You Are A Badass

Can you believe we're approaching, like, two years since The Secret? I can't even believe we're approaching two years of doing this show. We're past two years of doing this show. We've almost produced, like, 15 episodes. It's like a British sitcom. We'll see you in four years, and we'll produce a Christmas special for some reason. No, if I keep doing books like this, my output's going to be crazy. You just read this yesterday, didn't you? We're just talking about it. I woke up early this morning and did it. All right, let's do this. Let's do this. Do you have a zinger? I literally don't even know the book. I don't even know what book we're doing. How could I zing? You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. I've literally never heard of this book, and you have not told me anything. You're like, all you've said is that we're doing a dumb book. This is, like, the biggest sort of one book thing we've done so far. Oh, okay. You could literally say, I know nothing about this book. You just promised me that it was going to be the dumbest book we've done so far. Okay, let's do it. Okay. Michael. Peter. What do you know about You Are a Badass? This is the first time I'm hearing about the name of this book, but I was hoping. Hoping it was called The Secret Atomic Rich Dad Workweek. So my promise to you and myself and our listeners was that after the 2024 election, we would do some lighter work. Yes. No more politics. No more discussions about fascism or whatever. No. I'm going to read the dumbest looking book I can find and then tell you about it. Just like the United States of America, we are getting dumber every single day. So the book is You Are a Badass, subtitle, How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. I can't imagine what would be problematic, the points we've made in every previous episode. I can't believe we would return to any of those previous points. This came out in 2013, written by Jen Sincero. They've been very popular in self-help circles. It spawned some spinoffs, including You Are a Badass at Making Money, which I also read. You Are a Badass for Teens. You Are a Badass Dad. So the author, Jen Sincero, wasn't really a known entity. Like many of our authors, just sort of came out of nowhere. She was a musician for a bit. She was in like a punk band in the 90s, started to become an author, and then made it big with this book. So just some lady. Yeah, not to be rude, but it's some lady. Usually it's a dude saying stuff. So this is a diversity hire on the show. This is us giving in to DEI mandates. We've talked about one book theory. Many of our books have overlap with one another, leading me to my tongue-in-cheek theory that we were converging upon a single book. But reading this, it felt like we were going beyond that and more into something like copyright infringement, more into something that feels illegal. So fully just like you fed all these books into ChatGPT, and then it spit out this book. Right. This is another book where the. The central theme is the law of attraction, the idea that you can attract positive things into your life through positive thinking. And if you recall, that was the central premise of The Secret. And that was one of like the first books that we did that truly caught me off guard with how unhinged it was. Because I went into it thinking like, oh, the power of positive thinking. Sure. Vision boards. Yeah. But then it ends up being about how you can literally attune yourself to the universe. The universe will deliver you the things that you want, not in some metaphorical way, but like scientifically. These all converge into like you can think your cancer away. Yes. Your kid has measles. Like believe better. Do better brain. This book has another similarity to The Secret, which is that it's full of just random quotes of famous people. Yeah. If you try to Google them, the only sources are on those like quote aggregator websites. Right. It's like quote sprout. Right. Right. You can never find out if they're real. There's like a Tesla quote in one of the early chapters that says like, if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. Oh. I looked into it and as far as I can tell, it traces back to like something an acquaintance of his claimed that he said back in like the 40s. Right. I'm not trying to do a gotcha. I just find it interesting how these books try to present the idea of the law of attraction as if it is like a secret of the Illuminati. Right. Right. Like until now, only the. The world's smartest and wealthiest and most powerful people knew about this. And now you do, too. And the only way they've been trying to get the word out is in every airport bestseller for the last 30 years. Right. This is the secret knowledge. It's being leaked to you. In every book. I'm going to send you like an introduction to the concept here. She says, the universe is made up of source energy. You are vibrating at a certain frequency and everything you desire or do not desire is also vibrating at a certain frequency. And vibration attracts like vibration. We're all attracting energy to ourselves all the time, whether we realize it or not. And when we're vibrating at a low frequency, feeling pessimistic, needy, victimized, jealous, shameful, worried, convinced we're ugly, yet expect high frequency, awesome things and experiences to come into our lives. We are often disappointed. You need to raise your frequency and match the vibration of the one you want to tune into. This is very scientific. I think she's correct here. This is I'm sure you've you've emailed numerous physicists. Yeah. Everybody clapped when I brought this up at a physics lecture. In her other book, You're a Badass at Making Money, she says this about it. Just like electricity and gravity, two things that impact our everyday lives, and we don't actually see that few of us understand and that, hello, everyone believes in anyway. Universal intelligence and the power of our thoughts are real and affecting our lives every single moment. You may not understand the intricacies of how it all works, but still, you're totally down. Jen Sincero says that you have this subconscious ego that is essentially trying to sabotage you at all times. The universe is picking up these negative thoughts, right? And then it's delivering you negative results. And this is like a common theme in self-help, which she acknowledges. She says that in self-help, this is referred to as the ego uppercase, which I guess is like a sort of bastardization of Freud's ego. She says that she will refer to it as the big snooze. Which she says is appropriate because, quote, So before right-wingers started saying you can't do anything because of woke, Jen was saying you can't do anything because of sleep? Yeah. It's very funny that, like, the basic advice here is, is always just like, yeah, be optimistic, you know? Whenever you can, it's useful to be optimistic. But, like, that's two sentences, and you need 200 pages. And so here we are. You're like, we're going to need some Tesla quotes. One of the recurring themes of the book is the idea that when you do improve your life by positively vibrating with the universe, some of, like, your family and friends will turn into jealous haters. Right, really? So I'm going to send you this. One of the first things you might have to deal with when you decide, to wake up from the big snooze and make massive positive changes in your life, is disapproval from other people who are