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Speaker 1: Masters in Business is brought to you by proper Cloth,

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Speaker 1: the leader in men's custom shirts, with proprietary smart sized

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Speaker 1: order your first custom shirt today. This is Masters in

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Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio. This week on

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Speaker 1: the podcast, I have Derek Thompson. He is a writer

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Speaker 1: for The Atlantic magazine. I've been a fan of his

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Speaker 1: work for a long time. I think he does an

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Speaker 1: outstanding job of taking complex issues of economics and markets

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Speaker 1: and making it really understandable for the lay person. His

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Speaker 1: new book is called Hit Makers, The Science of Popularity

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Speaker 1: and the Age of Distraction, and it's really a fascinating

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Speaker 1: discussion about how we completely misunderstand what makes a hit

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Speaker 1: and what doesn't make a hit. Our concept of things

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Speaker 1: going viral is really wrong. Most things don't go viral.

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Speaker 1: Even the things we think that are going viral are

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Speaker 1: really in some way being broadcast, being selected, being pushed. Uh,

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Speaker 1: the organic viral hit is as much a myth as

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Speaker 1: anything else. I found the book to be quite fascinating.

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Speaker 1: It it is some ways a more rigorous version of

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Speaker 1: tipping points, uh to some degrees. It's a freakonomics like

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Speaker 1: type of book where there's actual science and actual studies

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Speaker 1: and and really interesting history that leads to an explanation

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Speaker 1: of something that we think we understand, but in reality

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Speaker 1: we really don't. And that's what made both the book

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Speaker 1: and our conversation so interesting. So, with no further ado,

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Speaker 1: my conversation with Derrick Thompson. This is Masters in Business

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Speaker 1: with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today

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Speaker 1: is Derrick Thompson. He is the senior editor at The

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Speaker 1: Atlantic Magazine and has appeared on Forbes thirty Under thirty List.

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Speaker 1: He is the author, most recently of Hit Makers, The

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Speaker 1: Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction. The book,

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Speaker 1: which I enjoyed a great deal, has been described as

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Speaker 1: picking up where the tipping point left off, a sharply

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Speaker 1: observed history of the mega hit. Derrek Thompson, Welcome to Bloomberg.

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Speaker 1: It's great to be here. Thank you. So you you

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Speaker 1: tap into a lot of my favorite subjects, everything from

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Speaker 1: cognition to networks to why our beliefs about many things

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Speaker 1: are so wrong. So so let's just jump right into

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Speaker 1: this let's discuss familiarity. What is fluency and disfluency. Fluency

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Speaker 1: and disfluency are these two lovely ideas that actually come

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Speaker 1: from meta cognitive psychology, which is a bit of a mouthful,

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Speaker 1: but meta cognitive above thinking, thinking about thinking, thinking about thinking,

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Speaker 1: feelings that we have about our thoughts. And it's weird

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Speaker 1: and a bit hippie dippie maybe to think that our

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Speaker 1: thoughts have feelings. But imagine, for example, you're traveling in

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Speaker 1: a foreign country and you're looking at all of these

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Speaker 1: signs and you don't know what they say, and you

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Speaker 1: really have to get to your hotel, and you're very

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Speaker 1: anxious about this. That is disfluency. That is anxiety about thinking,

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Speaker 1: difficult thinking. But let's say you turn around in this

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Speaker 1: busy street in this foreign country and you see a

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Speaker 1: close friend from high school who looks completely at home

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Speaker 1: in the street, and you realize, ah, I can ask

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Speaker 1: you directions. That is fluency. That is sudden ease of thinking.

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Speaker 1: And I think that we confront products in the cultural landscape,

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Speaker 1: whether there are songs, movies, tele and shows, along a

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Speaker 1: spectrum of fluency to disfluency, meaning things that were familiar

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Speaker 1: with the things that are just too far out there,

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Speaker 1: a little strange, and we're not comfortable with right on

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Speaker 1: the right the extreme on one end, hearing our favorite

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Speaker 1: Beatles song for the fifteenth time, and at the extreme

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Speaker 1: on the other end, hearing some weirdly syncopated Swedish music

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Speaker 1: for the first time. And so in dealing with fluency

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Speaker 1: and disfluency, what's interesting to me is that, yes, people

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Speaker 1: do have a bias toward the fluent. They have a

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Speaker 1: bias toward the familiar. We love things that are familiar,

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Speaker 1: but we particularly like things that are familiar when they're

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Speaker 1: sneakily familiar, or when that familiarity emerges from a state

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Speaker 1: of disfluency. Think about a podcast. I think one of

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Speaker 1: the things that people try to do on the best podcast,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that you try to do consistently

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Speaker 1: is to take a subject area that's a little bit

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Speaker 1: confusing and find a way to elucidate it for listeners

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Speaker 1: so that they can say, ah, ha I suddenly understand it.

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Speaker 1: And that switch from disfluency to fluency has a very

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Speaker 1: specific term in psychology. It's called old in a rather

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Speaker 1: lovely way, the aesthetic aha, and that is actually my

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Speaker 1: next question. By the way, I cheat because I bring

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Speaker 1: in folks like yourself and Philip Tetlock and Scott Galloway

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Speaker 1: and go down the list who are experts in a

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Speaker 1: deep but narrow area. And the beauty of their work

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Speaker 1: is they provide that fluency in an area you almost

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Speaker 1: sort of kind of understand, you know, there's something there,

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Speaker 1: and the aesthetic aha shows up. So let's discuss what

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Speaker 1: is the aesthetic? The aesthetic aha, So let's talk about

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Speaker 1: it very clinically. This was a study that was done

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Speaker 1: by a few psychologist about Cubist paintings, and they would

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Speaker 1: show a bunch of weird Cubist paintings to participants and

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Speaker 1: they would say, I'm not sure I like this, I

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Speaker 1: don't get this. And then in a second round they

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Speaker 1: would give them a little clue, so if the painting

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Speaker 1: kind of looked like a fish, they would say pisces

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Speaker 1: or they would say did you know that Picasso loved

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Speaker 1: fishing in the Mediterranean, And suddenly, in the second round

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Speaker 1: people would like the paintings much more. They would gain

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Speaker 1: a sudden appreciation for what the painting was. And this

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Speaker 1: moment of suddenly understanding that which was previously confusing, was

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Speaker 1: called by this psychologist, Claudia Muth, the esthetic aha. And

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Speaker 1: so if you extend this to say, the storytelling realm,

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Speaker 1: you can imagine, for example, how every single great thriller,

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Speaker 1: every episode of Law and Order, every story of Sherlock Holmes,

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Speaker 1: every mystery is this beautiful dance between disfluency, what's going on,

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Speaker 1: who's the killer, who's died? And fluency. Ah. I think

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Speaker 1: I got it, I think I know who did it.

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Speaker 1: I suddenly realized the answer. And in many ways, I

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Speaker 1: think the best hit makers, the best cultural producers, are

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Speaker 1: those who are really gifted at engineering these moments of

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Speaker 1: both anxiety and sudden understanding, meaning that it is both

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Speaker 1: accessible yet different enough to present something. Hey, I haven't

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Speaker 1: quite heard that, and yet it sounds somewhat familiar exactly

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Speaker 1: if we were here discussing you know, what is g

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Speaker 1: d P. What are the elements of g d P.

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Speaker 1: A lot of your listeners I think don't need another

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Speaker 1: you know, ninth grade class in the various components of

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Speaker 1: GDP that is too familiar to offer any aesthetic. Ah.

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Speaker 1: But if you're talking about you know, what's going to be,

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Speaker 1: you know Tillerson's plan for the Middle East, or what's

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Speaker 1: gonna be Minuchans plan for uh, you know, the Federal

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Speaker 1: reserve or interest rates or tax policy questions that people

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Speaker 1: think dis fluently about don't know the answer to. That's

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Speaker 1: what yields an aesthetic a HAA is providing an answer

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Speaker 1: to those unknown questions. So we've been talking about content.

