Mexican Batman, Britain’s Downfall, Mr Bean’s Comeback & Jimmy Carr - Rabbit Hole #5 - #1143

0:00A vigilante, known as the Batman of Lagos de Moreno, has gone viral after catching alleged motorcycle thieves and duck-taking them to lampposts across Lagos de Moreno in a halee score. That least five suspected thieves have been found restrained to poles over the past ten days, some with their mouths taped and signed the labeling them as thieves. Authorities are investigating and say those found tied up and being treated as victims. But at least have added the vigilante to a wanted listener also looking into whether the multiple people are behind the incidents. We've got some pictures of what these people look like. It's like a real, the guys are real life Mexican Batman that appears to be getting motorcycle thieves and duck-taking them. People are also calling him duck-take-man, which is... Oh, wow. But he's really doing it. Oh, that is, I mean, that's a, yeah, okay. Sorry, so you hear duck-take and you think I could get myself out of duck-take? No. That is, okay. I know he's left the motorcycle with them. That seems... There's the evidence. That seems bad, because someone's going to cut them free and they're going to disappear on the... See? Motorcycle.

1:00There it is, duck-take-man. Okay. That seems... That's kind of great, because normally if you see a story about crime in Mexico, you go, or this is going to be... No. This is going to be eye bleach. This is a very fluffy way to deal with crime in Mexico, it seems. How has he taken down two in one? I mean, they don't look... Preferably physically intimidating. They look 14 and terrified. Yeah. I mean, it's... Yeah, don't steal motorcycles. I don't know if you've been a message there. He would be, too, if you'd been taped to a lamppost. The rise and fall of civilizations and the rise, duck-take-man brings back law and order. You were talking about a strongman make good times. That is the strongman that uses duck-take. There was the case about seven months ago in the UK where a guy purposely left his bike, I think outside of the HMP in London, where all the police are based and put like an Apple airtag on it. And it got lost. He calls up the police and it's like, we have the airtag, I have the address. There's nothing we can do.

2:01There's nothing we can do. All of a sudden, he then takes us to the telegraph at the time. It becomes a huge story and then the police go, we're looking into it. So even when you have the GPS coordinates, they don't take it seriously. Yeah, it's good. I think it's a crime I could get behind that. The vigilante, it's like... It's nice. You don't hear a lot about it these days. Well, it was the last crime you committed. The last... I would say probably... Probably some sort of tax avoidance. It was the last big one. When that whole thing happened, this is years ago, no, about 12, 13 years ago. When it was all going on, I was like front of the papers and the Prime Minister was David Cameron at the time. He broke off from the G20 summit to comment on my personal tax affairs. That is a red flag. But it was all going on. I never once mentioned the millions that I've given to charity because I thought, well, at this point, line's not going to help. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because evasion is allowed, but avoidance is not. No, avoidance is allowed. There's a big difference about 18 months in prison. Right.

3:01Or if you ask Gary Stevenson, then there's a big difference as well. What was the document you watched? Have you watched Gary Stevenson's new documentary? No, go on, what's the document? I think he's wonderful. I think he's the best economist. I heard you laughing while you were watching it last night. I think he's the best economist of our times. And when the Soviet Great Britain becomes, and you guys are fighting over a little bit of bread, me and Gary will throw you a strip. So I don't want to say anything bad about Gary at all. Right. Because when the Gulags come, Christopher, I'm going to be eating bread. This is the same as being kind to your AI in case an AI overload. Just to get this guy, Marxist economist or... No, no, no, he's a pioneer. He's a genius, Jimmy. His idea, he wants to bring in a, I think is it a two to two percent wealth tax on over 10 million per year inside of the UK is what the policy Gary's proposing. That's it. I thought there was more. The documentary's called How To Become Felfy Rich. Yes. So what's the thesis? Tax wealth not work. Yeah, tax wealth not work, which I actually think you'd like that from a copy writing perspective

4:02Mr. Dry. But his, yeah, his whole thesis is with rising inequality, if we can bring it in a two percent wealth tax to the UK in particular, then that will raise, I think, about 25 billion is Gary's thesis. But quite impressively inside the documentary, they actually keep on actually a smart economist who argues a little bit back with him. And his whole thesis is, well, actually the GDP will probably go down by about four to five percent. Because if you're a foreign investor, why not go to France? Why not go to Sweden? Why not go to United States of America? I was talking about this. We were chatting about it earlier, but I think like Britain needs to be more competitive. Right. It's like that thing of like we're competing with other nations. People have the ability to move anywhere they want to move now. And there's a lot of talk about billionaires and millionaires leaving the UK. Whatever. Like you just got to compete. So that idea of going the big thing, the big kind of controversial thing is I think the currency is overvalued. I think if you, the great play you, every nation has when you print your own currency, you could devalue it. You could devalue the currency and make it very cheap to invest in great Britain.

5:03And just have all the money come to you. It's like, you are, it's like a zero sum game in the world. You want people to come. People want to live there. There's good schools. It's a great place. Wonderful people, wonderful culture. You want more people to come there. So devaluing the currency has always been seen as a humiliation. But every time the currency is being devalued, there's been 18 months of incredible growth. Did you not have inflation as the currency gets devalued? You could do them and you've got to mitigate against that. But I mean, we've got massive inflation anyway. So what are you going to do? So we could weaken the dollar. That's your, that's the car, the car mission statement. Yeah. Super weak. Super weak currency that attracts a lot of people. China have been doing it for 20 years. They've massively devalued their currency artificially in order that people Chinese goods are very cheap in the rest of the world. That's great. So they export a lot of stuff and they do very well as an economy. They've brought more people out of poverty the last 20 years than you could dream of. It's incredible. I guess the idea is then that for British guys, podcasts back in London and not America. You know, I feel like this is a living pro almost of some of the troubles. Yeah. I mean, it is that thing of like, you've just got to be better than other places.

6:06You know, so how do we compete? I thought one Brexit happened. I thought the next day we would have undercar Ireland. I care in Irish passport. I love being Irish, but I thought we would have undercar Ireland. And Ireland had the corporation tax of like 12%. So that's why all the tech companies are based in Ireland. If you get your, whatever, bill from anthropic, it comes from Dublin if you buy it in the UK, right? So, but we didn't undercut them. We just went, oh, great. Let them do that. If you're prime minister for the day, what are some of your, not like, like, less, maybe less obvious policies that you do, roger policies that you implement. Okay. Okay. Devalue the currency. Okay. It would be the first thing. It would be the same way mission. Yeah. Quite a question. Not that much. Specifically how you could just talk it down. You could, honestly, you could talk it down enough. And it's not going up. It's not going up. It's not going up. It will go down. I mean, it's going to happen anyway. But isn't that a bit, but it's probably, but if we went, if we went, yeah. But when the currency naturally devalues, when there's, when there's something, something bad happens. Do you, do you go to the IMF and try and bail out the pound or just go, great, things

7:06are now cheap in the UK and come the rest of the world, sales on. It's a bit like rope adoke, like Arle just sort of sitting on the ropes. Yeah. Yeah. And then you come out and you're going to wait for them. I'm going to let him punish me in the face so much that he gets tired. It's a lot of labor's cheaper than China and Vietnam. Yeah. But then investing infrastructure and, you know, you have to, you have to have to make it. Yeah, it's a serious idea. But then the other thing that you do is energy, energy cost is four times higher in the UK than America. And every business has that as a factor, right? So things are very expensive to produce and it's expensive to even run an office in the UK because energy prices are very high. That affects everyone. That's a, that's got to be like 20, 25 year problem, right? So you got to fix that. You've got to be as technologically advanced to 70s France, who built 56 nuclear power plants in 10 years. If you do that, you, you're off to the races. I've got to say, Mr. Kai, you're, you're talking, read your catering young man. Well, you're talking like a man who might be having a bit of a prime ministerial run. Is that, is that on the cards?

8:07I think, yeah, I think now I believe the system in the UK now is seven prime ministers in 10 years. I think we now take a ticket like it, like it, like it, a, I don't know if it's a delete and you just, it comes out. So you're rough at some point soon. And if that you want to be, you wouldn't want to be prime minister because it'd be a big commitment. That always used to be the case now. It's been six months. It's it. I've begun for six months. It's going to be a shop, shop sign that you turn around. Like, you know, back in five prime minister. All right, given that we're talking about the UK, let's play a game of guest, the Victorian slang word. So I'm going to say different words from Victorian era Britain. And you're going to try and guess what they mean. Okay. Yeah. Lovely. All right. First one, tickety boo. It just means good. Something that is in perfect order or a satisfactory condition. That's like really kind of tickety boo. Tickety boo. Tickety boo. Everything starts tickety boo. Muffin Walloper. Hmm. She'll suddenly die right. I'm a muffin Walloper fat. I think it's a, I think it's a, it's a sort of rather stout gentleman who enjoys muffins. Yeah.

9:08An idle person who sits at home, we can't just kick on. You've got to tell us what a muffin walker is. That's what I'm saying. I'm literally describing it. Oh, I thought you'd move nothing. No, it's an idle person who sits at home eating cakes and gossiping instead of cooking. Muffin Walloper. So you should be cooking, but instead you're sitting at home eating cakes and gossiping. Next one. Church Bell. A church bell would be my, would be my guest there. I'm fine. I'm fine. Okay. Is it, would it be an ugly person like you've been hit by the church bell like a quasi-modo reference? Oh, that's clever, but no. I think it's, this sounds, I think it's a young virgin. A May young nail version. Harry's just going to answer young virgin for all of you. Yeah. When did the young virgins come out? Paul Wilkinson has that great bit, which was when he's watching university challenge, because he can never guess the answer. He just says egg each time, because statistically at some point he's going to be right there.

10:10There's a better chance of just a young gentleman. I think we've, there's a method to the madness. Right. Okay. Church Bell, I'm thinking a young sort of subject, like to the left of the organ master, there's the man who rings the church bell, a young 40. Oh, okay. That's actually, and it's been probably way too clever. A woman who talks so much, her voice is reminiscent of the ringing of a church bell. Okay. Next one. Butter upon bacon. Is it like a hat on a hat? It's too much of a good thing. Yes. But she's doing too much. Yeah. Butter on bacon. It's butter on bacon, yeah. Mathicking. Mathicking. You know what, Mathicking is? It sounds northern. It sounds northern. I'm going to go with... You're really good at this. Some level of incest. Uh, it could result in incest. It could result in incest. A term for getting wildly rowdy out in the streets. Oh, I mean, that's just... Mathicking in Newcastle. Mathicking on a big market. Yeah, I love the jump from it sounds northern to incest. Insisting.

11:11Yeah. It could be incest. After-noonified. After-noonified. You're slacking off. You're no longer taking things seriously. Yeah, exhausted. Someone or something that is highly fashionable. Oh, would... After-noonified. That's too assumed. That's good. That's because you only dress up in the afternoon. Right, you're after-noonified. Right. He wouldn't dress that way in the morning. You wouldn't keep walking off. Uh, Chukaboo. Chukaboo, a dear friend. Dear friend, Chukaboo. Uh, Giggle Mug. Someone who's always smiling. Half-rats. Bit drunk. Half-rats. That makes sense. That's just half-rats. Uh, evening weasers. This should be brought back. Evening weasers should be brought back. It's fake news. Uh. So evening weasers. Uh, and apparently, it's champagne weather. Means it's pouring or raining. Coffee sisters mean besties. There we go. Victorian slang for you. Well, it is interesting, like, language. Like, to talk about this,

12:11because that's the same language. That's the English language that we still use. And those words have gone. You never notice when something disappears, because it disappears. Kind of becomes forgotten. But the idea that it's the best example of anarchy, the political system of anarchy, is the English language. There's no central system for it. No one sits down and goes, that's a word, that's not a word. We're changing the meaning of that. It just organically sort of emergent from the group. It's kind of perfect. I think a lot of solutions are like that. You can't do it from top down. It just has to sort of let it happen. What do you, I mean, you spend your entire time playing with the English language. What have you come to think about sort of how it's developed recently? How is developed? I don't like new words. I mean, this is slightly tangential to the question, but if I was on a date, for example, it's the ones using lots of new and actual new words, I would say, it's been a great night, you know? That's what I'd say. I think simple words are the best words. Best, what's the worst phrase? Big things are best said in small words.

13:11It would be like a mark of intelligence. Like if you can get across a complex idea to a five-year-old, great, and if you need incredibly complex language, you're some kind of hoxster. You're selling some bullshit. You've got an issue with like, lead speak, 21st century lead speak, and that would be if a lady wants to bag Harry Dry, she can't use too much modern slang. I think so. If she came out and started talking tickety-boo, that'd really get you going. Unfortunately, I've watched Peep Show. So for any fans of that show, they know that words a bit of a turn off. But I think I read once that the French started a revolution with free words, which are quite big words. But what was it? A gallery, a liberty, a fraternity? You know, I don't think you need much more than that. You don't need much more than that to sell soap if the French are starting a revolution with just free words. What's the best example of compression? Or to like the most simplest? Oh, geez. The best example of compression. Well, there's like a two-word joke, dwarf shortage.

14:12And I had a three-word joke, which was stationary store moves. He had the six-word story. Oh, yeah. For sale. Children's shoes never worn. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, brilliant. How do you think about words, Jimmy, in comedy? Do you think some words are just funny? Or do you obsess about word choice when you write a joke? Yeah, I really do. I really think it's kind of the phrasing. It's more the rhythm of it. But sometimes it's the phrasing, like having the right word for the thing and conjuring up an image is very important in people's heads. So you've got the concept that you kind of, oh, I know this thing's funny. How do we get that across to someone else? So it's about that language, the purpose of language of like conveying, like getting space in their head, getting into their head and making them draw the cartoon. Didn't you have stepdads? Motherfuckers. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Stepdad. I don't like the term stepdad. I prefer to say motherfucker. Yeah. It's nice. Just take a moment to step back from it and go, yes.

