Jared Diamond Returns (on the science of leadership)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Today we have, which is a great honor, for the second time, but this time in the flesh, Jared Diamond. Jared Diamond is a scientist, historian, a professor, and a Pulitzer Prize winning author. I mean, this guy started in the physiology department, then he became the head of the geography department. Talk about a polymath. He's an ornithologist. I mean, he's one of the smartest people we've talked to. Yeah, he really is. His most famous book, of course, legendary, Guns, Germs, and Steel. If you have not read that book, it is phenomenal. Everyone should read that book. Collapse, The Third Chimpanzee, The World Until Yesterday, Upheaval, and his new book out now called Profits, Profits, Coaches, and Kings, When Do Leaders Matter? This was so interesting. It's so fascinating. Spoiler, there's not one thing that we can predict an effective leader on. There's many. There's many, many things that contribute to whether or not they are. Please enjoy Jared Diamond. We get support from Quince. You know what I think about a lot? The stuff in my closet, I actually wear. Like, not the trendy pieces, the sweater that goes with everything, or the pants that fit perfectly, the tee you kind of just throw on without even thinking. That's what Quince does. They make those pieces. That's right. They have 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at $60. Organic cotton, merino wool, quality you'd expect from a luxury brand. Luxury without the luxury price tag. We love that. They skip the middlemen, go direct to ethical factories, and pass those savings to you. We're talking 50% to 80% less than similar brands. I'm so excited for fall simply because I love my cashmere sweaters from Quince. And I also got to add that right before I left Nashville, I was assigned the task of putting all the bedding back on my children's bed, and I got to fold first the Quince sheets and comforter. Then unfolded them and put them. And the entire time I was spreading it all out, I was like, by God, they really are so soft. It's crazy. They are. I also have a pair of sheets from Quince that are really, really good. And honestly, what sets Quince apart is that everything feels intentional. These are timeless, versatile pieces designed to be the dependable stuff you reach for day after day. You're not buying something just for right now. You're buying something that's going to be in your rotation for years. They've also got hotel quality bedding and bath, kitchen essentials, even furniture. So if you're doing any kind of refresh. At home to same quality, same prices across the board. Quince just gets it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash DAX. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash DAX. We are supported by Auto Trader. All right. If you've been putting off car shopping because it's sound. Sounds like a whole thing. Buying your car online on Auto Trader makes it way easier. Really. You can shop tons of cars online, compare prices, check financing and trade-in options all from wherever you are. And if you want to start online and go to the dealership for a test drive, you can do that too. Really. What I like is the flexibility. Start online, finish at the dealer or the other way around. Your info stays with you. So you're not starting the process from scratch. Plus you're working with local dealer listings. So you've got real people helping behind the scenes. And when you're ready, you can pick up your car or have it delivered. Really. Buy your car online on Auto Trader. Really. Oh my goodness. You're already here. Yes, I am. How are you? How are you, sir? I'm good. How are you? Good. Wonderful to see you in real life. Hi. Hi. How are you? Last time we were Zoomed, right? Yeah, we were. I think we were Zoomed. I think. If you recall. Yes, I do. My sons reminded me. That's their role in your life? I have two daughters that I'm hoping will take over. Much of my cognition as I get older. How old are your daughters? 11 and 13. You are in the eye of the storm. Thank you for saying that. I feel a little alone in the eye of the storm currently. We got through it okay. We have twins. They're 39 years old. Oh, wow. Nothing terrible went wrong. In their teens, they wanted more to spend time with their friends and not just alone with their boring parents. Yeah. Eventually, when they were committed to bring along their friends, they tolerated their boring parents. Yeah. Right. Jared, I'm so happy to have you in person as an anthro major at your university. I'm so happy to have you in person. The players are there for longer, they have more power. And the professional team has an owner and a general manager. So on the average, college coaches have more discretion. That's a third factor. So timing in place, discretion. How much power do you actually have? A fourth consideration is whether or not you are the founder. The founder of a country like George Washington or Lee Kuan Yew. The founder of a country sets the institutions for good or bad that are likely to continue for quite a while. So founders, and similarly founders in the business world, have more discretion. That's a fourth factor. Fifth factor is that a leader who sees that the public should be doing something that the public doesn't want to do, but convinces, gets the public to do it. Franklin Roosevelt recognized that the United States had to prepare for war, but the American public did not want to prepare for war. But because he saw it, and he gradually nudged the American public to do it, the government in that direction, he had more influence than a leader who was doing what the public wanted. The thing I find most impressive in the list is the leader who can convince people to do things they don't want to do. That, to me, seems like a very esteemable triumph, if you can convince people to do things they don't want to do. Well, esteemable if it's a good thing that they're trying to get them to do. True, true, true, in the FDR sense. And you know, another example, Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle, the last thing the French wanted to do, in 1958, was to pull out of Algeria. But de Gaulle recognized that they had to pull out of Algeria, and he got to do it in a tricky way. He began by saying, we will not pull out of Algeria until after there have been no terrorist acts for nine months. And then he said, we're not going to get out of Algeria until there have been no terrorist acts for five months. So eventually, he said, and now we're getting out of Algeria. So he got the French to do what they didn't want to do. Then finally, the last thing on my list of six is, that a leader who does not have outstanding colleagues. Clement Attlee produced the biggest change in social policy in Britain in the 20th century, but he's not nearly as famous as Winston Churchill. Because Clement Attlee had about five cabinet members, all of whom were skilled and talented, and they shared the glory. If Attlee hadn't done it, one of those five would have done it. So that's the sixth reason. If you have the misfortune, each of you would have an outstanding colleague. Yes, yes, yes, we're going to have to share that glory, which we do. But we left out the most important one that comes up most often in the book, I think, which is this thing you label the Hamlet Test. So explain the Hamlet Test. The Hamlet Test is a test that leaders rarely pass. People think, well, he or she, she or he, is the only person who could do it well in a country of 340 million people, the United States. It's hard to make an argument that Jeff Bezos was the only one of 340 million Americans who could found Amazon, but in the case of Botswana, a tiny colony of one million, where at the time of independence, there were only 22 college graduates. They had seven miles of paved road in the entire country. That's right. And on top of that, of those 22 college graduates, Sretse Kama was the chief of the most powerful tribe. And so he was the only chief who could get away. With abolishing the power of the chiefs. And on top of that, it was on his tribe's land that were found the diamonds that made the wealth of Botswana. So he was the only chief who could get away with giving away the tribe's diamonds and saying that they were national treasures. He was both the president and the chief of this very important tribe. So yes, he had to have so many things. That's similar to the competition one, I feel like, or sharing the glory. It's like, if it's only you. And you're the only person. And the reason you call it the Hamlet test, and I don't know that people would necessarily know this history, but explain why Hamlet is relevant. Sure. People will necessarily not know the history. Hamlet is often regarded as the greatest play in the English literature. So Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. Was Shakespeare the only person who could write Hamlet? Well, in this case, I call it the Hamlet test because this is one of those rare cases where there aren't another 340 million people to consider to write Hamlet. First of all, you had to have a track record of writing other plays first. Hamlet was Shakespeare's 22nd play, and he had already written good plays like Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. But also, to write Hamlet, you had to have a London theatre company, and Shakespeare had the best theatre company, the best theatre in London. So there were only about two dozen outstanding Elizabethan dramatists. We know every one of them, and we've got their plays, so we can read their plays and decide whether their plays were as good as Hamlet. None of them wrote plays that were as good as Hamlet. So that's why I call it the Hamlet test. We know all of the other candidates, whereas in the case of Jeff Bezos, we can't name all 340 million Americans who might have done what he did. Right. Okay. So let's start where the book kind of starts, and this is, again, probably not a very well-known story about Hitler, but in 1930, years before he becomes chancellor, he is being driven in a car in the passenger seat by a chauffeur, and a large truck that is speeding towards him. The impact seems inevitable. The chauffeur floors it. They narrowly avoid what would have probably been the death of Adolf Hitler, years before he was chancellor. So then this brings this tasty question: Would Germany have had this trajectory without Adolf Hitler? How do we work through this counterfactual fantasy? So I was born in 1937, which means that I grew up in the world of Hitler. And on top of that, my family is from Europe on both sides. My wife is from Poland. Right. And half of my family in Europe, and half of my wife's family in Poland disappeared in the Holocaust. In the case of my wife's family, we know that one of them died. My wife's father's father was killed on the train to Auschwitz. My wife's mother survived Auschwitz with legacies. So in the case of Hitler, historians debate, would World War II and the Holocaust have happened if there had not been Hitler? They write biographies. The trouble with writing biographies is… All biographers have to recount the same facts. And most biographers conclude he made a difference. But then A.J.P. Taylor, perhaps the best-known British historian of the post-war period, concluded, using the same facts, Hitler was a normal German politician who did what any German politician would have done. And so Hitler did not make a difference. Biographers would argue that Hitler did make a difference because he was way out of line in his anti-Semitism. There were plenty of German anti-Semites, but none proposed industrialism. There were plenty of German anti-Semitism, but none proposed industrial scale extermination. He was the most charismatic speaker for good or for evil. He was infinitely above even Winston Churchill in his charisma. He also was amazingly skilled as a deceiver of people. He's famous for having deceived Neville Chamberlain at Munich. But on top of that, he deceived German industrialists. And he deceived German generals. His fellow Nazis. He was a great deceiver. So those are the reasons why most biographers believe that Hitler made a difference. But A.J.P. Taylor didn't. So how can one settle it? The method that can bring conclusions is the method that I call natural experiments. So I trained in medical physiology. I worked in the laboratory. Chemists, molecular biologists, they work in the laboratory and they discover things by means of controlled biology. And they're not manipulative experiments, meaning you've got two batches of test tubes and one you pour a dye in and the other you don't pour. You've set up the experiment yourself. If we social scientists were permitted to do such experiments, I would run around since World War II killing 47 prime ministers and not killing 200 prime ministers. And then I would do the statistics and quickly I would know whether prime ministers made a difference. Well, that's not nice and it's illegal and it's immoral, but