snoring away. Especially the people closest to you. Lame as this may sound, they may express their discomfort in all sorts of ways. Anger, hurt, bafflement, criticism, snorting every time you talk about your new business or your new friends, constant remarks about how you're not the way you used to be, brow furrowing, worrying, teasing, blocking you from all social media outlets. I don't know. It sounds like what she's saying. It sounds like what she's doing is getting you mentally prepared to be an asshole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the weird cult thing of, like, everyone's going to hate you. But, like, if all you're doing is, like, I don't know, trying to get more done at work and, like, use Duolingo or something, your friends should not be, like, blocking you. They're just mad at you because you're good at business now. Like, that's what she wants you to think. Has she given any specifics yet? I feel like this is much easier to talk about if it's, like, okay, you just start waking up early and going jogging or, like, whatever advice she's going to give. It just seems like, in general, she's like, you should be better, and then you'll face all this resistance. But, like, it kind of depends on what be better means. It takes a while for her to give any practical advice. Okay. And there's not a ton in this book. There's a little bit more in the making money one where she's like, make lists. And so you're like, yeah, cool. Yeah, I don't think my friends are going to be blocking me on social media for that. Which is why you know that she's getting you ready to just cut off your friends and family when they're like, hey, you need to stop with this MLM. And you're like, Jen warned me about you. Right, right, exactly, exactly. And she goes, She goes a step further, she says that As you try to change your life, the big snooze, your evil subconscious, will actively try to undermine you. I mean. This is a very big part of the book. She says the big snooze will do everything it can to stop you from changing and growing, especially since you're attempting to obliterate the very identity that you and everyone else has come to know as you. But also, she seems to believe that it has supernatural powers. Right. I'm going to send you something. This is her talking about how the big snooze reacts when you try to wake up and improve your life. She says it's a detox of such staggering proportions that sometimes it can feel like the universe is conspiring against us. Trees fall on our cars. Our computers crash. We find our significant others in bed with our best friends. We get our identities stolen. We get the flu. Our roofs cave in. We sit and gum. When in reality, the big snooze is creating chaos in an attempt to self-sabotage and keep everything as is. Instead of moving forward into unknown, yet desperately wanted new territory. These sentences. Every successful person knows this and has been through this. I sat and gum because I'm making lists. Every successful person knows that your evil subconscious can fell a tree. Just ask Jeff Bezos. She's also got we get the flu on here, too, because these books always converge on not believing in the germ theory of disease. I'm tracking my sleep, and that's why I got gone. Gonorrhea. I just sent you another bit. She says, I have a client who decided to quit his ho-hum yet high-paying job to start his dream company from scratch. He had no idea where to start, what he wanted to do, or how he was going to pull it off. And regardless of the fact that he had a family that was counting on him, no guarantees and even fewer leads, he quit his secure job and went for it because he was determined to create a life he loved. That's when the BS hit the fan. By the way, when she says BS, she means big snooze, not bullshit. An incredibly confusing thing that reiterates throughout. Not the book. He got not one, but two flat tires after leaving a coaching session with me. His babysitter ran into his wife's car while driving his car. The water main under his kitchen exploded. And right before his first big deal went through, he got hit by a freaking bus. I'm pleased to report he's fine. Again, I just want to sit in this for a moment. She's claiming that when you try to change your life, your subconscious will alter the physical world. In ways that include but are not limited to possibly controlling the weather, but also disease. Your subconscious will get behind the wheel of a bus. Yeah, this is what might happen, by the way, which I just want to be clear, makes this immediately not worth it. Like if this were true, yes, your subconscious is going to try to actually kill you with a bus. But at the end of this, you will be running your own small business. Yeah, I could just not make the lists. I don't have to make lists. This is one of those books where, like, I've encountered people and seen them online saying, like, well, what's so bad about this book? It had some good advice. And I'm immediately like, I know you didn't read it. Because what the book actually says is that your subconscious will manipulate the physical world to try to kill you if you leave your job. There's also a lot of stalling here. It reminds me of when I was researching the Rich Dad Poor Dad episode and I was looking into, like, online financial grifters. There was this one guy with, like, a super local restaurant-ass website. That was, like, the secrets of finance. And then he's, like, listing, like, these are the people who know these secrets. And then he lists a bunch of famous people. And when you finally, like, scroll your ass down, there's, like, a two-hour-long fucking YouTube video. You finally get to the advice and it's, like, you should buy gold. He was just procrastinating telling me the actual thing. I almost wonder whether the point of this is to, like, get you to buy in. Like, she spends so much time telling you how powerful and dangerous this knowledge is that, like, by the time she's actually giving you advice, you're fully invested in a way that you wouldn't be. If you just opened the book and it was, like, try to be nice to people, maintain an air of positivity about you, you'd put it down immediately. Yeah, yeah. But if it's, like, God will try to kill you if you listen to this. Do not read the rest of this book unless you're ready to die. People are, like, ooh, shit, this is hot. It's got to be partly sunk cost fallacy because you're, like, look, I spent 20 bucks on this book and then I spent six hours reading it by the time I got to the actual content of it. She also does that grifter thing. Where she basically, like, shit talks people who don't like the book. She says, like, if you try getting through this book and decide it's a bunch of crap, you can go back to your sucky life. Relax. If you don't like this podcast, you're a dumb loser. That's fine. Go back to reading The Atlantic, I guess. It's just, like, relax. You don't need to do this. It's also funny because it's her first book. So it's not even, like, this is a tried and tested approach. It's, like, I'm just saying stuff and, like, people are going to try to stop you. The middle portions of the book. The middle portions of this book are pretty inoffensive. There's some reasonably good advice on, like, self-love. There's some advice on meditating. Very common advice about positivity. All good. I'm skipping over it because this is a bad faith episode. That's, now you're talking about our haters. Our haters are correct about this