15:14It was right there. It was right there the whole time. I had a thing the other day that I just thought, how's no one got to this before? We were talking about that Donald Trump came up. I said, yeah, they tried to assassinate him. And they very nearly did kill him because no one could warn him because no one wanted to sound stupid. No one wanted to shout, Donald Duck. Very hard. It's good. It was right there that you go, well, how did no one? The palm of everyone's hands. How did no one see that? Yeah, sometimes it feels like the joke's there. You're just like getting rid of everything else. I've learned from over a thousand podcast episodes, the easier that you make your health routine, the more consistent you'll be. It's like golf, right? You want to keep it simple and not make a bunch of pills. You want the eye of the tiger, not the DUI of the tiger. That's why I'm such a huge fan of A.G.1. One scoop contains 75 vitamin, minerals, probiotics and whole food source ingredients in a single daily drink. And that's why I've been taking it every single morning for nearly five years now. And they've taken it a step further with A.G.1 next-gen back by four clinical trials. Nurse trials that was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times, even in people who already eat well. Plus, if you're still unsure,

16:15they've got a 90-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it and try it every single day for three months. If you don't like it, they will give you all of your money back. Right now, you can get 20% off a welcome kit and that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below, are heading to drinkaigewon.com, slash modern wisdom, that's drinkaigewon.com, slash modern wisdom. It's interesting how you have these, you can even explain some of these techniques yet, they still work. So one we've discussed is the A, B, B, A. So it will be, it's not about the days in your life. It's the life in your days. Or church, yes, alcohol's taken a lot out of me, but I've taken more out of alcohol. Or you have JFKs, don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And you'll see this A, B, B, A pattern, and it still works, even when you know it, even when you know it's coming, it still works. Just one in advertising, like everyone will know it, just beans, means, high-ents, but just changing all of the last letters to be a Z, was just the most genius.

17:17But that's another example when you do things in threes. So again, another one, you ever heard the Winston Churchill speech during World War II where he talks about, this is when he comes in and he refers to, I have nothing to give but blood, sweat, and tears. What's interesting is he didn't say that. He said I have nothing to give but blood, sweat, toil, tears. But because we like threes, it just, it disappears. And you constantly see this, whenever anybody actually makes a four-way statement. Although you look at the unit, you go, you didn't toil much to it. Big, big, thumb. Big old boy. What have you got? Do you bring something from it? Yeah, I've got some stuff from home. We went to bring stuff. Yes, I'm so sorry. No, I'm joking. Okay, what do you got? So, we've, do you recognize what this is? You're gonna have to lift it, put it on the table for the class, okay? Okay, so this is, yeah, that looks perfect. That's lovely, thank you. Do you recognize what this is? Yes, it's, I would say it's the woods. Some woods? A pirate woods? Yeah, Britain. So this is Charles Darwin's thinking path

18:20that he built around his house. So whenever Darwin was stuck on a problem, he would go on a walk around his thinking path and he would collect, he'd have stones like racked up that he would knock off to kind of figure out how many rounds that he's done. His kids would sometimes fuck with him and like put the stones back on whilst he was walking around. So Darwin used to use this thinking path regularly. Okay, he had 10 kids as well. So there's a lot of, pass, a lot of kids to, do we know what this is? So I say you, Seth. You, Seth, kidnap, Chase, Arthur, Eames, Lim, oh, it's Christopher Nolan's inception. Correct, this is, so Christopher Nolan was working on inception for 10 years. And one of the things he did was actually draw the plot down. So you see the five part dream plot that he visualized here. Do you know what this is? Yes, but I'm not gonna say it. Do you guys know what it is? It looks like my, my diary when I was in school, most you know, I don't know. No idea. Is that J.K. Rowling's? When J.K. Rowling was stuck on Harry Potter.

19:21She turned it into a spreadsheet. This is the fifth Harry Potter, like the entire storytelling sequence into a spreadsheet. Is that, I had it on workouts, is it? Is it? All right, cool. This? I think, does that say at the top? Yeah, it says, I think, and then it has a little diagram. Let me see. Therefore I am. Back, you know. Back to Mr. Charles Darwin earlier. This is when he opened his red notebook and drew out kind of his first thoughts around what evolution is. I like the family trees, I how it all interconnects. Okay. And then, anybody know what this pub is? Jimmy, this looks like one of your thoughts. Yeah, I know, this looks like the eagle and child. It's not the pub and Oxford, is it? Yes, it is. Is it the pub and Oxford? Yes, correct. All the great myths of the 20th century were written. Pretty much so. So it's Lord of the Rings, CS Lewis. Yes. It's where J.R. Tolkien and CS Lewis used to meet up. Have a try. Tolkien would give CS Lewis his draft of the hobby, all of the rings. CS Lewis would give Tolkien his draft of Narnia or whatever he was working on.

20:23They would both read it out loud and then roast one another over a pint. Hey, do you want to know an interesting, his, a tangential fact to that? So I only find this out recently. So Finnegan's Wake is a book that I've read around a lot. I haven't read Finnegan's Wake, but I read about it a lot. It's kind of the great work of literature. It's James Joyce, obviously. So I didn't realize that Finnegan's Wake is Star Wars. So Joseph Campbell, you heard of Joseph Campbell. The hero has a thousand faces. The hero's journey, all of those kind of great books that informed Star Wars, that basically Star Wars is a sort of dumb down version of those books. Well, before Joseph Campbell wrote the hero's journey, his thesis was on the myths within James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. So he basically wrote that first and then he thought, this is really good, this thesis. I'm going to make this into a book about the heroes that are in all stories. And so it's kind of James Joyce and then it's Joseph Campbell and then it's George Lucas.

21:24And then James Joyce is actually the root of this. Yes, it's a distilled version of these things. That's brilliant. Alex Petkiss on the show and he did a breakdown of the Odyssey, but because he can read the original Greek, he's able to get much more rich explanation of what's going on, because sometimes words have multiple different meanings. And he's digging into that. It was so good, so fantastic. And you see even in that, there's turns, there's a descent, and I'm asking him at each point. Okay, so using Campbell's idea, which was like 2003, 2000, it goes later, something like that. At what point on the clock face are we here? As he goes around and sure enough, even back then, even the first book ever written, the first thing ever written down before that it was all verbal sorry right? Gilgamesh, wasn't it? Oh, maybe. The message is a bit older. Maybe. Not to contradict you when you're in podcasts, but you know, I mean, feel free. Just to go back to that, is it interesting to just hold this up for a second? The eagle and child, pub in Oxford, where CS Lewis and Tolkien would meet up

22:26to roast each other about the fiction. Meanwhile, you two nerds, fucking lifetime, over a smoothie, over a honeyberry smoothie, English have lost their way. My point of bringing these is I'm working on a chapter called, it's a round of thinking, we've discussed it before. Essentially the premise is, don't think with your head, think with your feet, your hands, or your mouth. So a few different premises on that. There's a few, I didn't include that. So Dickens, when he was struggling in insomnia and writers block, would do what his friends described as a violent walk-kick. He would walk 20 to 13 miles. Travis Kaleneck, when he was creating Uber, he had a racing track built in the office. They would do walking meetings and be constantly walking around. Of course you see his emails are weak. Yeah, you can't get a car. There we go. And then going back to thinking with your math, if you go to the bottom of Mike, Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, the paper he published about 25 pages,

23:26he credits nobody, but he says thank you to one person, which is Michael Besso, who was his friend that he would walk around and talk with. And the one day as he's talking it out loud, his friend, he comes up with this idea. That's why Harry's like, I call him my Besso as a result, because you having those people to talk to, but I wanted to kind of, it may be explained like, why do I think this is going on? I think you might be the Einstein. He might be. LAUGHTER Jorries out. Don't take that. I'll take that. I'll be a Besso. I'll be a Besso. So I went to visualize something that's under disgust. Okay. Right, which has spent that a little more for me. This idea here, which is kind of human step count throughout your great, great, great N times 100, just goes like this. And then suddenly you have kind of the agricultural revolution here, and it just completely plebates. Like, and then you kind of go down to 10,000. And now we're currently the average is around about 5,000. What's interesting, 18,000 for men was the average step count for hunter-gatherers.

24:28We estimate about 15,000 for women. Interestingly, they said, how do you get that data? One way you can look at it is with, oh, what's the current people that reject technology that forgot? Armish. Armish. So the armistice, look at the number of steps the armistice do per day to kind of... The only armish life is slightly different to 300,000 BC. Hunter, you can look at a few different things in terms of like walking distances. Okay. That's one of the gauges. You think it might be the same amount of steps in a lifetime, but they're getting them in early because they die at 35. No, no, no. Because they're all better than life. Doesn't that down to the same number of steps overall? Yeah, you've got a certain amount of steps in you, and that's it. Roger Federer has got this canister theory, which was because he had a couple of years out, basically he got into the age, I think it was more than 2019. And he was like, I still got stuff in the canister because he didn't play, no, he didn't play in 18, I don't think. And it was this idea that a tennis player just has a canister, which they can even burn and out like Nick Curios and just actually he didn't play much, but like more like in the dark. And then the canister, cheer at the end of the game.

25:30Well, I like that idea of like in relationships, thinking about reservoir of goodwill. So you build up a reservoir of goodwill early in a relationship in the kind of honeymoon period, and then you can spend it later on. So how many fights could a friendship survive, could a relationship survive? And it's all about how much you've stacked up. So you're stacking up those good memories, those good times, and then you've got that reserve that you kind of eat into in the relationships, quite a nice way to think about it. Because you kind of go through hard times for someone, you go, actually it's all right, because we've done a lot of stuff in the past. Whereas if it's someone you've just met, you go to the fuck this noise. Yes. Yeah, it's like paying into a bank account. Yeah, if you haven't deposited much in, you can't withdraw much before it goes into the bank account. But I think people think about friendships in that way, where you go kind of friendships are, they're incredibly important. I sort of think every argument between a couple is one person saying to another person, you are not enough people. The best relationship advice is investing your friends. You're part of what will be fine. Go out and talk to your friends, and then come home and listen. But people don't have that. They think one person's gonna be there everything. I think one of the problems of talking about friendships like that is it makes it sound quite transactional,

26:31and it gives people a little bit of an I. What are you saying? Yeah, I mean, there's supposed to be something, loyalty is not just if this person can add to my life, Alex had this line where he imagined that one of his friends asked him, he'd broken down his guy, he got flat tire in his car, he was five blocks away. Will you come and help me? And Alex would just ring a roadside assistant to go and see him. And it was like, well, that means that I can do what I want to do. My friend gets about a quality of service. But what it forgets is that he's not just saying, can you fix my tire? It's will you give me your time and your support? Not Alex, sort of remains staunch. He's like the most like utilitarian when I come to your friend. I think you've got this recently a lot, because so much education is now done by YouTube. Right, so if you learn how to shave, and we've all got differing abilities here, but you learn how to shave, you do it with a YouTube tutorial now, but you miss the intimacy of going to a father or an old friend and going, how do I actually do this thing?

27:32And I don't know what's lost there, but like you would think that the aim is to shave, but it isn't, it's like a little communal moment. No, Sean has this wonderful idea. And I tried, you know, we was talking last time around what we call like hypermeter, which is this idea to be atron Greeks or Romans, rather than scroll the news feed everyday or read a new bar, call us into a new audio book. They would have principles that they want to take seriously. So they'd go back and review the label, this is forgetting everything. And one of mine would be from Sean, which is that idea he talks about, just delete the score. So like a lot of people go into the start of a relationship, kind of game theory one at one, or it's like, I'm at zero. Christopher is at zero and I'll wait, wait, wait. Chris, Chris will do something, take time. But you understand why the scoreboard is there to measure an imbalance in injustice. And delete the scoreboard. Okay. Okay. You get taken advantage of that after you've searched your past. You'll feel that. I don't think you're even going to get taken advantage of. I don't think you need to be a sociopath to take advantage of somebody inside of a relationship. Like let's say that you get into a relationship with somebody

28:34and like an intimate relationship. This is maybe going to be your new wife for the rest of time. And she keeps on turning her blade. She keeps on disrespecting you. And you're like, no, just give, give, give, give. Contest, right. But within reason completely, it's all like when I say, but no decisions rather than experiments and somebody's like, well, I'm going to shoot up a load of heroin and I'm going to punch a police officer in the face within reason. And I'm talking about people that air one way. So if you air naturally towards the, I'm going to wait for this person, then I'm going to mirror. And then I'm going to mirror. I think I'm with you. I think it's the, you can't win an argument with your wife. Everybody loses. Yeah, because if you win, you lose. If you lose. I have mood. So that thing of like going and the relationships are transactional, right? There's, there's like codes of conduct that you expect within it. And that's, that's kind of, that's okay. But then I think if you just get, if you enjoy the act of giving and just, just give, give, give. And I do think you end up way, you end up, the other person ends up giving way more because you just push it so far. And listen, if you're 15 a lot, then yeah, we'll, we'll go away. But until you get to 15, I'll just give it. So wait better way to live.