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Speaker 1: There's a quote in the book that that I love

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Speaker 1: which um is your quote. It's not you writing about

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Speaker 1: someone else, which is content maybe king, But distribution is

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Speaker 1: the kingdom. Just discuss that content might be king with

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Speaker 1: distribution is the kingdom. Content is king? Is the cliche

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Speaker 1: It says that if you make something that's great, a

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Speaker 1: great podcast, a great song, great move v it is

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Speaker 1: self distributing, it will necessarily go viral. It has within

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Speaker 1: it the qualities of a virus. It is typhus, it

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Speaker 1: is pneumonia. It'll just spread automatically. And yet, and yet,

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Speaker 1: what we see throughout the history of culture is that

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Speaker 1: that's just so obviously not true. Some of the biggest

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Speaker 1: hits in music and movie history depended overwhelmingly on distribution

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Speaker 1: mechanisms to get out to the public, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: sometimes they failed before they had this powerful distribution mechanism

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Speaker 1: um in the music industry. For example, they have song

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Speaker 1: testing websites that will essentially test hundreds of songs for

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Speaker 1: in front of hundreds of people and ask them before

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Speaker 1: these songs hit the radio, how much do you like

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Speaker 1: this song? And what they'll say is that if the

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Speaker 1: song passes a certain threshold, say an eighty between zero

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Speaker 1: and a hundred, that the song is a guaranteed hit.

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Speaker 1: I'm Barry Rehults. You're listening to Masters in Business on

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Derrick Thompson. He

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Speaker 1: is senior editor at the Atlantic Magazine and author of

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Speaker 1: Hit Makers, The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about music because this is really a fascinating

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Speaker 1: topic to me. Repetition is the god particle of music. Explain,

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Speaker 1: there are many species of animals where biologists say they sing,

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Speaker 1: and it always means that they repeat a certain sound

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Speaker 1: at a common interval. If you take even a sliver

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Speaker 1: of human speech, and you take even a little bit

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Speaker 1: of it, and you start repeating it again, start repeating

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Speaker 1: it again, start repeating it again, start repeating it again.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly the brain starts to hear that which was previously

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Speaker 1: sort of cacophonist speed stream as music. No longer hearing

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Speaker 1: the content, but you're hearing the melody, and you're hearing

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Speaker 1: the exactly. Yes, you're hearing the tones and you're hearing

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Speaker 1: the rhythm. And so literally, repetition is the thing that

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Speaker 1: distinguishes the cacophony of the world from that which the

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Speaker 1: brain recognizes as music. So why is familiarity such an

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Speaker 1: important part of our liking music, film, everything else. There's

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Speaker 1: two elements of this. There's the biological element and then

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about the economic element. Biologically, why are we

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Speaker 1: predisposed to that which is familiar um. The evolutionary psychology

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Speaker 1: explanation would be that if you're a hunter gatherer trawling

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Speaker 1: the savannah of Africa and you see a plant or

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Speaker 1: an animal that you recognize, that's a really good sign

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Speaker 1: that it hasn't killed you yet, so you should probably

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Speaker 1: trust it a little bit more than that plant or

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Speaker 1: animal that you don't recognize and might kill you. Disfamiliar

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Speaker 1: potentially equals danger. Its equals danger, right, so there should

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Speaker 1: be a sort of alarm bell that goes off in

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Speaker 1: your head that says, I don't trust this, and now

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Speaker 1: I have to think a little bit about whether I

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Speaker 1: should trust it. That is that the reason why you

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Speaker 1: say to a young child, here, try this. You've never

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Speaker 1: had it, No, I don't want to try it is

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Speaker 1: literally a biological component to that, that that that child

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Speaker 1: has learned quite well from thousands and thousands of years

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Speaker 1: of human evolution. Absolutely, um But on the economic side,

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Speaker 1: I mean, familiarity is the back owe of the advertising business. Right.

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Speaker 1: Why do you want to expose people to coca cola

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Speaker 1: and pepsi and uh Bloomberg over and over and over again.

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Speaker 1: You want them to trust it, You want to them

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Speaker 1: you want to build in the familiarity that comes from

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Speaker 1: multiple exposure. Um. On. From music, it's unbelievably powerful. On

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Speaker 1: top forty radio, songs that are unfamiliar are considered two

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Speaker 1: notes in a somewhat paradoxical way. We tune in to

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Speaker 1: top forty radio to hear songs that we already know,

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Speaker 1: but in an order that surprises us. And so with

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Speaker 1: in music, in film, and even across the economic landscape,

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Speaker 1: there is and there's a strong economic imperative to build

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Speaker 1: in familiarity because with familiarity with familiarity comes like, so,

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Speaker 1: let's let's talk about the Spotify Weekly Playlist, which I've

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Speaker 1: been getting for years and and I'm always feel like

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Speaker 1: it's homemark. I'm so far behind. However, there's a fascinating

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Speaker 1: story as to how that evolved. One of my favorite

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Speaker 1: stories from the book um Spotify is discover weekly app. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It dumps thirty new songs into computer, into your phone

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Speaker 1: every single Monday. And when they first built this technology,

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Speaker 1: they wanted all the songs to be new, all the

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Speaker 1: artists to be new, pure discovery, pure originality. But a

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Speaker 1: bug in the algorithm accidentally let through some very familiar

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Speaker 1: songs and some very familiar artists. They fixed the bug,

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Speaker 1: and they kept testing it internally. And what happened if

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Speaker 1: they fixed the bug, engagement with the app collapsed. It

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Speaker 1: turned out that having a little bit of familiarity, a

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Speaker 1: little bit of this app won't kill you, it won't

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Speaker 1: bite you. Made it much much more popular. And so

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Speaker 1: that's why I say in the book, if you're trying

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Speaker 1: to sell something that is familiar, the key is to

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Speaker 1: make it a little bit surprising, to make it a

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Speaker 1: little bit This is not something that you've experienced before.

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Speaker 1: But the key to selling something that is surprising is

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Speaker 1: to make it a little bit familiar. And that applies

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Speaker 1: to some degree to the pandora Um playlists, or actually

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Speaker 1: it's not even a playlist, it's Pandora's collaborative filtering. If

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Speaker 1: I like this artist and this song and this artist

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Speaker 1: will I probably like those and that works very well

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Speaker 1: for them, doesn't it? Yes, right, and you mentioned collaborative filtering.

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Speaker 1: Collaborative filtering also essentially takes the taste of the masses

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Speaker 1: um and uses the decisions that they've made to guide

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Speaker 1: your next choice. So that, for example, if you're shopping

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Speaker 1: on Amazon and somebody buys your book and then buys

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Speaker 1: my book and then buys Tyler Cowen's book, if lots

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Speaker 1: of people make that sort of decision tree process, then

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Speaker 1: the next time my friend goes and buys your book

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Speaker 1: on Amazon and my book on Amazon, Amazon will prompt

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Speaker 1: them and say do you want to buy Tyler Cowen's book,

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Speaker 1: because thousands of people that bought those first two books

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Speaker 1: also bought the Latin the third one. So this is

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Speaker 1: how a lot of these algorithms work is they essentially

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Speaker 1: say a lot of people after they listened to Beyonce

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Speaker 1: and the Weekend, then listen to Drake. So if you're

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Speaker 1: listening to Beyonce and you've listened to the Weekend, we're

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Speaker 1: going to suggest Drake. So let's let's talk a little

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Speaker 1: bit about um, why so many songs seem to sound

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Speaker 1: so familiar. When I started reading that part of the book,

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Speaker 1: I immediately thought of the Blues Travelers song Hook, which

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Speaker 1: is loosely based theoretically chord for chord on Pacabell's cannon

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Speaker 1: and D. And then you start looking at that chord progression,

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Speaker 1: the one five four six, and it just shows up

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Speaker 1: everywhere in music, and there's an ongoing list and a

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Speaker 1: hilarious YouTube video of somebody playing all the variations on

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Speaker 1: pacabell and they're all well known rock and roll songs

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Speaker 1: right or or pop songs and reggae songs. This is

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Speaker 1: if you're if you're listening at home and you are

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Speaker 1: an arms leanked away from a piano, you can play

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Speaker 1: a C chord followed by a G chord followed by

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Speaker 1: an A minor followed by an F or you can

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Speaker 1: look that up in line and just you know, listening

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Speaker 1: to you listen for it to yourself. Um, but yes,

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Speaker 1: that's exactly right, you know you The number of songs

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Speaker 1: that play off of the structure is just incredible. You

