The Most Important Questions Of Our Time - George Mack - #1124

Speaking of football, do you know who Cristiano Ronaldo was named after? Go on. You're a big fan of football. How do you know? One of the most famous, maybe the most famous player on the planet. Who do you think Cristiano Ronaldo was named after? Well, it wouldn't be the Brazilian Ronaldo because he almost overlapped in terms of careers. Oh, is it Ronald Reagan? Yes. Yes. Yes. Wow. My parents named me after Ronald Reagan because they both liked this name and thought it sounded strong, Ronaldo, whose full name is Cristiano Ronaldo. Dos Santos Aviero said in a GQ cover story, I know that my father admired him. Ronaldo was born February 5th, 1985, while Reagan was still president of the United States. But according to Ronaldo, his dad was a fan long before then, told Riley that Reagan was his dad's favorite actor. That said, he wasn't too sure how the Republican leader would have felt about Ronaldo's outfit in the GQ cover that accompanied the article. Let's just say it's not very conservative. We've got an image. Of the outfit that Ronaldo had. Oh, wow. Ronald Reagan. I mean, identical, right? That's very much nominative determinism right there. I forgot because I was, I was so, I've not been in America too young for it as well. I forgot the fact that Reagan was an actor. He was an actor beforehand. Was he in big movies and stuff? I believe so, yeah. Okay. It's kind of the prequel to Trump in a lot of way. There's also, if you like footballers' names, there's a South American player called Osama bin Laden, whose brother is, I believe, called Saddam Hussein. Can you search chat GPT and is it V-I-N? I think it's bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, two brothers in South America. This does sound too good to be true. And like, you've been gazumped by it. Well, it's interesting, particularly like Brazilian names. They often decide their own names. So you've got Ronaldinho, Fred. Hulk, great name. Pepe. Pepe. Well, Pepe's Portuguese, but they often just, unlike us, they just kind of, they don't often go with their own name. Yes, there was a Peruvian footballer named Osama bin Laden, Jimenez Lopez, oftenly written simply as Osama bin Laden. Very good. He attracted international attention because it sounds almost identical to Osama bin Laden. Actually, in Spanish, it's even closer because V and B are pronounced the same. Some unusual details have been widely reported. He said he was named after Osama bin Laden. His brother is named Saddam Hussein, a Spanish spelling of Saddam Hussein. To avoid controversy, his jersey typically displays only Osama rather than his full surname. Wow. I mean, I want to meet his parents. I want to know what they've been reading. You can just do things, clearly. You can just name your kid after the most famous terrorist of the 21st century. The year after 9-11, too. Oh, fucking hell, yes. Shit, that was done one year. So really hopping on the bandwagon post. That's buying Bitcoin while it's on a rip, isn't it? Jesus Christ. What's that story of Rory McDonald's walkout music? Oh, Rory McDonald, UFC fighter, used to walk out to some of the strangest songs. And people would kind of laugh as he was walking out. Like, why does he have such a weird niche in music? And it was when it came out, he was interviewed. Like, why are you playing out some of these super strange songs? It would mix from like classical music. It would also have, Jared, look it up, like the different Rory McDonald songs. And when they interviewed him, he was like, it's not me who's picking the songs, it's the UFC. Then they go to the UFC and say, Rory's saying you're picking the songs. And it's like, no. We text him before every single UFC. And when it actually got into it, they were texting his old phone number, which had been given to somebody. If you go on Reddit, so here's the song. So he has a violin orchestra by George A. Quintero. One More Road to Cross by DMX. Personal favorite, Can't Touch This by MC Hammer. UFC 133. Grew up a screw up by Ludacris. So you've got to think. He goes from light work, a Lupe fiasco. I love the fact he did We Found Love twice in a row. He came out to St. Anger by Metallica twice in a row as well. He came out by 46 and 2 by Tool. That's a fucking slamming. And then got the life back. Okay. But so he says the UFC chooses. The UFC says he chooses. What's the truth? Well, it was somebody had his old phone number. So the UFC was texting it. And this person was obviously a UFC fan that was kind of in on the joke and just absolutely went on a rampage for multiple years. What would be the worst song to walk out to for you? For me? Yeah. Or best? Well, when I came down the love lift for Take Me Out, my first dating show, I wanted Jamie Jones Hungry for the Power. Because at the time I thought I was really cool because I'd just done the season in Ibiza and everybody did remixes of it saying Hungry for the Power. And I was like, oh, I'm fucking sick, man. I used to go to a, I'm sniffing ketamine in Ibiza and that. And the producers looked at me and said, why have you got this very low energy deep house track for the walkout? We're going to give you example. Love kickstarts again. Was that? Okay. Fair enough. So that's like, as you come down and everyone's doing this. Clapping above the heads. And the love kickstarts again. Again. Chris Williamson. Yeah. Single man reveal yourself. That's what it is. Did you get, how did you perform? Did you get a date off Take Me Out? Did I get a date? I don't know. I don't know. You might've got. Blackout. The bloke before me did. Yeah. Everyone was backstage shitting themselves that they were going to get a blackout. How did you, how did you fare? I got on well. What was a deep conspiracy about Take Me Out, which for the American people is a kind of British staple dating show. The first of many dating shows for me. And, um, uh, the, uh, biggest fear that anybody had was that all of the girls would turn the lights off, but earlier in the season, because for every, every time that they don't go on a date, that's another week that they're on TV. So all of the girls were incentivized at the start of the season to hit the lights so that you didn't get as much. And we were episode, I was episode two. So I was doing it on hard mode, mate. I was doing it on hard mode. Still had 11 girls to choose from at the end. Show me the incentives. I'll show you the outcome. Show me the outcome. Yeah. Yeah. The ITV producers of Take Me Out do not, have not read the almanac of Charlie Munger. What would you, what would you want to walk out to? For a fight? Take me out or a fight? Because I see them both as the same thing. Um, you've got to go. You've got, you know, you already know. I think you've got to go with Big, Big Phil. Which song? Big Phil. Um, I think In the Air Tonight. Yeah. I'm both my fighting music and my love making music. 1.6? 1.6? Yeah, 1.6 speed, depending on, depending on the opponent, both in the ring. Okay. So is it faster? Is it faster for dating or faster for fighting? That's a great question. I think, no, I think, I think you probably want to slow it, slow it down a little bit for the, for the dating. 1.4. Is that to make it feel like you've lasted longer? Yes. Right. I need that. We were talking about AI in writing yesterday. Uh, one of the Commonwealth short story prizes appears to have been awarded to an obviously AI generation. This is a relatively prestigious prize. The prize winning stories all appeared in Granter magazine and the editor's response was basically a shrug. When asked whether it was AI generated, AI concluded that it was almost certainly not produced unaided by a human. And a computer scientist claimed that the empty metaphors that often plague the prize winning story and the plague all AI writing as well, they come from human written fan fiction. So this is the source of a lot of AI. A lot of the very strange, very clunky analogies that you see. So, uh, for instance, the rare phrase, the patience of a reptile, which appears in this allegedly AI generated story also occurs in a fan fiction based on the Japanese anime and manga Naruto. There's no way to be sure that the LLM sucked it up, spat it back out, but it's worth remembering that a meaningful amount of the text inside of these machines was written by people who were playing pretend with anime characters. So the LLM. The reason being, if you were to take the total amount of time played, uh, people playing football globally, and you were to learn how to play football as a robot or an AI system by watching everybody on the planet play football, there are far more people that are bad at football than good at football. Therefore you will learn to be quite bad at football. And this is the same thing with writing. If you think about how few books that are written, get published, how little writing is made for a book and how many books that are written are actually good and go on to sell anything. I don't think that there's that much of a waiting in terms of the LLM that James clears atomic habits on Moby Dick is worth 10 million times that of an anime and manga blog. However, by sheer numbers, the amount of bad writing out numbers, the amount of good writing. So there's a sentence from that story. But a belly sound as if the earth swallows a shout and holds it there. Pretty jarring. It's not really what you find in good writing. Don't worry. This might've been potentially drawn from a fan fiction. webpage, The Fall of a Phoenix, where the original sentence was, he swallows a shout of pain, breathing heavily, his whole body trembling. Another sentence, his eyes narrowed against the glare outside and the darker glare inside him. Eyes narrowed against the glare outside sounds like unnecessarily vain and ominous in a way that's unnecessary. The reason could be