29:34I think it's more enjoyable. But there is also, there is also no 15 L. Like I, there is no 15 L. Exactly. You know, as soon as, yeah, I agree with you. I think once you decide, I think you have to make a decision in life. And then once you've, once you've made a decision, then you've got to make that decision right. And I think people kind of sort of waste a lot of time in this space of like, I can't decide, I can't decide. And that's when maybe the school boards, pinging off, pinging off. But once you've decided, then you're the same, like you're the same person. Yeah, I see Alex Hormose, he's up on the wall there. We met for the first time this weekend. I was in Las Vegas. And I kind of know him, like we spoke on Zoom and I know a lot of his work, but I met him for the first time. And it was that kind of thing that he has this sort of theory on, like that thing about, his new theory is about optionality. And the idea that people are getting all the options they can, they want optionality on everything. So they get five degrees and they train and they're ready for everything, they're ready for options. But until you cash in those options, it's meaningless. I think it's kind of a genius idea of like, at some stage, you go with what you've got now

30:36or you don't go to do what you can with what you've got where you are. Or you just, it's like, otherwise you're like 40 and waiting for something to happen. So George kind of decided at one point in our interactions that we were friends. I don't know when it happened. At one point George just decided that we were friends. And then he started, he started just, I mean, I would say, I would say, if I was to describe to you, I would talk about your generosity. And it feels kind of weird to speak highly of you because I've been abusive you were weak. But you're, I think you're an incredibly generous guy. And I think that like, you know, I don't think there's any expectation of anything which comes with that. You just kind of, like I touched down an Austin Airbnb sorted, you know, I touched down, it's just, I think it's a lovely way to live. And I do think there is a point where it's Chris is like, yeah, if someone, if you, it's a feeling, as soon as the feeling goes. So that's my point on that, not needing to turn it into the metric. Why is it that we like to hang around with some people and we don't like to hang around with others? There is some form and this would be Alex's argument. And I'm, if you're on one end and Alex is on the other, I'm somewhere in the middle.

31:37Alex's point would be, you are tracking a scoreboard whether you're doing it mentally or not. And the scoreboard is the vibe of how you feel around somebody. We have friends that we've stopped hanging out with because we're like, I just don't feel like this vibe is the scales don't feel like they're balanced regardless of whether or not you're keeping count. And I do think that that's true. My, my Rupert Lufan is that awful line of like, you're the average of the five people you've ironed around with. And I think in essence, average of the five podcasts you listen to, yes. Then what ends up happening is you have this, you're always trying to fuck up what's if you follow that approach anyway, which means that my definition, that why should those people hang out with you? I think a better Lufan is forget how much money they have, forget what they've achieved. I, surround yourself with who you feel almost alive with. So I don't care if someone's a poet that's broken. If I hang out with them, I feel alive. It's way more interesting than some billionaire where you feel dead behind the artist after hanging out.

32:38A lot of this is probably the best match. So I still think that you are the average, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with this fine. It's just what is the metric that you're optimizing for? Because some people might want to be in a room with people that have got the highest net worth or are the most well-known and the highest status, whatever, but it can just be. And ultimately, what it comes back to is, if you ask enough why questions, I just want to feel good. I want to feel good around these people. I don't know, it's a weird thing on what a friendship's for. And I don't think friendships really pay out until the bad days, right? So you can have a really bad day before you know what a friend is. Because on good days, it's fine, everything's fine. We can hang out with anyone. It doesn't matter. They're giving, they're taking, it doesn't matter. When you have a bad day, like if you get cancelled, which I have been a number of times, like it's a filter, it's such a great filter. It's like a gift being cancelled. Because at the end of it, you end up with fewer friends, but much better ones. And it's the foul weather, friends. It's the guys that call on the bad day. That's what really matters. And that's what you're ultimately, I think somewhere at a deeper level, we're solving for that. We're solving for, well, if things get bad,

33:39who could I actually want? Well, this person stay with me in the trenches. Yeah. What's the, what it comes to like cancellation or public criticism? What's the idea that's kind of non-alvious that you only appreciate, apart from that, once you've gone through it, that most people wouldn't be stout. I think it's, the impermanence of it is interesting. And the idea that you go, is anyone gonna care about this in a month or a year or, yet if no one's gonna care in a year, why do you care now? Joseph's got this land, he says, the dogs bark and the caravan moves on. And I quite like it. Merimio. Goose. Just quote it. What's the first ever? I was a merimio, quite. Yeah, it's good though, isn't it? It's that thing where you go. It's a real sort of test. It's character versus reputation. Because your reputation is being destroyed and your character is who you know you are. What was the, what was the love list text or call your head? Like who was there for you? There was a few, there was, James Corden would really stand out. So when I got, it was the tag thing, actually, and he was in Broadway.

34:40He was busy winning a Tony for his performance in one man's e-governance and he called me every night, and he's in total of his show. And he just called me and then he called me, and I said, no, I'm fine, I'm fine, but, then he called me the next night, because he knew it wasn't, and then he called me the next one, because he knew it wasn't, and he just kept on calling. That's amazing. Yeah, it's a lovely thing. And all it teaches you is, like, I can't do that for him, but I could do that for someone else. And when it comes along, that thing of like, being the person that calls when something awkward happens or when something terrible happens, phoning and saying, I don't know what to say, but I thought I'd call him. Because no one remembers what you said. I think it's a memory with that. Somewhere along the way, low energy just gets accepted as a part of getting older. Turns out, there's a reason for that. As we age, our mitochondria, the parts of our cells that power us become weaker and make less energy, which is why I'm such a huge fan of timeline. They've developed this that helps to clear out your damaged mitochondria, so your cells can actually renew themselves. Timeline is backed by over a decade of research and has more than 50 patents, and is the number one recommended mitochondrial supplement

35:41on the planet. This isn't just theory. In clinical trials, people saw mitochondrial renewal increased by more than 40% in just 16 weeks, along with improvements in their overall energy. I've been using it for over two years, since my doctor recommended it to me way before I partnered with Timeline and eat your heart out Martin Schreley, because they've just dropped the price, and it now starts at $99. Best of all, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee plus free shipping in the US, plus they ship internationally, and right now you can get that $99 price within additional 20% off by going to the link in the description below, heading to timeline.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. At checkout. I am just a lovely thing when people do stuff for you, which they can be zero ulterior motives. They literally can be. I'm trying to think of a good... I can give you one from my life. So this was the moment I became, like, properly, properly good friends with UCF. So for the people that within the last 600 episodes of the show, you only appear as once a year, but it was most of the episodes

36:43for the first 400 with Johnny. He heard his back. He has a bulging desk. He'd heard his back in the gym doing flips or deadlifting or whatever he was doing at the time. And I was on my way to drive to one of our club nights, and his house was kind of out of the way, but not a million miles off. So I was like, I'll come over and I'll bring you something, because I know what it's like to beleitating back pain. You sort of laid up and he's like, no, no, you don't need to come and see me. Anyway, I managed to get into his house and brought him a loaf of soar in, some Ivy leave, some Neurofen, and went and got a hot water bottle for him, and he couldn't move. But he just, the classic male denial of medical problems or whatever, he's 25, right? He's made of rubber and magic. He'll bounce back, he'll be fine. But he was just miserable and it felt like it sucked. And that was a palpable moment when our friendship changed. And even though we were really good friends before, I could just tell that there was something that happened at that moment when I decided to go around with some malt loaf and pain relievers and a hot water bottle and was like,

37:43all right, man, I gotta go and be in a nightclub with 1,000, 18-year-olds. Like, I hope you're all right. And then he, basically, sent me this sex afterwards, like, being teary and being like, man, that was just how wonderful and like, what a lovely thing to do. You're all right, like, especially in a world where everybody is looking out for the transaction where effort can be so low effort, right? Like, just sending a text, I think the bar has been lowered for what constitutes becoming a very good friend. Like, you got me from my birthday one time, you got me a newspaper from the day that I was born and printed off graph of the first episode and the biggest episode with the play count in between it. And I was never, I couldn't even take it, it was left in Mike Thurston's apartment in Dubai for like two years, because I couldn't fly back with it because it was so big. But like, stuff like that, you know, it's just, it's really being, yeah, being better or just aggressively going, dip, dip, dip, dip, and figure out the next life. Aggressive friendship. And figure out the next life. But isn't this a BDSM friendship? You're often very good on this kind of stuff, right? You pointed out this, I thought about this a lot, right?

38:44There's a lot of books about being a good parent, but there's no books about being a good kid, right? Which is kind of interesting. And there's, and really it should be a book about being a family. But there's interesting, there's loads of books, there's, you know, kind of the game and stuff about pick up culture and finding women and getting women, great. But there's very little about friendship. And actually, that seems to be the thing that I think friendship is upstream of having a relationship. I think it's not gay to practice on your friends. But that thing of like building friendships and building kind of, and that's kind of what's missing from, you know, rough and tumble play has been replaced by video games. And it doesn't work in the same way. Like there's something about that male friendship thing and building that up over years having your boys, having your guys that you're with that's really incredibly valuable. And we don't do enough of it. Robin Dunbar has got this insight. See, it was the guy that came up with a hundred and fifteen of you. And he's brilliant. He's fantastic. And he says that you have your close group of friends, which is five, and a slot, five very close friends. But a relationship takes up two.

39:46That's a relationship takes up two of the slot of five. And that would also mean that if you lose the relationship and you want to keep that same level of connection, you can't just replace your chick with a new friend. You probably need to replace them with two. Yeah, well, it's also that thing of like, men tend not to do very well post divorce because they outsource their social life to their other half. So then it's like, the wife and the friends, they're entirely isolated afterwards, which is terrible, where to be. Robin Dunbar, we hit. Go on, you were going to say something there. I lost my train of thought now, but I think, you know, I always think of, I think it's, a lot of what we're discussing is what I wonder if the American audience appreciates it as much as the British. Because they're so giving, dude, they're so Americans don't understand just how pro-social they are. Like you can be on the side of the lake. And this happened, this happened the other week when we went to the Jasper Mike's house. And I was on the side of the lake and a boat just went by, well, like, do you want to come wake surfing? Like they didn't know me. Like, yeah, sure, went wake surfing.

40:48Like that just, you would need in order to get to that level of friendliness, that would be a three year project in the UK, in order to warrant being invited onto this thing that was part, and you know, maybe it's because everyone's, it might be an awesome thing because everyone's kind of a social transplant from somewhere else. There might be an America thing because everyone's a cultural transplant, you know, sort of, historically from somewhere else. But I don't know. I noticed there's three types of interactions I'd have with strangers. So, interaction one would be, stranger would just not look at me. Interaction two would be, would mirror one of us energy, so are you given not? And then you'd have somebody who actually says something. I realized a lot of the time I'd just like mirror. So I'd kind of head down. Somebody says hello and I'll say hello back. Somebody gives me a nod, I'll give them a nod back. And if they have their head down, I'll have my head down. Versus, oh, you can just, you can just do that. You can be the leader. But you're using the proportionate force of like being in a fight. So if he's got a knife, I can use a knife,

41:49but you just always use a gun. Yeah, yeah. I do wonder if we try to call him this. Welcome to Texas. Try to call him this time, which is a British syndrome. And America's syndrome's another thing. But British syndrome, I was out for dinner the other night, my friend of mine, and he's had this employee that he's kind of complained about for the last six weeks, like issues he's trying to get him to do. When he finally sits down at dinner, and he goes, I've realized he's not no agency. He's just British. Right. Ah. That's true. Well, you had a great razor for that on, I think it was you. Yeah, it was. British versus America. So you go, the British disease is cynicism and the American disease is bullshit. Yeah, which is, I mean, it's great. Great comic, Jeff Green. Do you have it? No, Jeff Green, great observation comic. Yes, sure. He said, I prefer America to Britain. I'd rather be told to have a nice day, but by someone that doesn't mean it, than told to fuck off by someone that does. Jeff Green, great, great comic. So, I have a whole lot of fun, which is whatever I criticize, but good criticize America as a router, or call him a broom. Yeah.

42:49Sounds like you're keeping school. I was thinking, do we, we ever have like an Elizabeth Holmes, a sandbag and a freedman? I think so. I think we're just, we're just not playing at that level. I think I have the reason why. The level of brazenness that you need to pull that off. I don't think any British person, except maybe Gary Stephenson has enough self belief to be able to drive that home. You need to have banks to rob them. Yeah, it's a good point. Just try and think of it like a great huckster in the UK. No. It's what I mean. A great hub. Gaff in the market. We should do it. I feel like Andrew's kind of hovering over that area, but that's the British huckster. Who? Andrew. Prince Andrew. Oh, the OG Andrew. Right. I got in a lift in Ios and Noston last year, and I got, I got in lifts, they call them elevators. Or do we call them elevators? What, one of us calls them elevators. We call it a lift, they call them elevators. Getting in these, these elevators or lifts.

43:50And I would say people started asking me what number I was on the elevator. Six, I'd say, you know, punch in six. And I, I'll come back to England and I'll, I'll try this out. So two marine road probably shouldn't have said that. Into the elevator, I go, the lift, I go, I say, hey, what number? What number would you like? And I say number? I say, yeah, some people say number. Some people with its headphones on and it's a starkly different experience. Having said that, I also learned about the California lunch. Well, I've never been to California, but apparently if you go to California, everyone says they want to have lunch with you. But they don't actually want to have lunch with you. Right, yeah. That, I remember a friend of mine saying to me, you know, it was in Hollywood and they said, be careful, you could dive encouragement. It's just, it's just, everything's very positive. Joey, how do you, how do you, I feel like there's two different ways into like, creating stuff. Right. And I feel like there's the volume method,

44:51which is like, I'm just gonna ride a lot of jokes and some of them are gonna be good. And that's sort of prints when he was recording music, would just make a lot of he'd record a song a day. You know, and then there's like, the Leonard Cohen approach, if I'm gonna spend five years on Alalu, you're under the right 80 versus. And I wonder in comedy, are you more like, I'm just gonna write, write, write, write, and some jokes again, stick, or I'm gonna work on one joke for a good couple of days. No, I don't find working on them really helps. It's like they come out pretty much fully formed. And then I just, it's iteration. It's just trying new things in the audience, tell you what's gonna work. So the audience feedback, the audiences are genius. They tell you what is and what isn't funny and what isn't acceptable. And you just go back to them time and time again. So at the end of the show, I've still got it on me from last night, you got new jokes and then you just try the new things and that's the night how you're riding your book, do you almost? Yeah, do you set yourself a number of jokes to write? Is it like that? Or not really. I mean, there's always like, there's always new stuff to try. There's always like, I've got a file, it's huge.