show. The one-star reviews are right. So another thing that this has in common with The Secret is that they talk about having the ability to, like, harness the power of the universe to give you whatever you want. But then the advice is always just, like, and we will use that power to start a small business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whenever she is reaching for an example of what you might want to accomplish, it's either making money or, like, finding a boyfriend. That's another thing it always leads to. It's, like, how to get thin and get rich. There's no solving child poverty chapter or anything. It is funny because, like, the thing that is, like, most correlated with happiness is, like, meaningful relationships, like, ability to form intimacy. And I feel like these books don't really do that. She's already telling you to shed your friends. Yeah, but the number two thing is being your own boss. Have you ever thought about that? So one of the big problems that this belief system runs into very quickly, and you sort of flagged early on, is victim blaming. Because the belief here is that your thoughts are responsible for whatever happens to you. So the bad things that happen to you are sort of your fault, even if they appear to be out of your control. She says, Probably the worst example of this is when she starts to talk about depression. Have you tried cheering up? Vibrate in a happy way. The way she frames this is that everyone tells themselves a story about their life and that that manifests in reality. So here's one part. It's good that even though it feels awful, when you feel awful, you don't have to work hard or do the laundry or go to the gym. It also feels very familiar and cozy and comfortable. It gets you attention. People come in and check on you and sometimes bring food. It gives you something to talk about. It allows you to not try too hard or move forward and face possible failure. It lets you drink beer for breakfast. Ooh. The problem with depression is that it rules so much. Yeah, it's great. That's what she seems to be saying, right? Everyone's taking care of you. You get so much positive attention. It's like she heard just like a couple of facts about depression where someone was like, yeah, people sleep in and they stopped doing their chores and she was like, sick. They must be doing that on purpose because that sounds phenomenal. Here's a little bit more. If you were once depressed but have decided to let it go, stop listening to melancholy music. Stop talking about how lousy you feel. Stop pretending that putting on your bathrobe counts as getting dressed, etc. False. Instead, focus on the good and do the things you love to do. Make an effort instead of calling. Collapsing into the familiar feeling of being depressed. These people are always such pieces of shit. Absolute scumbags. It's so rare that somebody writes a book where it's like, ah, their heart's in the right place, but maybe the execution is off. This is just like you're a bad person if you think this. All right. We don't realize it, but we're making the perks we get from perpetuating our stories more important than getting the things we really want because it's familiar territory. It's what we're comfy with and we're scared to let it go. If we've been depressed or victimized, or whatever, if we've been depressed or victimized or whatever since childhood, we trick ourselves into believing that it's really who we are as adults in order to continue reaping the rewards. And the rewards is in quotes, which feels like she doesn't know how quote marks work because we would put rewards in quotes to make fun of her for saying that there are rewards for being depressed. I feel like as she wrote it, she knew that this was kind of a incredibly awful thing to say. And so she just put it in quotes to make it. Sort of unclear whether or not she was being literal here. I also love if you've been depressed or victimized or whatever. Or whatever. No editor was like, maybe think of a third thing or maybe you can just say depressed or victimized. This is good tips for our listeners who I imagine are disproportionately depressed. Yeah. Who's not depressed? Snap out of it, folks. Turn off Joy Division. Play Hey Ya by Outkast over and over again. There is like a tiny element of truth in that like it's pretty well established that trying to push yourself to do things, is in fact beneficial for people who are experiencing depression. But that's the hard part because that's kind of a that's like that's a symptom of depression is finding it really difficult to go out and do things and she's like you should go out and do things the idea that people are doing it on purpose is right come on and also for all the rewards like you're so popular with your friends when you talk about your mental health problems you know this is the heart of the book and the heart of a lot of self help books right in order for self help books to be helpful. Help to work the readers problems need to be entirely. internal. Because if they're not, if they're structural problems or if they're really about the actions of other people or institutions or medical condition, then there's like only so much advice the author can give. So they have to reframe everything as a mindset problem because that's a problem that they can pretend to solve. So they peddle this idea that like optimism isn't just helpful, it's magic. Well, that's what's so frustrating about it is because whenever you criticize these books, they can hide behind, oh, you don't think it's good to have a positive attitude? Right. Sure. To the extent that that affects things like, yeah, you should try to have a positive attitude. You shouldn't like overly focus on negative things. But on the other hand, that doesn't solve everything. And also you're entitled to have a bad day. The final section of this book, and don't worry, we are not almost on this episode. The final section of this book is titled How to Kick Some Ass. And it starts off with probably the worst anecdote I've ever heard written in the most irritating style that you could possibly imagine. She is a terrible writer from the excerpts. Oh, it is awful. I thought that you would perhaps learn this as you went. And you have. You immediately clocked that she is an awful writer. It's so bad. Now I want you to recalibrate your brain because the quality of writing is about to go to a place that my guess is you didn't really believe was possible. Remember Rich Dad, Poor Dad, how he was like a fool and his money? Our one big party. I don't know if anything can top that. Where at like 20 million copies sold, no one was like, that's a very common idiom that you're fucking up. Oh my God. That is so fucking, I forgot about that. God, Robert Kiyosaki is worth like $50 million. I think about that all the time. It's insane. I know. All right. I've sent you a long story. She says, the story goes that when Henry Ford first came up with the idea for his V8 motor, he wanted the engine to have all eight cylinders cast in one block. I have no idea what that means, but apparently it's a good idea. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't It was a tall order because his team of engineers was like, bitch, you crazy. You're making me read this. He told them to do it anyway. And off they grumbled to toil away at it only to come back and inform him that it was impossible. Upon hearing this news, Ford told him to keep at it no matter how long it took. He was all, I don't want to see your faces until you bring me what I want. And they were all, we just proved it can't be done. And he was all, it can be done and it all cannot. And he was all, can so. And they were all, no way. And he was all, way. So off they went again, this time for a whole year and nothing. So they go back to Ford. God, Peter. Like half the listeners just tuned out at how long that was. Yeah, but you need it. You need it all for it to really hit your brain. To just really accept that this is real. So they go back to Ford and there's lots of tears and finger pointing and hair pulling and Ford sends them off again and tells them it will be done. And they're like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And then in the lab, somewhere between folding origami swans out of their notes and making fart noises. Every time someone mentions the word Ford, his engineers do the impossible. That was one sentence. That's right. They discover how to make the eight cylinder engine block. This is what it means to make a decision for reals. When you make a no nonsense decision, you sign up fully and keep moving toward your goal, regardless of what's flung in your path. God, the premise of the story was so long ago that I've forgotten what the point is. Henry Ford did literally nothing over the course of this anecdote. She's like, this is about perseverance. This is about making a decision for reals. He's literally just yelling at his employees over the span of like two years until they do it. It doesn't illustrate her point at all. It's just like, be mean to your underlings. There's genuinely nothing to learn from this anecdote. I honestly don't like, I don't know what you could take away from this other than like something about unionizing maybe. Like the world is so full of these anecdotes. There's so many. And she just chooses one that's Henry Ford yelling at his employees. She's just assuming that you also have employees and you're not mean enough to them. So like 80% of the way into the book, she finally has a chapter dedicated to making money. Okay. This is what I've been waiting for. I've been hyped on this. Okay. Because we've cured our depression. I'm out of bed. Nobody's bringing me casseroles. Jen believes, of course, that the don't want to make money. Have you tried wanting money? All right. Sent you a bit. One of the biggest obstacles to making lots of money is not a lack of good ideas or opportunities or time, or that we're too slovenly or stupid. It's that we refuse to give ourselves permission to become rich. This is something me and Aubrey come across a lot too in like diet books. They're like, you don't think you have permission to be thin or whatever. And it's like, no, just becoming thin is hard. Excuse me, sir. I believe I deserve to be hot more than anything in the world. So let's move to the next, the next part of your advice. It just, it's a, it's a, it's a, I think kind of like sophisticated way of reframing something that isn't your fault into something that is your fault. They need it to be your fault so that they can solve the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Your face isn't structured like Timothy Chalamet's. That's because of God. I, what else do you have for me in that situation? Right. I did. I've been in LA for like three days and I saw Timothy Chalamet at Trader Joe's by which I mean, I was at Trader Joe's and my friend said, wouldn't it be weird if we saw Timothy Chalamet? That's basically the same. I like that. I was about to reveal myself as a little pop culture freak by being like, but isn't he on a media tour? Isn't he in con? I've got my, I've got my fingers on the twink pulse, Mike. So don't try to fool me. Okay. Here's her other, here's her following follow-up excerpt. Let's say your story is that you can't make money by staying broke. You get to be right. You get to be a victim, which makes you dependent on other people and gets you attention. Other people will offer to pay. You don't have to take responsibility. You get to give up before you start and avoid possible failure. If things in your life fall far below the mediocre scale, you get to blame other people and circumstances instead of taking risks to change it because you can't afford to take risks. Yeah. Being, being poor is so good. Being poor. That's why people are poor. It's like so good to be poor. People are so nice to you when you're poor. Doesn't that tell you the kind of circle she runs in where she's like, yeah, it's great to be broke because other people will offer to pay. That's not, I don't think you've been broke. People are going to think I'm being sarcastic or like kind of overdoing it or being snarky, but I do believe that she should go to jail for writing the paragraph. I'm sending you one more piece. We choose to stay in our stories because we get what I call false benefits from them. We get to keep our identities as a broke person. We get to blame our brokenness on things outside ourselves. I don't have time. I have seven kids. The economy sucks. I can't find a pen to write down my to-do list with. We don't have to push ourselves outside our comfort zones and risk failing, looking like an idiot, losing money, changing and becoming different from our family and friends. The list goes on and on. And it all comes down to this. You have to want your dreams more than you want your drama. This is what I've always said to people who have seven children in a bad economy. She says that she overcame this mindset when she realized that her dad showed his love by giving her money. And so she was subconsciously avoiding getting rich because it would be as though she was rejecting her father's love. Wait, she just like admits that like my dad gave me money? Yeah. Why are we listening to these people about anything? Your excuse for being poor is that you have seven kids. Mine was that my dad gave me too much money when I was younger. But also, yeah, I don't think that most people are subconsciously avoiding getting rich for bizarrely elaborate psychological reasons. When I lived in London. When I lived in London, I made 16,000 pounds per year, which is like $24,000. And like, I would just run out of money on like the 27th of every month. And then I would just like eat what I had in the cupboard and I would like walk everywhere. Well, wasn't it nice that other people were paying for you? And people, I never told anybody because it would have been too easy. I wanted to play life on hard mode. Yeah. At least with the depression thing, there's like some element. There's some plausible scenario to like, you can cheer your way out of depression. But this is like straight up. Like objective facts of like, how much money do people have in their bank accounts? I have a story from this book that I have that absolutely does not fit here, but I just want to tell it. She says that at one point she was staying on a farm for free. The only thing that she had to do was watch after the horse and two goats that they had at that farm. And one day she goes out shopping and she comes back five hours later and the goats have gotten into the house and wrecked the place. And she tells a story. It's just like, you know, kind of a funny story of goats tearing up this house. And then at the end of it, she says, in order to become rich, you must connect to your desire for money with the passion of a goat who wants in off the porch. That's the lesson that she took from the story where her only job was to watch