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Speaker 1: have Bob Marley is No Woman, No Cry. You have

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Speaker 1: Lady gagas Paparazzi, you have Journey, Don't stop believing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: there are so two you with or without you. And

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Speaker 1: what's interesting about this is that I think the common

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Speaker 1: thing that said about these these songs in this chord

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Speaker 1: structure is that the songs you're derivative, that they're all

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Speaker 1: just doing the same old thing. But the reason I

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Speaker 1: don't quite buy that is that No Woman, No Cry

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Speaker 1: doesn't sound anything like Lady Gaga, and it doesn't sound

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Speaker 1: anything like with or Without You, or anything like you know,

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Speaker 1: John Denver. These are actually I prefer to think of

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Speaker 1: them as clever cartographers, understanding that they all have to

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Speaker 1: plot a route home, but taking slightly different routes to

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Speaker 1: the same destination. And if you buy the thesis of

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Speaker 1: this book, which is that familiarity beats originality and distribution

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Speaker 1: beats content, then it makes an enormous amount of sense

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Speaker 1: that as a new artist, you would try to write

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Speaker 1: music that is optimally new that is slightly familiar, not

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Speaker 1: only because people are predisposed to like that thing, but

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Speaker 1: also because the most powerful distributors might be inclined to

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Speaker 1: more to better distribute a song that is sneakily familiar

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Speaker 1: and therefore more likely to be a hit. Why has

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Speaker 1: Sweden become the capital of pop songwriting? Three things. First,

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Speaker 1: Sweden writes music in major chord melodies, which makes it

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Speaker 1: really exportable. They often write their songs with uh English lyrics,

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Speaker 1: which also makes them exportable. They have a massive public

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Speaker 1: education investment in music education at a young age, which

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Speaker 1: is very helpful. And finally, they've had a couple sort

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Speaker 1: of like Michael Jordan's style hits. I'm Barry Ridholts. You're

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Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special

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Speaker 1: guest today is Derrick Thompson. He is the author of

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Speaker 1: Hit Makers, Science of Popularity in the Age of Distraction.

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Speaker 1: He has appeared on Forbes thirty Under thirty List. He

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Speaker 1: is a senior editor at The Atlantic. Let's talk about

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Speaker 1: TV movies and video images. How did ESPM become the

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Speaker 1: most valuable cable channel in the world. ESPN in the

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Speaker 1: early two thousand's was really struggling with Sports Center. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they were covering bass fishing, they were covering all sorts

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Speaker 1: of card games. And John Skipper, the president, comes in

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Speaker 1: and he says, you know, I feel like we're turning

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Speaker 1: into a Greek diner. We're serving ten thousand things in

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Speaker 1: a mediocre way. We need to be more like a steakhouse.

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Speaker 1: We needed to do a few things really, really well.

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Speaker 1: And he be orients Sports Center in the mid two

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Speaker 1: thousands around a handful of hero stories, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods,

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Speaker 1: Derek Jeter. Let's just make sure to optimize the chance

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Speaker 1: that every time a marginal ESPN viewer wants to click in,

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Speaker 1: they'll expect to see a continuation of their heroes story.

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Speaker 1: And after this, you see ESPN stock just absolutely sore

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Speaker 1: the value of the of the channel, actually sore on

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Speaker 1: the cable bundle. Obviously, they've had an enormous number of

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Speaker 1: issues in the last few years. It's using cord cutting,

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Speaker 1: but this is clearly how they established their dominance in

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Speaker 1: the two thousands. And so interesting about this is that

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Speaker 1: it's really similar to the way at Hollywood has thought

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Speaker 1: about heroes as well. That audience has seen that just

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Speaker 1: want to come back and back and back to see

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Speaker 1: the same franchises, sequels, adaptations, and reboots of the same heroes.

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Speaker 1: So in a way, you could say that ESPN took

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Speaker 1: a page out of the Hollywood playbook to become a hit.

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Speaker 1: So one of the data points in the book I

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Speaker 1: found fascinating is since two thousand and twelve, more people

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Speaker 1: spent time interacting with digital devices then with television. And

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Speaker 1: it seems the progression was radio was eclipsed by movies.

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Speaker 1: Was eclipse by television? Was eclipse by laptops? Was a

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Speaker 1: clip by eclips by phones? Is that more or less right?

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Speaker 1: That is actually correct? But what's so fascinating is the

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Speaker 1: degree to which these former technologies were eclipsed without being

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Speaker 1: totally shut out. Uh. In a way, yes, the television state,

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Speaker 1: the television box replaced the radio set in the corner

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Speaker 1: of tens of millions of families living rooms. But in

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Speaker 1: a way that made radio better. It made radio mobile.

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Speaker 1: In the next few decades, radio went from being an

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Speaker 1: absolute rarity in cars to being a standard feature in cars.

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Speaker 1: So TV sets made radio mobile. And I'm sure a

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Speaker 1: lot of people are listening to us right now as

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Speaker 1: they're walking around or as they're driving. Radio is considered

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Speaker 1: a kind of mobile technology, and so people still listen

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Speaker 1: to the radio while they watch TV, while they're on

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Speaker 1: their laptops, while they're looking at going to a movie

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Speaker 1: maybe later that weekend. The mountain of media seems to

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Speaker 1: keep growing. The quote in the book I Really liked

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Speaker 1: was television ones freed moving images from the clutches of

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Speaker 1: the cinema cineplex. The historical sequel is mobile technology is

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Speaker 1: emancipating video from the living room. Yeah. I think sometimes

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Speaker 1: people say, you know, TV is dead. TV is not dead.

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Speaker 1: What's happened is that I think as millennials have cut

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Speaker 1: the cord, so to speak, they've sort of unleashed this,

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Speaker 1: like all of these little seedlings of television that are

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Speaker 1: pollinating our little tiny plates of glass. So, yes, tradition

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Speaker 1: no linear programming is clearly instructural decline for Americans under

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Speaker 1: the age of sixty, that is without debate. But Americans

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Speaker 1: under the age of sixty are still spending hours and

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Speaker 1: hours of their day watching video. Maybe it's on Facebook

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Speaker 1: or Snapchat or YouTube or Hulu and Netflix, but they're

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Speaker 1: still spending a lot of time consuming video entertainment it's

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Speaker 1: just that there's so much video entertainment that it's eclipsing

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Speaker 1: sort of the the o G the original linear programming content.

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Speaker 1: The day we're recording this is there was a Wall

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Speaker 1: Street Journal article. YouTube is now up to a billion

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Speaker 1: hours of video watched per day, unbelievable, astonishing number. Um.

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Speaker 1: We keep coming back to repetition. And there's a couple

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Speaker 1: of things I wanted to go over with you, not

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Speaker 1: just Joseph Campbell and George Lucas and that, but you

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Speaker 1: referenced um a movie dumb and Dumber. There are movies

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Speaker 1: we've all seen a million times. For me, when my

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Speaker 1: wife had the chicken pox a decade ago, we watched

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Speaker 1: Gross point Blank on HBO over and over and over again.

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Speaker 1: And the more we watched it, the more we liked it.

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Speaker 1: It just became every scene became familiar. I could probably

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Speaker 1: say the same thing about Blade Runner, I've seen a

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Speaker 1: million times. And then there are the films that have

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Speaker 1: that repetition built into a Groundhog Day or the Tom Cruise,

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Speaker 1: UM War. It's the same movie internally, only with slight variations.

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Speaker 1: Is that actually a genre that plays to our desire

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Speaker 1: for for familiar things in a weird way. Those sort

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Speaker 1: of movies groundhog Day are microcosms of the experience that

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Speaker 1: you have. I think with a single piece of fractical content, right,

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Speaker 1: it's it is fractical. It's a perfect word for it.