that it was drawn from a random horror blog, the original sentence being his eyes narrowed against the glare of the halogen strip lights. And speaking of the darker glare, while it's pretty common, it appears in another fan fiction story. So basically, you can't work out what's inside of an LLM's brain, which is probably for the best, but it's entirely possible that when you prompt it to write fiction, it's not scouring through the greatest works ever put together. It's looking at random fan fiction, manga, and anime websites written by somebody at 2am who really shouldn't have been doing it. Well, what makes sense there, and again, snapshot in time, six months, 12 months from now, this may be completely different. But what's interesting is on a coding side of things, it's currently way more capable than the writing side. And I wonder if that's because code itself, it's a lot easier to come to an objective conclusion. So thing did compile, thing didn't compile, or thing did work, thing didn't work. Button appeared, button didn't, button didn't appear. Whereas with writing, it's so much more around taste. It's so much more subjective. So it's harder to almost give the feedback loop of success or failure. But it's interesting that you wouldn't, that argument there that you would just have the widest data set possible for writing versus having an LLM that's trained a lot more. But what would be interesting, in theory, that's quite easy to do. So has anybody done that? Probably. But it's still, even when I've given it great writing, it can't, it can't, for whatever reason, repeat it. Maybe it's not the physics that it's built on top of, it's not just here is good writing, it has to understand what each word inside of that writing means. And the way that it understands what the word inside of the writing is, is based on the bigger corpus that it has outside of it. So it's a little bit like saying, I've got Usain Bolt, but he's running into a 35 mile an hour headwind. But regardless of how great the talent is that you're trying to push forward, I think that you're always going to be, working against this. Now, it's got to be a relatively complex, but simple, sorry, like, arduous, but simple solution to be like, just weighted toward great pieces of work. It's not arduous, Chris. It's simple. Said like a true Roman senator. Question. Question. What man could get the most number of women on the planet to turn up at his house if he gave them the invite? That's, um. Philosophers have pondered this question for hundreds, if not thousands of years, Christopher. So the real philosophical insight that's plagued the industry is which man alive could post his address right now and have the largest line? Who do you go for? You need international appeal. Yeah. You probably need to skew a little bit. Older. Bigger TAM. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got to expect. Especially with a declining population. Yeah. Aging population. Yeah. Aging population means that I think anyone under age 35 is probably going to struggle. Anyone under age 30 is really going to struggle and think that you're going to want as a mid-50s, 60s year old woman. I don't know whether. You probably do want to be ravaged by that, but I don't think you're going to go. The likelihood of you upping sticks and getting on the bus, getting on the 59 bus to go to wherever this person is, I don't know. I don't think you're going to go. So my call for this, I think it's between Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm trying to think about who the pop star or rock star would be that would be up there. I bet somebody like a Drake would probably be able to do some damage. I don't think so. He's done his damage. He has done a lot of damage. Yeah. But I think I would put my money. I would say I would put my money on Brad Pitt. I think it's very hard to fight Brad Pitt. Pitt and DiCaprio are very much the Intel or Microsoft in this moment in that I think 10 years ago, I think you're correct, but I think you've got to be looking at a little bit more blue chip. I think David Beckham is probably the Apple stock here. Been around for a while, but I think Beckham still outperforms Pitt and DiCaprio because I think Beckham's actually more global because you've got to be looking at Africa. You've got to be looking at Southeast Asia. I'm always looking at Africa. What was the last thing that David Beckham did? What was the last thing that David Beckham did that was globally recognized? If you turned on the World Cup recently, he's on every single advert, my friend. I don't think that that is enough. I don't think. But I also think DBEX, D7 still has quite a clean, beautiful image, whereas Brad Pitt doesn't. Pitt, no, definitely not. I think less so as he's got older. And DiCaprio seems to have. DiCaprio's really tanked his own stock prices. Intel, this is what I'm saying. Right. I understand. I understand. But. I don't think. I don't think that you're right about David Beckham. I don't think that you're going to get. I don't think he's going to reach out into the Middle East in the way that Brad Pitt would. I think that you get. I think David Beckham's going to nail it in East Asia. I think he's going to absolutely crush it because they're kind of sports crazy over there. I don't think. You're joking me. With the Saudi League and the Qatar World Cup, I think DBEX is well-known out there. And the English accent still goes a long way, my friend. That's. I just don't think he's done anything relevant for a long time. Okay. We can agree to disagree. I do think. Who's an outside favorite? I think Styles is very much the NVIDIA of our moment. Yes. It may fall. The market may collapse, but he is very much leading the charge. Timothy Chalamet is like ChachiBT or OpenAI. He's currently private because he's in a committed long-term relationship. DBEX is as well. It's not necessarily about private or public stock here. David Beckham was close at the SpaceX pre-IPO. Yes. Yes. Very established for quite a long time. A lot of. A lot of investment from a variety of countries. People really cared about his success. And then finally, he's been able to cash out if he manages to break up with Victoria. Fascinating philosophical question. This is the most important question of our time. 95% of people don't get enough fiber, which is why Momentus built Fiber Plus. Because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually kind of hard. Even harder than your last toilet trip. Fiber isn't just a digestion thing. It's the foundation of your gut health, which drives how you eat. How well you absorb nutrients, how stable your energy is, and how quickly you recover. If your gut isn't dialed, everything else you're doing is working at a fraction of its potential. Fiber Plus is a three-in-one formula built to address digestion, gut barrier strength, and blood sugar stability all at once. That's why I plan to make my next big dump Momentus. 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Get the familiar dopamine hit without spending money, smoking, or giving in to other impulsive habits. I saw that. And I think the argument they, a big argument you'll see online is this behavior is happening in Asia. Therefore, it's going to downstream happen in the Asia is ahead of us, but sometimes it's just such a different culture. So I think it was, I forgot which Facebook product manager was talking about how they'd release a new feature and they'd test it off in the Philippines. And there'd be this crazy reaction and they go, we have to launch this new feature immediately. And the amount of times they'll then test it on the West or anywhere else in the world, and it wouldn't work. So he actually banned doing tests or stopped doing tests. A lot of features in the Philippines because their phone usage is so different to ours. They spend so much more time on their phones than any other part of the world. So it's just, where is it like a human thing that these people are just ahead versus where is it just a cultural thing? Have you ever, have you ever come across Montaigne's lists? Do you know who Montaigne is? Yeah. So French philosopher would be fascinating to hear his perspectives on the old Q debate. But Montaigne used to have lists that he would keep of what different cultures thought were acceptable throughout history, just so he could remind himself that this whole thing is largely made up. It's largely social contagion. So some of my like favorite from Montaigne's lists. So one where it's normal to grow out your hair on the right side of your body, but shave everything on the left where white teeth is deemed as unattractive. So they purposely get their teeth blacker and blacker and blacker. Where at a certain age, you're supposed to kill your own father. when you and your father hit a certain age, you say goodbye. Another one on Montaigne's lists are when at a funeral, you're supposed to chop up the dead, grind them to a pulp, pour it into wine, and then drink them on the day of the funeral. And a final one, one for you actually, Christopher, because I'm sure you've attended many events like this, which is certain cultures for the weddings. The success of a wedding was judged by how many of the groom's friends could sleep with the bride, which I know is actually quite common in the Northeast of England. But that's only if they're family. So Montaigne kept these lists to himself, like more and more and more and more examples like that, just to hold a mirror up to himself and the times that he's in. So he's collecting weird cultures, cultures that we would find strange and that their norms are different to ours in an attempt to- To try and highlight, hey, whatever it is that you think is normal is just consensus because of where you are. And if you were to be somewhere else, your consensus would be totally different. Yes. I'll