these goats. And she let them into the house while she went shopping for five hours and fucked it all up. And she's like, the lesson here is about the perseverance of goats. And goats are just so persistent. Yeah, they really go after what they want. Like, that's the lesson Jen's taking. I really learned something about goats today. This is someone who, like, can't do anything. I would never share that story with anyone. It's humiliating. Now, here is another example of how Jen talks about poverty. She was broke years ago and she needed a new car. And here's the story that she tells. She says. The most painful part, really, was that even though all signs pointed to broke clueless and stuck, deep down I knew I could be doing so much better. Which is why, even though the sound of crickets could be heard echoing throughout my empty bank account, I wandered into the Audi dealership, took the brand new Q5 for a spin, and let the sales guy rattle on and on about leather this and premium that. It was about much more than a damn car. It was about no longer being the kind of person who takes what she can get and finally becoming the kind of person who creates exactly what she wants. Buying the Honda would have been the sensible thing to do, but I knew that adventure, true love, and a whole new way of life awaited me on the other side of my comfort zone. I was brave enough to buy a luxury car. So she buys the considerably more expensive car, and you're sort of reading the book thinking, well, okay, how did this work out? Yeah. And then she tells you. I almost instantly came up with a new way to pay off my Audi, and I'm certain that if I'd bought the Honda, I'd still be struggling to pay off my Audi. I'm certain that if I'd bought the Honda, I'd still be struggling to pay for it because I'd still be playing small. I'd still be in the mindset that I can't afford more, and I'm the kind of person who has to struggle to get whatever she can, that I can't break out of the mold and go get something completely out of my reach, et cetera. Just say your dad paid for it. This is taking forever. So she says, I almost instantly came up with a way to pay off the Audi, but she does not tell you what it is. Oh, really? She doesn't say it. She doesn't say it. She doesn't even bother? This is sort of a consistent where she's like, I got myself in this situation, and then I thought of a way to get out of it. And at first, I was furious that she repeatedly did this. But then I realized in her mind, this is the essence of the law of attraction. The actual method that she used to produce the money in the real world is irrelevant. The only relevant thing is her mindset. So she thinks that telling you how she made the money is superfluous. It's just like the natural output of her at a high frequency. Only a person with money would think that that's the problem. If you sort of try to boil down her financial advice into one thing, it's very clearly go into debt because that will put you in a more aggressive mindset. The lesson of the Honda Audi thing is more debt is actually better because it will propel you forward. You want to be running on adrenaline and credit card debt? For your entire 20s and 30s. This also, I hate to, I mean, I know we're like dunking on this dumb fucking book. But to me, there's like a real societal corrosion story here. Like it's so fucking corrosive to have these books around. It's such toxic fucking poison. And I think the core thing that like bugs me about this whole outlook is that you've got essentially ruling class people, wealthy people, who not only want to be wealthy and stay wealthy and have a comfortable life, they want you to fucking congratulate them for it. They want it to be virtue. Like, oh, wow, you didn't buy the Honda. You got the Audi. Oh, because like you're so brave. It's really like an act of self-actualization to do this. We're surrounded by people that are like part of the ruling class that are constantly gaslighting us about how much money and fucking power they have. Like you just wanted a nice car, so you got a nice car. Fine. I also found this rude as someone who bought a Honda fairly recently. This is targeting you specifically. She's like, well, I guess that's my loser mindset that I was like, oh, this seems like a reliable car. Yeah. Why don't you have permission to get an Audi, Peter? You didn't give yourself permission. Next time I'm going to get a Bugatti. It's going to cost me a million dollars. And that will, of course, propel me into a mind space where I can make a million dollars and pay it off. There's no other way to motivate yourself other than by buying things you can't afford. It's like the Klarna method of self-motivation. Probably the wildest story in this vein comes from her other book, How to Be a Badass at Making Money. She attached a book to a seminar about manifesting money. Oh, it's a seminar grift. At that seminar, she realizes she wants to be a life coach. This is she's doing the grift. She's doing it. She's doing the grift. Oh, my God. It's an Ouroboros. You went to a seminar and they were like, here's how to be a seminar grifter. And then you turn into a seminar grifter. And this whole fucking book is teaching me how to be a seminar grifter. The guy leading the seminar is selling coaching packages. The top tier package is a year long coaching thing with a bunch of one on one FaceTime with the guy. And it costs eighty five thousand dollars. Dude, you are getting scammed. You are getting scammed. She says that when she saw that price tag, she switched her thinking from no way to there must be a way. Hell yeah. She starts to believe that she can manifest the eighty five thousand dollars. Incredible. Here's how she does it. Remember that eighty five thousand dollars I told you I manifested to pay for my big fat coaching package? Well, I'm a tell you how. I did it because it was right up there with one of the scariest, most uncomfortable things I've ever done. Once I decided to get coached at that level for reals, instead of running and hiding like I did the first time around, I acted on an idea that came into my mind the moment it arrived. I got the idea of someone I could maybe borrow that money from someone who a very little about coaching and what she did know probably brought to mind words like snake oil and manipulative garbage and bunch of weirdos. B is the most frugal McDougal. B is the most frugal person I've ever met, the kind who has money but never ever spends it except a stockpiled toilet paper when it goes on sale. And C believed in me. I bought a plane ticket to fly to her house the moment the terrifying thought took over my brain and arrived on her doorstep, surprising the hell out of her. I risked being vulnerable to this person. I risked her thinking I was out of my mind, irresponsible, very possibly in a cult. And I will never forget the pained face she made when I told her how much I needed. But after much uncomfortable discussion, she forked it over. This is her mom, right? No, this is just a random friend as far as I can tell. Who has $85,000? Yeah, that's because Jen manifested it. She'd never met this friend before. She made up the friend on the flight. So she manifested this money by getting an $85,000 loan. And this is basically according to her when her career takes off. So she is ultimately able to pay it back. But again, she never actually details what exactly she did to start making more money. I also want to know so bad what the life coaching