history has done that experiment for me. Since World War II there have been 47 prime ministers who died natural deaths of cancer and heart disease and Harold Holt drowned. And then there are about 200 prime ministers who didn't die natural deaths. But we can compare the outcomes, and the numbers are so high that we can do statistics on it, or in the business world, if I wanted to see whether CEOs make a difference. I could experimentally kill CEOs, but it's not nice, but let's be less drastic, instead of trying to kill CEOs, we will kill their first-degree relatives. If CEOs make a difference, they'll get upset, but if CEOs don't make a difference, who cares whether they get upset? And in fact, it happens. When the spouse or the only child of a CEO dies, the CEO really gets upset and the business income goes way down. The next worse is if a sibling of a CEO dies. The CEO gets upset but not quite upset, and yes, these earnings go down proportionally. Interesting. The punchline of this is amazing. If a parent dies, you get upset but you expect parents to die, so the earnings go down but less. If your in-law dies, your mother-in-law or your father-in-law, if mother-in-law dies, that's the only death which produces that increase in earnings, but the sample size is small, the effect is small, and it's not quite statistically significant. That's very funny. What it means is that, without being permitted to do the manipulative experiment, We can analyze the natural experiment that relatives of various degrees of closeness die. And those deaths, psychologists will tell us, some of those deaths are a bigger blow than other deaths. So that's the natural experiment. So let's go through some of the columns. We touched on it for a second, but if we start with politics and history, I cannot pronounce his name, but Kama? Soretzi Kama. Soretzi Kama, who we talked about, I think, sufficiently. If we added up the fact that he was the first president of a brand new nation that was incredibly poor, didn't have a lot of college educated folks, didn't have paved roads, had no foreseeable access to money or resources. He's unique. He makes some unique decisions. Yeah, he keeps around some British administrators that have a lot of experience with administration and bureaucracy. That's kind of a rare choice that he makes. Once they discover the diamonds, as we talked about, he is in this position to grant all of those minerals. He's an extraordinary leader in that he is unusually high discretion. Anything he says pretty much goes. And crucial decisions plus some favorable circumstances and perfect timing makes him an enormously impactful individual. And then maybe to counter him, let's talk about Rachel Carson. Who is Rachel Carson? The two science books in the last 170 years that made the biggest impact on the world were Darwin's. Origin of Species, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring about the damage to lands and to animals and to people caused by toxic chemicals jumpstarted the environmental revolution. Now, Rachel Carson was unique. She passed the Hamlet test as Soretse Kama. She was uniquely qualified to do it because she was a scientist. So other scientists answered her letters. From childhood on, she wrote prose, but she read the prose back to herself. She listened to it. So she was a writer, but she was also a poet whose writing style is still the most beautiful writing style of scientists today. She could have just been a beautiful novelist, but also had this biology background. Right. Compared to the best other science writers, Richard Dawkins, who is terrific. Paul Ehrlich, who was terrific. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Writing style is still much better because she read it back and she listened to it with the ear of a poet. Two other advantages of Rachel Carson. She was not a university professor. In those days, if you were a university professor writing for the public, that was really bad because it meant you're writing for the public because your career is washed up and you're prostituting yourself. So you turn to writing for the public. It's still the case today. Really? The only time UCLA denied me a promotion was when I won the Pulitzer Prize. Oh, my God. Which proved that I was prostituted. What? That's crazy. It is crazy, but that's academia. Can you answer the psychology behind that? I mean, I understand publishing in peer-reviewed journals and that that's the high watermark for anyone under their employ. They're trying to get their university to have massive cachets. So the more peer-reviewed journal published, the higher that rises. But why does a book for the public diminish that? Partly it's envy. Sure. So someone who writes a successful book. A book for the public is doing what other academics would like to do, although they won't admit it. And it's also the case that there's a belief that if you're writing a book for the public, it's because you can no longer write good papers that get 32 citations in the Journal of Planetary and Earth Science. And nobody reads it except 31 other planetary scientists. Yeah, exactly. So there's a feeling that if you're writing a book for the public, you're doing it because you're all washed up. And since you're all washed up, you prostitute yourself. Rachel Carson, with her beautiful writing style, a man who wrote with a beautiful writing style, who wrote like a poet, everybody would be suspicious about that man. Rachel Carson is a woman. It's okay for a woman to write with a beautiful writing style. And so for all those reasons, Rachel Carson, I think, passes the Hamlet. That was uniquely qualified to write Silent Spring. Also what was relevant, she really exposed DDT as being the big chemical that we later found out was what was. She was killing, right, the bald eagles. And so that gets to Kennedy, this book. And then all of a sudden, we have the EPA, and we do outlaw DDT, which is great. In the case of in the business world, do you drink pomegranate juice? I don't personally, but I'm very, very aware of it. Pomegranates were domesticated something like 4,000 B.C. They've been around for a long time. Yes, you can get juice out of them in Middle Eastern markets. Until the year 2002, there was no pomegranate juice industry in the U.S. In the Middle East, you could go to a— You could go to a Saturday market, and the salesman would cut open a pomegranate and squeeze a glass of pomegranate. But there was no pomegranate juice industry. The reason is that they're hard. Much of the medical benefit and much of the flavor is in the rind. But you can't do it like an orange, cutting it in half and squeeze it. Instead, to make pomegranate juice, you need literally a three-story press that can grind this really hard stuff and get the juice out of it. Well, as of 2002, pomegranates— Pomegranates being Mediterranean climate plants. Pomegranates were grown in the United States, only in California. And there were about 22 pomegranate farmers in California. Of those 22 pomegranate farmers, 21 were ordinary, poor farmers. So they did not launch a pomegranate juice industry. But Linda Resnick ran a company, successful company. She had lots of money. Her husband invested some of the money in buying acreage in the Central Valley so that they're now the largest agricultural landowners in California. And he discussed— And he discovered that on his land were 125 pomegranate trees about which he knew nothing. But Linda Resnick read about them and learned that they might have medical value. So she invests $150 million in learning what the medical value is. And then they build this three-story press because they've got other products. So in 2002, they launched the pomegranate juice industry. Weirpon, Coca-Cola, Nestle jump in and start producing fake pomegranate juice. So they spend another $120 million suing Coca-Cola and so on. In the Supreme Court, these other 22 farmers, first of all, they don't have the $150 million. But on top of that, they have tiny fractions of the market. Even if they had $150 million, it wouldn't be worth spending $150 million if you only have a tiny fraction of the market. But the Resnicks had produced half the pomegranate juice in the United States. Plus, they had the money. Plus, their company was not a public stock company whose stockholders would have said, for heaven's sakes, don't waste our money at all. Yeah, some unproven beverage in the already oversaturated— Unproven beverage market. That's right. They controlled their money. And so it took them 18 years to make a profit on it. It was not a way to get rich. They got rich in other ways. But they passed the Hamlet test because out of those 22 pomegranate farmers, they were the only ones who controlled enough of the market and who had enough money and who had the money themselves, not as a stock company, that they could lose money on pomegranates for 18 years. Yeah, there's likely never a pomegranate beverage without her. She has this kink about finding medicinal outcomes for existing ripe plants and fruits. Like, you got to have her weird interest in that to then bring this thing to market. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. We get support from YouTube Premium. Okay, I got to tell you something. I just got YouTube Premium this year, and it's completely enhanced how I use YouTube. I already liked YouTube for obvious reasons. I'm watching all my car stuff on there. Everything's on there. And thought, how could YouTube get any better? Well, Premium has awesome features like offline downloads. Just use it on a plane ride. So I can download my favorite automotive shows and videos to watch when I'm on the go. And that means I don't have to wait when I don't have Wi-Fi, which is especially great when I'm traveling and don't have guaranteed Wi-Fi on airplanes. Speaking of not waiting, and this is my favorite part, YouTube Premium is ad free. So I can watch. It's uninterrupted whenever, wherever. Background play also comes in clutch because I can lock my screen and keep the audio going. This comes in handy when I go out for a walk or when I'm in the middle of a great podcast. Plus, it has a ton of other features I didn't even know about. Like, did you know? Premium automatically downloads videos from channels you subscribe to? So even when I forget, my content is still right there for me. So if you're like me and you already like YouTube, you're going to love YouTube Premium. Try it now. For two months free. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking your teeth before walking into a meeting. You smiled at six people in the hallway. Confidently. Full teeth. You felt great about it until you caught your reflection and realized you'd been carrying a piece of spinach like an accessory since lunch. Yeah. Checking first is a good idea. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate, North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. Okay. I got to tell you something. Yes. Watching all my car stuff on there. Everything. Well, Premium has. awesome features like offline downloads, just use it on a plane ride, so I can download my favorite automotive shows, and videos to watch when I'm on the go. Speaking of not waiting, and this is my favorite part, YouTube Premium is ad-free, so I can watch uninterrupted whenever, wherever. Like, did you know, Premium automatically downloads videos from channels you subscribe to? Try it now for two months free. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about Rob building our website on Squarespace, and we're going to talk about how to build a website on Squarespace. And I bring it up again because it's a perfect example of what they do well. Rob had all the pieces, the content, the vision, the ideas, but he needed something to actually take all that and make it public-facing. And Squarespace was that bridge. Maybe you're in the same spot. You've been developing something, a business, a skill set, a body of work, and it's been private. It's been yours. But at some point, you're ready to put it out there, and that transition from private to public can feel like a huge leap. Squarespace makes it feel like a step. Beautiful templates. Built-in SEO. Email campaigns. Scheduling. Analytics. Everything you need to go from, I've been working on this, to here it is, come find me. All in one place. No code. No stitching together a bunch of different tools. So, if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.com slash DAX for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Before we move into businesses, I just want to say or ask you, you do survey 22 modern political leaders, Churchill, Mandela, Mao, Idi Amin, a bunch. What patterns emerge when you look at these 22 modern political leaders? Certainly, all of them had discretion. Some of them were dictators. Some of them were wartime leaders. Winston Churchill. Some of them were founders, Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew. Those are things shared among them. But there was one thing shared among them that I hadn't expected. I noticed when I went over the table. Of those 22 founders, there were only two who retired voluntarily, Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew. The other 20 founders didn't retire voluntarily. They committed suicide like Hitler, or they got assassinated like Anwar Sadat, or they got voted out of office, like Winston Churchill. So what it means is that once you become an outstanding political leader, and you've developed a high opinion of yourself, you're not likely to lose that high opinion of yourself and step down voluntarily. That was a surprise for me. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it's a good bit of knowledge that we should keep in mind if and when we ever get a charismatic leader that we all love. We need to go, "And this person will never show themselves the way out." I mean, that's part of the reason we have term limits, right? I mean, we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. industry caused an industry to develop in a distinctive way. How can leaders make a difference? Some leaders can uniquely do something that nobody else could have done at all. Shakespeare with Hamlet, Linda Resnick. But most leaders achieve something that other leaders could have achieved, but the leaders achieved it in a distinctive way and put their stamp on a country or on a business. Right. I mean, that's good. It means more people have that option. If everyone has to pass the Hamlet test, that's not possible. Yeah. Let's talk about sports, and this is fun for both of us. So let's talk about John Wooden. Will you talk a little bit about him and what he accomplished at UCLA? Sure. John Wooden is generally regarded as the greatest coach in American sports in the last century and maybe the greatest coach in any country. Before John Wooden, I was born in 1937, so the major sports when I was growing up were baseball. I was in the year. Boston, the great Ted Williams, and football. Basketball was a comparatively minor sport. John Wooden gets a large share of the credit for making basketball a major sport up there with football. He was a master of detail. The detail that he went to, not only did he teach his players how to dribble, he taught them how to roll up their socks. Makes a difference how you roll up your socks. His practices, they went for two and a half or three hours. and he would tell his players, run that play. And then at the end he would say, run it again faster, run it again faster, faster, faster. The practices were faster than the game by design. That's right. Which is crazy. You practice a little lighter than you play the game in general. He emphasized being in peak physical condition. So when UCLA played against Duke for the NCAA, Duke's players averaged 6'8". UCLA players averaged 6'4". But UCLA players couldn't jump higher than Duke players, so UCLA won. He was a great psychologist. He understood individual players. On top of that, he was great at getting people to work together. But then perhaps the most important thing about him, that in fact his own players emphasized. They said, yes, he was a great basketball coach, but he was the most important person in my life other than my mother and father, because for him basketball wasn't a game. Basketball was a metaphor for life. And so what his players learned out of playing basketball was, yes, to achieve success in basketball, but also to achieve success in life. And that's something that you can't fake. Yes, there were other great basketball coaches. Bobby Knight, who was not a nice person, as was John Wooden, but nobody would say that Bobby Knight was a metaphor for how to operate life. Yeah, how to handle oneself in public. Yeah, a couple of unique things he did. Well, first of all, he won 10 national championships, which is bonkers. But he. Unlike these other dictators who, and this will be towards the end, we learned they fell because there's no feedback for them. He was in a position to be quite strong-headed, but when they had a losing season, he went back to the drawing board, made this realization that these subs weren't playing enough minutes to be good. And when he had a player like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he changed the game to suit him. He was flexible and was endlessly on a path of kind of discovery and curiosity. And I think that's quite unique about him. He could have gotten set in his ways and said, no, no, I know how to win. Kareem, you'll play the way I play, you know. He was a thinking coach. And as you say, in that, I think it was 14th year at UCLA, when his team did not well, instead of blaming his players, he spent a lot of time figuring out what had gone wrong. Okay, and now you take down these universities in a very fun way, which is, now statistically, how much do coaches change outcomes? Let's talk about the actual power of the coach. The number is similar to that 30% for CEOs. Coaches make a difference, but they don't make the entire difference as they think. What other things make a difference? Having a great player with your team, but that's not enough. The amount of money that the school puts in. Alabama puts huge amounts of money into their football team. UCLA doesn't. Alabama pays its coach three times what UCLA pays its coach. The facilities. UCLA has a much better basketball court, Poly Pavilion, than does USC. But USC has better football practice facilities, with the result that USC is better in football and UCLA is better in basketball. All of which means that coaches make a difference, but they don't make an overwhelming difference. And the proof of this is that if UCLA's chancellor and if UCLA's athletic director had seen fit to ask me or to read my book, our athletic director, would not now be $155 million in debt from having fired basketball coach after coach after coach after coach. And you got to buy out their contract. That's bad. And then you get into this incredible statistic in the book, which is, when researchers compare poorly performing teams that fire their coach with equally poor teams that retain theirs, both groups tend to improve by roughly the same amount. That's right. It's like throwing dice. There's no skill involved in getting there. It's like winning six. It's just pure chance. Coaches make some difference, but they're closer to the throwing dice end. Because they're already great. The coach UCLA brings in presumably is already top-tier coach. Presumably. And in fact, our basketball coaches, I think all of our basketball coaches since John Wooden have had winning records of like 65 or 70%. Any other school would be thrilled out of their minds to have every one of our basketball coaches, every one of whom we fired. 100% of the coaches since Wooden have been fired. That's crazy. They didn't live up to Wooden. Part of it is the culture too, right? Like in the South, football is the culture. So schools are going to put a lot of money in there because they make a lot of money there. But I have to add to that, that UCLA's football and basketball coaches were the highest paid or the second highest paid employees of the state of California. Oh my God. Of the whole state? Of the whole state. That is crazy. Of all employees of the state of California. And our chancellor, the salary of our chancellor is one-tenth of the salary of our basketball and football coaches. That tells you something. It tells you that Adam Smith was right and market forces are strong. Okay, let's talk about religion because religion to me seems like the greatest place to evaluate charisma. Yeah. Because obviously most religions, if not all, were started by a charismatic prophet who was claiming some kind of power. Some kind of revelation. So let's start with Joseph Smith. Let's talk about him a little bit. Joseph Smith founded Mormon religion. But let's place him in context. So within the last 200 years, there have been four new religions that have spread around the world. Which are they? Mormon religion, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian science. All four of those are American religions. But there have been new religions founded in other places, the Mahdi of the Sudan in the late 1800s. Founded a new religion which expanded over Northeast Africa, but didn't expand around the world. Why is it that all four of the new religions of the last 150 years that have spread worldwide were American religion? I think that it's a no-brainer. The United States had the economic power and we eventually had the military power. The Mormon religion, every Mormon man and Mormon women have the option, but every Mormon man is required to spend two years of his life at age 18 proselytizing. On mission. And if he doesn't have much money, then you go on mission 70 miles away. But if you have enough money, you go overseas to Europe and to the Pacific. And that's enabled the Mormon religion, because it's derived from the wealthy United States, to become a worldwide religion. Now it's true that the founders of all four of those religions were charismatic. In other spheres of leadership, charisma's not the only way to become an effective leader. Augusto Pinochet, the vile dictator of Chile, he was not charismatic in the least. Or Stalin, not charismatic. They terrified people. So there are other ways besides charisma to become a leader in politics. But in religion, the only way to start becoming a leader is to be charismatic. But charisma isn't enough. There are all these charismatic New Guineans and others who found religions in New Guinea, but their religions don't go anywhere. For religion to go somewhere, the religion has to have what I'd call an economic and demographic engine. The leader of a religion, or leaders, need at least two qualities and maybe three. You have to have charisma or you go nowhere. You also have to be or have a great organizer. So the Christian religion, Christ wasn't a great organizer. I mean, he was killed too early. We don't know how he would have been as an organizer. I heard his room was messy. Saint Paul was the organizer of Christianity. In the case of Islam, there, Muhammad was not only a charismatic, but he was a great organizer. And in the case of the Mahdi of the Sudan, he was a fantastic organizer as well as charismatic. The third thing that a religion may need is it may need a general and an army because religions often face resistance. The Christians did not attempt to fight back because the Roman army was too strong, but the Mormon religion did fight back. The Mormon religion had its own army. - Brigham Young. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Discover Pandora Talisman, a new collection designed to help you express every side of who you are, because the most powerful statement you can make is being yourself. Featuring meaningful zodiac symbols and personalized jewelry pieces, each design tells a story that's uniquely yours, a reflection of what you stand for, what you believe, and how you choose to show up every day. Whether it's your sign, a symbol that speaks to your soul, or a piece that captures your personal style, Pandora Talisman lets you wear your identity with intention. Pandora Talisman, a new language of self-expression, because every version of you deserves to be seen. Shop new styles in-store or online at pandora.net. Living your best life means being extra where it counts and skipping the extra where you don't need it, like in your cleaning products. That's where 7th Generation comes in. Their bio-based cleaning power delivers a powerful clean with nothing extra in the bottle. Need a dish soap that cuts through the tough grease? A detergent that tackles the worst stains and odors? 