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Speaker 1: So that, for example, in groundhog Day, he is living

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Speaker 1: the same day over and over again, but he's also

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Speaker 1: learning from it, and he's noticing different things, and now

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Speaker 1: he's mean to the homeless guy, and then he helps

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Speaker 1: the homeless guy, and we have that relationship. I think

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Speaker 1: with movies and songs too. The fifteenth time you've heard

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Speaker 1: a Day in the Life by the Beatles is not

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Speaker 1: like the first time you've heard it. You know how

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Speaker 1: to pay attention to the shape of the song, you

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Speaker 1: know when to sort of tune in and tune out. Um,

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Speaker 1: even with movies like Dumb and Dumber, which is not

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Speaker 1: exactly Citizen Kane, I probably seen it a hundred times,

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Speaker 1: not exactly, not exactly, but maybe who knows, you know,

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Speaker 1: everyone has their own taste. I'm Barry rid Hilts. You're

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Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My guest

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Speaker 1: today is Derrick Thompson. He is a senior editor at

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Speaker 1: the Atlantic Magazine and author of the new book hit Makers.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about art and why some

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Speaker 1: things go viral quote unquote, and why things don't. I

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Speaker 1: want to talk about a both a patron of the

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Speaker 1: arts and an artist himself that you describe in the book,

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Speaker 1: Kai Bot, who left a bequest of seven specific artists

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Speaker 1: from the impression Impressionist period that weren't particularly highly regarded.

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Speaker 1: And it was to the um remind me which museum,

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Speaker 1: muse de Luxembourg, Muse de Luxembourg, tell us, tell us

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Speaker 1: what happens with those seven artists and how this affected

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Speaker 1: future history. So I came upon this story as I

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Speaker 1: was having this thought. I was in the National Gallery

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Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And having a thought that I

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Speaker 1: think is relatively familiar, which is, why is this painting

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Speaker 1: so much more famous than this other painting, even though

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Speaker 1: they seem to be of relatively similar quality. And there's

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Speaker 1: this remarkable story with Gustav Kaibat. He's one of the

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Speaker 1: least famous French Impressionist painters today, but he was a

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Speaker 1: collector of his friends worst paintings. Actually he only collected

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Speaker 1: or bought the paintings that wouldn't sell to anybody else.

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Speaker 1: And when you say his friends just a quick list, Monet, Pissarro,

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Speaker 1: Dega Siciley, man A Renoir says, on, that's some crowd

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Speaker 1: to run with. It's some crowd to run with now,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you his his walls are probably valued

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Speaker 1: at several billion dollars sort of today's Christie sales, but

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Speaker 1: at the time it was relatively worthless. I mean, he

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Speaker 1: literally was buying that which couldn't sell. So he dies

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Speaker 1: in the early eighteen nineties at the age of forty one,

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Speaker 1: and he his estate he bequeathed to the French government.

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Speaker 1: The French government says absolutely not, We're not going to

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Speaker 1: hang these terrible paintings. But after a bit of haggling,

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Speaker 1: they finally decide, yes, we'll hang a handful of these

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00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:21,800
Speaker 1: Impressionist works in a French state museum for the first

428
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:24,840
Speaker 1: time ever. It was this enormous scandal. And as you said,

429
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:30,400
Speaker 1: who just happened to be the seven painters he collected Manna, Mone, Degassan, Renoir,

430
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:37,480
Speaker 1: uh Sicily and Piesarrow still today these seven core Impressionist painters.

431
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:41,159
Speaker 1: So what does the story mean? Well, my interpretation of it,

432
00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: and it's not just mine, it's several psychologists as well.

433
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:49,639
Speaker 1: Is that his bequest consecrated the Impressionist canon, because the

434
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:52,800
Speaker 1: next generation of artists looked at these seven to say, all, right,

435
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:56,200
Speaker 1: which Impressionist matter, And the next generation of art historians

436
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:59,600
Speaker 1: looked to this seven to say which Impressionist matter? Even

437
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:02,800
Speaker 1: in the night teen fifties. John Rowald's very famous History

438
00:25:02,840 --> 00:25:08,680
Speaker 1: of Impressionist Art talks about these seven Impressionist paintings exclusively

439
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: as the cannon. So it's this remarkable reminder of a

440
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,440
Speaker 1: the power of familiarity. When we see a famous work

441
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 1: of art, we're not just seeing the paint, We're also

442
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:24,399
Speaker 1: seeing its accumulated fame and be that Cannons can be

443
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:27,600
Speaker 1: kind of bs sometimes, right, that this cannon. I'm not

444
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,680
Speaker 1: saying money is bad, but the cannon was consecrated by

445
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 1: a literal stroke, distribution being the kingdom. Distribution is the kingdom. Yeah, absolutely,

446
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: not all that different from the Mona Lisa story. Until

447
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 1: it was stolen, it was thought of as a minor work,

448
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: and it created a whole bunch of celebrity, and all

449
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:48,640
Speaker 1: that attention became its distribution network. Yet Mona Lisa now

450
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: is literally the most valuable painting in the world. The

451
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:54,520
Speaker 1: most expensive insurance policy on any painting. But in the

452
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:57,560
Speaker 1: nineteenth century it was worth I think one sixth of

453
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: several Raphael and Titian paintings that were in the same museum.

454
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:03,280
Speaker 1: It was a minor work. It wasn't considered especially. It

455
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: was considered a lovely a lovely work, but not certainly

456
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:08,680
Speaker 1: not the most famous painting in the world. It's then

457
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: stolen by an Italian painter to bring it back, wants

458
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:14,639
Speaker 1: to bring it back home, right, it takes it to Italy.

459
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: It becomes this international man hunt for the Mona Lisa.

460
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 1: And it's only then after it's recovered and it's become

461
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 1: broadcast on newspaper covers all over the world, uh, that

462
00:26:24,640 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: it goes on a little international journey to visit all

463
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: these different countries so that the patrons can come see

464
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: the stolen piece of work. So again, the Mona Lisa,

465
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,160
Speaker 1: I don't think I could well, just to remind listeners,

466
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:39,680
Speaker 1: looks the exact same today as it did in the

467
00:26:39,760 --> 00:26:42,679
Speaker 1: nineteenth century when it was worth sixteen percent of Titian

468
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: and Raphael. I'm gonna tell you it doesn't look the

469
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: same it was the first time you see the Mona Lisa,

470
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:49,919
Speaker 1: you go, that's it. It's tiny. You're so used to

471
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:53,119
Speaker 1: seeing the image, you assume it's a big portrait and

472
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 1: you show up. I'm like, Oh, that's how he stole it.

473
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 1: He's stuck in this. It's a tiny little thing, right,

474
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: you can fit it in a little back hack. Um,

475
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: And which is why it's now behind you know, basing

476
00:27:03,359 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 1: is because it's easy to steal. But once again, um,

477
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:11,040
Speaker 1: the content is the same. What changed massive media distribution

478
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:14,639
Speaker 1: of a the story of its stealing and be the

479
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,360
Speaker 1: painting itself. It goes on an international tour like it's

480
00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:20,560
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones after it's recovered and brought back the loop.

481
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,160
Speaker 1: So why is it the most famous painting ever? Not

482
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,679
Speaker 1: because the content, because of the distribution, quite amazing. Let

483
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:30,200
Speaker 1: let me shift gears on you and talk about industrial design.

484
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:34,639
Speaker 1: What is maya? Maya is how I pronounced it, But

485
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,199
Speaker 1: it might be most advanced yet acceptable, m a y a,

486
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: most advanced yet acceptable. This was the grand theory of

487
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 1: everything from Raymond Loewy, the father industrial design. And that's

488
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:50,240
Speaker 1: what you tell. A wonderful story as to how he

489
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:54,320
Speaker 1: comes to understands design and how he comes to think

490
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:59,080
Speaker 1: about New York is this grimy, greasy place he looks

491
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:03,399
Speaker 1: at from the top of building right and basically says, no, no,

492
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,679
Speaker 1: we have to change all this exactly. Yeah, he's a

493
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: French orphan, comes over to the States in nineteen nineteen,

494
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:11,880
Speaker 1: struggles in art in the nineteen twenties, and basically between

495
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and nineteen sixties, designs that which we

496
00:28:15,840 --> 00:28:20,120
Speaker 1: now recognize as mid American esthetic. Like everything everything, the cars,

497
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 1: the trains, the tractors, the cold spot refrigerators, the central

498
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 1: acting cleaners, the pencil sharp that looks like a like

499
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:29,880
Speaker 1: a little egg that everyone listening I'm sure has seen

500
00:28:29,920 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: a thousand times bolted in your grade school. That is him. Uh,

501
00:28:35,880 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: this guy is Steve Jobs for the nineteen fifties. If

502
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was allowed to design for literally every single

503
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: company in America, it's amazing. We don't he's not as

504
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,120
Speaker 1: famous as as he is. But yes, his theory of

505
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:51,840
Speaker 1: everything was maya uh most advanced yet acceptable. He said

506
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 1: that people like discovering new things, new songs and new

507
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,520
Speaker 1: consumer products and movies, but we only truly love them

508
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 1: if they sneakily remind us of that which we are

509
00:29:02,600 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 1: really familiar with. So he was this genius at understanding it,

510
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 1: really being an anthropologist, first understanding how consumers lived in

511
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:13,640
Speaker 1: their kitchens and on their farms, and then designing something

512
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 1: that was only so sneakily new that they would confront

513
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: something clearly novel and immediately understand how to use it.