tell you what, do you want a list of. I was thinking, okay, let's say Montaigne came back today. I was writing this chapter recently. So let's say Montaigne came back today and was like, well, what's normal today? So normal consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar per day. Normal has 140 thousand 755 dollars in debt. Normal is 30 pounds overweight, ozempic pending. Normal averages less than 4,000 steps per day. Normal spends 90,000 hours of their life at work disengaged. Normal stays indoors for 22.3 hours per day. Normal spends more time on the toilet than exercising. Normal hasn't finished a book in the last 12 months. Normal experiences under 10 minutes per day in silence. Normal will spend 20 years of their life watching TV or scrolling social media. Under 10 minutes a day in silence and more time on the toilet than exercising. Averages. But then there's always a criticism around averages that you end up netting it out. But when you begin to look at, oh, this is just what's accepted today. And maybe tomorrow weddings will be back that you like to attend. In the 1830s in Massachusetts, beards were so uncommon and strange that people were not allowed to wear them. A man named Joseph Parker was mocked and shunned for wearing one. Assailants tried to forcibly shave him, but he fought them off with a knife and was imprisoned for assault. He refused to pay his fine or court fees, so he remained in prison for over a year. And this at least gave him the excuse to create an all-time classic tombstone. Oh, wow. The right to a full beard is honored by the grave of a man who was attacked in jail due to his facial hair. Wow. Talk about norms, mate. That's a great beard. One of the things that everybody kind of has discussed in the marketing space for ages is that live streaming will become normal in the West because it's normal in the East. But I'm yet to see live shopping where people sit there for hours and hours per day. I'm yet to see that fully take off. Well, it depends what you mean, because live streaming, kick, Twitch, obviously that's streaming. Live streaming, yes. But actual live shopping, sorry. Live shopping, different. IRL streaming feels, I don't know whether they've got that in, I bet they don't have that in Asia. You know, the IRL stuff where people are walking about and sometimes causing nuisance and doing predator stings. And I imagine that they don't because a good bit of Asia feels like it's got honor culture where you don't want to disrupt. I mean, you've seen the Japanese subways, the Japanese tube, and I've been on the phone to a friend who lives in Japan and he'll warn me while he's on the side of the subway waiting at the terminal. And then he'll tell me, look, I'm just about to get on. And he won't say anything. He won't respond to me on the phone. He won't even whisper. So I'll be talking to him for three minutes without him being able to respond. And then he'll get off and he'll talk back to me. Like that's how, and he's not native Irish. And that's how much reverence people have just complete silence. So they're playing your drill rap on the back of the bus. Not that, not even whispering, not even talking to each other. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Do you know that? Wow. I didn't know that. It's interesting how much of who you think you are is just postcode. Oh, so much of it's ecology, right? I mean, and that's the reason why changing your environment has such a big impact on your life. If you, both me and you changed gyms over the last six months, and that made a massive impact. Just a different routine didn't change me as a person, but it changed the way that my day was shaped. Like, oh, actually my routine is largely built around some of the other things that I already do. And if I change where I go and do them, that alters maybe having the office, having the office in the studio, that's made a massive difference as well. So what do you think from stuff that's happened in Asia that has prophetically come across to America? Labubu's Asian. They look like they are. What's a labubu? It's these little stuffed animals. It was the Dubai chocolate at the stuffed animal world, and people were queuing up for ages to get a key ring and collect those. It's funny how we're being in the West, we talk about Asia the same way. I always find it absurd when somebody talks about Europe, obviously Brexit means Brexit, so we're no longer in Europe. But the idea that. Asia is this place, or Africa is this place. Despite it being absolutely massive. Yes. And often. I'm going to Europe. What the fuck does that mean? But because we're so far away, we don't think of Asia as being anything different than just one big hegemon. And there seems to be a recurring memetic trend throughout geography, which is, you think two places, because they're next door neighbor, are very similar to one another, or get on with one another. But historically, it is the opposite. I laugh whenever I interact with the French, that we are. 23 miles away. So different. So fundamentally different. It's actually hard to find a culture as different to Britain in Europe, I would say, than the French. And we're next door neighbors. Yeah, we are. But I mean, speaking as somebody that's dressed as an ex-Italian, essentially, you would know. You would know. You would understand. Yeah. I don't know about the Asian thing. I definitely know that there's a lot of stuff that goes on over there that doesn't happen over here. You can buy used period pants in vending machines. I saw Craig Jones do this on a vlog. Some ladies had menstruated through her pants, and then you can buy them in a little. It comes in a little pokeball like that, and it's in a specially sealed bag inside of a pokeball. I don't think that's taking off in the West anytime soon. Yeah, there are certain areas that are resisting globalization. It's kind of impressive. California's gay certification. California is pressuring public utilities to award $633 million in special contracts to LGBT-owned firms. To qualify, residents must go through the state's official gay certification program and face up to a year in jail if they're not gay enough. By 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission established a goal for utility companies with annual revenues exceeding $25 million to buy things from state-certified LGBT companies. California's gay certification program is for LGBT businesses. 0.5% of procurement in 2021, 1% in 2023, 1.5% in 2024, and beyond. If large CPUC-regulated utilities meet these goals in 2024, they would have sent $633 million to LGBT-owned firms. The scheme raises an obvious question. How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork. Supplier Clearinghouse, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an LGBT organization attesting to their sexual preferences, proof that a newspaper identified them as LGBT, or three letters from personal contacts written on company letterhead attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who falsely represent their business as gay face up to a year in county jail. Supplier Clearinghouse also accepts gay certification letters from the National Security Office. The chamber has its own list of accepted documents, including human resources complaints or police records claiming LGBT discrimination. As it states on its website, certification is a journey, not a destination. Think you'd be able to pull off getting California's gay certification to receive $633 million? So what percentage do you need? To be gay? Yes. You need to be gay. It's not a percent. Oh, so it's not a recruitment percentage? No. Oh, okay. No. So you have to hit, if you have a certain level that you get the funding. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But you also need to be gay to unlock it. So if you're not gay, you don't get it. And if you're not big enough, you don't get it. But if you're big enough, they need to be finding sufficiently diverse. So these companies actually, one of the best ways to do this would be to hire, this is an incentive to hire C-suite executives that are gay. Damn. It would unlock an awful lot of CPUC funding in California. Damn. And you face it, you're in. County jail. That's, that's real, that's real founder mode right there. Like if you're willing to. Take it up the ass. To, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, if you're going to power bottom your way to the top. Yeah. You can either get fucked by investors or get fucked by Craig. Someone else. Well, look, it's going to, it's, I don't know, man. The whole state. Is that real? Is that all real? That's real. That's literally, that's a brand. I'm not going to lie to you. I know, I know. Why would I lie to you? Where did I get this from? Cityjournal.com. There it is. Inside California's gay certification program, the state is pressuring utilities to award $633 million in contracts to LGBT businesses. Interesting. The tip of the spear for LGBT diversity is energy and utilities. Contracts for state certified gay owned businesses. You could arbitrage the hell out of this. You know, when people say, how much would it, how much would you have to pay to be gay? If the number is less than $633 million, your quid's in. Damn. What else? What else you got? You got some stuff? Do you bring anything from home? Yeah, go on. Do I have some stuff as always? Um, oh, my bag of cash is getting in the way. In other news, Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce companies in the US. They are the driving force behind Gymshark and Skims and Allo and Nutonic, which is why I partnered with them. Because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, they are best in class. Their checkout is 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms. And with ShopPay, you can boost conversions up to 50%. Basically, you