7th Generation handles it all without any dyes or artificial fragrances. Real clean doesn't have to come with a long list of add-ons. Upgrade to a powerful clean without anything extra. Look for 7th Generation dish soap and laundry detergent wherever you shop for your cleaning products. After the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young became the organizer. Yeah, you say in the book, you know, Joseph Smith gets a lot of the credit and the acknowledgement, but without Brigham Young, he's the one who really takes it to a place where we can have the infrastructure and have the mission and have the capital and resources. Like, Joseph needs him, or we don't really have Mormonism, probably. That's right. This just illustrates, then, that religion needs. Charismatic founder, absolutely. Needs an organizer, absolutely. And sometimes, it also needs an army and a general. And in a few cases, the Mahdi of the Sudan and then Muhammad, those two fulfilled all three roles. Muhammad, he was an outstanding organizer, an outstanding general, as well as a charismatic founder. And similarly, the Mahdi. But in the case of Christianity, the only one of the three roles that Christ fulfilled was the charismatic founder. St. Paul was the organizer, and eventually. The Roman state was the military. That's right. What about Jim Jones? Let's talk about him. He's always fun to talk about. I was going to say, cults have that similar trajectory. Jim Jones was a charismatic. I never met him, but he was described as a charismatic religious leader. I didn't know until reading your book, I didn't realize he was quite legitimate before he was a cult leader. He played a large role in integrating Indianapolis. He was admired because he. He was anti-racist. He led the movement to desegregate Indianapolis. And so he attracted idealistic people. When he moved to California again, he attracted idealistic people. So he had his positive side. His negative sides were that he eventually went crazy. He was a sexual predator. He was economically dishonest. He was a drug abuser. He drove his entire group to suicide. But he was a charismatic person who was also an outstanding organizer. Was he a general? Close to it. He didn't fight in the United States, but he certainly ensured that Jonestown was well-protected militarily. Yeah, they were well-armed, as I recall from the documentary. Let's talk about really quick in our natural experiment that we flirted with at the beginning, comparing 83 heads of state assassinated since the Second World War with the far larger number of 140 who died of cancer and heart disease. What do we find when these great leaders die or consequentially die? A bunch of leaders. I don't know if I'll say great. What happens when they die? What we find when they die depends upon what the social scientist who did this study is interested in looking at. Namely, the natural experiment gives you a database, and then you can mine that database for anything. So, for example, if you compare prime ministers who die of natural death, die of cancer, with prime ministers who don't die of cancer, you can compare and you can ask multiple questions. Jones and Olson, the first question they asked was, do leaders make a difference economically? And when a leader dies, does the economy of the country suffer or does it improve? So Jones and Olson asked about the effect of leader death on the economy. What they found was that if you compared the economy two years later after the death of a leader with the economy two years later after the non-death of a leader, the leader stays in place. On the average, the economy stays the same because half of economies get better and half of economies get worse because some leaders are good for the economy and some leaders are bad for the economy. When Mao and when the founding leader of Mozambique, when they died, the economy got better. Those were leaders whose deaths improved the economy. So you can use that database to look at the effects on the economy. Another thing, if a leader dies, and this is wartime, does the death of a leader have an effect on the economy? No, it doesn't. It doesn't have an effect on the economy. If a leader dies during wartime, then it is more likely that the war will come to an end. And it turns out that if the leader is a dictator and a dictator dies during wartime, then it is more likely that the war will come to an end because a wartime dictator knows that if the war carries on and he loses the war, he's going to be killed, like Mussolini, get killed in an awful way. It's not hard to imagine that if Putin had a heart attack tomorrow morning that the course of Kiev would be much worse. It would be much different. The Ukraine war would probably come to a resolution in the absence of Putin. I agree with you. And I'm not permitted to do that experiment, killing Putin. But on top of that, the experiment hasn't happened yet as a natural experiment. But we shall see. Yeah. Okay, two last things. One is, when do leaders matter? And this is an example of discretion plus timing. There are fun examples where it's like it doesn't really matter how profound your. Your point of view is or your discovery. If you're not timing it correctly, it doesn't really matter. We have some crazy examples from science, do we not? So continental drift and plate tectonics, if you look at a map of the world, you look at the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa, they fit very well, suspiciously well. Yeah, yeah. Which led Alfred Wegener, a German climatologist, to postulate that the continents had drifted. And it's not just the fit of South America to Africa suggests. The evidence was somewhat limited. He could not think of a mechanism that would enable continents to drift. He suggested that continents drifted because of the rotation of the earth. But it became easy to do the numbers and it doesn't work. So Wegener died on an expedition to Greenland in 1930. And he was widely disbelieved. This is something I remember because I was a postdoc at Harvard from 1962 to 1966. This is the time that continental drift was proven. Oh, wow. There were many things that proved it. The two most important things that proved it were lines of sea floor spreading, magnetic reversals. And the other thing was the discovery of magma upwelling, this amazing discovery. Is this where two plates are joining, there's a gap and the magma spurts out? It was one of my colleagues at Harvard in 1962 who was the first to see with deep underwater eagle. The first to see on these lines, the bubbling up of -- Welds, really. -- magma. So Wegener had the right idea, but at the wrong time. The evidence for it came out in the 1960s. And again, the foundation of genetics. Genetics was founded by Austrian monk. Mendel published his paper in 1868. He had it absolutely right, but it was ignored. Not until 1900, three scientists independently were doing similar experiments and they all rediscovered Mendel's. Until in 1868, it was the wrong time. The world was not ready for Mendel, but the world was ready for these other three people in 1900. Okay, so it's hard not to imagine that you wrote Prophets, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings, When Do Leaders Matter? You wrote it in a certain time and place, and that time and place obviously is at a moment where we have great polarization. We have a very polarizing president. When you, or do you, are you willing to run Trump? Trump through these six criteria. And what things do you think he's doing well at? And which ones do we think prevent him from being an incredibly impactful leader? I did not run Trump, nor did I run Angela Merkel through my criteria. In fact, I said I will look only at leaders whose careers have come to an end, because we can pass judgment. In the last couple of years, our view of Angela Merkel has changed greatly. For the better or worse? I'm unaware of this. For the worse. It's not that she was an evil leader, but it's now regarded that her decision to bring one or two million refugees into Germany, she was praised for it. She said, "There's chaff in us. We can do it. Just admirable." But now— Well, they have a far-right rising current. We have a far-right rising party, and it's now recognized that, yes, it was a noble thing to do, but pragmatically, it was not a good idea for Germany economically. So that's the reason why I don't discuss any political leader whose career hasn't come to a close. That makes sense. That's totally fair. So business schools, including the UCLA Business School, justify their charging tuition of $60,000 to $100,000. Business schools say, we will teach you how to be a successful CEO, and the way to be a successful CEO is by being charismatic. Well, the trouble is that there are many different ways to be a successful CEO, just as there are many different ways to be a successful politician. Charisma is one way, but there are political leaders and there are business leaders who've not been charismatic. Other ways to be successful are to be a master of detail, to terrify people, being a good discussion leader, being able to pick good followers. Feedback's got to be important, right? Because as you say, this is the downfall of all dictators, is they are no longer subject to feedback, which is dangerous. Yeah, this is something that I know from my own experience running a laboratory, because for 40 years, I ran a laboratory doing manipulative experiments on the gallbladder intestine in the UCLA physiology department. I had about five students. The students were all naturally younger than I, and that meant that they had been trained more recently than I, and my students didn't hesitate to tell me, Jared, you are out of date. We've learned more recently, and we've got the better method, so step aside. And I learned to shut up. That's hard to do. Well, Jared, I got to say, it is, again, an enormous honor to get to talk to you. Do you turn 90 next year? I'll be 89 tomorrow. Oh, my gosh. Happy birthday. Okay, so a year and a day away from 90, I suppose. Oh, that's exciting. What a life. Yeah, what a life. I mean, I still love from your first moment. He won the MacArthur Foundation prize, and they were quickly really bummed out that they gave it to him, because they found out all he was going to do is continue to look at gallbladders. It's such a joy to get to have some of your time, and I really, really loved your book. You're a very fun writer. There's nothing too dense or academic about it. It's just a very pleasurable book full of lots of funny and fun historical antidotes. It's a great examination. I do think we, just philosophically speaking, I don't know if this is an American thing or a West thing where we prize individuality. I do think we overinflate in general, and if you could say, is there any conclusion at the end of this, studying this, we overinflate how much one person can change the country, the economy, all these incredibly dynamic forces on the planet. Do we not overestimate what one person can do, or do we have it right? On the whole, I would say in politics, certainly in the United States, and probably in most democracies, yes, we exaggerate what even a prime minister is capable of doing. It's really hard to change the economy, and if the economy is going well, we give the president credit, and if it's going poorly, we vote against the president. But it is hard for the president to change the economy. It's even harder for a governor, and it's hardest of all for a mayor to change the economy. Yeah, and you might take office on the day they announce a global pandemic. What now? How effective can that one person be in that scenario? Well, again, what a pleasure. Jared Diamond, please read Prophets, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings, When Do Leaders Matter? It's wonderful. I hope we get to talk to you again on your next book. Thank you. Yeah, I do lots of interviews, so I know there are different interviews, and it's a great pleasure to be interviewed by you two. You've done your homework. You express yourself vividly. You understand these matters. You ask good questions, so for me, it's a pleasure to do this interview. Go Bruins! Oh, no! I'm so excited. And then I was like, what else are we going to do? We're going to be there for two nights. Ooh. So I got a reservation at my favorite steakhouse for Night of the Metallica Show, and then WabiWab helped me get a reservation for Best Friend. Oh, nice. Aw, Roy Choi. And then how about this left curveball? You coming? You listening? I'm here. I'm like, Cirque du Soleil. Let's do that Friday night. Go on to get tickets for Mystere. That's my favorite. I've seen it eight times. Uh-huh. Great show. I don't think the boys have seen it. Okay. And I'm on the page for Cirque du Soleil, and I'm kind of cruising through. Well, there's so many shows. There's so many different Cirque du Soleil shows. I know. Well, you know what my favorite one is. Oh? Yeah. It's lovely. Water. Love it. Yeah, you're a water sign. No, I'm not. No, I'm not at all. I'm an earth sign. Double earth and a little bit of fire for my rising. Go on. You started that? Well, lo and behold, I see not only is there a Mike Jackson Cirque du Soleil. Oh. Michael Jackson. Sure. It's at my hotel. Oh, cool. I go, fuck that. I'd rather walk downstairs than cross town. Wow. So now we're going to Cirque du Soleil Michael Jackson. That's fun. What a fucking weekend we're about to have. Wow. This is one of those crazy, hard choices. You know, a soapy's choice, if you will. Between Mystere and- Yes. It's like, do you go with something you know you love that you don't get to see that often? And I love passing it on, right? I've taken so many people- Right. Who've never been to Mystere, and I know it works. Exactly. Yeah. Or something new that's close by. That's in your backyard. Yeah. It's an elevator right away. I hope it's good. The tickets were more expensive than Mystere, so that makes me think minimally people want to see it more. Maybe you could go on YouTube and just watch like two minutes to make sure people are flying around and it's not just like- I don't want to see an impersonation of Michael Jackson for 90 minutes. And I'm not going to say which one, but I once went to a Cirque show that I was overwhelmed by. Only once. And you're not going to say which one? No, because that's mean. Is it still up and running now? Probably. Okay. I have seen four of them. I've seen Mystere. I've seen Love. Oh, the Beatles