514
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,680
Speaker 1: He he was doing consumer product research and market studies

515
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: really before there was a science of that. I don't

516
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:31,440
Speaker 1: know if he could say he created it, but he

517
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:34,200
Speaker 1: certainly took it to places that nobody else did. He

518
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: He was a genius in a in a way, and

519
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:38,880
Speaker 1: and and his company what were We're total geniuses in

520
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: a way that today I think we would revere to

521
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:45,400
Speaker 1: the end. I think that if he were alive today, Uh,

522
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: he would be a Steve Job style figure. He would

523
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 1: have television shows named after him. Uh. He really was

524
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: in a way. If you take mad Men, right, if

525
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:56,920
Speaker 1: he could don Draper character a genius of human psychology,

526
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:00,320
Speaker 1: and you marry this with a Steve Jobs intell and

527
00:30:00,560 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 1: a an instinct for aesthetics, that's Raymond Loewy, you know,

528
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:07,200
Speaker 1: I mean Draper plus Jobs. He was just absolutely market

529
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 1: And you describe three rules that we learn from his

530
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: work and I'll let me quickly go through them, and

531
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:16,960
Speaker 1: let's talk about it audiences collectively no more than any

532
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 1: individual creator. To sell something familiar, you must make it surprising,

533
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 1: and people may not know what they want until they

534
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: love it, which is very much a Steve Jobs like

535
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: very much believe. Yeah, but he he really was a populist.

536
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: He believed that design began with consumers. And so if

537
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:37,960
Speaker 1: you want to design something that people love, the first

538
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 1: challenge is to understand them. How do they live? And

539
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:44,000
Speaker 1: I think this applies to everything from you're designing a

540
00:30:44,000 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: new chair, figure out how people, how people sit and

541
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: what parts of existing chairs sort of don't fit their bodies,

542
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: to something like a mobile money app. Figure out, you

543
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: know how people send money, where they meet to send money,

544
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 1: what their pain points are. He really believed that the

545
00:31:01,760 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: design began with anthropology. And then the second lesson might

546
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 1: be one of the most important prescriptive lessons of the book.

547
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 1: To sell something surprising, make it familiar. To sell something familiar,

548
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: make it surprising. So, since you just did that inversion,

549
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about rhetorical inversion. I thought

550
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:28,640
Speaker 1: that was kind of fascinating the language of anaphora and apistrophe,

551
00:31:28,720 --> 00:31:32,640
Speaker 1: and all that is really quite asked, not what your

552
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 1: country can do for you, Ask what you can do

553
00:31:34,600 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 1: for your country. There are so many examples in the

554
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: book of this. Is it just the rhyme and the

555
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 1: and the lure of the familiar that makes that sort

556
00:31:44,360 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: of rhetoric so attractive, so soaring. There is a psychological

557
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: principle called the rhyme as reason effect rhyme as reason effect,

558
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: which essentially says that people, rather dispiritingly perhaps are more

559
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: likely to trust and idea when it's phrased musically. And

560
00:32:03,320 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: that doesn't just have to be a rhyme. You know,

561
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: it's not just birds of a feather flock together. There's

562
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 1: all sorts of very clever and subtle ways to turn

563
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:15,920
Speaker 1: language into music. Uh JFK's first inaugural used a ancient

564
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 1: Greek rhetorical device called antimetaboli, which is way too difficult

565
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: to spell it pronounced, so just think of it. Is

566
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: abba A B b A. Ask, not what your country

567
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: can do for you, Ask what you can do for

568
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 1: your country. It's not the size of the dog in

569
00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:36,240
Speaker 1: the fight. It's the size of the fight in the dog.

570
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:39,400
Speaker 1: Human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human

571
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:43,160
Speaker 1: rights a B B A anti metaboli. And it is

572
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: not a coincidence that Abba and that A quinces that

573
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: Abba wrote a lot of hit songs. Right, So it's

574
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 1: easy to remember because you think, if I want to

575
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:52,400
Speaker 1: make this idea a hit, just think you know Abba.

576
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Derrick Thompson. He is the

577
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,479
Speaker 1: author of Hit Makers, The Science of Popularity in an

578
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:02,000
Speaker 1: Age of Distraction. If you want to find Derek's works,

579
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 1: you can go to The Atlantic Magazine or Barnes and

580
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 1: Noble or Amazon. Uh. You can follow me on Twitter

581
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 1: or at Dhults. Check out my daily column on Bloomberg

582
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: View dot com. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions

583
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: right to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net.

584
00:33:21,720 --> 00:33:24,840
Speaker 1: I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on

585
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Hey guys, let me ask you a question.

586
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595
00:34:08,440 --> 00:34:10,920
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast, Derek, Thank you so much for

596
00:34:10,920 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 1: doing this. I was really looking forward to this. I'm

597
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:16,520
Speaker 1: like three quarters of the way through the book. I

598
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:20,799
Speaker 1: really have enjoyed it. I really like the way you

599
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,560
Speaker 1: take something. So first of all, the books we like

600
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: the best are the ones that are about us in

601
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:28,279
Speaker 1: some way. So you see a lot of your own

602
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: psychological foibles and cogniveras, and you start to recognize some things.

603
00:34:34,640 --> 00:34:36,800
Speaker 1: There are so many questions we didn't get to before

604
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: I get to our standard questions. I have some stuff

605
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 1: I have to uh, I have some stuff I have

606
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:47,359
Speaker 1: to go through with you because it's just it's just

607
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:55,000
Speaker 1: to me, is just so fascinating. Most popular products in history,

608
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:57,839
Speaker 1: or some of the most popular products in history, were

609
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:02,400
Speaker 1: one bad breakaway from her failure explain. One of my

610
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: favorite stories in the book is Rock around the Clock.

611
00:35:05,920 --> 00:35:08,040
Speaker 1: Rock around the Clock is one of the most famous

612
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:11,400
Speaker 1: songs the twentieth century, but it's best understood as just

613
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:16,480
Speaker 1: an unbelievable fluke. It comes out, it's a B side,

614
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:19,239
Speaker 1: not even an A side. It charts on Billboard for

615
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:21,879
Speaker 1: about one week, and then it's basically forgotten. The song

616
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:27,040
Speaker 1: did not succeed. It was essentially a middling flop. But

617
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:29,200
Speaker 1: one of the few thousand people that bought the record

618
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 1: was a ten year old boy named Peter Ford. And

619
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:35,680
Speaker 1: Peter Ford's dad was the movie star Glenn Ford. And

620
00:35:35,760 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: Glenn Ford was in this movie, Blackboard Jungle, and the

621
00:35:38,680 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: director of Blackboard Jungle comes over to the Ford's house

622
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: and says, to kick off this movie, I want to

623
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:48,880
Speaker 1: jump jive tune. What have you got? And father Glenn

624
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 1: Ford says, look, I just listen to Hawaiian folk music.

625
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: It's not going to work out for me, but my son, Pete,

626
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:56,919
Speaker 1: he might have some records that you'd like. So young

627
00:35:57,000 --> 00:35:59,320
Speaker 1: Peter Ford, this ten year old boy in fifth grade.

628
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: Hey ends the director Blackboard Jungle a stack of vinyl records,

629
00:36:04,280 --> 00:36:08,560
Speaker 1: and one of those vinyl records included Rock around the Clock.