didn't get. You didn't get into business to learn how to code or build a website or deal with the inventory stuff bullshit on the back end. You just want to get down to creating and promoting an awesome product. And Shopify takes all of the mess off your hands and allows you to focus on the job you actually came here to do. Designing and selling the thing that you love. So, upgrade your business and get the same checkout that we use with Nutonic with Shopify. Right now, you can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shopify.com slash modernwiz.com. All lowercase. That's shopify.com slash modernwiz.com. Story of a Spanish chicken farmer called Juan Poyol. So, it's 1941, start of World War I. And he's essentially a failure his entire life. So, he's been a chicken farmer, a manager of a one-star hotel before bankruptcy. And he's after a new job with a tremendous CV. So, he's walking along the streets of Madrid, takes a right, goes into the British embassy. And says, I want a job at MI5 to help out and spy on the Nazis. And MI5 or the embassy sort of say, okay, how about you put that in writing and we'll come back to you. Which is the British way of saying, get the fuck out. So, he leaves the building, comes back, walks across, goes into the embassy, says, I want a job with MI5. They ask him. To leave. Tries again. He just like walks across the street and turns around. No, these are multiple like future events. So, he keeps coming back. Fourth time, he's walking along and he decides, he walks up the steps. But this time, he goes into the German embassy. And he goes, I hate the Brits. I want a job for the Nazis to spy on Britain. And the Nazis are eyeing him up. And he talks about his love for the Führer. The love for the Third Reich. And how much he hates his new inspired hatred for Great Britain. And the Nazis end up training him up. Giving him little tasks. And he keeps proving himself. Learns how invisible ink works. Ends up recruiting multiple agents inside of Great Britain. So, he builds his way up. And then he walks back the street of Madrid. Goes to the British embassy. And says, I now want a job at MI5. Because I'm one of the most valuable spies. For the Nazis. So, he got rejected, rejected, rejected. And was like, okay, I'll take matters into my own hands. So, he then becomes the most valuable spy for Britain during World War II. He builds up a network of 27 sub-agents inside of Britain. That the Nazis believe are true. But it's all his own imagination. All these different agents that he would create stories from. That they were doing. So much so, when he arrives. The MI5 called him Garbo. Because Garbo at the time was the most famous actress in the world. Greta Garbo. Yes. So, named after for his acting skills. So, Juan Poyol, the Spanish chicken farmer. The most important moment in World War II was D-Day. So, as D-Day was happening. Juan gave so much fake information. He convinced them that D-Day was going to happen in Calais. So, Hitler and Himmler were getting. These reports from Juan. They thought the war was going to happen in Calais. So, they sent some of their most important armies to Calais. Then the D-Day happens. And Juan was so convincing. Even with these fake reports that Hitler gave him the Iron Cross. So, he's the only agent to get both an Iron Cross from Hitler. And an MBE from the king. No way. Yeah. Do you know what's tragic though? So, they say that. When it comes to D-Day. The most important day of World War II. The three most important people were Eisenhower. Who looked after the US. I think Montgomery. Who looked after the Great Britain. And Juan Poyol, the Spanish chicken farmer. Those are the three most important people in D-Day. In terms of the impact. But this guy who gets these double awards. Ends up dying. In 1949. Mozambique. To malaria. And in the 1980s. Three. Of the agents that worked with him in MI5. Are sat at a bar. So, they're all in their like late 80s now. And they're talking about the war. They're in this former little intelligence pub. And they're chatting about the war. And having a few drinks. And they have this kind of confused look on their faces. There's old guys walking towards them. And they get more and more confused with their face. And then this 80 year old man. Who's a MI5 spy. Breaks down in tears. Crying. And they go. It can't be. You're supposed to be dead. So, his final last act. Was to fake his own death. In 1949. And he lived in a bookstore. In Venezuela. So, the Nazis would never know. Where he was. That's insane. Spanish chicken farmer. Was he really worried about Nazi retribution in 1949? Yes. Were the Nazis still. Going around and chasing people in the 50s? Ironically, even though he's in Venezuela. There was a lot of Nazis in South America. Yeah. But if he'd not gone to fucking Venezuela. He got supposedly caught malaria in Africa. There's still a lot of. Where's Mozambique? Mozambique is I think West Africa. Right. Okay. But. He should have stayed there. In 1949 or even onwards. There was first off. We're viewing history few hindsight. At the time there was still millions of Germans that served for the Nazis. That was still alive. Yeah. There was lots of Nazis afterwards. And they would have wanted retribution for people that had. I didn't. I guess I don't know. The most impactful man during D-Day who was a double agent that gave them all this false information. If there's one person they're going to try and kill. Yeah, that's true. I guess I don't know what happened in Germany after they lost. I don't know how quickly everybody capitulated. Well, there was this. I was listening to Finn versus history and they was talking about how. Friend of the show. In a, when after the Nazis commit the Holocaust, I think they were banned for the world cup or from like international games for four years, but when Liverpool had the incident in Juventus where loads of fans died, they were banned for six years and it's like, it's not, it doesn't scale quite even scale accordingly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's a, I mean, unbelievable amount of agency. I, I suppose to be a guy that wants a job so badly that you take the opposite job to get the first job, it's just as well that he really did want to work for MI5 because if you didn't, he would have just been a great asset to the Nazis, but it's having that, that level of theory of mind of, okay. I've been rejected from something. What does this person want that would make me completely invaluable? Cause I think there's this kind of myth that, oh, if you've been rejected, just keep going and they're idiots versus can you get inside of their head and think how they think? Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, is it time to push or is it time to pivot? It's kind of the age old question, but he did both, right? He pivoted into a new one. All right. So that's your story time. This is a new segment, a new segment on our episodes, story time, my story time. Shavas Karapetyan, are you familiar with Shavas Karapetyan? No. Okay. So, uh, 1976 in, uh, Yerevan, and there's a trolley bus carrying around about 90 passengers. And we don't know what happened. Uh, some people say that the driver of the bus had a heart attack. Some people say that he was having an altercation with a passenger on board. Whatever happened, it crashed into a reservoir, Yerevan, and the bus sank roughly 10 meters, so 30 feet. And, uh, the bus was going to the bottom, freezing murky water. There's a 23 year old man who's training with his brother nearby, Shavas Karapetyan. And, uh, without giving it much thought, jumps into the water and ordered his brother to help him from the shore. He said it was scary at first. It was so loud as if a bomb went off. I almost drowned several times. I could imagine the agony of those 92 people. And I knew how they would die. The thing was Karapetyan wasn't an ordinary bystander. He was a 17 time world champion. and 11-time world record record holder in fin swimming he was one of the best underwater swimmers on earth immediately dives into the water to help visibility is basically zero because the reservoir is full of mud and sewage and debris as well obviously the bus has gone in so it's kicked up all of this silt it's basically impossible to see so he swims down into the dark locates the bus he called it a traveling coffin for all of these 92 people he kicks the rear window in underwater to get inside dives down dive after dive holds his breath finds trap passenger drags him back to the surface hands them to the rescuers and his brother in a rowboat goes straight back down again reportedly made dozens of dives of around about 20 minutes and physically pulled out about 37 people 20 of them survived during one dive he accidentally grabbed a leather seat cushion instead of a passenger because his visibility was so poor it'd be one of these old school buses that would have had movable cushions and he grabbed it and he grabbed it and he grabbed it and he grabbed it this leather cushion and brought it up thinking it was maybe a small human he later said that this one decision haunted him for years because he believed someone may have died while he carried up the cushion instead carapetian was hospitalized along with the victims of the accident because he'd lacerated all of his legs all of his body from going through the broken glass from breaking the glass himself uh septic fever double-sided pneumonia and nervous frustration had doctors fighting for his life for over a month when he was finally discharged chavash went back to practice but swimming underwater echoed painfully in his in his lungs but he wouldn't give up without having one final medal so during the next championship that he swam in a haze still wasn't in any way back to full capacity his brother camo ran along the side of the pool ready to jump in in