one. The Beatles one. I saw that one twice. Okay. One of my funniest experiences of my life was me and Panay went, and we had drank, each of us, over a hundred Diet Cokes that day. Oh. And the show starts 10 minutes in. We peed right before the show. 10 minutes in, I go to him, I go, dude, so embarrassing. I got to go. And he goes, oh, fucking thank God you said that. I got to, I'm going to pee my pants. We go, we sit back down. 12 minutes later, I'm like, I cannot believe I'm about to tell him this. I'm like, I got to fucking go again. He's like, oh my God, I'm so good. Monica, we peed six times in 90 minutes. Do you think it was psychosomatic? No. No? Every time I peed, volumes of pee. What? Yeah. Weird. Yeah. Tons of girthy urine. Tons of Diet Coke piss. Yeah. Clear as water. No, probably pretty brown. No. Really? No, I just think when you drink that volume of liquid, it flushes out anything that makes your yawn yellow. Interesting. Yeah. I used to kind of be obsessed with that. The color of your yawn? Yeah. I can imagine you, you and I have different experiences though. Cause you're staring right at it. Oh no. Cause I drink so much more fluid than you and so much more water than you. And I pee so much more than you. Yeah. That I'm almost never have seen like, orange. Other than that time I had the catheter and they put a dye in there. Yeah. And I hated seeing that orange yawn in the bag. Of course. No one likes that. No, it's gross. But. Unless you have anyone listening who's got orange yawn. Yeah. Let's be nice. You're beautiful. It's a pretty color. Amber. But you're also like, you're peeing where you can look straight into the toilet. I got a great view of my yawn. You've got to bend over. I turn around, you know, I pee. Well, then you evaluate in the bowl. Yeah. Well, then it's already been, um. You can still tell the difference. Yeah. But it has been diluted quite a bit by the half gallon of water in there. So think how fucking orange it was before you saw it diluted. So you see the pee coming out of the penis. Oh, wow. Yeah. No. I pee out of my penis. That's what's unique about me. Tell me more. Yeah. So I'm using that and I can see the yawn. Okay. Yeah. So I know right away before I don't even got to look in the toilet. Remember when I thought this whole time that you were saying, I mean, Y-A-W-N. Y-A-W-N. Yeah. That's what I thought. I thought it was like a Southern word. Well, it is a Southern pronunciation of urine. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, no. Yeah. I pee sitting down. That's how I pee. And then I wipe and then I stand up and then I look and I'm like, okay. And is the anticipation building like, oh, like if you're suspicious, it's going to be bad. Yeah. I'm like, oh, let's find out. Sometimes I'm like, yikes. I didn't drink water. I wonder. This week. And then sometimes I'm happily surprised. I'm like, oh, I didn't need it. I drank too much maybe. No. The other day I drank so much water one day that I got a migraine. No. That's not why you got a migraine. But those two things happen. Definitely correlate. It made no sense. I was drinking so much water all day. And then I was like, oh, I'm like getting a headache. Weird. And then it was just like growing and growing. It was, it was so bad. I don't even like hearing about, if I'm being honest with you, I don't even like hearing about someone having a headache because I feel like I'm going to get it. The way that my, when I used to have tics and someone was a blinker, it would set it off. I'm like, I don't even want to know about headaches. Okay. Well, this is, you know, you call me a hypochondriac, but I just want to like point the finger. So you had a real throbber. It was so bad. I, I, and I had to, I was driving home and I was like, I like don't probably shouldn't be driving. Like I am disoriented. Wow. then I took four Advil as soon as I got home. And then I put this like ice pack thing on my head and nothing, it was not working. None of that helped. No. And then I have this thing called, it's like this peppermint oil thing. And you, you make a halo around your hairline with it. And it just like really tingles in it. And that started to help a little bit. And then I think the Advil kicked in and then, but it was, it was rough. What was the duration of this agony? Good question. Thanks. You asked good questions. Thank you. I don't know. An hour? Longer than that. Two hours. Maybe two. I didn't want to look at my phone a lot. It was, that would hurt, you know? All I can, it makes me remember having hangovers and that I would be laying on my pillow in bed and I'd like keep micro adjusting my head. And then I'd find this little sliver of space where it was like, oh, there's a little relief. Yeah. And then you just try to hold, in that exact same spot. And then that goes away and then you got to re. Isn't it crazy? Aren't hangovers crazy that we have them and then we do that again? Sure. Yeah. Like. Price of admission. That's a powerful drug. That it makes your head split. And I mean, all kinds of things it does. Yeah. All kinds of things. The most curious one is that it would make me crave a Filet-O-Fish sandwich at McDonald's. Very common. And you. But that doesn't make any sense. I don't like fish. Wait, that's crazy. You said that because I was going to bring that up in the last fact check when we were talking about fish and how you hate fish and now Aaron hates fish because. But I was about to say, I can't believe you guys don't even like Filet-O-Fish sandwich. I can tell you when I was hungover, I loved them. I have never eaten one not hungover. Okay. Well, I have a recommendation for you. There's a restaurant, Little Fish. It's in Melrose Hill. It's so good. And they have a fish sandwich there that went like, they created it during COVID and it was out of their house at first and then it was this pop-up and now it's a restaurant. The fish sandwich, fried fish sandwich is a Filet-O-Fish basically, but just much better ingredients. Presumably. And it's so good. It is. Oh my. So crispy. God, it's crispy. The cheese is so good on it. It has some sort of sauce. Oh my God. Tartar type sauce. Yeah. Tartar type. And you should get it. I want you to get it. Maybe just the next time I feel terrible. It won't be hangover induced, but. You know, the Filet-O-Fish is a few people who I know who are really, really big into food. It's their favorite food. Oh, really? And it's like a very interesting thing. Where is this place located? I don't know what Melrose Hill is. What's that? Melrose Hill. Well, wait till you watch my video. Fishtown? My resi. Resi video, because it's all about Melrose Hill. Oh, it is? Yeah. Presumably Melrose Boulevard? Between what and what? It's like Western and Melrose-ish. Oh. Where there's like Arkout. I mean, I'm just wasting the video. You guys just gotta watch the vid. Okay. Once the vid dropped. I don't know. Okay. But anyway, highly recommend that. What if I was driving down Western tonight with the kids and we were protein Melrose and I was like, I swerved down the side street. I'm like, I can't, I can't even find out about what's happening there. We gotta wait for the video. We gotta wait for the video, everyone. I'm not supposed to be here. I don't want to know. We gotta wait. Okay. Well, that sounds so fun, Vegas. I'm very, very excited about this trip. Oh, you guys are gonna have- With the errands. You're gonna have a great time. I had a less, I don't even, I probably shouldn't tell it. Oh, yeah. Let's hear it. No, no. Cause it's like not- It's not becoming of a young woman? It's no, I was shameless about something. Oh, wow. I was shameless about something. Oh. Um, but, and people will like this. It didn't work out. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay? Okay. Um, I'm going to New York. Yeah. And I, as if anyone listened to the Eric Good episode, which is an incredible episode, please listen to that episode. He's such an amazing person. Yes. Um, I stay at the Bowery, my favorite hotel. Yep. And, uh, I went to book my- My room. Uh-huh. And, um, two days were sold out. Uh-huh. In the middle. Oof. Worst time. You had to go to another hotel. Yes, but I was like, wait, what am I going to do now? Like, do I go there, then go to a different one, then come back? Yeah. Do I just forget- Sleep in the lobby for a couple nights? Yeah. Or do I just forget this and go to a different hotel this time? Yeah. Um, so this, you know, and then I was like, dude. Do I dare? Uh, reach out to Eric? Yes. Okay. I did. Okay. His publicist. Okay. I reached out to his publicist and I said, I am so embarrassed to do this. Yeah, yeah. Especially so soon. But, you know, I'm going to be in New York. I'm trying to book the Bowery and it's saying there are some days that are sold out. Yeah. I don't know if there's any wiggle room here. Like, I don't know how true that is. Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Are there special rooms they keep? My guess is yes. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Um, and, and I was like, I'm really sorry. Like, I, I know this is upsetting. Yeah. Um, and she was like, of course, let me ask. Yeah. Uh, and no problem. Yeah. They don't apologize. And I was like, oh my God. And then, then I. He did offer on the air. He did. You have that as a defense. He did. And he offered, which was so sweet, a friends and family rate. Yeah. Which I was not trying to do. You weren't trying to get a bargain. You just didn't want to sleep in the living room. In the lobby for a couple nights. Yeah. I just want to go to another hotel. I love hotels. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so then this morning I wake up to like, there's like an email chain that has started. Uh-oh. And it's like so, it's so nice. Like, um, the person, I don't know if I should have shot him out. His name is Jeremy. Okay. Um, he. Yeah. He works with Eric. Yeah. And he sent. He's a good guy. And a really good guy. Yeah. We love him. He sent an email and, um. To the people there and was basically like, it's so nice. Like, our good friend needs a room. Mm. Uh, make it happen. Our good friend. Yeah. Wow. It was so nice. And they were like, make it happen. Uh-huh. And give her the friends and family rate and make sure it's a nice room. Oh. Like, just so kind. Yeah. And then the guy responded back and was like, no. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I can't, can't do it. Sorry. He was like, we're booked. Yeah. Don't know what to tell you. And he was like, what? The first couple of days? And I was like, sure. Yes. Like, thank you all for trying. This is so, so, so sweet. I'm so embarrassed. And I clearly don't deserve love. Um, and yes, I'll, yes, I'll take what, those first two nights and then I'll figure out the rest. Yeah. Which is very upsetting. So a lot of times when you, you reach out and you ask for a little help, you end up in a worse position. I found this to be the case because then they offer something as a consolation prize and then you feel obligated to take that, but you don't really want the consolation prize. I'm not saying that's the case you're in, but sometimes I am in that situation. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And then you're just like, why did I? Forget it. I shouldn't have done this. This now. Yeah. Well, that did happen recently. That's not the case here, but that did happen to me. I was ordering an umbrella for my patio. Okay. And I ordered it. And, um, then they sent me an email very kindly and was like, just confirming for you that this is the stands you want for the umbrella because that stand doesn't actually go with this umbrella. But maybe you're buying it for an, and I was like, no, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. That was so nice for you to catch. And yeah. Yes. Can I do the one that's the right one or whatever? They're like, yes. And then they were like, oh, it's sold out, but we have this other one and it's more expensive, but we'll give you a discount. I was like, that's so nice. Yes. And then they're like, oh, that's sold out too. You know? And then I was like, and then I just had to be like, thank you so much. I'm going to press pause on this whole thing. I'm not going to get it. Mm-hmm. I was so glad because they had done so much back and forth. They were really trying to be like a good business. Company. Yeah. Yeah. And they were, but like I was done with it. I had to cancel something recently. I ordered another High Factor 2000 for this house. Oh. Yeah. And all of a sudden five weeks has gone by. I'm like, where is my High Factor? Oh. And then I emailed them. Hey, what's, does this get lost in the shuffle? For people who don't remember, it's the thing that zaps- It's best that they don't, that I don't actually articulate. It's the thing that zaps Dax's High Factor. I am dying right now, because there's like two things I want to zap. Okay. And it's driving me insane. Okay. I like almost want to fly to Nashville. Which ones? Just a little bump here I don't like, and then a little bump over here I'm not enjoying. And at any rate, so they're like, no, it's back ordered. But mind you, when I ordered it, it said in stock, right? Uh-huh. So then I'm like, okay, well now I want to find, is there another place I can get it? Sure. So I find another place. Okay. But I don't know, I want to order a second one if the other one is going to come. Yeah. So I sent an email and said, and this is the term, this is the language I use, I said, if it's okay, I would like to initiate a refund. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. I have found the product from another vendor, I said. I think I'm maybe trying to sound like a doctor, because I think you have to be a doctor to have this. Oh. You know what I'm saying? So I'm trying to. But then you shouldn't have said, if it's okay. That feels, that feels layman's. That's true. Or just they would be more mad. Yeah. Yeah, they would be entitled to be mad. And I wasn't. They would say, I have an MD. If it's okay, I would like to initiate a refund, I have found another vendor. that can get it here quicker and so i have i have received a refund from that and i've ordered another one but now i'm prepared for that one to probably take five weeks as well and then i'll be like i should have just stayed the course shortcuts are always the fastest way to the back of the line i've been told uh-huh and i've been told um there's no short oh boy you can't even get that out that's how little you believe i believe in it so much yeah i've been told there's no shortcuts to anywhere worth going uh-huh that's also good yeah yeah it's really good it was on it was on a necklace instagram i was on a necklace a lot of words for a necklace it was on an compass necklace from kohl's that callie had in high school and i loved it so much she got me one i recall this story yeah yeah it's a pretty heartwarming one that's a really important story to our friendship you know callie used to be so oh she's oh my god she used to be so nice and i was gonna say that yeah. she really did though at the beginning of our friendship she was making up for a tough beginning okay if you remember she didn't save me a seed and like it was horrible okay and i was really vulnerable i asked her to save me a seed and then i get to class and then she didn't save me a seed okay it was really bad um but once we got through that um she used to bring me treats all the time she used to bring me ensimmons donuts yeah the chocolate ones with the crumbles and then it's like wax over the chocolate too yeah they would they had different kinds they had a waxy chocolate one they had a um regular ew and then they had a chocolate one that had little it was a cake donut oh right right i know this one yeah it had crumblies on top that was your favorite i like the wax chocolate covered one regular wax or did you like that it was chocolate inside no no it was a vanilla yeah with chocolate wrapping like the hostess ones that i loved yeah the hostess ones didn't have as much wax on them as the intimans i love intimans it makes me think of my papa bob and grandma immediately they constantly were chowing down on an intimans coffee cake yeah because grandparents fucking love coffee cake i know it still has never got you got me yeah it feels very dry i agree i was in new york with friends who have good taste that are going to come up later and um they recommended i get a coffee we went to zay bars after they were like have you had the coffee cake like you need to get it and i was like oh i was lying like i wasn't excited about it a little bit like i didn't get it though you didn't okay yeah it feels the sand consistency a little bit it looks like sand it is sand yes but that's the thing it's just made of sand and cinnamon flavor listen feel free to send us some coffee weekly's prepared a stew oh wow he started on a stew yesterday on a pot roast okay yeah and that's what we're eating for dinner tonight what do you mean he started yesterday he started it yesterday and then he said it'd be ready at 5 30 and then he he put a fork in it and it didn't crumble he said it's not ready and then it should be right at 6 30 then 6 30 rolled around he put a fork in and he's like it's not there so then we ordered indian food not to trigger you um but we did and it was so delicious and then he put his fork in it right after we finished the indian food and the whole thing crumbled he goes well now it's perfect so then you just that's fine okay we're can't no more heat okay goes in the fridge and then it'll get warmed up tonight we'll have a nice okay well i'm excited to hear how that goes the end of that remember that the and and by the way that just uh um for anyone that listened to the last fact check he he told on himself and he admitted that his wife said aaron loves cooking he said no i don't i know and then he left that fact check and he called ruthie and he said i i admitted on the fact check that i had done this and she said well if you recall it was harsher than that it was you said i hate cooking it was even worse than i remember oh no i hate cooking what a what a strange strange you you too i know there's something wrong with us but he acknowledged it publicly that's all you can ask for it's well it's something to ask yeah it's an improvement yeah it's better than nothing than just sticking with it i think a lot of guys just they stick with whatever and then they can't cook ever again even though it's their favorite activity yeah they want to and they remember they enjoy cooking for others yeah and then like you know the wife's out of town and then they get something stuck up their butt obviously and then the wife comes back into town and they're like it smells like it smells like pot roast in here did you order it and where do you order a pot roast from hun that's what they would ask oh uh i got a sears tool department that's why you've never seen it it's made by craftsmen okay well i see there's a pot on the table comes with a pot that's a craftsman brand pot okay yeah i'm came with a pair of pliers talk about a divorce well okay okay i went to an ears nose and throat doctor what happened well i guess the headline is i don't have a deviated septum or anything oh yeah which of course i wanted i know yeah i'm sorry and then i'm going to now do the sleep test where you wear a thing on your finger oh i think it's i'll start that tonight it's supposed to have arrived what does it do it tells you if you have sleep apnea or whatever measures how many times you wake up oh like an aura ring or something but i think it's a little more it's a i haven't seen it yet but apparently it's like a full sleeve that goes over oh it's medical grade and it's bluetooth and it communicates with your phone okay so i'm excited about that um i'm excited to get a terrible score which is a weird feeling well no i want it confirmed validation yes i want i want like uh data to support this experience i'm having okay but the experience itself was i went and um the doctor didn't come in the room for an hour yeah this happens i know it's it's upsetting was this person recommended yes by my primary care okay great physician he did those say he said oh yeah i know two great ones one's older but he's really he's you know he's done a million okay he's like i'm not afraid older oh let's go older and then i'm sitting in the the room by myself for an hour and then i have then i i gotta pee i don't know what to do i i just i walk out of the room sure i walk down the hallway i walk through the lobby i go use the bathroom i come back in the door is locked to get back in the hallway and the receptionist is she's not having it like there's just too many people there i think right she's purposely ignoring anyone that's in the thing so now i'm like this is hysterical i can't get the receptionist attention it was an hour waiting there and now all of a sudden i hear the doctor go where's my patient i've lost my patient i can hear him he's yelling and i go i'm here i have to go to the bathroom and now i'm locked out of the hallway this is how it starts and he's like oh oh oh let him in then then the receptionist pays attention for a minute and then i go in there and it was the most bizarre interaction i've ever had with a doctor like i don't even think he's like could see me i just don't know i think he's i don't know i don't know but it was it was a very bizarre experience he's poking around in my nose and he's talking about the another patient the whole time can you believe that thing we saw with that patient at 10 he's just talking about talking to somebody else yeah his his helper and um so he's not talking to me at all and then when i start to engage he just doesn't want anything to do with it okay then he fills my nose with all this numbing cream and then i sit for another like 20 minutes i'm like jesus christ man i didn't know i was going to be gone for three hours i had other stuff and then they take me to another room and he crams a camera way down how could you feel it yes he's like all right this this should have gotten rid of your gag reflex all right now i'm gonna put this in it was ah all right i wish every patient was as good could handle this so that was i got a compliment that was really nice all to say it was a very unsatisfactory experience but i got the referral for the sleep study which i guess is all i needed because i didn't have a deviated septum and now the next only thing left is to get the sleep site but then i got the referral for the sleep study and i got the message on my voicemail two days later it was like hi i'm calling from such and such doctor and we'd like to schedule you for an ear test hearing test oh and i'm like i would never come back there like i i would never like you guys know things oh i gotta add to the fucking the office was dirty oh god like i'm looking at the i'm in the room with the camera and they've got some computer equipment clearly they've upgraded to the system but instead of getting rid of the old equipment there's all these keyboards just crammed in the bottom of this car it looked like when you're in high school and they bring the av car this is all the old shit they did that's not fixed that they're not gonna throw away yeah and i'm just kind of looking around everything is shit stacked up everywhere there's fucking keyboards hanging on thing cords everywhere i'm just like i don't want to go back there for anything yeah ever cut this was in beverly hills yeah i'm sure the guy was a legend hitter man yeah it was it was how dirty and fucking how much pack rat shit was all over these different offices and the notion that i'm going to come back for a hearing test what so i can sit in that room for an hour and then i can yeah okay this is funny this room so when i first moved here and this is definitely privilege right like i understand yeah yeah i'm lucky i can go see someone let me say that oh right yeah i'm totally lucky that's not what i'm about to say okay when when i grew up i obviously had doctors and stuff and i grew up in a place where i could go see someone and i grew up in a place where i could go see someone and i grew up in a place where i could go see someone and i grew up in a place where i grew up in a place where i could go see someone and i grew up in a place where i could go see someone and i grew up in the suburbs so i don't know i just went to the doctor they all kind of seemed the same to me nice i guess retrospect now i'm like oh those are nice i thought that was that was standard right yeah and then same with my small town like when you went to the doctor they were nice to you oh i mean like it's not dirty oh right yeah same like it was a pretty new facility in my small town yeah yeah just like the chairs look nice or whatever anyway when i remember when i first moved to la i was like oh my god everything all the doctor's offices look like grungy sure like there's diseases all over everything yes yes and then i was like oh it's probably because i'm not going to nice ones and then i started going to nice ones and it's the same what's going on it is weird that my small hometown had a much nicer setup yes this really nice quote in nice okay so are you gonna go to a different person to do a hearing test was where they know i don't even need a fucking hearing test my hearing is fine but they think yeah also on the thing they like you know you're filling out a questionnaire which i did by the way i got there like 20 minutes early to fill out i knew there would be a lot of that's another i mean if i can be airing grievances it's like i'm in the same fucking network right i go to the same it's the same group yeah how could they not have like i don't understand how that hasn't been digitized in a way that like you know my birthday you have my insurance information i've gone to all these networks and i got to start from beginning yeah tell me if anyone in your family's died i can't all of it is just waste because it was a new it's waste for them it's waste for me i know it's just so inefficient it's crazy there's no