630
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 1: The song ends up playing at the beginning of Blackboard Jungle,

631
00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: in the middle of Blackboard Jungle, and at the end

632
00:36:14,320 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: of Blackboard Jungle in May of nineteen fifty five, and

633
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:20,879
Speaker 1: it's only then two weeks after the movie comes out

634
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:23,960
Speaker 1: the song hits number one on Billboard and becomes the

635
00:36:24,000 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 1: first rock and roll song to ever be a number

636
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:29,320
Speaker 1: one hit. And this becomes the second best selling record

637
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: of all time after Bing Crosby's White Christmas. So again

638
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:35,920
Speaker 1: like on the one hand, the song sounded the exact

639
00:36:35,920 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: same when it was a flop in a nine and

640
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:42,239
Speaker 1: it was a hit. The difference was this bizarre flukey

641
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:46,360
Speaker 1: lucky moment of distribution in Blackboard Jungle. Um, But it

642
00:36:46,480 --> 00:36:49,880
Speaker 1: suggests that it's really difficult to predict, sort of before

643
00:36:49,960 --> 00:36:52,680
Speaker 1: the fact, whether a song is going to be a

644
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:56,240
Speaker 1: massive hit or a massive flop. Sometimes the same song

645
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,239
Speaker 1: can be both within the same ten month period. And

646
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: we all know songs that we know and love, And

647
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:05,319
Speaker 1: how come this album never took off half them? No

648
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: one's discovered this band. It's not the quality of the music,

649
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 1: it's the distribution right above a certain threshold of quality,

650
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: above a certain threshold of catchiness. What matters to become

651
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:19,279
Speaker 1: a hit is not more catchinus or more quality, but

652
00:37:19,480 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 1: rather superior distribution. And Blackboard Jungle is Glenn Ford, Sydney

653
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,680
Speaker 1: is Sydney Portier, and I think Sydney Party is in this, Yes,

654
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 1: and um and Francis. I'm just trying to think of

655
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:33,480
Speaker 1: of the main It was The Stars teen it was

656
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:36,279
Speaker 1: it was not one of the great hits of nineteen five.

657
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: It was the thirteenth biggest movie of the year. So,

658
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 1: I mean, just imagine being in Nate Silver about this,

659
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: trying to predict that a discarded and forgotten B side

660
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:48,120
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty four played over the credits of the

661
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:51,120
Speaker 1: thirteenth biggest movie of nineteen fifty five is going to

662
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:53,720
Speaker 1: be the biggest rock and roll song in music history.

663
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:58,799
Speaker 1: It's It's completely amazing and unpredictable. So you you talk

664
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:05,240
Speaker 1: about a a Yahoo research project in where they're looking

665
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: at the spread of online messages on Twitter, More than

666
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:14,720
Speaker 1: of the messages didn't diffuse at all, and the clicks

667
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: came directly from the original source or one degree of separation.

668
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:22,560
Speaker 1: So so what does that tell us? What does that mean?

669
00:38:22,719 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: Are we still in a broadcast one too many sort

670
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: of world? Yeah? I think that today when people say

671
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 1: that went viral, what they really often mean is that

672
00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:36,880
Speaker 1: got big really quickly, and I'm not sure how, But

673
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:40,360
Speaker 1: there's two ways that information can spread online, broadly speaking.

674
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,200
Speaker 1: Way number one is pure virality, pure one to one,

675
00:38:44,239 --> 00:38:46,760
Speaker 1: one to two shares. So so give us an example

676
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:48,880
Speaker 1: of that, because we all know of things that we

677
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: think are viral, but you're telling us some of these

678
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: things really aren't. For sure. Let's say I publish an

679
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 1: article on the Atlantic. Um it doesn't hit the Atlantic homepage,

680
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:00,719
Speaker 1: doesn't hit any major a broadcast plot form. But I

681
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: share it with one friend on Facebook. He shares it

682
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: with two of his friends, he shares it with a

683
00:39:05,520 --> 00:39:08,479
Speaker 1: handful of his friends, and it grows over many, many,

684
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:12,359
Speaker 1: many generations of intimate shares. That's one way, right, That's

685
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 1: how a virus spreads. That is true virility. But there's

686
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 1: another way that information spreads online that's not a million

687
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:22,840
Speaker 1: one to one moments, but a handful of one to

688
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:25,760
Speaker 1: one million moments. So, for example, let's say an article

689
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: that I write he hits the front page of Drudge,

690
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:30,960
Speaker 1: or hits the front page of Reddit, or is shared

691
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:35,279
Speaker 1: by Oprah on Facebook. There's nothing about that mechanism that

692
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: is viral. Millions of people are going to see that

693
00:39:38,280 --> 00:39:41,360
Speaker 1: article from the same source. So It's very similar to

694
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:43,960
Speaker 1: that which we are comfortable calling a broadcast, like on

695
00:39:44,000 --> 00:39:47,840
Speaker 1: television when twenty million people are tuned into the same

696
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: program all at once. So the Super Bowl, the Oscars,

697
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:54,279
Speaker 1: things like that. Super Bowl clearly broad list. Let me

698
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: challenge you on Reddit because Reddit has this built in

699
00:39:57,160 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 1: virility mechanism where things are up voted, down voted. So

700
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:04,480
Speaker 1: for something to make it to the front page of Reddit,

701
00:40:04,760 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 1: where it may subsequently be broadcast, it has to have

702
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 1: some degree of I don't want to say virility, but

703
00:40:11,040 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: I guess virility work appeal, Yes, right where it's getting

704
00:40:14,719 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: up voted and up voted and up voted, and that's

705
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:19,920
Speaker 1: almost a one to one or one to a few

706
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 1: before it reaches the front page where it then becomes

707
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:25,160
Speaker 1: broadcast to everybody. And this is what's really interesting about

708
00:40:25,160 --> 00:40:26,920
Speaker 1: the age that we're living through right now, which is

709
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: that you know, there was a period where technology was

710
00:40:29,600 --> 00:40:34,440
Speaker 1: either social or broadcast. Telephones are clearly just social, that

711
00:40:34,520 --> 00:40:39,120
Speaker 1: is a one to one conversation. Um Television is purely broadcast.

712
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:42,319
Speaker 1: It is just one to tens of millions. But most

713
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 1: of the technologies that we have today are an interesting

714
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:48,760
Speaker 1: combination of social and broadcast. Facebook, for example, allows family

715
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 1: members to talk to each other while seeing articles from

716
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:55,640
Speaker 1: Time magazine in Bloomberg. Reddit is a really is it

717
00:40:55,680 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: really fascinating combination because articles are up voted socially by

718
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:03,200
Speaker 1: individual users, but once they hit a large page like

719
00:41:03,200 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: the Reddit dot com home page, it suddenly is a broadcast.

720
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:10,760
Speaker 1: My contention is that if you that for every piece

721
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:14,280
Speaker 1: of content that we think goes quote unquote viral online,

722
00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:17,799
Speaker 1: it almost always needs at least one or hopefully a

723
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:22,680
Speaker 1: handful of broadcast moments. But because we sometimes don't see

724
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: these broadcast moments in the information cascade, because for example, um,

725
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:30,040
Speaker 1: your friend reads an article on reddit dot com and

726
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: then shares it with another one of your friends, and

727
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: then you see that friend's article on Facebook, you can't

728
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 1: see that it was broadcast on Reddit dot com, and

729
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 1: so I call it a dark broadcast. But my contention

730
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 1: is that broadcast moments are still responsible for popular for

731
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:50,400
Speaker 1: driving popularity. So let's talk about a couple of pop confections.