case he suddenly lost consciousness but he came in first and set another world record without even realizing that he'd done it at the time he was so delirious but the rescue that he'd done of the bus had destroyed his athletic career broken glass shredded his legs polluted water had caused severe pneumonia and sepsis he couldn't recover from and he spent all of those weeks plus then months critically ill and then recovering soviet authorities initially downplayed the story so it remained relatively unknown for years and today the rescue is considered one of the greatest acts of civilian heroism ever recorded jesus christ there's a thick russian carapetian yeah yeah like a serious russian guy that's him there and just a pair of pants and everybody else is trying to pull it up wow isn't that insane wow there's a an award jared ask ask a bald friend uh what's the name of the award that's given to people who risk their lives for strangers the award you're likely thinking of is the carnegie medal it's given to civilians who risk their lives to save or attempt to save strangers is there anything interesting about the demographics of the people who've been given that award there are some patterns worth noting the carnegie hero fund which awards the medal has found that recipients come from all walks of life age gender and background very white it's not interesting historically men have been the majority of recipients but women have also been recognized how many men how many men won the carnegie hero fund has awarded thousands of people since its inception in 1904 so fucking historically the majority have been men what's the percentage of men that have won the carnegie award the carnegie hero fund reports that historically about 90 percent of recipients all right shut up i i just i whatever happened in 2020 continues to carry over now do you know what i mean like california thinks that the most important thing to do with its utilities is not give people cheap and reliable energy but to make sure that the diversity of the sexuality of the people who own the companies is important and you fucking 5.5 need to have a chat with someone about you anyway uh that carapetian i i love that story i think it's fucking awesome and um what what the kind of kicker is the fact that you know that he was he made such a personal sacrifice but then also was ravaged by the fact that he picked up a fucking cushion having gone down 37 times and one time he made a mistake in pitch blackness when he couldn't see that what's the likelihood that the guy that's running on the side of the road with his brother like he's got his pants on he's got the he's got the how he's the the number one fin swimmer deep sea swimmer in the world 17 times 11 world records tragic yeah tragic yeah if you're trying to go from joey chestnut to joey swole the rp strength app is the best place to start i've been in the gym for two decades and it wasn't until this last year that i had some of the best training sessions of my life and rp was a massive part of that actual scientist built this thing around the obsession to beat up their high school bullies and provide the most science-backed effective path to maximizing muscle gain it tells you your exercises how many sets reps the weights everything so all you have to do is show up and lift if the rp strength app could wipe your ass for you probably would and it adjusts automatically every week based on how you're actually progressing for me following a proper evidence-based plan has made a massive difference and if you're serious about your training it'll do the same for you right now you can follow the exact same training plan that i use and get up to 50 off the rp hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout that's rpstrength.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout yeah it's it's interesting how often that is the case where you'll have these acts of great heroism that don't have 100 success right and then the individual spends so much time looping on that yeah that's that's survivor guilt i suppose right i've known some people who've done some incredible things and i've known some people who've done some incredible things and i've known some people who've done some incredible things like in the police or firework for example and it's the same thing they don't ruminate on the the heroism it's the it's the one mistakes that they made yeah yeah the people they could have saved i wonder what that's what i guess that adaptively it's trying to get you to focus on this is something pro-social that you could have done if you'd been more prepared more skillful um therefore in future you need to you need to adapt your your approach so that this doesn't happen again maybe that's the reason for survivor guilt actually just type it in chat gbt what is the reason what is the adaptive reason for survivor guilt or adaptive explanation for survivor guilt so the only thing that i can think of is that it's supposed to try and guide your future behavior so that well i mean fucking bluetooth came up as a thousand year old norse god or something like that so fuck knows if we're going to find out what is the adaptive explanation from an evolutionary or adaptive perspective survivor guilt can be understood as a byproduct of mechanism to help humans maintain social bonds cooperation and group cohesion okay so my hypothesis is looking good so far basic ideas in ancestral environments humans survive and reproduce largely through belonging to a group or one person benefited while others suffered there are often social consequences so the inverse of that okay maintaining group cohesion if you survive a dangerous event while close allies did not feeling distressed rather than indifferent signals oh that's cool so because if something bad happens and you were one of the few that survived if you show that you feel distress as opposed to indifference it reinforces to everybody else that you weren't selfish and an asshole that you actually regret the fact that they died and that you didn't i am still a part of the group i didn't take it all for myself i didn't just swim out the back of the bus myself i really did try um reciprocal altruism and fairness mechanisms they've got strong intuitions so when we receive an expected benefit relative to others even when we did nothing wrong our minds may interpret the situation as a violation of fairness expectations survivor guilt may arise from the same psychological machinery machinery that makes people pretty uncomfortable receiving disproportionate rewards okay motivation to help survivors yeah okay so it encourages caring for bereaved families supporting injured group members counterfactual learning humans are unusually prone to imagining alternative outcomes the counterfactual helps us learn from near misses and dangerous situations dude don't test me on evolutionary theory okay don't test the hamburglar on evolutionary theory my intuitions are strong costly signal of commitment as well grief and function you can't fake it that's an interesting one that's the the reason um why would it be the case that when you're sad or distressed or overwhelmed with um negative emotion that the same thing your eyes do to make sure that your eyes stay lubricated would go into overdrive why do we cry like what's the reason why do we cry what's the reason for crying and one of the uh adaptive explanations for this which is pretty fascinating is it's such a costly signal to do because the most important sense you have is your eyes and if you're prepared to fill them with water to say how much i've been hurt how much i'm suffering you're in an unbelievably vulnerable position you can't fight you can't see you can't defend yourself tears are coming out and you can't fully operate this is how much i'm in pain i'm in so much pain that i'm essentially exposing my neck to you so how do you then factor in tears of joy why do we cry out of joy i did ask this question so it could be a spandrel which is just a crossover between the two but it could just be the same thing it could be a very costly signal hey look at how much i love this thing that's happening i am here collective effervescence me and the group we are one i experience this thing with you too and i do think when it comes to sort of emotions, sadness, like peak sadness. joy joyful experiences beautiful experiences and sad or sort of dreadful experiences they kind of have this same like part of the pitch of the of the the chord that they play is kind of similar right it's like an outside of the body at least when i when i uh experience stuff that's like really intense whether it's good or bad i always feel it sort of across the top of my shoulders my traps and like sort of everything feels like it lifts up a little bit if i'm being delivered bad news by somebody or if there's something that's really beautiful happening it always feels like i'm sort of being lifted a bit so there seems to be similarities resonance between those two um there's two there's two visuals jared if you could pull them up there's one of how emotion feels in the body i don't know if you've seen this one where it's like a heat map heat map yeah and there's all map of emotions yeah there's also the topography of tears how different types of tears look under a microscope and they're slightly different no way is this constitution yeah this artist produced it where so top left so here is yeah how uh emotions at least feel in the body which kind of makes sense is that a map mapping emotion so is that self-report i think this is more self-report of how it how it feels okay so anger seems pretty right so anger's sort of above the like upper chest arms and hands a lot lower face a lot and head and if you start with neutral on the right so you kind of see okay this is neutral and then you compare that to all the different ones