way this couldn't be coordinated so yeah in in that paperwork it's like it was asking you questions about your hearing well none of them would have alerted them to that i needed a hearing test right i'm have no complaints about my hearing yeah do you think you're a little defensive because you were deaf when you were born no i don't think that's what's going on anyways back to the person yeah and then i just thought like oh yeah they're like a machine that's just like yeah now they can get another fee for checking my hearing when i had no complaints about my hearing and then yeah yeah you gotta watch out so i was unsatisfied with that experience and so okay but thank you but what's lucky is what would i have done if he's like oh yeah you have a deviated symptom let's schedule a surgery i think i would have to go like nah no after meeting you and interacting with you see and then the the quality the fucking filth of your office in the in your your your lack of uh punctuality and here's the other thing i understand that people get behind yeah like i actually i wouldn't have even brought this up if the guy had said hey sorry i'm an hour late right i'd have nothing to say to you right now yeah i wouldn't even thought about it i was like but the notion that you're coming in an hour late you don't even address that and then you don't even really look me in the eyes and even talk to me at some point yeah i agree i'm like oh i'm a part of this not a good experience i'm on a i'm in a factory yeah and they're just they're just okay but this is why we're different right and we did just talk about this on an episode that will come up like you're like i guess i'd have to tell him like this place is a dump and i hate him and i'm like no you could just say just say like okay i'm gonna go home and think about it um and i'll i'll be in touch and then you just aren't in touch well funny enough to be more specific about what we just talked about i was saying in the past i would confront people about if they asked for something kind of that i thought was inappropriate i would tell them like hey this isn't you shouldn't really be asking me this right so in the past and i want to i want to call back and go like no i'm not gonna have an hearing test there because you're an hour late still no one's in sorry and it was a terrible experience you guys need to fucking clean the office and why don't why are you keeping all those keyboards what do you think you're gonna do with those keyboards instead i just didn't return the call and i'm never gonna return the call right so i because i was saying my new math is i just ignore stuff i don't like that of course but i'm saying if you're in there and they're like oh my god you need surgery let's get no no i wouldn't go in there the thing that you brought up the scenario and that he's like up there and he's like oh wow you have a deviated septum we need to do surgery yeah then you say okay i would like to go and think about this and i'll be in touch not like well i'm not doing it here with you sir i'm gonna go see the other guys should have that and i'm gonna tell my gp to stop wrecking i did cross my mind to tell him to stop recommending i was gonna say that of all things to do you could just be like hey it's not an issue but i am i do just want to let you know that that was not a good experience and like maybe recommend the other guy yeah yeah just keep it but now you need to see the other guy to make sure he's worth the recommendation but he's worse i'm like oh wow i actually got the right guy he could be well great luckily i don't need an operation the other terrible truth is he might be the best at the operation i know this is you get into bedside manner right yeah and then who gets sued and who doesn't yes so maybe he's still the best okay so the sleep thing okay so you're gonna monitor that and then is there do you have to go to a facility and sleep there one night and that's the old way and that would have been preventative for me because like i can't barely sleep in my own ideal situation i can't imagine i've heard i had friends and they hook you up to so many cables and shit and i roll around a lot yeah and i'm i'm on the move when i go to sleep man how many pillows do you sleep i bet i burned six seven hundred calories a night fucking flopping around all night yeah so no i well what i'm hoping and thinking will happen is if you know they conclude i have sleep apnea and i need a device i'm i'm praying that this company i'm dealing with for the device will just supply it and i have them dial it in i i hope like i don't they don't even suggest i gotta go back to that guy yeah yeah don't even whisper i'll just fuck i'll be like i'm buying one my own i'll read the manual i'll have chat i already know i'm gonna go to my hyperplasia guy my height what's it called high factor my high factor guy i got a guy oh the one great thing i shouldn't i should have said this okay had a great nurse before the man we love eventually came here obviously and i told her i had a high factor and she said oh i know why she said that she missed working for a dermatologist that she had worked for a dermatologist for a lot of years okay i said oh wow um so you worked at a dermatologist forever and she goes yeah i go did you ever use the high factor 2000 did you ever just use it she goes the entire time i worked there i wanted to and i go why didn't you she was i didn't want to get in trouble she goes and there's one here in one of the offices and i think about using it all the time and i'm like go for it no i have one and it's awesome and i'm having so much fun zapping everything off my body and she was like she got it she got it she's been coveting it just like i did for years she's not gonna do it and this is this is a major ding ding ding too do you think i could get sued by high factor i don't know i'm scared they might call and say like you gotta stop talking about this device but the lipd shows up at my house um seizing your sir we understand you have a medical device in here and we also understand you're not a doctor we have it in writing you initiated a refund such a good device they should actually have me as an ambassador or a spokesperson for it it's made by con med okay that's the manufacturer it's such a good instrument okay i this isn't a a really really really big ding ding ding for facts for next episode but it is i'm a little just i'm i don't care okay it's for adam grant yeah and we get in a conversation about cheating and employees and and if those are connected if people cheat in exactly yeah are they more likely to to cheat or be dishonest in the office if they've cheated on their partners yes and we both are we're both like we don't think that's the case the group you're using was on a very specific what whatever you'll hear that you'll hear it it's a healthy debate but this is funny because this nurse has such high integrity like she's like i want to so bad and i'm not gonna she probably has never cheated and she's probably never cheated and now we know maybe he's right and maybe when we find out what if i followed it up i go you've never used it she goes no i mean have you ever cheated she was what what the hell does that have to do with me wanting to burn off the skin tag i have um all right you want to do some facts let's do some facts stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare okay jared diamond my goodness gracious yeah i can't believe he was about to turn 89 the next day yes he's definitely now 89 he's 89 since we recorded it and he's so he's still so smart like part of that is it is a use it or you lose it yeah yeah yeah it is yeah i mean that i'm inclined to think that as well although i do know a couple people that were brilliant and they used it yeah so there that happens too but sure but it is so impressive that at 89 he's as articulate as he is and can um roll out his whole book in the manner that he can i know yeah it may definitely make me think of david attenborough right and i and i have thought a lot about this like leadership and what makes a good leader and all the factors a lot since we interviewed him what is cute is he has so much he could be proud of or impressed with mm-hmm And what did he talk all, like, when we weren't recording? Gallbladder. Well, that was his expertise early on. Oh, ornithology. Well, ornithology, but his children. Oh, yeah. It's like, it's so cute that no matter what someone does, right, he's just like, he's so into his kids' lives and what they're up to, and it's very sweet. Of course, of course. And yes, and when we walked out, because I walked him out and waited for his Uber, a little bird shot up into our oak tree, and he immediately was like, oh, that's a such and such, such and such. Yeah. And normally they're this, and they're blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm like, it's, that's wild. Like, I can't comprehend doing that. I can do it with cars. Yeah, so you can comprehend. I can in that way. Yes. But birds don't look that distinct to me. Well, and people would say that about cars. They would. Yeah. They absolutely would. I think I told you that was, ding, ding, ding, that was one of the examples that. In this archaeology class I had, they were talking about moche art in Peru and how they can tell what year the pot is made. Yeah. Based on how the pattern changed in art. Like, it evolved. And of course, when you're, to the layperson, these things all look identical. And, and, and I'm almost suspicious of like, well, you're telling me you guys have figured out that this one came 1,000 years after this one. And then the professor said, now, there are people in this room that could look at taillights of. An Impala and tell you what year it is. And I was like, oh, yeah, I, I, I can do that. The F1 drivers can hear the sound and know what part. That's real. Like, that's why I, I know not to like be controversial, but I know you and other people don't believe in Psalms. And like, to me, that's unfair. What are Psalms? Sommeliers. Oh, Sommeliers. Yeah. And it's like, that's unfair to them because they can do that. They can taste it and they can know the region. And just because like, maybe you, general you, who's, who doesn't think this is real, can't do that or don't taste a difference and say, who cares? It's what they know. I don't dispute that they know it. Okay. Some people do think it's all made up. Well, there have been some pretty bad blind tests that they've failed. Some people, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Some, some well-knowns have failed some cheap wine tests. So that's, that's one issue. Sure. Like probably. My bigger issue is like, this one's better and more valuable than that one. So I'm already, the whole endeavor, I, I kind of bristle at, because it, I think it's, it's the same reason someone decided one of these baseball cards is worth $10 million and it's printed on paper and it's identical to the other one and the other one's signed as well. But that, that one is worth $10 million. It's, you decided it's worth $10 million. Well, depending on who's in it, how rare they are, like it, it, it's, I mean, people would say that about classic cars, like, okay, this one happens to be worth so much money. Okay. I don't see that much of a difference between this and this, like, you know, it's all interesting. Everyone has their own niche. And I guess I'm just saying, um, it's cool to have a niche and it, and we're not, and I don't want to disrespect any of the niches. Yeah. Um, but yeah, anyway. It triggers my class warfare. I know. So I wish you could just understand that. A million dollar bottle of wine. We're like, you guys are jerking each other off. Like, you're going to get drunk the same. Does it taste better? The car's going to get you from A to B the same. But can it get you to A to a quarter mile in nine seconds? That's an objective, quantifiable thing. Can the wine taste a lot better? Yes. Also, the more you drink it. Well, you would agree, taste is very subjective. Like, I think. I think I'm, I think a Big Mac's better than, uh, a hundred dollar piece of fish. Okay. But the, the, if you drink wine as I do, and I do not claim to be, I don't, I'm not a psalm. Okay. And I, I would not be able to tell the difference between a million dollar bottle of wine and a thousand dollar bottle. Right. Is there a, is there a million dollar bottle of wine? Let's ask what the most expensive bottle of wine that's ever been auctioned. I'm going to ask you right now. What's the most expensive bottle of wine ever to be purchased? This record appears to have changed in 2026. A 750 milliliter bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romane Conte, DRC, Romane Conte, sold for $812,500. One bottle. Wow. Yeah. I mean, what do you think about that? Um, what do I think about it? Does that seem. I think anything when you're getting to this level and it's an item is like, it's crazy. And I, I, I can wrap my head around if that's your world. Uh-huh. I mean, it's interesting though. I'll