732
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:54,000
Speaker 1: You mentioned some of these in the book Call Me Maybe,

733
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 1: or All about the That Base. These things seemingly, especially

734
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: to someone like me over thirty way over thirty, have

735
00:42:02,719 --> 00:42:06,640
Speaker 1: exploded out of nowhere, and then they've just become in escaped,

736
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 1: in escapable. How how do hits like that? How are

737
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:12,760
Speaker 1: they manufactured? So Call Me Maybe is a really interesting

738
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 1: example of a so called viral hit. You could say,

739
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:18,520
Speaker 1: on the one hand, that Call Me Maybe his popularity

740
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:23,080
Speaker 1: was engendered online, which suggests that maybe there was a

741
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:27,520
Speaker 1: purely viral mechanism to its to its popularity, But in

742
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 1: fact the song was sort of hovering in like the

743
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:35,960
Speaker 1: mid level tiers of Canadian pop track popularity. When a

744
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: little known star named Justin bieberi Canadian star indeed, found it,

745
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:44,359
Speaker 1: tweets it out, and makes a YouTube video of him

746
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:48,000
Speaker 1: and his girlfriend's Lena Gomez dancing to it. That video

747
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: goes absolutely wild. And it's only then after he releases

748
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:54,319
Speaker 1: that video that Called Me Maybe becomes a sensation that's

749
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:57,760
Speaker 1: on the broadcast. So what's the broadcast? It is Justin Bieber,

750
00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: a celebrity with the fall lowing of any traditional broadcaster,

751
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:06,960
Speaker 1: Time magazine, right, yeah, exactly, USA Today, broadcasting this song

752
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:10,879
Speaker 1: to his millions and millions of followers. And it's only

753
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:13,839
Speaker 1: then that the song becomes a hit. So you use

754
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:17,760
Speaker 1: the phrase the audience of my audience. That is truly

755
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 1: how things go viral. Unless you're Justin Bieber or Taylor

756
00:43:21,600 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: Swift or someone with tens of millions of Twitter followers,

757
00:43:25,360 --> 00:43:27,720
Speaker 1: you tweeted out and even though half of them are bots,

758
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:30,359
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. You tweeted out and that goes out

759
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: to millions of people and and an equivalent number of algorithms. Right, yeah,

760
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 1: I Right after my chapter on virility and broadcast, I say, okay, well,

761
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:43,080
Speaker 1: let's say that you're trying to build a hit product

762
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:45,640
Speaker 1: or a hit company, but you're starting from a really,

763
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 1: really small base and you don't have access to the

764
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:50,759
Speaker 1: Justin Bieber's the world. What do you do to be

765
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: to make things that people want to talk about? And

766
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:56,920
Speaker 1: a way that I think about this is that when

767
00:43:57,000 --> 00:44:00,520
Speaker 1: I write an article, for that article to go big,

768
00:44:01,120 --> 00:44:05,200
Speaker 1: it can't just be appealing to my first audience, to

769
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: my first level of readers, and for them to simply

770
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: say okay, cool and then click out and never talk

771
00:44:10,239 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: about it again. I need a handful of them to

772
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:16,840
Speaker 1: want to pass it along because they think that passing

773
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:21,399
Speaker 1: along that article will make them my readers look smart, uh,

774
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:26,799
Speaker 1: morally in touch with the world. Um surprisingly, sort of

775
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:30,400
Speaker 1: counterintuitive about what is true and not true about economics.

776
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 1: So in a way, the psychology I have to employees

777
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 1: to think. I can't just be appealing to the my audience.

778
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 1: I have to make my audience think that they want

779
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: to share it with their audience, the audience of my audience.

780
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:45,399
Speaker 1: And so I think that it's sort of it. It

781
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:48,440
Speaker 1: provides I think, a really nice frame to see. You know,

782
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:51,759
Speaker 1: how do how do you create articles or you know,

783
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:55,360
Speaker 1: essays or or podcasts that appeal to a as broad

784
00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:58,680
Speaker 1: a possible as a listenership and viewership. And that's too

785
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:03,120
Speaker 1: to cree ate something that your listeners feel like, well,

786
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:05,840
Speaker 1: it will make them look good if they pass it along.

787
00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:10,440
Speaker 1: So we we have a situation and I'm reminded of

788
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,799
Speaker 1: this from a quote from the book where it's a

789
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:18,480
Speaker 1: winner take all society to a large degree. Another previous

790
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:21,960
Speaker 1: guest on the show, um, the top one percent of

791
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:26,279
Speaker 1: bands and solo artists now earn eight percent of all

792
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: the revenues of recorded music. That's an astonishing Parado principle.

793
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: That's just it's not steroids. It's eighty two one that

794
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:39,440
Speaker 1: it's just the stuff. So what does this mean for

795
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: the non justin biebers who want to try and get

796
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: something out there, whether whether it's an article, whether it's

797
00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 1: a small film or television show, or a song. What

798
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,880
Speaker 1: does this mean is is this a doomed effort or

799
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 1: do you need a million of these things in order

800
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:56,719
Speaker 1: to find that that one percent? This is? This is

801
00:45:56,760 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 1: an awesome question. And I think about this a lot.

802
00:45:58,880 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 1: And there's lots of for an answers that I provide

803
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:02,320
Speaker 1: in the book. But let me talk about one that

804
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:05,359
Speaker 1: I that I think might be most interesting, um, which

805
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 1: is this concept from sociology of cults. Um. What is

806
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 1: a cult? Uh? Accult is a measured rebellion against a mainstream.

807
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 1: So it is people thinking that they are special and

808
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:22,560
Speaker 1: the mainstream is wrong. And there's lots of interishing research

809
00:46:22,640 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: that suggests that when people hear a song or read

810
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:29,800
Speaker 1: an article, or experience a product that they think gets

811
00:46:29,840 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: them specifically to the exclusion of the mainstream, that they're

812
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: more likely to share it with their close friends in

813
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:39,760
Speaker 1: order to sort of draw that tight circle of kinship

814
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: and say, see, there's someone who gets us. So one

815
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:47,000
Speaker 1: way to employ the audience of my audience principle somewhat paradoxically,

816
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:49,800
Speaker 1: is that if you want to be really big, start

817
00:46:49,880 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: by making something that's small and specific, because that small

818
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:57,880
Speaker 1: specific message or small specific product is more likely to

819
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:01,920
Speaker 1: get your audience, your consumer base to say this, this

820
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,360
Speaker 1: thing gets me, and I'm going to share it with

821
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 1: my close friends to show that it gets me. And

822
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:09,320
Speaker 1: so I talked to this h and an Etsy designer

823
00:47:09,320 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: who ended up being one of the most successful um

824
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 1: Etsy sellers in that company's history. He makes little pinback buttons,

825
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:18,880
Speaker 1: and one of the lessons that he gave me was, um,

826
00:47:18,920 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 1: you know, of course he's you know, as mainstream as

827
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:23,239
Speaker 1: an Etsy person can be right now. I think it's

828
00:47:23,280 --> 00:47:25,880
Speaker 1: the top seller on one of its um platforms for

829
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: several years. But he said, I don't want to make

830
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:32,280
Speaker 1: pinback buttons that express purely banal thoughts, purely generic thoughts.

831
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:35,800
Speaker 1: I want my pin back buttons to express something that's weird,

832
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 1: because in a weird way, it's the weird message that

833
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:41,240
Speaker 1: makes people want to spread it along, not the message

834
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:43,800
Speaker 1: that says, hey, I'm just like everybody else. The market

835
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 1: related quote to that that I've always loved is everybody

836
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 1: wants to be a contrarian. Yeah, right, But if everybody

837
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: is a contrarian. They're just part of the crowd. And

838
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:56,320
Speaker 1: so you go through this whole of mirrors where people

839
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: want it to be different enough so they could look

840
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:03,160
Speaker 1: down on the crowd, yet they become part of a crowd.

841
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:06,040
Speaker 1: It's it's there's a I don't know if you saw

842
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:09,879
Speaker 1: the Money Python movie, The Life recording to Brian, Life

843
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 1: of Brian, Life Recording um Life of Brian. I love

844
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:17,360
Speaker 1: the scene where he's speaking to the crowd, you're all individuals,

845
00:48:17,360 --> 00:48:20,840
Speaker 1: and they chant back in response, we are all individuals.