45:51They're like, okay, I'm gonna print off, okay, I'll try 10 tonight. And then the next 10. And then you sort of maybe, you tweak them a little bit but it's not a full kind of rewrite. You might tweak it a little bit. If you go, I didn't then really got that at all. And that wasn't clear enough. But it's very rare that you tell us a joke and it doesn't work and you can rescue it with a rewrite. It tends to be just the ideas just not there. And if they're immediate, then that's, and you're looking for the triple A's. You're looking for the ones that are gonna work every single time, no matter how you deliver them. You're looking for that kind of quality. So the idea of like, polishing something's kind of a different. Sometimes it's like, you change the wording a little bit and it perfects it. Jason Fried said this about writing. He said, if I write it down and it just doesn't, it's not feeling right. He said, I'm not, I'm not gonna come back to it. I'm not gonna rewrite it. I'm just gonna leave it. Start again the next day and it's like a different route in. Which is funny because I have a very different, I don't particularly work like that. Do you ever hear the Bob Dylan, a learn of common story when they met up, they met up for lunch and they, he talked about, Alalooia, 80 versus four years or whatever.

46:52No, it was like, it was Bob Dylan went, I think he said, but he said, how long did it take you to write, all along the watch-hound, Bob Dylan said 20 minutes. And he said, how long did it take you to write Alalooia and he said 12 years because he was a barris that it had been 20. But it was like, it's a long time. Yeah. But what's your process? Do you sit and follow it? I like writing. I think that you can't really write. You can only rewrite. So I guess I'm not writing jokes, you know. But is that, but that thing about you can't write you can only rewrite it. I think the idea of doing, you do masses of stuff. I think the reason most people don't succeed in the arts is because they get into it because they like really good stuff. They've got great taste. But then they don't stick around long enough to be able to produce good stuff. If I, it's like you start bad and then you get good over time. If I was gonna give one piece of advice to anyone trying to learn to write, I would say, honestly, I would forget quantity and I would think about trying to genuinely write one good sentence or maybe even two and then maybe just a good paragraph. And I feel like the real problem is people can go their whole careers without actually writing anything good.

47:52And what you really need to do is you need to understand what it's like to write just one thing really good. Because a great book is just like, it's a lot of great sentences which then form paragraphs and whatnot. And I remember who was it? Hunter S. Thompson, you wrote the great Gatsby. Just to know what it felt like to write a good book. And I do think there's something in there. I think he rewrote it. But hand, by hand, yeah, just to forget the feeling of extraordinary. I have a collection of, you see it, the follow-up of what I like about what I like and I turn it into an app as well where it starts, intros, middles, ends, quotes, reference setups. What was the Orwell spy rules that you keep banging on about? Well, I only bang on about them whenever you're, I know it's something that you don't want. I can't remember them. I think number one, actually, number one, I love it. It's never put, never, actually, how can we get on the internet there? We can look at a, first one is, I think the first one is just basically never put something in print which you've seen in print is the idea. So essentially just avoid cliched all times. And I think if you want to quickly improve any essay,

48:53I would just, you could drop it into Claude or you could just look at yourself and say, have I seen this sentence been written down before? Well, I pulled out, you're up, because you said, you said yesterday I was editing your writing and you said, what did you say about you? Something like during his darkest days. During his darkest days. Really great example of this. It's just been said, if you go to Google search and you put it in quotation marks, during his darkest days, would have been said millions and millions of times and it's the debris of someone else's thinking. That's what a cliche is. And you really want to just write original sentences. If you're really staveed and by Steinmeck it's the last sort of big book I read. And you drop his sentences into Google, no one said sentences like that, like the whole book. And I looked at the chapter you had and you dropped a couple of things into Google search, direct quotes and it's just been said before. It's a very good proxy for like average writing which your book's definitely not. But Tolkien, no, Miss Baby. What's the drop on the, this phone on the best one, do you give me the drop on your far idea? Okay. This is really about going from abstract to concrete writing. So essentially anything abstract,

49:55I'm trying to think of in examples. Yes, so let's say someone's writing a trinical what was an app for fitness and they said, I got an app, the idea is to regain your fitness. You can't really visualize regain in your fitness and what you want to do is you want to take that and sort of convert it into objects, physical objects, which you can drop on your foot. So Chris, let's see how we go. Regain fitness, drill into that, like what would drill into regain? What do we mean? What could we mean by regain fitness? Give me an object. Give me a starting point and an end point for regain in fitness. Not loving your body to loving your body. You could drop a body on your foot. So that would be closer. What you could also drop on your foot would be a couch. Oh, so this is yeah. A couch. And Jim knows to have a couch. If I've got you know where this is going. And it's huge. That's the nice thing, right? Yeah, because it makes it real. You know, if you can and people think in analogies, really, they can, you know, it's like that. If you can't see it, it's not there yet.

50:56It's really good riding advice. So if you can't visualize it, you know, it's not there yet. That's a great kind of, I mean, that kind of add copy as well, but you've kind of got that thing where it just feels like that was always going to be a hit. But it wasn't of course. They could have just called it the app. So couch to 5K was done by again, again, New York. It was a lot of his name, but he was living with his mum at the time. Like it was, it was sort of this crazy break out application, which had no right to be. And I think then it got bought by the BBC. And it's the most downloaded fitness app of all time. And that's like the, the, I think ideas, but I feel like even ideas are somewhat underrated. Like you really just need the conviction to, to, to do them. And those two things together. There was a Nike advert or a Nike or an ad, I think Nike during the Boston marathon. And it said, runners welcome, walkers tolerated. And it was great, but it was the, the, the difference here was the taste of the direction it was going in. It was so effective and catchy that all of the people who walked

51:58during the marathon, which is probably most people, most people are going to walk at some point. And I got into a lift, fuck me, in LA at the start of the year. And there was one wearing hooker mid 50s, something like that. Nicely dressed like fit women, like off to the gym or do whatever. And both of them were talking about how much they dislike Nike because, and both of them referenced that campaign. One of them was wearing hookers, the other was wearing rads or something. And they said, oh yeah, that, that campaign was just, runners welcome, walkers tolerated. They're so, they're so out of touch now in any case. And they had this, everyone has a degree of, distaste for the top dog. I can't wait for that to, that, that fall to happen. And especially if you play the out of touch, I don't care about the every man game. Like there's two things that are cohesing together there to like really move in the same direction. They've gotten so big, they've forgotten their roots, right? It's like, it's a cliche, you're playing into a trope that makes it very easy for somebody to attack you. So yeah, I think they put that for you.

53:00If there's, there's a few of those aren't they? Kind of examples in marketing where people have absolutely shout the bed, like done really badly. Was it, was it Ratna, the jeweler in, in the UK? Was it going to call, you gave a speech where he said, oh, we just sell fucking tat. And it just shut down because, yes, yes, yes, yes. Just, yeah, we just, in a single, in a single tweet, keep going. It was like, it wasn't a tweet, even, it was like, pre that, it was like, an after dinner speech, we just, it's just fucking shit that we sell. Yeah, but it, you know, like, it's funny because they say you have Ron seal, the fence painter and they say, what do they say? It does exactly what it says on the test. What it says. And that's, it's different to just seal in tat. But like, that's because the language of fence painters, that's how they talk. Whereas jewelers, you know, they probably don't want, that don't want the word tat to be used to say, look at their own looks. Doesn't this all just come down to your favorite word of position? A position. Here it is. The most famous UK example of a jewelry store saying their own product is bad is Gerald Ratner, CEO of Ratner's group, who in 1991 described his company's product as total crap.

54:00This caused a 500 million pound loss in value and forced a rebranding to signate group. Another recent instance is complaints regarding the website Scarlett Jules, which distinct from genuine Scarlett Jules Rick has received poor reviews. Yeah. Well, his infamous speech stated that some of his earrings were cheaper than a prawn sandwich, but probably wouldn't last as long. That's pretty good, right? You've got one job mate. That's really, you know, wow. Salute tat. That's gone, that's gone very badly. Salute tat. It's interesting that thing of that industry is that, oh, like businesses, industries that disappear overnight. Like 90, I love the fact that 1901, biggest industry in the world was wailing. Wailing. Yeah. Wailing to light. Wailing, catching whales. What's wailing? Catching whales. Ah. Selling the oil in order to put the lamps, right? And then the light bulb comes along. I think wailing was the biggest industry in 1901 and it had fully disappeared by 1903. Wow. Yeah, like this whole town's and kind of just like shut down. Well, facts machines are kind of like that. Facts machines go from everywhere to now just the Remy

55:01NHS and the traits, horses in New York, in Manhattan. Horses in New York, yeah. And it's always the technology that's the, because they brought in so many laws to get rid of horses in New York, because the horse manure problem, you know the reason there's steps up to brown stones in New York is because the horseshit was that high. And there's the whole thing of like smelling salts like people, because the whole place smelt horrific. It was just horseshit. And then if the horses died, they had to chop them up, wait for them to out-of-the-fire, chop them up in the street and then cart them off using other horses who then died on the way. So the whole thing was just, it was an absolute mess. And they kept on bringing in new laws, new laws, new laws to try and get, you know, attacks on horses and other attacks on horses. And then Henry Ford comes along and vents the motor car and people go, yeah, we don't need horses. What do you think that now? What do you think five years, 50 years, 100 years will be like, oh, it's gone. Well, I think it's very interesting question. Because obviously the AI thing, we can see the jobs it's going to take, but we can't see the jobs it will create. But I wonder with that whether, I think talk shows would be

56:04quite obvious point. Is there still those to Ginny's heart, careful? No, no, I mean, that one. I think you're, I think you're like the, it's from old media to new media. I think the idea that something like, you know, I love Saturday and I live, but I can't see it being around in 10 years. Like the, I remember going to see a recording last year and just thought, wow, this is incredible. The amount of people to put this show on to make this happen, it was like, it was incredibly genuinely spectacular. And then you just go, well, I can't imagine this being, it can't compete with people just doing funny sketches on their phone. Because the size of the screen seems to be inversely proportionate to the amount of money you can make. So the movie business might not last. I think what's funny though is all the sketches on the phone, I can have, I can't really recall one. Whereas I think of Carrot in the Box, like, yeah, I think cats, Sean Locke and I, you know, it's, it's, I think TV weirdly sticks. Like I, I can't remember. Well, there's a point I say by, who's the guy that wrote abundance with? As reclined, Derek Thompson. Derek Thompson has a great podcast and he did this episode called, he wrote this essay called,

57:05Everything Is Television. And his argument was, everything is television. Television won't disappear because TikTok is television. You don't think of it in that way because it's streaming. YouTube's the biggest TV channel in the world. It's, of course it is, it's television. Facebook is, Facebook isn't social media. People think it's like, but that would be for us to know each other and be sending videos to our family and sharing them with friends. That's kind of the, that's the idea. But the reality is people watching videos that other people have made that they don't know. That's television. It's a bit of a shame because Gavin and Stacy, Christmas special, was sort of in my opinion, probably actually the World Cup somewhere in out, but the last time like the UK came together for a theory on this thing. Why Christmas TV is such a big deal in the UK. I'm not sure what it's like in the States, but Christmas TV is a big deal, not because it's better than the TV the rest of the year, but because people sit down as a family and watch the big, watch the big fat quiz, and watching it together, it's just nicer to do things in a communal way. Like, people used to gather around a fire, and then around the radio, and then around the TV, and it was all great. And then we went off to our bedrooms with our friends.

58:06Just a more communal time if you're generally, but you're back in your old childhood bedroom, or your old childhood house, or whatever. You're with the families coming over to you, and it's a meaningful, slightly slower pace, sedate moment there. So I think, yeah, if you could own anything, I mean, that has to be why Harry Potter just keeps on getting run back over and over again, right? It's the thing that you watched when you were a kid. This episode is brought to you by Woop. Most people treat recovery like it's optional, but unlike politicians, data doesn't lie. How you recover is literally going to determine how good your next day is going to be, and Woop tracks all of it. Sleep, strain, heart rate, recovery. It's like, dog the bounty hunter, but instead of criminals, it's tracking down your bad habits. All of this data gets pulled into a dashboard that actually tells you what to do with the information. And now the brand new Woop 5.0, 7 cents smaller, it's got two weeks of battery life, shows you how fast you're actually aging. It comes with hormonal insights for women managing their cycle or pregnancy, or men hiding from it.

59:06Once you see the patterns, you start making better decisions. It's that simple. Best of all, you can join for free, pay nothing for your Woop 5.0 strap, plus you get your first month for free, and there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now you can get the brand new Woop 5.0 and that 30-day free trial by going to the link in the description below, or heading to join.woop.com slash modern wisdom. That's join.woop.com slash modern wisdom. Speaking of technology, a new study claims that an eight-minute conversation with chat GPT can reduce belief in conspiracy theories by about 20% and these effects last at least two months. I'm always wary of tiny interventions that purport to have a large and long-lasting effect, but I don't see anything immediately fishy about this study and the mechanism is plausible. I bet most 9-11 truthers have never spoken to a skeptic who both took them seriously, and who knew a lot about 9-11. And I think this is an underrated and positive aspect of AI. People are worried about the hallucinations and AI psychosis

1:00:09and rightfully so, but keep in mind that many people do not know basic uncontroversial truths about their world. 37% of Americans, a plurality, believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. 40% don't understand how a control group works. 26% think that the sun goes around the earth. For these people, talking to a chatbot is likely to leave them with a more accurate view of reality. I think it's an interesting point, because conspiracy theories for me are a symptom of a much larger problem, which is we've lost sort of trust in institutions. But I think that's, they bubble up when you have no faith in institutions, because you desperately want to believe in something. You desperately want to trust someone, but you don't trust the government anymore, and you don't trust the medical profession, and you don't trust academics anymore. So you're desperately searching. So these more and more kind of incredible theories come to the fore. I mean, not to say that people do conspire to do things. That's a different thing. I mean, conspiracy theories in their traditional form, like an unforceifiable theory.