surprise is definitely a lot in the head that's cool sadness is kind of in the middle of the chest happiness sort of everywhere disgust definitely in the stomach so disgust disgust and anxiety both in the stomach the most that would make sense because uh disgust is a pathogen rejection uh fear middle of the chest i think that seems quite right interesting that happiness is basically just tuned down love depression's cool that depression it says here it's just sort of a low energy state or on your extremities as opposed to anxiety and i would agree with that i think anxiety is a much more active version of depression contempt like existing exclusively in the head is pretty cool pride so the swelling in the chest makes sense shame the uh cheeks that's people get embarrassed and envy sort of little bit of head and some heart that's actually would you disagree with any of those i think it feels it feels accurate as trying to be neutral right now uh could you search topography of tears please jared this was done by i think an artist that made this uh go to that video that instagram video let's just see what this uh what this lady's going to say third one click and open that your tears look different underneath the microscope depending on the emotion that you're experiencing this project was called the topography of tears by rosalind fisher she's a photographer and what they did is they looked at tears underneath the microscope and you will see that depending on what these participants were experiencing their tears look different this is tears of laughter versus tears of change tears of grief versus tears from cutting onions wow tears when someone is experiencing a moment of catharsis whereas someone is experiencing a moment of change i'm a therapist and i often show this to my clients because i think it gives a really good demonstration that crying is actually really important at times to release certain things from our body and being able to see that our tears actually look different depending on what we're experiencing i think really demonstrates that really well did you know insane that's cool i want to know what the fuck it just ask jared as chachi bt from the topography of tears study what are the differences in the structure of tears or why are they there because i want to know what what is inside of the tear that's different is it more salt content is it like what how much shit's in tears like i guess maybe you could have you could i don't know his cortisol in the blood that leaks into the tears but surely tears are kind of like sperm produced in advance and then released uh there are three main categories basal tears constantly produced lubricate the eyes reflex tears produced in response to irritants like onions and emotional tears key biochemical difference here we go is that emotional tears contain higher concentrations of certain proteins and hormones including prolactin adrenocorticotropic hormone stress related hormone leu encafellin a natural pain relieving peptide differences in minerals such as potassium and manganese when tear dries on a slide these dissolved substances crystallize into different patterns wow there isn't a simple one-to-one mapping of grease or grief always looks like x and joy always looks like y the patterns vary considerably even within the same emotional category the amount of ratios of protein salts hormones and other biochemical i didn't realize that you had that much obviously you can cry for different reasons if i start cutting an onion in front of you or if you're in pain or if you're feeling something or if you're just lubricating your eyes testosterone tears as well the higher the higher t that you have the completely different that's great that's what yeah drake lovecki is tears from bloomer actually a protein shake for the people that don't know greg lovecki has got 2 000 nanograms per deciliter of testosterone greg's tears i suppose that's actually in this bag it's not money it's just greg's next testosterone or you pull up greg's tears they're just fucking exactly they've got they've vascular tears uh yeah yeah it's uh the emotions thing's been interesting uh trying to navigate the world i don't know if you've seen it but i've seen it this over the last 18 months or so i still think kind of interested in what the the conversation around men showing emotions is obviously i've talked about it a lot like everyone's talked about it a lot but uh one of the interesting wrinkles that i learned about was i don't think that men are particularly good at receiving other men's emotions that we often talk about guys need to open up more look at all of the people that are taking their own lives whatever it is however many men per minute or men per day are doing this uh you need to open up but a lot of the time if a guy does that on the internet it's not just women that are unaccommodating to a guy that's maybe crying or feeling bad or seeming a little weak like guys i would guess on average are actually more discarding men are less accommodating of other men's sad emotions than women are and a lot of the time these would be the same men that would say something to the effect of wow the men's mental health's in a state like nobody really cares that much you go okay so which one is it because if you're not prepared to hold your boy like while he's going through a hard time you don't also really get to say we need to talk about men's mental health more you need to put where your like your emotions where your mouth is so to speak my natural thought at least from my experiences i don't expect friends to be these pure mixed martial artists that have everything across the board so i know if let's say for example i want to break down in tears there's certain people who i will who i'd speak to and then there's other friends where if i you know what i mean want to fucking pull it together i'll speak to them so this like having a little bit more of a decentralized on-chain uh friend base i just think yeah i think expecting the person who helps you to pull it together to then also be the person that's perfect with your emotions it's hard to have that i agree but if it's the person who helps you to pull it together if it's the person who uh is saying we need to have better resources for men's mental health but they're also not being accommodating that just seems like a kind of hypocrisy to me and this is from uh uh men are good tom golden's thing and um it makes sense because what you basically have as a man like i think that it takes a lot of work for guys to get over their sort of visceral ick of other men's sad emotions this is a price that's maybe not seen by women or it's also hidden by men but if there's a guy who's able to sit in her like charlie hooper for instance or conor beaton or joe hudson or dr k these are people that are trained professionally to be able to do this obviously the fact that they can sit they've had to get over a lot of their programming because your programming as a man is if i'm around another guy who doesn't seem to be able to hold it together emotionally he's an unreliable ally how do i know that when we go on our next hunt or when the tribe from the next valley comes and tries to attack us that he's actually going to be able to hold it together i don't know that he's going to be able to hold it together i don't know that he's going to break down in tears there's the same reason this is a spicy one i need to put a second fucking pair of glasses on for this william costello taught me that most homophobia in men isn't homophobia it's femophobia so we're actually the disgust mechanism that gets turned on or the aversion that some men have to seeing gay men isn't necessarily about the gayness it's about the femininity that is being presented by a man and that's the same mechanism that unreliable ally if this guy doesn't seem to be showing the typical masculine uh uh sort of control conquer aggression 10 toes forward energy that i expect from other guys what happens when there is some sort of altercation or issue in future that we need to to step in on so yeah femophobia homophobia is like kind of interesting i immediately think of who's the most masculine gay man in the world who then breaks that who creates a paradox tell me who's the most masculine gay man that you know i don't know usually multiple drinks deep at the time that is a fucking great question a lot of the tech bro people i i would you look at peter teal and guess gay i don't think i'd look at him and guess gay he was in the closet for a long time until gorka yeah yeah with the hulk hogan thing by the way uh if you need a new listen on audible of a very old relatively old book ryan holiday's book conspiracy guy that's written a lot about stoicism books on stoicism are good this one's his best one by a distance so fucking good can you ever you tell me you've read it a while ago it's fucking amazing it's so fantastic what's the plot it's around hulk hogan so um peter teal gets ousted by uh gorka i think it's gorka's subsidiary company i can't remember what it's called um that was reporting on silicon valley and uh i swear the headline was something like peter teal's gay as shit people and uh at this point he still wasn't out about the fact that he is and he held on to this for maybe five or six years and he's building this case behind the scenes and he recruits this guy called uh mr a mr a was this operator that came to him who was just going to be able like a legal expert uh machiavellian conniving sort of guy and they start to look for ways to take down this company and then the hulk hogan sex tape happens and during the trial for the hulk hogan sex tape it turns out that uh terry baleo hulk hogan's just got like infinity money he's got the best lawyers he's got he just can drive this thing into the ground to keep on taking gorka down it turns