advice was that she paid $85,000 for. The life coach was become a life coach. That's what I was just about to say. Like the advice has to be like become a self-help grifter, right? Dude, imagine how hyped that guy was when the first person ever bought an $85,000 package. Like, you know that that's just there to dangle an extra high price sort of option in front of people so that they pay for like the $5,000 option and think that it's like a good deal. He just wanted to get her out of his hair. He's like, I'm just going to tell her $85,000. So she stops bugging me. And then she's like, I'll do it. Oh, fuck. So again, it seems pretty clear that she is telling people to go into debt in order to shift themselves into a money-making mindset so that they can pay it off. I love that you have to read between the lines of these books to find out what the advice is. She says, in order to transform your life, you may have to spend the money you do have, get a loan, sell something, borrow from a friend, put it on your credit, or manifest it in some other way. That's the thing with all these people. They're just like, spend money you don't have. Also, she's providing five specific examples of what you can do to transform your life here. And three of them are just different ways of going into debt, right? Just get a loan, borrow from a friend, put it on your credit card. Right. Get a loan, get a loan, or get a loan. Do you have any actual advice here? Yeah. So once again, we're left with this idea that any problem you have is just the result of your lack of a desire to fix it. If you don't have something, it's only because you didn't want it enough, right? There's no structural inequity. There's no generational poverty or anything like that. There aren't even individual barriers to getting money. Everything is literally vibes. Yeah. Every chapter in You Are a Badass at Making Money ends with a mantra that you are meant to repeat to yourself to get rich. I'm going to share with you all of the money mantras so that our listeners can repeat themselves and get rich. Okay. I love money because I love myself. I love money and money loves me. I love money because it's the root of so much awesome. I love money because money is always here for me. I love money because I love living an awesome life. I love money because it comes when I call. I love money and am grateful every day that it's surrounding me with its glorious awesomeness. I love money because I am a fearless, badass, money-making machine. I love money because it makes me more of who I truly am. I love money because it gives me freedom and options, and that's how I love money. I love money because I love living my life a whole lot of freedom and options. I love money because it lets me be the most me I can be. I love money and will not give up until I am surrounded by all the wealth I desire. I love money more than I love any single human life. I made that last one up, but the rest of them are real. I can see my vision growing redder as this goes on, that it's basically a rich person being like, it's so good to be rich. I'm just going to tell you all the ways it's going to be rich. It's good to like eat good food. It's good to like live in like a super big house. Do you guys know about this? Each of these mantras is accompanied by like what are basically thought exercises to get you thinking about money the right way. These people already believe this because otherwise they wouldn't have bought the book, Jen. I already think money is good, which is why I'm buying a self-help book about getting more money. Well, hold on. But here's some, um, here's some practical things you can do. Make a list of all the reasons why you deserve money. Make a list of some of the beautiful things that have happened in this world. thanks to money oh my god spend at least five minutes every day sitting in silence connecting with the energy of money imagine money flowing all around you filling you up moving in and out of your heart fucking god leave money around your house in various places so you get used to seeing it all the time remind yourself how abundant it is make it like an easter egg hunt that's also great i love these books also just have like straight up bad advice just like little piles of ones this reminds me of my cal my college roommate who used to get uh wasted and then around easter he would hide when he was drunk cadbury eggs around the apartment and then when he was sober he would he would like open a drawer and be like oh cadbury oh wait here also here's one of the practical tips go on the internet and do a search for the following text our deepest fear by marianne williamson what print it out tape it to your refrigerator and read it as often as possible oh my god me and aubrey talked about this on the show it's a it's a poem by marianne yeah this is a poem by marianne and it's a poem by marianne and it's a poem by marianne and it's a whole thing about how like you're afraid of being like thin and hot and rich yeah you're all you're doing is you're selling people on the premise of the book while still fucking wasting time not giving them tips it's basically reasons you should buy this book what do you mean those are tips write down all the reasons that you deserve money you're changing the mindset tips exist in the real world and the real world is fake what's real is your vibrations and she's this is like my biggest pet peeve where like you go on youtube to like learn something specific and you're like how to iron a shirt or whatever and then you click on a video and it's like don't you hate it when shirts get wrinkled having a wrinkled shirt is the worst we hate you're like yes i'm on the video you're telling me reasons i should be interested in this video but i'm already here when i am frantically youtubing how to tie a bow tie i'm in a hotel room and i need to be at a hotel room explain the history of bow ties please move forward the first word of your video should just be like one so at one point jen says my first experience with the power of mastering your mindset happened when i was working with my very first private coach the one who helped me start my online business helping writers complete their book proposals called write your damn book dot com so she's pitching her website in the middle of this yeah and who was also helping me hone my chops as a life coach at the time i'd worked with a couple of private coaching clients of my own here and there and had basically tripled my annual income with write your damn book dot com oh so it is the grift to be clear at this point jen has written one not very successful book which we'll talk about shortly and is admittedly broke and she is selling her coaching yeah and she's selling advice someone who's failed at the thing she's giving you advice on jen wants you to buy expensive coaching packages so that you can eventually sell expensive coaching packages like these people have nothing material to contribute to society they can't even tell you how to make money except as part of like this circular economy where everyone is both scamming and being scammed at all times there's repeating the scam to you that they fell for now that would have been basically the whole episode except i found something so unhinged that it changed the arc of what i was doing okay like i have sort of referenced in 2005 jen since share wrote another book i'm going to share with you a screenshot of the cover okay wait what it says the straight girl's guide