1:01:10Let's say, for example, the coronavirus pandemic happened, like it never happened that it happens in 2026, which are in. I wonder what the AI bots would be saying about the coronavirus. Oh, that's fascinating. That's pretty tight. Because people would be arguing online with other people based on what their bot had told them to derive from the fact. As well as you would have the fabled model, for example, would have replied, because it'd be around biology. You can't ask any big questions to fabled right now about biology, because you might be thinking, you're printing the 3D virus. So everyone would be asking, Pymi, and... Oh, yeah, you'd be getting... The Chinese models, which would be interesting, the cause and effect, the full side. How long do you think... I mean, I'm not... Who's to say AI didn't create COVID? Who's to say that it wasn't... I mean, it seems to be now people are saying it was created in a lab. Do you think this technology arrived when we think it arrived? Or do you think it's been around for 10 years? I think it's arrived when it arrived. Yeah, because the transformer technology that you need... It's my... You're good, but it's... It's my favorite... My favorite... Here we go.

1:02:10You want to aim my favorite conspiracy theory at the moment? Okay, so there's two terrifying scenarios. One is there's a Manhattan project currently underway in America, and they're working on a AGI. It's the big thing. It's the Doomsday weapon, is the AGI, and they're working on it and it's called Solstice. And it's somewhere in America, we don't know where, but that's been worked on, right? Second terrifying scenario, they're not. Jimmy, when do you think of all your ideas? I've got the days for me. But that is... It's an interesting kind of weird thought, right? Oh, it's what you're rather. Well, I'd rather they were working on it. I think that it's kind of happening, right? They're putting ever more powerful computers together and people are worried about the wrong thing. I think people are worried about losing their jobs. But I think if you point AGI at the environment, it might be able to solve the problem of net zero,

1:03:13it might get to that much quicker. And if you point at a physics, who knows? I mean, the great... Physics is real power in a way that nothing else is. Everything, every other science is stamp collecting. Physics really changes the world. And there's been no, you know, Eric Weinstein and... Sixty years. Peel was always saying there's nothing's happened for 50 years. String theory's just kind of gone a different way. But if there was a unifying theory of physics, I mean, if that could happen, that'd be extraordinary. And whoever had that would have some power. But if you saw it, so cord released the fable, and then they put... They had the issues with government, then fables could back. And then you had this kind of cock tease, shall we say, where they would say, you've got access to it until the 5th of July, and then Chatship ETs release the new model. So cord of now, well, you now have access to it until 12th of July, and it moved it again. And what you're actually seeing is because there's so much competition right now, it's so hard for any of them to run away or create any form of an uplink.

1:04:14So over the onset of being a Manhattan Project, it feels way more like there's going to be 15 at once. I get the sense that the COVID thing... I certainly don't think the AI would have had that much to do with it. I had Annie Jacobson on the show who wrote Nuclear War, a countdown scenario, and... Oh, yeah, that was a fun episode. Yeah. What a new one. It was a minute. It was about bio weapons. It's about hillabli. And she said the Russians during the 80s, when we are not working on enhancing weapons to make them... bio weapons to make them more transmittable, they had programmed into the virus. They'd programmed euphoria in. That's how panicious this plague, what it was called a super plague, and they'd programmed euphoria in as one of the side effects because if people felt euphoric, they would go out and dance. Right.

1:05:14And then they would become there on super spreaders. So they'd even put a behavioral modifier into this super plague, and apparently this thing... This existed but never got out, was never used, but probably sits in some bank, some frozen virus bank, someone. Here's a hot tag, right? So in the late 80s, there was a thing called mad cow disease. Do you remember this? Yeah. They thought everyone was going to go crazy that at... Yes, 40 or whatever it was called. Yeah. Maybe it happened. The guy that hosts the apprentice, his president now. Maybe we all went crazy. Everyone has got mad cow disease. Maybe we all went crazy, just no one noticed, because we all went crazy. I tell you what, the amount of phones I've seen in soreners, it wouldn't shock me. You've gone... It's the real... I guess it's not new. That's the real... I don't have my phone on me. Describe your phone. I could sell my phone. It's a Quinn F22 Pro. It has applications, but it's too useless to get addicted to. Great. Yeah, I've probably done phone yourself.

1:06:14No, genuinely. Actually, I don't really like talking about it, because I got it, because I hate these people who get their new phones, and it's all stupid phones, and they make it their thing. So I feel kind of self conscious talking about it on the show. But my younger brother, Jack, had this phone, and he got the non-pro version, which is a bit of a mistake, because it's actually just too useless to text on. But I got the Quinn F22 Pro, and I loved Jack, because I was on hold there with him, and he didn't mention it once. I was like, Jack, what's this phone? And I feel like the way to get people on to these phones is to not ram it down people's phones. Sure. Sometimes you're going to let them know, because Harry came up for Austin for my birthday. Say goodbye to him. I don't hear anything for a few days. So what's happened to him? And then he finally gets back in touch by WhatsApp on his desktop, and he's like, what did you do to your phone again? You threw it in the river? I threw it into the river, because that would have been disrespectful to the fishes. I threw it into the bin by the river. And then I switched out. If I come across a lot of money, I think it's what I would try and change in the world. I do feel it really depressing.

1:07:15You walk into a sauna in Austin, and it's an epidemic of people with airpods in it. I'll take you to a sauna in Austin, but there's this. Remember something else? There is someone in the sauna right now listening to the show. I'm there for that. I'm going, maybe I shame you. I genuinely look at your life if you were doing that. I feel like you might feel like you've got to work it out. If you have that one step you are doing it, you haven't got nothing worked out. Wait a second. How do you feel about people that wear airpods during massages? Sorry Chris, how do I feel about people wearing airpods? Full stop. You're done. Right, but okay. That's it. During massage, you're also done. It doesn't change the question. I'd listen to audiobooks during a massage, yes. No, no, no, no, no. You're being very diplomatic about that. Even during the happy ending? He's speaking up. What? He's speaking up. That's why he gets an apology. Oh, yeah. My younger brother works in politics and is his idea is to understand what real people think. And he does a bloody good job of that. But I said to him, well, what are real people think?

1:08:15And I'm going to tax with him. And he's got his damn airpods in. Trying to listen to what real people think. I said, will, there's a taxi driver that, why don't you ask the taxi driver what real people think? I think it's bonkers. Was he getting a massage at the same time? You need to stop wearing airpods during massages. Why? I just, it is the perfect, Wait, is he massaging the strip? Why is he got this level of, it's a client service worker dispute here. This guy is not even paying attention. Yeah. Well, listen to this, gibberish. He's just on guard. I just, it is the perfect time to be with your thoughts, to do some good thinking without feeling like you're wasting time, you're falling behind, being in the dark playground, being in a reverse version of it. We talked about that earlier. I think boredom is unappreciated serenity. And allowing yourself to be bored, like, like, planning it is quite a good idea. Like train travel. It's quite good to be on a train, be bored, be in an airport, be bored. I'm bored enough. I'm bored enough. I do, I do enough time alone, I'm bored enough. I do enough time alone, I'm bored enough. I do enough time alone, when I'm having a massage, I want to, I want to have an apology.

1:09:16Speed lessen, speed lessen to do. I do robots 40 hours. I don't realize Napoleon even recorded an audio, but this is tremendous. That's just, yeah. Yeah, I, I slightly disagree. To place it, to play, Devil's Advocate. How do you know you're not in the mass hysteria of TV's going to give you square eyes, like, calculate, should be banned. Lodite syndrome. Yeah, Lodite syndrome. How do you know when you're going against smoking, versus being a Lodite? I don't know when I'm going against smoking. Because I, how do you know you're pushing back against something that you're doing there? I'll tell you what I will tell you why. I will tell you why. Because my, what I'm doing is I'm doing nothing. So you can't, it's not like I'm smoking cigarettes here. My idea of where I'm trying to move the needle is just less, less, less, less, less. So if you're smoking, you're doing something. If you're, if you're going skiing, you're doing something. What's a different example? If you're, if you're saying, if you're saying, like, have an energy drink, that's, you, you, you, what's the word it? What did Talib say? Subtract. So if you're subtracting, you can't go wrong if you're subtracting. That's the fact.

1:10:16I think there's, I think there's something to this. I think the, that whole anxious generation, Jonathan Height thing of like, it's not good for kids. And there's this kind of, you know, they think it's social media is as harmful as cigarettes for kids. But I think, I think what we need to do then is give kids cigarettes. Yeah. You know, that idea of like, and this kind of a joke on the language, but you go actually, it's the point that he makes in that book is not just band social media, it's band social media and let kids play outside. Because they can't have infinite freedom online and then no freedom in the real world. And really it's the freedom in the real world that we haven't quite, everyone's kind of on this idea of like, oh yeah, we'll take away the phones from the kids. But actually, what else do they get to do? It's interesting that what, the average person spends six hours a day on screens. We haven't gained six hours. We, days aren't now 30 hours long. So often the time that we had previously, that's how to get squeezed from somewhere. Yeah. Which means that you've lost time doing other things. But certain smart people are giving messages while listening to stuff. So there's certain, there's outliers out there that have gained the system, their geniuses. How seemingly publicly to my audio,

1:11:16but during massage, you've got a worse fan of it, so I mean my friend. Oh yeah. I've got a hairy piece. I've got a, I've got a horrendous with my phone. I'm saying that the massage is not the place to have your iPods. It is weird now that the technology, it was kind of the thing of like, I've got the new phone, the new thing 10 years ago. Now the most opulent thing you could do is say, oh, we went to a cabin and there was no Wi-Fi and we just put away our things. It's the most opulent thing in the world. That's why it's meditation, which is the most. What are the, what are the, what are the, what are the, the wealthy well doing now? What are the billionaires doing now? They're trying to live without that social media without those screens. How is there a treat? It was intense. Yeah, to do seven days, I mean, it'll be the longest time. I was, since I was probably a child, I was probably a child, either it would have even been a TV in the room, right? One of the guys, there was an AI interface that could help you with your practice. And what? That sounds like absolutely the page in the purpose. I didn't use it. I didn't use it. If none of the facilitators were available

1:12:16and you were coming up against some blocks in your practice, there was a chat bot that was on it, was on the laptop and it had been sort of imbued with all of the principles of the thing. But the interesting thing, this was Timor, who was one of the... They have fucked up so hard there. I didn't go into that room. I didn't use that. I didn't use that. However, he thought, am I able to find out the England score by messaging the meditation chat bot? So he's trying to go... Every time that I sit down to meditate, I keep being distracted by wondering what the England score was. Would it be possible for me to find out so that I can get back to my practice, please? But no, fascinating. Northern California, it was John A. Practice, J.H. A.N.A. It was also OpenAI's global reset week. So a lot of the engineers were off from work. They have two global reset weeks, which is basically enforced holiday. It was a way to try and sort of front run people not getting burnt out by saying, hey, you can't come into work, essentially. So I go and there's all of the guys...

1:13:17A bunch of the guys from OpenAI, but there's also all of their main competitors from Anthropic, and a bunch of other guys that are in there from Google as well. So there was kind of like low-key, silent meditation retreat turf wars going on between people at the forefront of AI development. That was kind of interesting. And yeah, like you kind of learn... The particular school of meditation I was doing, which was John A. You're learning to allow conductivity through your emotions, and that is to allow them to move freely without any construction. So you're noticing and releasing mental tension, it's like primarily what you're doing, but that drops down into emotional tension. What you realize when you come back into the world is how much of your life is spent constricting emotional tension because there's times when emotions come up. Well, it's not appropriate for it. You might feel a little overwhelmed as you're walking through the airport, which everybody did, as we went reintegrated back into society. Well, that's not the time for you to talk about how...

1:14:17I feel so scared and awkward, and this is too much for me to take. No, you swallow down the overwhelming wildfires in Europe and the fat guy presenting the football on the screens, and you just sort of move past it. Also, it's very difficult to hear what your soul is whispering to you when the world's shouting at the same time. So you start to hear far more fleeting thoughts that come up. A lot of the thoughts that you wouldn't have been able to pay attention to if you were regularly even talking to people, let alone being on screens. So that was kind of interesting. What was your soul whispering to you, Chris? It's all whispering to me. It probably fucking spent more time in silence, I think. It was quite a matter. It's vegetarian, which meant that almost everybody's digestion was ruined for the first three or four days. Lots of beans, lots of tofu. They're trying to do group meditation with 40 people in a room while there's farting going on. It's relatively interesting. Some guy... I have no idea how, but entered the retreat single

1:15:17and left the retreat with a girlfriend. So that is the level of game. And her boys got gay. That's the level of gay. None of us could pull it aside. How did the guy... He should be a guest on the show. I think just straight up frame. Oh yeah, not like you. You're tying a little forearm. Anyway, it was really good. Enjoyed it very intense. And then coming back. And having your old patterns come into conflict with your sort of new system, new worldview. And it takes a good bit of time. I feel like tight-trade. I couldn't use my phone. I just simply cut it. I felt very icky, very sterile. After just staring at trees, the only thing I was looking at was trees. Good back in. Yeah, a few points. I think it's a good amount to take a holiday for... It's not been one of my... I call it proper holiday for five years. So then he goes and does a jauness seven day time

1:16:17at the meditation retreat. Even gopins is his own holiday. I think an interesting question I have around the phone stuff. Question. And there's a great guy on Twitter called Chris Lakin. And his whole idea is that the phone itself might be Chesterton's fence. Chesterton's fence? Yes. If you see a fence, don't take it. Don't take it down so you understand why it's there. And he helps a lot of people with a phone addiction. And then we'll often discover two days later they've got a bacon problem. Well, they've got a porn problem. And actually the phone was never the problem. The phone was the solution. And if you actually get a little bit deeper, the phone addiction goes away. And I do wonder how much of the... The phone addiction is actually a solution to a much great problem. I think it might be that the... We spoke about this. Monk Fisher talked about this before he died about the... The idea that we've... privatized mental health problems. We sort of think it's a personal failing for people to be depressed or anxious.