say this. One thing that's really unique about it is that the million dollar painting can be enjoyed. I know it. Yes. I agree with you. The million dollar car can be enjoyed. This, you just, you have to be getting that much pleasure out of knowing you, you own something rare. I, I agree with you. You can't experience it or it's gone. I know. I agree with you on that. Okay. That's, thank God. That's great. But that's different to me than like being in the wine world and knowing what things are from and stuff like that. But like, yes, owning million dollar bottles of wine is. Seems a little crazy. To me. To me, you've run out of things to buy. Yeah. And you're like, oh. It wouldn't be for. I'd probably never get. Even these crazy watches, you can wear them. Of course. Yeah. You know. Here's one. There are some weird exceptions. For example, a magnum of. Yeah. A champagne Avenue Fotch, Fock, 2017, reportedly sold for 2.5 million. But that transaction, that transaction included an NFT digital artwork. Oh, my God. Another fake thing. Exactly. Another fake thing, right? It's fake. Now, do you. So they're not drinking it, right? No. The NFT? I don't think you can. No, not the NFT. I'm teasing. I'm teasing. No, the million. The 812. Well, right. There's no way someone's. I hope they drink it before they die. I hope they drink it. Yeah. Or maybe they're probably going to pass it down. They'll probably get sold at another auction at some point for $2 million. I. It's just to tell people I have this thing. I know. You've got to admit that's a little bit. I know. Okay. Okay. Now, what do you. But I was saying, as someone who does drink wine, I can't taste the difference between a $12 bottle. Okay. and a $50 bottle. And I really can't because sometimes I'll be at parties and like I'll, you know, pour and I'm like, I can't drink it. Sure. But I definitely think there's got to be some stratas we'd agree upon. So, yes, I bet you can tell the difference between an $8 box of wine and a $150 bottle of wine. Yeah, I can. But I would bet a considerable amount of money that you can't tell the difference between a $150 bottle of wine and a $2,500 bottle of wine. That I would put a good chunk of money on. I probably couldn't. You probably could not. I do think, though, it's all relative. Like, some people can't really care. They don't care or taste the difference between the $12 and $100. I liked Ernest Gallo when I was drinking wine sometimes. I would get that big fucking jug at Save-On for like six bucks. Okay. Pound that thing and drink it right out of the bottle. Yeah. Great. I'm not a get. I'm not like. But I've got. Snobbiness is like you don't think you're going to become a snob at something and then once you get in the world. It happens. Snobbery follows. Yeah. The most expensive bottle of wine I think I've ever paid for was to be consumed in the moment. It was at a restaurant. It wasn't like to own and present, but I wanted it. To show people. Yeah. It was recently and I think it was like $2.50. Oh, wow. Okay. It was a lot. Yeah. Shared. Okay. How many bottles? Three and a half glasses in a bottle of wine? No. Like, I would say like five. Five. There's five. Yeah. Okay. So $50 a glass. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's a lot. I'm not saying it's not a lot. I have thought about that wine multiple times since I had it and my friend had it and she too was like, this wine is so good and. So I believe you a thousand percent and I also believe in paying for experiences because that's what you're going to take with you. Right. Right. So I. I agree. But would you also acknowledge that your brain does some stuff when you know, like, I'm going to spoil myself. This is obnoxious, but I've decided in this moment it's worth it. This moment's special. I'm going to go for it. Yes. There's a lot built around it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There is. I totally agree with you, but also I'll buy wine from, shout out, Silver Lake Wines. Great wine shop. Let me just put it this way. It's the exact same bottle of wine, but it was $25. I'm pretty certain you wouldn't reflect back on it a lot. I know. And though it'd be good, though it'd be the same. The part is, this is what I'm trying to tell you. Okay. It couldn't be $25. Okay. Because it is, it is too good unless, it's all relative, unless the cheapest bottle of wine is five cents. Well, we agree the price of grapes are the price of grapes. Well, it depends on where it's coming from, region. This is an Italian wine and the year is rare. They don't have their money. But they don't, they put, they don't put grapes in some wine and then gold in other. No, no. Yeah, but the quality of the grapes and when they harvest and how they harvest, it's all— I'm sure they go up, you know, some percentage if you grow them perfectly and you take all the time and all that. But just the base ingredients are the base ingredients of wine. Again, like a car. Well, not true. Well, the base ingredient. Carbon fiber disc brakes, are they metal? Are they carbon fiber? Is the body aluminum? That has to do with this, too. Is it in steel? Is it in wood? I mean, there are factors. There are factors. Yeah. Yeah. But they go up by orders of magnitude in certain spaces. Sure. Luxury brands tend to, they get an order of magnitude of markup. Yes. Yeah. But. By the way, I'm delighted. I co-sign on your decision to do that. Yeah. And it's great that you reflect on it. Yeah. But I've also, what I was going to say is I buy wine from Silver Lake Wine. Shout out. Great wine store in LA. Great to buy from them. Okay. And. Really enjoy it. I really like. I like Barolo wines. Okay. That's my preferred wine. It's not that easy to find. So, I will buy it if it's at Silver Lake Wines. I've bought many. And I don't know this cost from this cost. It's all in my cabinet. Mm-hmm. And I'm not. You don't remember what cost what. I don't remember what's what. Yeah. And some are significantly more than others. Yeah. So, but there are times where I will have it and I'm like, this is not good. Garbage. Yeah. And. Wine also turns sometimes, right? Yeah. Something's wrong with the cork. You can get. Yeah. Yeah. And. What? Nothing. And I'll look and I'll be like, oh, that was one of the expensive ones. Oh, that happens. That happens. And I'm like, ew, I'm not buying that again. Yeah. So, it's not. There are. You won't completely fool yourself. Exactly. You're like, this is like shit. Then you look at the back. No, this is actually delicious because it was. Exactly. I'm like, oh, yuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyhow. Okay. Talking about. Okay. Back to the. Jared. Rare things. This is. This is. Perfect. Sim. And it's a ding, ding, ding. Shakespeare's most read, most popular place. I think number one has got to be Romeo and Juliet. Yes. It doesn't. It just has top three. Okay. So, that is in there. Yep. I would say Romeo and Juliet. I'd say Hamlet. Mm-hmm. And then for my third, I would say King Lear. No. Damn it. You want to try again? Midsummer is a good one. Midsummer's Night. Midsummer Night's Dream. Yes. Midsummer's Night's Dream. I was in. I was almost out, though. Oh, you were? Yeah. How many other ones are there? Oh, he has so many. Oh, too many. Well, he said he wrote 22 before he even wrote Hamlet, I guess. He, a very prolific man. Okay. Now, I was in Midsummer Night's Dream in college. Yes, you were. And I recently was watching, or I was on Instagram, and I was served Amy Poehler. Talking to Darcy Carden and both friends of our pod. Mm-hmm. And Amy was saying that she was a fairy in Midsummer Night's Dream. Oh, my goodness. And I was a fairy in Midsummer Night's Dream. Oh, my God. And you love her. And I love her. Yeah. And so we have some shared DNA. We're both fairies. You have something to talk about the next time you see her. We have so much to talk about. But that is. Yeah. I wonder if you were there. She was the same fairy. No, she said she was, like, Pea Blossom. Okay. And I was Mustard Seed. Okay, so the fairies are Peas Blossom, not Pea Blossom. Peas Blossom. That's who she was. Okay. Cobweb. Okay. Moth and Mustard Seed. So there's only four fairies. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. They're very small parts. Yeah, very exclusive. And small actors. Anyway, so I just loved it. I love that. That we're both of the fairies. Yeah. Um, okay. I was never in a play. In your life? I don't think. I'm trying to think. Wow. I don't think I've ever been in a play. Well, you know, I also. Is that true? I think so. Oh. There's still time. They made a Broadway debut. I was also in Trojan. I was offered a Broadway play. Wow. Not too long ago. Oh. And I thought, that's crazy they offered this to me. No, why would it be crazy? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It is a little crazy. Yes. But like. Well, I've never, I've never done theater. Yeah. So other, well, I've done comedy theater. Yes, you have. Yeah. But it is different. But yes. Yeah. Um, you've done sketches where you had to memorize stuff. So it's not like you've only done a part. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've done a lot of stage work. Yeah. I just have never been in a play. Um, uh, I was also in Trojan Women. It was Trojan Women. That sounds pornographic. Trojan Women and Iphigenia at Alice. Oh my God. That also sounds pornographic. Iphigenia. Iphigenia. Yeah. Oh my God. I was her. Iphigenia. Uh-huh. Oh, wow. Um, she's, if you remember. Was she a temptress? Uh-uh. She's a kid. Oh, okay. If you remember in the Odyssey. Yeah. She's the kid that, um, is sacrificed. And that's why Helen's sister kills the husband. Oh. Because they sacrifice her. Sacrifice. I was sacrificed. Oh. Yeah. Okay. So. Um, that was a pretty big part. Okay. All right. That was cool. Uh, okay. So, Hitler was almost in a life-killing car accident. 1930. And then also, you know that rumor, but it is a rumor, 'cause I looked, that his mom wanted to get an abortion. Oh, I don't even know. Oh. That's like a common thing people say. Okay. It says there's no historical evidence of that. Yeah. But it is a common thing people say. So, then I was like, "Wow. He really, like." I don't know how common abortion is. I don't know how common abortions were in 1900 Austria. She wanted to abort. Okay. Let's. Um. Also, how would anyone know that? Well, it was illegal. She wrote it in her journal. Maybe. I don't know. It's a rumor. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um. I, I'm not mad at you for telling me the rumor. I'm only saying it's often useful to think about how the knowledge has been acquired, right? I agree. You hear, like, someone say some study they heard about. And then you go, "Well, explain to me how that study was done." And you realize there's no way to do that study. I mean, there's a Reddit. But I don't know. Okay. But I just, I don't trust Reddit. No, no, no, no, no. So I'm not gonna even do that. Um. How much money does Alabama put into their football team? If UCLA is 150 grand in the hole, I gotta imagine this is gonna be a big number. The University of Alabama spent 82.9 million directly on its football program. Wow. Um. While the university relies heavily on the football program to generate the vast majority of its overall athletic department revenue, the massive annual expenditure is funneled into various programs. The University of Alabama spends $2.9 million on its football program. The University of Alabama spends $2.9 million directly on its football program. Wow. Um. While the university relies heavily on the football program to generate the vast majority of its overall athletic department revenue, the massive annual expenditure is funneled into various components to keep the program operating at an elite level. Um. While the university relies heavily on the football program to generate the vast amount of its overall athletic department revenue, the massive annual expenditure is funneled into various components to keep the program operating at an elite level. itself's not the manger because that basket could be anywhere and it would still be a basket but it's in a manger okay yeah which is a big stone or wooden square that's containing horses cattle hay and donkeys yeah i don't think a donkey could fit in that so that photo yeah yeah all right well i learned something today i thought it was a name for a bassinet you didn't grow up christian what can you do exactly what can you i would not we would not know the word manger if jesus hadn't been brought i've never i've never heard it apart from in the biblical sense yeah and uh the nativity scene is the manger i should still know though because you know i did take religion with my professor yeah and you went to a few you went to a few um youth church groups with your friends too um i went to youth group with my friend like a couple times yeah i also went to um synagogue that was more fun it was it yeah okay with my friend julia anyway that's where i got liberty at um a jewish bazaar yeah wow wow wow yeah all right okay i love you