to sleeping with chicks so this is her first book it's a book about well let's be clear this is this is exactly what it appears to be the straight girl's guide to sleeping with chicks this is an entire book dedicated to pretending that bisexuality is not real that is what this is hell yeah and i realized it was 2005 but my god little shout out here to a youtube channel savvy writes books oh yeah savvy she had a good video on this book and uh the other jen sincera books which unfortunately i found her videos for those after i uh was almost done the episode and then i cried because i could have saved a lot of time yeah she's a good follow yeah i'm gonna touch on some of the greatest hits from this book uh a lot of it is just tips for lesbian sex there are pictures of posed barbie dolls and i'm going to touch on some of the greatest hits from this book little strap-ons for visual aid that's why it took you so long to research this episode peter i will not be weighing in on this content you're like unfortunately i just have to read more i have to do more research for this episode look there are no two people less qualified to weigh in on this content there's only one acceptable type of gay sex and that's male on male that's why we're working together on the straight guy's guide to sleeping with dudes i want to be i want to be clear about some things up front here if you identify as straight you're going to have to but then like hook up with someone of the same gender and then you're like well that wasn't for me or that's not my main thing whatever you still consider yourself straight that's fine i'm not gonna nitpick the labels that people apply to themselves yeah and i have some sympathy for someone who's scared to identify as bisexual at a time when it wasn't as accepted right you know that those are sort of my caveats going into this i think you are wildly overthinking this peter i think she was trying to sell a book oh i agree i always love finding like the previous grift attempts by these grifters where like they just couldn't really make it work like i guess she was vibrating wrong but like she was shopping around like this is like a little persona and she actually basically says in the book that the title is clickbait like she basically says that yeah i'm being very careful because you can't get canceled for this you can say whatever you want i can literally do anything right now about lesbians and bisexuals in fact lesbians and gay men hate each other that's not even true it's true weird that people say but it's not actually no that was an episode of modern family i remember it quite well so with all those caveats about how i'm not biphobic or or anything like that i'm not problematic about this stuff she literally says quote it's not at all uncommon for straight women to get into committed monogamous relationships with other women but it's not uncommon for vegetarians to eat meat that's that's the thing she does this whole like labels who needs them sexuality is fluid thing throughout the book which like sure but there's a difference between saying hey i'm not into labeling my sexuality and being like oh i'm straight but i'm in a committed sexual and romantic relationship with someone of the same sex because that's not what straight needs no you're not doing sexual liberation you're just ignoring established human language you're you're you're getting into sexual dolezal territory if you keep insisting you're straight this i also do not think that this should be a problematic take i think that if you were like in a committed relationship with someone of the same sex you don't get to do this thing where i'm like i'm straight it's like words mean something she talks about moving in with a woman that you're in a relationship with she says quote if you live with your girlfriend but still call yourself straight people get up your ass even more than they do if you're just dating oh yeah yeah i'll bet if by like up your ass you mean they're like jen can you please just stop calling yourself straight it's getting disingenuous jen it's one thing to like not want to deal with labels it's another to just identify as straight while you're fully in a relationship with another woman which like by the way what does she think of the fact that you identify as straight in this scenario on my wedding day the guy i'm marrying he's like so as a straight guy i do take mike it's very it's very annoying when someone's like labels i hate labels i am straight though do not call me a fucking bisexual so she has various tips throughout the book uh some of them are completely off the wall unhinged and some of them are quite normal one of them is lesbians are into women if you're just experimenting don't be a dickhead and use her for sex when you can tell she has feelings for you zero pinocchios i'm gonna send you oh my god all right i'm starting to sweat i'm gonna send you you're so nervous for people yelling at you i'm on your side it's not it's not that it's not that this one it's just that it's getting it's gonna get increasingly unhinged and i felt like in the beginning i needed to give these qualifications and i needed to give because it seems like maybe this is going to be a situation where the title seems problematic but then the content is like yeah whatever yeah it's actually a situation where the title seems fine compared to the content oh my god so it's like a little graphic with like little icons of ladies and it says famous straight women who've dabbled madonna britney spears anne heche eleanor roosevelt zina not a real person ione sky janice dickerson shanate o'connor frida kahlo ali mcbeal kim cattrall drew barrymore angelina jolie lisa marie presley margaret cho and cynthia nixon these are bisexuals or just like straight up lesbians in some cases a couple of these are fully fictional characters yeah yeah zina warrior princess i i was like is this a joke yeah so first of all zina as far as i can recall doesn't like actually like hook up with or date a lady on screen she's just sort of a lesbian icon because a lot of people thought yeah it was pretty heavily implied or whatever she's literally just a strong woman and this author thinks that she's like dabbled and also again not not a real person yeah janice dickerson i believe she means janice dickinson oh yeah just fucks the name up i didn't know come on i mean some of these people are either bi or lesbian like margaret cho is just openly queer frida kahlo is just openly queer cynthia nixon i think was not openly queer when this book came out so i i will i will i will forgive her for that one but several of these people are just actually bisexual so like when we talk about bisexual erasure it's not just in like the the abstract sense she's literally just being like margaret chose straight also i love i i love doing like straight men who've dabbled neil patrick harris elton john just like just like list a bunch of like openly gay men liberace oh god also like i some of these are like when you say britney spears are you talking when she leads off with britney spears and madonna is she just talking about them making out on stage at like the vmas she was brainstorming that's the first thing they come where have i seen two ladies fooling around ah yes so this gets quite problematic quite quickly okay there are again a ton of like little standalone tips and stuff throughout the book one of them is labeled sleeping with chicks tip number one and it's quote alcohol is a gateway