1:17:17And actually I think it's a societal problem. We're not organising our society correctly for people to flourish. I think it's like the phones are kind of a symptom of a much larger problem within our society that we're quite sort of isolated. We're going to look into something to do. We're not in groups, we're not with other people. We're going back to the thinking of your hands, mouth, feet, feet, step count, that's the big deal. Hands... You're using your hands on your phone but you're not using your hands like how most humans used to try history. You wasn't... It is what? Going with your hand. When Winston Churchill was going through... The black dog. The black dog. Yeah. He would... Prod up 200 bricks a day. But Churchill just to keep his mind at bay. He would do something with his hands every single day. So when you lose the lack of feet, hands, and mouth, I do think that can be not necessarily a full explain of mental health problems but it definitely can.

1:18:17It's interesting that thing of like... How much is a hardware problem? How much of like if you meet someone that's... If you've got a friend really going through a tough time, it's like, what are they sleeping eight hours? Are they eating well? Are they exercising? Are they walking in nature? Are they seeing their friends? Like you cover that sort of simple stuff. But it's very difficult to regulate that stuff when you're feeling terrible. It's like you get into a spiral. The most absurd one was when it was a study that came out. It was like a mesh analysis of all the causes of depression or all the biggest treatments that have an impact on it. And the big headline was exercise, beans, SSRIs. And that was the huge thing that made like global news. But if you actually go into the meta-analysis, exercises the number five on the list. SSRIs are further down. Number one on the list. It's just an absolute sleeper that nobody talks about. Dance therapy. Dance therapy. Out-of-form exercise. And it's interesting more than... You have a lot of the benefits of exercise, but you're with people and you're out of your own head with music.

1:19:17Well also, you haven't got... You haven't got headphones on when you're dancing. Whereas if you're exercising, you have headphones. It makes me think when do we get involved enough to be depressed? Yeah, I guess that there's kind of... It's like we're busy, busy, fighting so-to-do tigers for a while. Like too busy. I think it's that thing where we have a... But if you really want to know how privileged you are, how far into the future are you planning? Because I think poor people have no future. And I mean that literally. Like if you're living hand to mouth and you're thinking about the next meal, you're not even thinking about what you're doing tomorrow. You're just trying to get through the day. And then really wealthy people think on like, oh, I want my grandkids, I need to make sure they're okay. It's like it's a different time frame. But I think that thing about having too much time. Yeah. My dad, I got free brothers and my dad would... What was a radio presenter back in the day? And he'd work a night shift in radio. And then he'd work a day shift teaching radio. And he just didn't... I slept in the car for a couple of years. He just didn't have enough time to get down.

1:20:17You know, when you've got kids to feed, it's... Yeah. That is a hell of a double shift. Radio by night and teaching radio by day. Yeah, my dad's great. He was an electrician. He really wanted to... This is kind of a storytelling story about like the paratiche because he was... He wasn't the smartest cookie in the shed. And when he was from... He was from Hull. And he was... Disadvanced right there. He was in a great grandpa, a bit of a whole prison. And he's in this little classroom. And he's listened to Noel Edmunds last time a radio show. And he had this teacher... A common room with the teacher's name. But like he thought he was going to be told off. We're in a cap to cover the big old headphones he used to use. And he says, what dry? What are you doing dry? And he says, Noel Edmunds last time a radio show. I'm listening to it. And the teacher goes, carry on dry. And he went on to... He won a Sony award. His career was very up and down.

1:21:17But you know, it's just an example of like... It's important in kids, you know, upbringing. Yeah, it's lovely. It's lovely. He's your father's still with us, is he? Still not here? He's still not here. They're thinking radio. I don't think you'd mind me saying this. Now you get fired a lot. It's show business. You're in one show. You're out of the next. So we play articulate. As a fact, you will know articulate. The game where you have to describe individuals. Go, come on dad. And he goes, I think he was trying to describe Joe Narmish Rating once. And he shouts at my mother. Sang dropped the pilot. Interviewed him in a way. Mom was just like, but I don't know. It's kind of a great thing now because radio is about... Obviously it's like old school showbiz. Like being an actor or being a presenter. You're waiting for someone to bring you flowers. You're waiting for someone to come along and give you permission to do the thing that you really want to do. And now with new media, it feels like that permission is already... You give it to yourself.

1:22:17You go, no one's stopping me. I could just start a podcast and interview people and do whatever. It's what you did in a bedroom in middle of the... And it's just... You give yourself permission. As long as you keep doing the thing, it happens. Substack has done the same thing for writing that YouTube did for video. And that Apple Podcast and Spotify did for audio. It's the same thing. Yeah, Substack is... I used to have this joke that if aliens looked at human... Reading and writing data... It's going up. But then as soon as you zoom in, it's just subtitles and text messages. Everything else is collapsing. Yeah, they do talk about people being kind of post-literate now. They're not people aren't reading books. I had this realization this week what we were talking about earlier around the wailing going out from 1901 and then... Sorry, being the number one and going out. Have you used whisper flow? Have you used whisper flow? Much yeah. I've been told to. But yeah, from a transcription perspective.

1:23:17I... because I realize they write so much that that muscle... And you'll know that in any one of Harry, it's quite an arduous task. Or... there's only so much writing you can do per day until you're exhausted. And as a result of writing so much, I'd struggle to reply to text messages. Because I'd be using the... I've trained my two-step all day. Now someone's asking me to do dips and I do it. I've been told to whisper flow. I'm now suddenly getting so much out there. And I was like, oh, people are going to start writing. This is going to become a bigger and bigger trend. People want your writing. You think the speech to text? I'll read it as well. I think both of those two things are unfortunately short. So Americans are more likely to place a gambling bet than read a single book. Fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. And there are only 66,000 responses to the American Time You Survey. Found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day have been 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023.

1:24:17Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book with 57% of Americans placing a bet last year but only less than half reporting reading a book of any kind. And this included audiobooks. They included audiobooks in that. I wonder it's there. Here's my big theory. Friction is very good in life. All the best things in Vell Friction. If you look at a TikTok, it's very low friction. But then you look at a YouTube video for five minutes. There's a bit more friction. A TV show. That's half an hour. It's a bit of an effort. A movie. A lot of friction. You read a book. Come on. This is arduous. But you get so much more out of the thing that you can't remember. No one ever says, oh man, you've got to see my favorite TikTok video from 2025. It's awesome. It's nothing. It's gone. The things that involve friction

1:25:17seem to be better. But in all areas of life, like the exercise, sports, arts, anything, more friction is better. I also feel like it's just a little bit about the story you tell yourself. So if I was when I personally watched a full book, you know, I'm like, bloody hell, like I can do things here. And I think you really transmit it into the day. You probably want to stoner. That's a wonderful book. It is a wonderful book. What's it about? It's about a guy called William Stoner, who lives on a farm with his parents. And he says, he says to his dad, dad, I want to go to university and learn about farming. And his dad doesn't say many words to him. So his dad said, okay, whatever. He starts his university Mississippi maybe. And he starts his farming court and after about a semester, flips into English. And he starts learning about books for the first time. There's a professor in the war starts. And the professor sort of gets that. There's that amazing sequence as well.

1:26:17Where he doesn't understand. He's like, he's really serious about me. And he doesn't understand what it means. And he goes to his professor and goes, I don't know what this means. But in it, in a way that no one else is. He's like, so excited about it. Like, I've got to know what this means. I don't know what it means. It's like, that's kind of the pivotal bit. It's a great thing. I'm amazing read it. The thing I took from it is he marries essentially marries the wrong woman. And I think it's a, I do think it's a book. It's about so many things. But one thing is about picking the person you marry to be honest. Because this one woman he marries really is just sort of, it's a thousand cuts. A thousand paper cuts. And his life kind of just sort of becomes a survey. She abused my her father. She was abused by a father. One of them, but that's like, it's never explicitly said. But it's kind of implied there's kind of a weird... A father commits suicide randomly on one sort of Tuesday because there was a bank run. The real advert is like the opening couple pages of the book.

1:27:17Where it starts with his death. And he works at this university. And nobody really noticed. And it's such a fling of a book. Because most books you have the giant hero, you have the Joseph Campbell. Whereas this is a man who has such a mundane life. That that's actually interesting. That you see yourself, or you see your potential worst self in them. One of my favorite songs ever. It's like, love agency in a song. You ever heard Pearl Jam. It's called, elderly woman behind a counter in a small town. Long, long song title. And it's just the point of view of this 80 year old woman. Who's never left a hometown. Wish she she did. And the guy who has her teenage sweetheart comes into the shop that she's in. And she recognizes him. And he no longer recognizes her. This is beautiful line of, I changed by not changing at all. Small town predicts my fate. And every time I listen to that song, it's actually way more inspirational than the hero's journey. And Stoner's a nothing.

1:28:17So how Stoner ends is the bit I'll always remember from it. Because he's on his deathbed. And before I tell you the four sentence question, which I like stuck with me, the offer of the book has a really different interpretation to everyone who read the book. It's also kind of weird. The offer of the book is like, actually, no, he lived a pretty good life. And he tore and he really loved English. But book, book ends. And William Stoner is, is he's got his wife behind him and is one kid who's sort of become an alcoholic. And he says, he just starts saying this question over and over again. He says, what did you expect? What did you expect? And I think what he's kind of referring to is like, like if you actually, if you fast forwarded your life William when you were 20, this was always going to happen. You were going to die in like a little small old room with your wife who doesn't love you sitting by you and he wrote one book which he wasn't particularly proud of. And he had a lovely affair which actually kind of sounds bad, but actually wasn't bad because his marriage was so screwed up. And he just says, what did you expect? And it was kind of thinking like, yeah, like God, like, if you don't change, you know, that's how I'll die. What did you expect, Harry? I mean, for me, I think he changed massively.

1:29:17Because it was a guy that was toiling the land from the first 16 years. He was like working the land really hard. And then he made it to a university and he spent the rest of his life reading books and teaching other people about his passion for books. It's beautiful. He achieved so much. But it's like you're good compared to what? Well compared to the life his parents expected which was just physical toil and putting food on the table. And he, like, that was all factored in. And it's like, what did he accomplish beyond that? Well, no, that's enough. It's enough. And it kind of goes to that Morgan Housle line of he talks about happiness being your current experience. Reality minus expectation. Yeah, which is like, what did you expect? Well, maybe you expected too much. Well, that's the thing because he's outstripped his parents' expectations of him but underperformed on his own expectations of himself maybe. Not in the bedroom. He found a lovely young woman who was, not young, who was actually quite old, relatively speaking and I think they... What is it about young women today?

1:30:17All right. What is it about young women today? It's about young women. That'll be clipped. That's a question. That's a question. What's your favorite drag you've ever raised?

1:31:21The last one that worked? It'll literally be the last... I try not to get attached to them so it's that thing where you go while I like the thing that worked the other night that worked for the first time. You go, great, that'll do. So you rip them up, rip them up. Yeah, it's like the new thing, the new thing, the new thing. And then you're kind of putting your show together and what that new thing is. It's interesting the good and the bad of any industry because the good thing for you, I guess, that you get to constantly come up with new material. But it's also like if you're a no-gallagher and that's a two-year stretch and does the songs, like the leverage of that exists forever. A lot of musicians kind of like they don't want to end up in Las Vegas being a covers band of themselves. Yeah, so it's that thing where you go, be careful what you wish for. Like I've constantly got to come up with new stuff. But that's also the fun bit is coming up with the new stuff. Well, we was debating this once. If you could imagine impact and then doing it over time. You've done an incredible job of doing it over multiple decades. But a lot of musicians still have that one album.

1:32:23And then they can't repeat it ever again. Whereas some people like Christopher Nolan's probably at my opinion one of the best who's managed to keep going. Kanye, by the way, Kanye is the best. Like, college dropping. He is. His recent stuff, college dropout, late registration, 808s and heartbreak, Jesus. My beautiful thoughts is to add to the life of Pablo. I'm just completely different album. Yeah. But they're completely different albums. It's very rare. It's very interesting, I think. It's very interesting, that thing of like genius. People often talk about genius. But what they're talking about is like hyper accelerated rationality. Not genius. I think genius is a different place. I think it's a big word, Jimmy. Well, once he has that kind of level of, he's got a level of genius where you go, he does all the crazy stuff that he does. That's part of it. It's like there's a mental health thing going on here. It's across to bear. It's a beautiful line of genius and science here, next to neighbors.

1:33:23And then he sometimes borrow one another's sugar. And it's wonderful to have had about Alan Lemp's. That you, an Alan Lemp can write good. And this may change. But he can't write great. And I think there's a little bit of a horseshoe theory with great writing. What great writing is, like, next door neighbor's to terrible writing. You've got to take risks. When you have something that's trained on the averages, it doesn't take risks. Like some of my worst ever pieces are quietly clicked to my best ever writing. Yeah, I think that thing of like the average will be free. In the world of AI, average will be free. And the very good will be very expensive. Like excellent will be very expensive. And it takes just to when you believe in something. No one can see your belief in it, especially if it's words written down on the page. But I think you can feel when someone really believes in something. And I think the problem with artificial writing, AI writing is like, you don't actually believe it. You just got it kind of from the robot. And I think there's just a weird, you can tell when you read something. And you just know that the person really,

1:34:23really, really believes it. I think of an advert. I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he basically has this idea, I'm going to suspend the car above the chap who made the car to prove how good the suspension is of the angle of Volvo. And they say, we can't get that possible legal. So he says, oh, it's going to be me then. So anyway, the writer of the ad suspends him, spends this big car which wires just above, above himself. And it's one of the most famous ads of all time. And it's like, that only got across the line because he just really believed in it. And I think your conviction in an idea is more important than the idea in so many cases. It's often the way with comedy, especially with let-edge jokes. Intent is much more important than content. And people intuit the intent. They just know. I think a normal McDonald's, like, you give his material to someone else and he's going to bomb. But because norm had this weird, like, belief in a bad joke, it would become a good joke. Yeah, what could you say that no one else could say? That's his whole career.