out that peter teal uses the hulk hogan sex tape as a way to get back at the organization and reporters that ousted him as gay like nearly 10 years ago by the time that this thing happens and it the revenge is a dish best served cold is no better epitomized by any other story than that like a decade of just sitting on it and seething and having you know this huge secret that you've kept as a very public person who's early into facebook and supporting like conservative candidates and yeah it's widely discussed uh the evil nature of social media or the ills of social media that exist today and a lot of people hark back to this previous long-gone era where you're from but the where i am from no not not quite there just yet but the golden the thing people forget about the golden era that they're harking back to is the shit we always forget the shit and even the journalist standards that used to exist the amount of journalists particularly british press that would pay people to sleep with people then report the stories this was a regular thing in journalism in the uk even um numerous football players athletes they'd have to be constantly wary of does this person actually like me or has a well-known british publication who i shan't name because they're still going is paying or they may pay somebody to approach me um is using it as a story that was a thing that was why that was common like a honeypot type scenario should be a crime and that was was that is that legal was that legal i i don't know but i guess it's a crime i guess it's a crime i guess it's a crime what's the difference between a kiss and tell and pay and a pay and kiss and tell like the order of the money is the only thing that's different here yeah depends when the invoice yeah technically gets cleared always comes down to finance yeah yeah well it depends if you've got a negative cash conversion cycle do you want to explain why you were so obsessed with jim shark's negative cash flow conversion no no no no um first off we don't defend yourself no no no stop defending yourself so for people uh who want to know what a cash flow conversion cycle is which is approximately about one percent of people listening i'll get through it fast essentially a cash flow conversion cycle is when you get the money so let's say for example chris is running new tonic he'll pay a manufacturer to make this beautiful drink then um he will obviously sell it to potentially supermarkets big stores around the uk there's a crunch period of well how much crunch period is there and how much crunch period is there and how much crunch period is there and how much credit can i get with manufacturers and then how much credit can i get with the supermarkets because if you if you have to pay your manufacturers today for stock that will arrive in three months and then the supermarket doesn't pay you for three months that's what's that's a i think a positive cash flow conversion cycle so a negative cash flow conversion cycle is when you get the um you almost have a delayed for the manufacturers and then you can sell right away which is a lot of what e-commerce companies do so i was once at a bar in manchester talking to my friend and we were talking about the conversion cycles and we saw these like repelling any woman within a five meter radius well no no we saw we saw these group of girls like look over and like say hello and i had a girlfriend at the time so i wasn't wasn't gonna do anything but i just started laughing at the thought of if only they could hear they would be repulsed well we've done that was it uh at summer of loud festival last year in uh the amphitheater georgia amphitheater here in austin and we were backstage and we got all the cool passes and all of these like cool metal chicks walking around and we were like oh my god we're going to do this and we're going to do this and then a couple came over and sat down next to us what the fuck were we talking about i swear it was something like this there was some debate that we were having and these girls sat down from a distance and we had a couple of our kind of like super chatty mates with us keegan was with us right who's essentially like proper roman adonis not you laugh the chad's chad yeah he's the chad's chad and these women come over and obviously look thinking what are they going to be talking about it's going to be so cool and sexy and they came over and they were talking about how we all come right optimization background the blended ncpa of our facebook ads manager could be doing with a little bit of improvement well tell me how many are split testing on the back end it's interesting i'm not sure if opus 5.5 is actually going to be as good as people expect and they just slowly over time got this look of it's probably it wasn't boredom it was closer to disgust it was like watching somebody desecrate a beautiful temple because what they saw was this amazing potential in keegan this beautiful man but the way that he was handling himself and what he was talking about the biggest takeaway i always get whenever i'm in a friend's birthday or a bachelor party there'll be a moment where i'll just start chuckling to myself at the often it'll be somebody might have a girlfriend like one of the guys in the will have like a new relationship where she's been like really wary about him going to this birthday party or bachelor party meanwhile it's me in a one hour debate at dinner talking about whether i'm going to be able to do this or not i'm going to be able to do this or not i'm going to rude van istoroy was a better footballer than thierry henry like that's what they don't see or like jim jim shark's negative cash flow conversion cycle i think if a lot of guys girlfriends or wives could see that they have this imagination that there's going to be all this chaos and these girls that are coming over and the strip club meanwhile it's usually a google sheet or excel formulas it's it's us trying to track down that guy that bought the cigars and opened up the straight of her moves by sneaking himself and into the middle of a run yes yeah yeah yeah but i wonder if it might be inverse it might be the fact that the guys that you don't think are getting up to naughty shit while they're away probably are yes and the guys that you don't think are getting the guys that you think are getting up to it aren't they're the ones that are talking about how they come from a conversion rate optimization background yeah very very important uh by the way if you're coming to the uk and ireland to a later this year i'm going to be bringing some of you up on stage to answer your questions so if you've got a question or a story that you think would be worth me talking about you can go to chriswilliamson.live slash questions and give me your questions and i'll be picking the best ones and you can join me on tour so most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit but what if i 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functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom a checkout little question for you yes um i can't pronounce this word but i'm going to give it a go have you heard of i think it's hypo hypo minetta no so i got it from my friend uh henrik carson who has this wonderful sub stack and during my era the either ancient greek or roman era it's very different to what it was today so we have this kind of bombardment of new information we're constantly scrolling social media i'm sure you have this where you'll see this amazing pithy tweet or you'll read something incredible and your life's going to change forever after from this point onwards. And then three months later, you see the thing again, you go, "Oh, I completely forgot about that." And it had no impact at all. So what the ancient Greeks or the Romans used to do would be they would have a book of all these insights that they'd collected. And each morning, they would think of a problem that they're facing and they would go and meditate on the specific passage or the specific quote. So this is where my question kicks in. I'd say you was to have that little notepad, notebook of lessons that you often forget or simply just wish that you took more seriously, that you would look at each day, what is on your list? So what are the lessons that you've learned? What are the lessons that you've learned? What are most known but not followed? Not necessarily not followed by other people. It could even be followed by yourself, just not as much. You always underpriced this lesson. You wish you took it more seriously. Something like no amount of worrying is going to make any difference to what happens. Some lesson along those lines, because worrying is very addictive. It's very addictive because it feels like making progress. Hal Mosey once, when I started doing investing, he gave me this really wonderful piece of advice on a call. And he said, "The most dangerous calls in all of business are just calling to connect. Would just love to explain the business to you." Because they have all of the trappings of doing work and making progress, but never result in work being done. You need to join that sequence further down the line once more scrutiny is being done, like the first stage, second stage. This is why I think in order to end up in front of him to do acquisition.com, you're 10 stages deep into the circle of hell. And worrying kind of feels like the same thing, although it's not as conscious. You're not doing it because you think that it's going to. You forget, this is not moving my situation forward. No amount of anxiety is going to change the outcome. No amount of worrying is going to actually make a difference to anything that happens. And ultimately, all of your worries were a waste of time in any case. There's a great book of stories of interviewing all people about their lives. And one of them, she said, "What