drug to sleeping with members of the same sex i'm i'm roofing women but in a in a straight way i'm gonna send you this gets this gets rough the very funny thing about the dynamic on the show is that you are more offended by homophobia than me i feel like because i'm just like more used to it i'm like yeah give me the problematic shit yeah well what i i have to fake it the minute the minute the microphones turn off like i'm like when i read this i was like she's spitting truths you know she says i'd like to point out a special bonus prize that the straight girl population might not be aware of because you're a chick dealing with other chicks you have the curious straight girls all access backstage pass you automatically gain entry to saunas group showers dressing rooms and a host of other intimate settings where women are not only off their guard but naked you have a coveted vip pass don't waste it this is like some andrew tate shit are you kidding me this is really bad this is vile it's just like yeah women don't suspect you yeah just like ogling them use their trust in order to see them naked in semi-public settings that's the hot tip here you knew this was going to be so homophobic the straight guy straight girl's guide to sleeping with chicks you knew it was going to be so homophobic so fast i mean is it homophobic or are we really talking about the problematic actions of this lesbian you know what i mean she continues think about all these situations you could get yourself into that would make sleeping with a chick a snap and then she provides a list host a slumber party slash kegger at your sorority house complete with beer bong and group sleeping area to get a game of twister going at your next pool party three suggest that the bride-to-be model all her new lingerie at your next bridal shower four take pole dancing lessons with your hot friends five hire a female stripper at your next bachelorette party six play truth or dare with your friends in a hot tub seven ask for help unzipping your dress in the locker room eight get a bikini wax from a hot chick i don't know about that oh my god i want i want her face to be very close to my butthole when i when i propose let's get a coffee nine instigate a game of spin the bottle at your next girls night out okay peter i have a theory okay this is a dude writing under the name jen whatever to try to make this sound progressive because these are all like rapey ass andrew tate tips wow the misandry coming out of you right now dude this is fucking wild several of these are just like create situations where you can low-key grope someone yeah get a game of twister going one of them is like a girl who's been in a relationship for a long time and she's apparently trying to fuck the bride at a bridal shower um i i love i love that this is so problematic that you're like this can't be a woman it's also so wild that like just as a society this is also the societal corrosiveness thing that like just as a society like 95 of tips for getting women are just like non-consensual flirting with them it's never just like go to a thing where you both have the same interest and introduce yourself go to a lesbian bar yes jesus christ i can't i can't believe this shit this is like how is this in new editions of your book oh wait so they're republishing this now that her subsequent book blew up not only is this republished there's like a foreword from 2016 where she defends the book oh no way she's like they called me homophobic they called me just for saying bisexuals don't exist and lesbians are straight women who dabble if i'm her and i'm rich as hell off of you are a badass and like whatever bullshit coaching stuff i'm selling i'm talking to simon and schuster and i'm like under no circumstances do you let people know about this yeah that's like you gotta bury this book man take it off of like imdb and shit i wanted to end on a lighter note so the last thing i will mention is that this book also has little inserts purporting to teach you lesbian vocabulary oh no i am 80 to 90 positive that she is making these up it's one of them body tea one of them is daikon which she says is a famous woman revered by lesbians oh so it's a combination of dyke and icon it's also a kind of radish that's where they get the name not the only time in the book she drops the d-bomb and uh sorry jen i know this might sound weird coming from me but i don't think you can say that if you're if you're gonna spend the whole book insisting that you're straight you don't still get to say it that's not how this works the benefit of being poor is that people give you money and the benefit of being gay is you get to use slurs there is one clear benefit to being any marginalized minority you get to drop the slur if you want to many of the many of the vocabulary things are just wildly vulgar and another another one of them is puddle jumping which is switching between fingering your partner and yourself and then there's then there's carpooling which is using the same dildo at once and then she says she calls dental dams veggie wraps she says that a one-night stand with a lesbian is called a lickety split i know that our listenership contains many dedicated lesbians so i am calling upon you you need you need to tell us whether these are real if any of you have heard any of these please reach out i remember when i studied abroad in australia as like part of the welcome package they gave us this little like pamphlet about like australian slang like these are the words you should know to live here and one of them was instead of sad they say happy as a bastard on father's day which i never heard anybody say i think someone was just doing like improv comedy yeah yeah just like put it in there i think that's like what she's doing this whole book sounds like she's like doing a bit she's obviously trying to do forced humor at many times and i think that's so like you're sitting there trying to figure out if she thinks that xena is a good example or a joke it's also kind of indicative of how these books come about where it's like it's not really funny enough to be a comedy book yeah yeah you can package almost anything if you write an advice book you can basically write a memoir but like pretend that it's advice or you can write like a stand-up comedy book that just like isn't that funny i feel like almost any mediocre writer and mediocre idea can be repackaged as advice and then sold to someone else so i think that's kind of i think a lot of that is like the function of these books because like she just couldn't really make it as anything else and oh god like the way that the henry ford anecdote is written where it's like he was like this and they were like this yeah is that supposed to be funny is it supposed to be charming and endearing in some way like she she always says for reals am i supposed to like smile at this or is it supposed to just like make me feel like she's relatable or something right i honestly don't know because she's not funny she's not funny it's not well written it's not really advice it's not really humor it's not really insight it's an advice book i do think daikon is better than feminine or whatever that one is feminine feminine got bold move peter to spend 15 minutes defending lesbians and then go after chapel roan right as people can hear the theme music coming back yeah so anyway that's the book um again i'm not gonna i'm sure that the sex tips are great we're not gonna go into it i would not know you