1:35:23Only he could do that. Just a properly non-fungible human. One of the reasons that AI uses very strange tropes. I told George about this the other week. Most writing that AI is trained on, the corpus of writing that it's trained on, is not good books because most writing is not good. But it's not distinguished between the hundred greatest novels of all time. And the millions and millions and millions of pages of anime fanfiction. That it's been trained on. So is there no waiting given? I just don't know. No, I don't think so. And even if it did, it would have to be so overly weighted. Some fourteen year olds, seven sequel to the Twilight series or something. They're just putting out on their, like, tumblr account. That should not. It would require some, it basically not exist. But it has been trained on it. And what they did was they looked at a bunch of short stories that one of a bunch of awards recently.

1:36:23And there was some very obscure analogies that we used. Talking about his stomach swallowing a shout. Which sounds that kind of evocative. But in the flow of the story felt a little bit clunky. And it was a bit harsh. And it didn't seem to be quite necessary so much. And they used this AI to trace where on the internet that piece of writing has been seen before. You know you were talking about analogy being quite tried. Or it's at this sentence sounds like I've heard it before. It sounds like something you could have. And they go and they actually find it. And they found so many of the source material pieces were random, anime, fan fiction websites. So that is all writing of all time. Right? Lots of it is good. Most of it's not. And the total world that has, has been trained on includes this like just endless dross. It's going to end up also I think Talib said it ends up being trained on itself a lot of time now. Correct.

1:37:23And it's there's nowhere to go. I think there's going to be a big sort of premium on books pre 2022. Because you know that they've not been written by AI. Yeah, because you know that there's kind of no help given as well. There's no editing. They did that in the old fashioned way. Like losing weight before a Zemperch. Yeah. There's an extra kind of flex on it. It was interesting you were talking about how coping mechanisms after gastric band surgery people sometimes commit suicide. And gastric band surgery is quite dramatic. Sometimes the surgeons make really silly errors like leave utensils inside of people and sew them back up or bits of gauze. The big reason that people commit suicide after gastric band surgery is that the reason they were overreacting was probably because of an underlying emotional issue. Yeah, that's how they were using the food as medicine. Bingo. And they still have the underlying issue but they no longer able to use the foods. Yeah.

1:38:23So they're crazy and the same thing with the phone. Right, what is the phone using? Chester since Fad's very. Yeah. Being there to distract you from what? When you chat to your petage, you're a gastric band surgery. What's been the impact of GLPs on gastric band surgery? That's the wailing industry. Literally. Yes. Very good. When you're so quick, is it algorithmic or is it like a sort of algorithm in your brain which insert topic you know where to go or is it intuitive? Say your roasting. No, I don't even think it is being quick. It's often that thing of like, I'll feel like I'm sitting on it for 10 seconds before I say it. And the worst person for this is Lee Mack. Yeah, Lee Mack. Lee Mack, they often have to put a thing into the edit and add a pause before he says the line. Because he's just like. He's like, it's so quick. Yeah, it's amazing.

1:39:23I had a question. It's actually about, do you know who the biggest comedian on YouTube is? I won't give you a clue. He's actually four times bigger than every single level comedian. Well, it ain't me. Is it Matt Rife? No. I'm trying to think about it. 40 million subscribers. You'll know him. Are they derriable first? I don't understand the question. No, I'd go Ron Actkinson. Mr. Bean. I feel like I teach advertising. Within Mr. Bean is the the silent comic of say 21st century. And I think he has the best position. This is like the Charlie Chaplin of his day. If you want to get stuck in the mind, you want to get an idea of stuck in the mind. Voice positioning? A position, I would say, is the space you own in the customer's mind. Like real estate. So say you've a picture like a picture like 100 filing cabinets or hundreds of thousands of filing cabinets in your head.

1:40:29And they've got labels written on them. So if we were playing this with chocolate bars, chocolate bar for when you're hungry, best selling chocolate bar in the world would be... Snickers? For a chocolate bar in the world. Yeah, for a break would be Kit Kat. And you take this to comedy. A good example would be like English, family friendly comedian. Bring the whole family. Okay. Kit Kat, Mac and Tyad, they own that space. And then you've got like, don't take the whole family. Don't sit in the front row, especially if you're English. Right. Yeah. That was named Frankie Boyle. Or you've got read by Guardian readers. Almost too clever for punchlines. Go on. It's true or Lee? It's true or Lee. It's true or Lee. It's like, sorry, to take Mr. Beast, he is the only like most famous silent comedian. Oh, sorry, Mr. Bean. Mr. Bean. Very different people for any answer. You know the Ron Atkinson story about Italy?

1:41:29Though, when Ron was first doing Mr. Bean, he's a big car enthusiast and he likes to take a holiday. So he basically carved out Italy on the sales of Mr. Bean. And then it was crazy. We would sell it to TV channels all over Italy. No, no, I don't want to sell it to Italy. And then why not? So we're going holiday. For the first 10 years of Mr. Bean, it wasn't available in Italy. That's great. And then after 10 years there was some offer or something and they translated it and they put it on in Italy. And it's the biggest show in Italy. Really solid. Yes, really solid. What must have been fascinating? I wonder how many Americans know what Mr. Bean? I think kids know it. It's that silent comedy thing it like shines through. That must be great for an international audience, actually. I think that's the point in what? It's why Charlie Chaplin was so universal because you didn't speak. And then I think movies started, movies then had sound again. And Chaplin was at this kind of crossover period of like, I can now talk.

1:42:32But if I talk, I've kind of ruined what I've done for all these years. So I can't remember the film. I think it's called the, the Summon Carrever. And it ends. And the only words Charlie Chaplin never asked is a gibberish. And that's kind of how his final silent movie ends. And it's just his perfect end to a film. How did you face with some, like, how do you about fixing your position? Well, there's two things here. There's like a position is the space you own in the customer's mind. So Jimmy's got a pretty like, you know, you go to a Jimmy Cargig. You're going to get roasted. There's going to be stagdoo's. And now it's a little bit deeper. I would attend a gig for. I suppose then there's some equal positioning, which is how you organize the customer's mind. So I think Stuart Lee is a funny example of this. Like when Stuart Lee, I think he retired from comedy in 1999. And he had a good career. I used very good career. He won an award at Hackney Prize or something like this. And then he starts writing on TV shows like Radio Forum, what not. And he returns to comedy in 2001. And then I saw Stuart Lee live like four years ago.

1:43:35And it was really good. And Stuart Lee's kind of reposition to the competition in very implicitly. Well, actually not so implicitly. His set design was one of the DVDs from like modern English comics. And he did lots of impressions of Russell Howard. I think basically Lee's reposition is like very much us versus them. So there's free ways to get a space in the mind. You can be first. You can be only or you can be against. And Stuart Lee is very much against. Like he kind of pops like Michael McIntyre, Peter K. Russell Howard, James Corden in this little box. He picture that being the mind. And then that's mainstream or that's like laugh a minute. And then this Stuart Lee, and he isn't punchline. He's like, you know, almost too clever for the punchline. Who else does like against? Like who else is positioned themselves or what else is positioned themselves against? So I think Trump's a pretty obvious example of that. But also even like Coca-Cola launched in, I think, 886. Liquid death. Liquid death. Yeah, liquid death Pepsi versus Coke. You know, you just think because you almost create, you almost create the, you know,

1:44:38the dense fossil wildest line of the fish can't see the water. With like liquid death, you almost didn't even think about plastic water bottles. It's everything was plastic. And then you suddenly create, oh no, here's the water and here's the lamp. You're craving something against that people don't even realize you couldn't be against. Yeah, I think, I what do I think? I think be against is, you probably see it more and more these days as the world gets slightly more polarized. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I don't love it in comedy because I think it's kind of the narcissism of small differences. We're all doing the same job. We're all trying to make people laugh. And it seems that there's a, there's a lovely camaraderie in that. That's that you're kind of missing out on. I think you're kind of punching against. I mean, does jealousy can you think a lot in comedy? I don't think it should, but I think it does occasionally. I think there's that thing where for me comedy has never been about that because it's not like being an actor where you go, look, there's one guy's going to be bond, right? There's one actor that's going to be announced as the new James Bond and none of the others are going to be. And that's, that must be heartbreaking for them. You can do stand on Monday. It doesn't mean that the other guy can't do the stand on Thursday.

1:45:39You can play it a theater. You can pack out the O2 for five nights. But then you're still there. Someone else can play it the next night. And it's, it's also that thing of like the more people that go and see live comedy and enjoy the experience. It's like, it's kind of like the early days of rock and roll. You go, you're the more people that go, the more people that want to go. And if they have a great experience, and they want to grow the pie. Yeah, you want to grow the pie and you want to be, and the idea that you go, well, there's different people that you like more or less. But everyone's kind of doing the set. It's the same intention. Certainly when it comes to content online, I think that the against four balance is actually skewed in against. I think there are more people producing critiques via content about four content than there is four content. Like what you would be relatively right. I mean, you know, in some industries, there's probably more people writing about football than there are people playing football. But there's far more people paying attention to the playing of the football than the critique of the football. It spreads so much more fast like being critical of something is incredibly dramatic.

1:46:41Being for something is actually quite anti-niletic. So James, Adam and James, what was the company that was slandering? Was it a member of the James's doing the lawsuit against? Fuck not tides. Yeah, the AI health checking app, like ways of something. There was slandering them with all the fake information. They've got millions of views. It was completely like the guys butchered all of the studies, all the claims that he was making. Then the apology gets like a few thousand views. And it's like the disparity between that. We was looking at somebody where there was this essay writer. And you can see this a lot with people that become these professional critics, where they'll have a piece that attacks a Chris or attacks somebody. And he goes super viral. And then you click on it and you scroll back and you go, oh, they've been doing this critique thing for a while. And you go, you see when the moment they once did it, everything spiked. But if you go back further, it was just in the void. It was always optimistic or slightly creative content that wasn't working.

1:47:44And then things started to work. It's quite sad. But everybody against something is once a hopeless romantic for a person that was forced something. It's like in politics, I'm really frustrated with political opinions just constantly being against things. I think in UK politics right now, like what are you actually for? I think it's a really, it's an unanswered question. Like you look at all the parties and they just love to disagree with each other. And they don't love to actually stand on a table and have their own opinion. 2012 was the year where most people voted not for the opposition as opposed to for their own party. That was the year in America where most votes were protest votes. I'm not voting for the person I don't like as opposed to I am. And you're one of the persons that I do like. Yeah, I've been creating bots before bots were controversial. And one of the bots I want to create on Twitter is whenever you have like a cynic or somebody where it's just quite tweaking, having to go. Playing everything is just this dossier. You think that then we could say of you sense that you should be following a different path.

1:48:45A more ambitious one. You felt that you were destined for other things, but you had no idea how to achieve that. And in your misery, you began to hate everything around you. And that's some, it's the perfect cynical line for the saying. Oh man. That's heavy. Yeah, it feels to me like there's a kind of bank account that you're supposed to pay into or withdraw from. And if you find that you're critiquing more than creating, you're kind of in negative equity. You're sort of withdrawing from the system more than you're putting things into it. That this conversation with Eric Weinstein about like a expert's only mentality where a lot of people believe the only way that you're allowed to talk on this topic is if you're somebody that has all of the requisite qualifications and this sort of esteemed history behind you. But the reason the enforcement mechanism of that is people on the internet that are going to call you out for. I see he doesn't actually fully understand what he means by DNA or recombinant. You're like, oh, remember that just means that nobody can ever get to play with ideas publicly.

1:49:47And everyone begins to be on Tenta Hux. And they're worried about maybe I'm going to say something that's going to get me rumbled. Like, I don't know, it doesn't create the Oxford manner, the ability to play gracefully with ideas. We very much lost the Oxford manner, the ability to say, ah, I see what you were trying to get out there. And you've made some errors over this side. But I think it's interesting. Even if you're wrong about what you talked about, it's cool that you're trying to apply something from your industry to one that is new or is novel to you. So I think as your podcast, though, Chris, why it works is because it genuinely seems to fill that space of like, it's okay to not have things completely worked out. And we're going to work that out together. I guess what a lot of your conversations are. I think that's a good summary. Yeah. How do you understand yourself in the world around you has kind of always been the summer? And also to have, there's a person in front of me or a bunch of people in front of me. Like, how do I make them look as good as possible?

1:50:47How can I try and draw out of them the best version of them as opposed to the opposite? There's far more people on the internet that are good at doing critique, um, take downs and break downs than I am. But I'm pretty good at going, okay, what was some, as my dad would say, a streak of pace and a pile of shit sometimes, or, you know, like, silver lining on the high. And how do you do that? Like, how do you think silver lining is maybe a nicer expression? I think, I think like, I think we're workshopping writing today. I think maybe. Yeah, dad, you didn't win that one. I don't know, just look, I understand, I think, I tend to try and give people the benefit of the doubt as best I can. I tend to try and yes and their ideas as opposed to no but their ideas. Stress test them in a way as you were talking about intent versus content. Yeah. Hey, well, what do you mean by that? I'm not saying it because I'm trying to trip you up. I'm trying to be, I'm trying to get you to strengthen your own argument by drawing out an area. It feels a little bit, sometimes you're having a really good conversation. It feels like running a hand across the top of a membrane and everything's kind of smooth.

1:51:50And then you feel a little divot in something and you're like, ha, the flow of what was being said there just felt a little bit off. Oh, that's because there's a, you made a, you said a word that I didn't understand or there was a premise that I didn't feel was fully fleshed out. You made this claim and I didn't really understand how it linked back to what we were talking about before. And that's the moment where it kind of breaches the threshold of me just sitting and nodding along and listening. And then we go, oh, can I just, what do you mean by that? Can I ask you, yeah, it's quite a hard question, but we had always five rules of writing. And what would your five rules of communication be? That's good. Um, speak precisely whenever possible, which is not using more or fewer words than it needed. It's never bad to ask the question, why? Then sort of what do you mean by that? Why? What do you mean? Like those little moments, I think allow people to dig deeper. Um, I like it when you say it. You say it's very, quite in frequent, but you go, say more.