was one of your best lessons you ever had?" And she goes, "I had this nightmare thing that I was ruminating on worrying about. So I called one of my friends and I tell her, I just kept spilling and telling everything that I'm worried about." And she goes, "Do you remember six months ago when you came to me about this nightmare worry that you had?" And she names it back. She goes, "No, I don't." And she goes, "Exactly. Just hung up." She goes, "It was one of the best lessons of my life. I was like, 'Oh, this thing is going to be here today and then gone tomorrow.'" I also saw this humorous statistic, which was they had people apparently with generalized anxiety disorder put down their worries and then they tracked how many of them came true. And that's what I've seen. Yeah. And it was found that 91.6% didn't come true. But if you have true anxiety, you start wondering, "Well, what about that remaining 8.4%?" That's real anxiety right there. I'm in the 8.4%. I knew that I would be in the 8.4%. There was another guy who helped Lewis Capaldi of anxiety. I think he wrote a book called "Addicted to Anxiety." And he apparently once cured somebody of their anxiety. And he removed a lot of the issues. And he rang them the next day saying, "I'm anxious. Where's my anxiety gone?" It's like almost this addiction that exists. Yeah. I was talking to Joe Hudson yesterday and there's a bunch of stuff that's maybe exciting or that is exciting that's happening. I shouldn't hedge the fact that this thing is maybe exciting. A bunch of stuff going on that's exciting. And I was like, "I'm a little. I'm unsure how to navigate this preamble, just the buildup toward the buildup." And he said, "If I was your coach," which obviously he is, he's like, "If I was your coach, I would tell you that you need to work on your pleasure anxiety, which is that being excited about something in advance often feels an awful lot like anxiety." Very, very close. What would it be for you? What would the lesson be that you most repeatedly come back to or want to know? You know, one would be David Ogilvie's line of, "You think you're advertising to a standing army, but you're actually advertising to a moving parade." So in the niche world of advertising, Ogilvie applies it in the sense that he would work with these huge brands. And these huge brands would be like, "Why are we still running this ad? I've seen it everywhere." And it's like, "Nobody else has seen things the way you've seen them." But what I love about that idea is it's not just necessarily ad campaigns. It applies to. We constantly observe ourselves significantly more than anybody else is observing us. So it's this standing army versus moving parade. And how does that relate to you? Okay. Like a little one, right? So I put together this list recently of all the best books that I've read and I'll post it out there, highagency.com/books for people listening. I'll post it out there and I will then think about, "Oh, I don't necessarily want to post that again. People have already seen it." But then on the 17th post, somebody goes, "Oh, I just found this." And often it's the case that nobody has fucking seen it. It's always a moving parade. So that's one lesson. There's a legendary story in advertising circles about auto magnate Henry Ford. He had a layout of the company's latest print ad tacked to his wall, which he saw every time he came into his office. One day, he loudly announced that he was tired of the ad and it was high time to create a new one. "But Mr. Ford," his assistant stammered, "that hasn't even started running yet." It's only natural for a client to get tired of an ad long before its intended audience does. So how can you determine when it's time to change your campaign? And they'll see this when, this is particularly British syndrome. I don't think Americans struggle with this as much, but when a Brit will do some new creative endeavor, do a business, do anything, they almost feel past the first initial ask to follow up. It's very un-British, Christopher. Were you friends with me when I made "Gas Your Friends" up my tagline for a couple of years? Yes. That would have been at the start of our friendship. I believe I was gassed. Yeah, well, you were. You've actually been probably the most gassed of all of my friends about everything I've done. But yeah, I just had this line that, "If you support Rihanna's new single more than your friend's new business, you're a bad friend." It's so fucking true. Gas your friends up, dude. Buy their shit, support them, share their work, tell them they're doing good. Obviously, don't encourage them to do something which is horrendous and give them feedback, but at the very least, you can support it. They've done something in their. Buy the fucking ticket, go to the show. Support your friends. It's very mimetic though, right? You kind of have. Someone needs to begin. It's like having an open, emotionally intimate relationship. Until somebody opens up, it's difficult for someone. No, I mean more that I think one of the reasons why you have less of that is that people see sometimes their friends, weirdly, as rivals because they have more similarities in common with them. Narcissism has small differences. Maybe, but I think my point still stands, which is if. Yeah. you want your friends to support you more, a great way to do that is to start supporting your friends. Now, it's another Joe Hudsonism when it comes to communicating that if you show up in your relationship differently, after about six or seven, very differently, there is a typical flow that you and your partner go through. They get to be the bully and you get to be the victim, or they get to be the victim and you get to be the savior. There is a dance, a sort of tone or rhythm to the way that you communicate. And if, when that happens, you show up in a very different way, presumably a much more positive way, more regulated, more calm, more peaceful, more empathetic, it only takes seven times of you doing that. They'll notice after the first time. After the next few, they'll really notice. After about seven times, on average, he said, "That pattern just can't continue." It's like playing tennis with the other person not hitting the ball back. Mm-hmm. So if you want to change the situation that you're in, the best thing to do is change your own behavior. That's beautiful. It's cool. That would be on my list. What else would you have on your list? Your default choices are almost always wrong. If you don't step into your programming and just think a little, and this is where the rumination trap comes in because you think, "Ooh, thinking's good for me. Let's do an infinite amount. Let's do an infinite amount of it." Mm-hmm. No. You need to do just a little bit. You need to practice something before you end up relying on instinct. At least that's a lesson that keeps coming back to me that most of your defaults are confused chemical signals coming from your body or social norms or paths of least resistance or the way that you've dealt with past trauma. Almost all of those are not things that you've consciously chosen. Yes. The things that you want aren't the things that you want to want. If you don't take some time designing your desires, you end up following the path that everyone else does. And outsourcing your wisdom to the group is usually a bad idea even what you said then around the questioning the first thought assuming the first thought isn't necessarily you i always go back to that wonderful uh meditation exercise of what's the next thought going to be yeah you sit there try it now if anybody when you sit there and you just ask yourself i'm not going to think but let's just see what the next thought appears is you just become the watcher and i find when i did that for the first time it was simply uh the bayern munich player iron robin cutting in on his left foot and then it's like huh why is that there i haven't thought of him in a long long time and you begin to realize a lot of it is just an automatic response what else do you like from uh meditation questions i know that's one of your favorites what are some of the other ones that have been really resonant with you you you "the problem with uh talking about meditation is firstly like a wanker well yeah but it's very late for that so that you've got to you've got to address that up front the second problem is have you ever heard there's this great line where when what happens is learning meditation it's kind of like learning japanese and then you go and tell everybody how wonderful it is but you do so in japanese so that's why when you read anything about it it almost doesn't make sense a cool one is to try and turn uh like awareness in on itself have you ever tried that where you think of your awareness and then you try and become aware of it and it's almost like this mirror and you go oh that's quite scary that's one of uh sam's like quick hit things where you try and catch your own awareness quickly it's kind of strange because most of the time when you're doing any meditation or mindfulness it's this evolving it's slow but this is more like trying to get an animal in a trap except the animal is you and the trap is also you uh anyway george mack ladies and gentlemen love you all thank you very much for tuning in where should people go high agency.com forward slash books read them heck yeah all right goodbye my beauties dude yes let's go close your eyes exhale feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today well i'm letting go of the worry that i wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class i got them delivered free from 1-800 contacts oh my gosh they're so fast and breathe oh sorry i almost couldn't breathe when i saw the discount they gave me on my first order oh sorry namaste visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order contacts.