1:52:51Yeah, say more. Like just give someone and you know that they've got more. Yeah, just give them a little, a little, a little, nothing being encouraged. It's a permission. They're being polite in the podcast and going, I don't want to say too much here. I feel like I'm monologue and you go, you know, and that permission is great. Um, such a yes-anding. What else would I say? Using silence is probably one of the best tools. So just shutting the fuck up and giving the room space to breathe. Okay. Well, actually, and there we go, it was just a half step off from the next insight that you wanted to give out there. And you're not making somebody rush, you know, but you're not sort of driving them through it. Ah, those would be some. Those would be some. I think that talking is the best example that the 10,000 hour rule is a load of. Nonsense. Because everybody has done 10,000 hours. Yes. It doesn't seem to have a reason. Well, class conversation. But it's very, very precise practice. I mean, me and you had this idea a long time ago, one of our prescriptions was, if you want to get better at communication,

1:53:54have a fake podcast with a friend where you put your phone down on record once a week for half an hour, phones out of the room. You don't need to publish it. You don't need to put it anywhere. Listen back to it. Listen to your verbal texts and the flow of your conversation and how you talk over each other or how you actually give them a little bit of, oh, I quite like the way that. If you really, really, really want to do it, but the easiest way to do it is to actually have a project. Like, somebody who thinks I want to become funnier will take so much longer to become funny than somebody who has to stack on stage and have all of the pressure of an audience. Someone that goes, I really want to improve my writing. You're so good at writing. How do I improve my writing? Are you writing for anything? Are you publishing anything at the moment? No, well, you don't have the pressure of developing your writing skill. Oh, you don't really well with your communication. Are you part of a project that requires you to communicate with enough pressure and scrutiny that means that you need to hone the skill? And if not, I think this is like, it's the homoses thing of like going, it's the optionality. People want to get like the action perfection ratio is all wrong.

1:54:55People want to get kind of brilliant at something before they even start and to have a perfect record. And I love the idea of like just being messy, just having a messy start trying something. Like, you don't talk about jokes, you just try them. That's the problem, though, what we were talking about while you were out of the room. The experts only idea that Eric Weinstein has an issue with. I think I agree with too, which is if you're not allowed to use the Oxford manner to play gracefully with ideas, you're always going to get sniped at, especially early on. Well, that's, you know, that's stupid. Like, how can you, the early stages of anybody's work tend to be scrutinized, not with the amount of discount that it should have. And I think it causes people to get worried. They're like, fuck, like, what if I... And doesn't it, I want to, a lot of the current expert classes built off some anti-expert or one point that went against it. How so? Well, if you go back through most of science, a lot of Galileo going against the Catholic Church, you were the expertise at the time, it was remarkably unpopular.

1:55:56Yeah, conformity is a coffin and heresy is a cradle. Mm. Yeah, it's interesting. I've told you that story about Copernicus, right? About the fact that he had the same insight as Galileo, a hundred years earlier, and sort of squeaked it out on his deathbed, you know, this great work, the revolution of us. And he was worried about Arya from the church. So, had the same heliocentric, like, learning, and it took a full century to do the next one. And you might say, well, you know, stupid Copernicus, he should have said he should have shouted it from the rooftops. But Galileo was forced to recant, kept under house arrest for the rest of his life, like, nearly killed. His treatment justifies the silence of the guy that came a hundred years before us. The first humiliation, you familiar with that? Three humiliations. So, Copernicus was the first, we're not the center of the universe. Darwin was the second, we're no different to the animals. And then Freud was the third, we're not even in control of our minds.

1:56:57And then the fourth is AI. We're no longer the smartest thing. It's kind of... I mean, it's not that humiliating, I can live with it. Well, when you've created it, I think there's a degree of all of us feeling like we conjured... That's why people have... Yeah, we did it. We did it, guys. We did it. We did it. We did it, guys. We did it. We did it, guys. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it, guys. We did it. We did it. We did it. It's amazing. We're already there. We're already here, right? It's already pretty bloody abundant. This is your indomitable optimism coming through. I'm a very optimistic long term, short term, there will be problems. I always use the example of my morning routine. So, right, my morning routine, which everyone's dying to know, it's going to have to have to have to have to have this morning routine. Sure. I don't know, you had your moment bike first in the gut? Yeah, my four-year-old clip about a four-year-old's morning routine.

1:58:00Yeah. My morning routine is I woke up this morning on a bed. I had a hot shower and I brushed my teeth. Okay. Which sounds not that impressive. But it's Emperor Augustus. Emperor of Rome slept on a sack of straw. Mary Antoinette, who was going to be the future queen of France at the time, that she was wondering around her palace of Versailles, they used to throw their sewage out of windows because they didn't have toilets. It landed on her head. It's even, I'd be air conditioning, which they'd think about. President Garfield, who was the President of the late 1800s, when he got shot, because his body was only heating. They had to get 500,000 cubes of ice to blow over him, because they didn't have anything near air conditioning. I think King Louis mowfropped it from the inside as well, because he can brush the teeth. So even when you look at the David Foster Wallister thing, we're already in post-the-bundits. It's just going to potentially keep accelerating more and more.

1:59:01But when people get there, they won't think about it. We were talking this argument over there. You were trying to talk about how we should de-accelerate or potentially pause things, and it's that douche line of, even the United Kingdom is an artificial concept. And you think about it. The hunter-gatherers won't be able to live in the United Kingdom. You know, the United Kingdom would have died on a cold winter night from the cop from the cop. So we're already living on Mars. Yeah. We're already living on Mars. But what I mean is when we talk about terraforming Mars, we've already terraformed the Earth. We're already living in unlippable places. That's the human thing today. We're wondering around Bolton, man. Like... How do you feel about that, Harry? I feel like me and George disagree on most things in life. We agree on the most important stuff, right? We disagree on everything else. We were talking about death the other day. It was George's very pro-living for a long time. And I'm not pro-living for that entire time. Oh, yeah. We had this debate while watching the England game.

2:00:02Who's the guy, Brian Johnson, the monster of forever? Kind of. Yeah, it was a good age. What's a good age? Well, I think it was a good age. I think it was an exacting where you got problems to solve. And you have dilemmas that you just have to live with. And death is the big one, right? Death is in the Muslims, what do they call it? The certainty. And I think you have to just make peace with it. It's going to happen at some stage. You don't get to choose when. You just... You don't get to choose how long your life is. But the depth and quality, you can have a big effect on. And that's where you should spend your time. And I think that thing about... It's absolutely inevitable. And the idea that these crazy... Whatever, this guy trying to live forever. George wants to live until the heat death of the universe. I would've kept going, baby. Well, there's the live forever or immortal, which is just ridiculous, because it's certain point you have to be hit death of the universe. But living to 150, that much significantly different than living to 80. Did this... Research ones were called where I was looking at...

2:01:04If you have everybody ever to live today, the average age. And then you had everybody ever to live ever, the average age when they died. The average age of that room would be 15. So we were already way past. And I used to example... The example I thought of the other day was... My dog has beautiful little Bernadude, or Barclay. Parents do. It makes me sad that... Ten years from now, he's probably in a diet. If I could take a dog's life from 12 to 24, is that bad? It sounds like a terrific thing. So what's the problem with going from 80 to 160 years old for a human? I agree forever is a completely different concept. And that's a very vague, minimal language. But is 150 or 200 a... Not every bad one. Yeah, because we're already not dying at 50. We're done with the devil, and it just depends how long your spoon is. So I'm not saying 120 or whatnot. Where does this end? I also don't feel like it's our universe to roam for that long. I feel like the old must make way for the new man.

2:02:04There should be a new George Mack selling that seat. You've got 10 more years of podcasting. And I think bringing the new George Mack, let's get some new insights. Like there should be a new job. We should be taken out back of the shed. Well, there is that thing where you go. People are very scared of death. There's a great Mark Twain said, I was alive for 10 billion years before my birth, and it didn't inconvenience me in the least. Can I go, yeah, just do you go back to the same thing? We're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness. And you've got 4,000 weeks. What are you going to do with it? You know, I think that thing about it is kind of a, it does set the clock of going, what am I going to do? And I think if you live, if you're talking about 160 years, I think there's a maniana to that of kind of going, well, you don't have to do anything now. And actually the sense of urgency that you have, I think it's quite, it's kind of a Russia blood to the head. Hundreds, so right now, I don't even know where to start. I think you live 200, I mean, 160, you live 260. That's how many wives you have, I'm sorry.

2:03:04Let's just get down to the top there. They're not living in this first place that you go to. It's also how many kids, you have your kids, they have their kids. At some point, there's like a deep heartbreak. It's a really deep heartbreak. Go back to the dog argument and talk about why I go from 12 to 24, would be the worst thing for a dog. But you're not trying to extend the dog's life. You're trying to extend your own life. And I do feel like, what about the lions out here? Are we still going to be killing the cows? You know, it is there would be enough meat to fill these new humans who are just now powering on to 500. Well, that's kind of interesting when you talk about, like, you know, we're checking about problems in the world. And you talk about the environmental crisis that's going on now. Are you aware of like the late 60s, there was a book written that was about how overpopulation everyone was going to starve? And it was going to be kind of a Mad Max scenario. Is that Mount Malfusias? I've already got that wrong. Yeah, Malfusian trap is when you have a growing population without resources that can support you. Yeah, so they thought that we were going to run out of food and basically two bits of technology happened at the same time.

2:04:05So they figured out how to kind of GM wheat and grain and they also found out how to do it with rice as well. And they increased productivity by like 4x in that time. And basically we can sustain a huge number of people. Because they worked out basically there's not enough land to support 4 billion people. And now we're 8 million and we're fine. It's really interesting like how problems change. They also thought there was going to be a new ice age in the 70s. There's not that long ago the 70s. And now it's kind of all worried about the heat. It's weird how it kind of changes over time. Well, hopefully we're sort of one step ahead and we solve it. Isn't there a Roman port that's like a hundred miles off the coast from where the coast used to be? I'm pretty sure that because there was an ice age not that long ago. And during the Roman Empire the entire climate was significantly different. But their ability to invade the UK was facilitated by the fact that here it is. Once a major coastal port and likely the landing area for the Roman invasion of AD 43

2:05:05it's now about two miles inland because the once some channels sweeted up or silted up. Interesting. Anyway, Romans may. We got to the Romans. This is what men are meant to do every two hours. I've been thinking about it the whole time. That being. Yeah, sure. Simple question. Who do you want to be the next Prime Minister of England? Assuming there's no like they can be they want to be anyone in the world. You could you could ship him in at a last good. That's good. Dominic Cummings. He had to go. He had to go. And I think the thing with DC. Who do I think could get elected? Okay. Mike, I know you got me talking right Mr Cummings. I think he's really competent. And not that likable. I feel like there's a real kind of like what you want in a leader is really competent while all-Stor being kind of likable. Okay, what was Keir Starmer? Never. I mean, he's gone now. But I don't think anyone's going to forget Keith Starmer and Harry.

2:06:08Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee, Lee. One news really interesting because that kind of Singapore example. There's a guy called Roger Bootle who's a brilliant economist and a great writer. I know him a little bit. And I think if you look at Roger Bootle's kind of assessment of what Britain needs, it's a really good checklist of what like he says there's no silver bullet. There's no big solution that changes everything. And he gives these eight examples from around the world of like where extraordinary things have happened and countries have turned themselves around. So from post-war Germany to post-war France to South Korea, North Korea, Singapore, all of these different examples of like how did those economic miracles happen? How did people get from relatively poor circumstance to abundance? And it's brilliant because it's like it's lots of little things done right. I think he'd be a great guy to have in charge. And Kenny Talk. Does he have a seat and talk? He's very likable and his thing is like it's not really about the... He's a big fan of the Singaporean dude.

2:07:10But he's not really about like charisma in the leader. It's more about, okay, these are the things that you need to do. These are the priorities that a country needs to have. And you need to know what GDP is for. You need to know what are you doing this for? Why do you need this to be? What's the purpose of this nation? What's the point of it? And he's very good on that stuff. Who do you want? Harry. I told him I'd just say I genuinely, the girl I'm dating, I think would be a good pick. Keep her busy, right? Bro, bring your fucking check to work day. That's who I'd pick. Right here right now, I bet she's American, so I'm not sure how to go down. Bring your check to work day. This is what's happening. You're going to implant your lady at the top of the country. What is she doing currently? Applied theater. Applied theater. Yep, she's the one for the job. It's gone here, isn't it? Yeah. Fine, salt. Judge, you. Yeah, Chris, don't tell me when it comes. Are you in class? Okay. Who do you want?

2:08:12He's an old, he's an old, like coming to that old lab, you know, he's been around the track. I think fresh energy. Jimmy? What? If I said I'd let Mr. Carr to lead us into the next century, what would you say? I'd say that we've made a mistake in the early 80s and we shut down all of the assilums and now the crazy people are just wandering around. No, I think I don't know if you're familiar with recent American history, but game show hosts have become politicians recently. I'm not always with scholar results. Tusha, give it a go ahead, gentlemen. You give it to the England manager. I think it seems to be working at the national team level currently as we were recording this. That's not about chat. Oh, you could put Garrett Salinas again, given that he's got the job for it. All right, boys. Give it gigs again to Caesar. Yeah, let's bring this one home. I appreciate you all. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. It's really fun. Goodbye, my beauty.

2:09:13See you. See you. This episode is brought to you by Chat GPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons podcast. Have you guys heard about Chat GPT work? It's the new way to use Chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give Chat GPT work access to your apps and files and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, Available on Plus and Pro Plans.