846
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: It's that exact moment. Well, it is. I mean, this

847
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:27,239
Speaker 1: is one of the really interesting paradoxical things about human psychology,

848
00:48:27,280 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 1: which is that in a weird way, we feel more

849
00:48:29,680 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: like individuals sometimes when when we belong to a group,

850
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 1: which doesn't make any sense, right, I feel more like

851
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: an individual when I belong to a group. But this

852
00:48:37,600 --> 00:48:40,560
Speaker 1: is precisely what cults are all about. It's all about

853
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:43,839
Speaker 1: individuals saying society doesn't get me. But if I enter

854
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,759
Speaker 1: this different group of people, then I can be my

855
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 1: true self. I can realize my true individuality, but only

856
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 1: if I find the right group, right, And so I

857
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:55,719
Speaker 1: think in many ways, this is one of the things

858
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:58,800
Speaker 1: that that you know, marketers and advertisers that think about

859
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:01,719
Speaker 1: culting in their own messages try to do um. You

860
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:03,960
Speaker 1: think about one of the most famous culting advertisements of

861
00:49:04,000 --> 00:49:08,359
Speaker 1: all time, Apple Night four. You are defined by that

862
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:13,400
Speaker 1: which you are not. We're not the talitarian big blue

863
00:49:13,560 --> 00:49:16,920
Speaker 1: IBM company, right. We are the people who throw with

864
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: it a hammer. Yeah, it was a hammer at the screen,

865
00:49:20,160 --> 00:49:23,799
Speaker 1: a big brother like we are. We are rebels. This

866
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:28,120
Speaker 1: is a rebellion, and every cult is a rebellion against

867
00:49:28,160 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 1: a mainstream. In many ways, I think identity is antagonistic.

868
00:49:32,280 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 1: Identity is that which we are not, and so in

869
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:37,960
Speaker 1: many ways, I think that you see lots of advertising

870
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:41,640
Speaker 1: right now which is all about allowing consumers to define

871
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 1: themselves by that which they aren't. That that's really fascinating.

872
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 1: I'm a huge um comedy nerd, and I love Mill

873
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:51,879
Speaker 1: Brooks two thousand year old man. And there's a line

874
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:56,319
Speaker 1: in it that speaks exactly what you're describing, and he says,

875
00:49:56,800 --> 00:50:01,120
Speaker 1: he sings the hell with everybody except Cave seventy three.

876
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:05,960
Speaker 1: And that's that's the cult of of that it And

877
00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:08,360
Speaker 1: it's hilarious if you if you haven't, if you're not

878
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:12,160
Speaker 1: familiar that it's UM if you listen to the I

879
00:50:12,200 --> 00:50:14,800
Speaker 1: didn't realize he was such a big fan of historical comedy.

880
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 1: Between life and Well, it was I'm not quite contemporary.

881
00:50:18,760 --> 00:50:21,200
Speaker 1: Well Life of Brian is contemporary with me. But all

882
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:24,399
Speaker 1: the mel Brooks stuff, especially going back to the two

883
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:28,799
Speaker 1: thousand year old Man, was talk about viral hits. If

884
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:33,640
Speaker 1: you read the story, he tells the story of how

885
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:38,359
Speaker 1: that went viral and I don't remember if it was

886
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 1: UM when he sat down with Seinfelder, when he sat

887
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:45,920
Speaker 1: down with UM David Steinberg, but he tells the story

888
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:48,600
Speaker 1: of it was party stick that him and Carl Reiner

889
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:52,560
Speaker 1: used to do and no one ever thought and finally

890
00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 1: someone says, you two have to record it. Uh. Brooks

891
00:50:56,239 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: was a genius improviser, as was Rhiner, and Einer would

892
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 1: take the role of the interviewer and they would just

893
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 1: do this and people would fall out of out of

894
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:08,200
Speaker 1: their chairs. Finally someone says in them, you gotta record this.

895
00:51:08,640 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 1: Might have been carried grant. You have to record this,

896
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:14,480
Speaker 1: and he when it's recorded, he takes two hour. He goes, listen,

897
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:17,480
Speaker 1: I need two albums. I'm leaving the country, and he

898
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 1: goes to England and he comes back and he says,

899
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:23,919
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, the Queen loved it, and

900
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:26,280
Speaker 1: if you listen to it, it's just really the most

901
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:30,319
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff is just beyond beyond hilarious. So

902
00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 1: we're down to our last half hour. There are a

903
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:35,879
Speaker 1: couple of things I wanna get to before we jump

904
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 1: to our favorite questions. Let me let me just reference

905
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: this quote of yours about books, which I found quite fascinating.

906
00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:50,440
Speaker 1: A reader both performs the book, attends the performance, and

907
00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:55,839
Speaker 1: attends the performance. She is conductor, orchestra and audience. So

908
00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:58,480
Speaker 1: explain that a little bit, because I think that is

909
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:04,359
Speaker 1: a fascinating take on books. It's interesting because we live

910
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:08,280
Speaker 1: in a world right now where with movies and virtual reality,

911
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:10,920
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of experiences that were essentially just

912
00:52:11,360 --> 00:52:14,400
Speaker 1: were given them, right, everyone agrees w a movie looks like,

913
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:17,800
Speaker 1: everyone agrees, and what the song sounds like. But books

914
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:22,279
Speaker 1: are really interesting because it's this weird arbitrage where I,

915
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:26,160
Speaker 1: the writer, have an idea, a mental image that I

916
00:52:26,200 --> 00:52:30,040
Speaker 1: have to translate into letters, and then you the reader,

917
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:34,880
Speaker 1: read these letters and create your own movie. And sometimes

918
00:52:34,880 --> 00:52:37,239
Speaker 1: it's the same movie, but it's rarely the exact same movie.

919
00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:39,760
Speaker 1: It's slightly different. You're imagining different pictures, you're making different

920
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:43,520
Speaker 1: connections to to mel Brooks. And So I think one

921
00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:47,160
Speaker 1: thing that is still so special about books, even in

922
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:52,080
Speaker 1: an age of proliferating and ever more developed media technology. UM,

923
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 1: books are special because they're ours. They belong to us

924
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:58,680
Speaker 1: in a way that the movies don't, because we are

925
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:04,560
Speaker 1: responsible for creating a movie from them. The seraph's themselves,

926
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:09,080
Speaker 1: the print itself cannot be revealing of anything. We have

927
00:53:09,239 --> 00:53:12,440
Speaker 1: to interpret it. We have to sinest, the sinest, the

928
00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 1: size it into words and images and connections and our

929
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 1: own ideas and our own self help. Um. And so

930
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 1: I still think that books are special because they are

931
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 1: more individual. The individual has a larger role in internalizing it,

932
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:30,720
Speaker 1: and they do for something like a movie or a song.

933
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:34,760
Speaker 1: That that's that's quite fascinating. Let's let's talk about film

934
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:38,640
Speaker 1: and the quote from the producer who said, the film

935
00:53:38,719 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: producer said, you could look at twenty things in a

936
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,239
Speaker 1: success twenty five things in a successful genre. Change one

937
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 1: and you have something new and interesting. Change them all

938
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:52,960
Speaker 1: and you have parity. Right. That's that's quite a fascinating

939
00:53:53,840 --> 00:53:56,960
Speaker 1: meta view of films. Yeah, it's it's a fascinating meta

940
00:53:57,000 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 1: view of films. And it clicks right back into one

941
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:00,960
Speaker 1: of the first thesis of the book, which is that

942
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:04,680
Speaker 1: we love that which is familiar with a slight twist.

943
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:06,839
Speaker 1: And you know, you can think about this for all

944
00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:09,520
Speaker 1: sorts of hits that you know, what is Star Wars.

945
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 1: It is a Western set in outer space. It is

946
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:18,360
Speaker 1: in many ways an unbelievably conventional story. An orphan goes

947
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:22,799
Speaker 1: on a supernatural quest to defeat a villain who is

948
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:25,880
Speaker 1: involved in his origin story and returns to the normal

949
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: world as a hero. That's Lord of the Rings, that

950
00:54:29,239 --> 00:54:31,720
Speaker 1: is Harry Potter to a t it's the hero's journey.

951
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 1: It's Joseph Campbell. But Joseph Campbell basically says all these

952
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 1: stories are one and the same, with with interesting variation, right.

953
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: And what's so fascinating about Campbell's theory is that the

954
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 1: individual storytellers aren't trying necessarily to copy each other. They're

955
00:54:44,800 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 1: just trying to tell a good story. But there are

956
00:54:47,040 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: certain elements of that which is a you know, capital

957
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:52,360
Speaker 1: g good capital, a s story that seemed to be

958
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:55,719
Speaker 1: relatively universal. We need an element of relatability. We don't

959
00:54:55,760 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 1: want to um attach ourselves to a hero who's already invincible.

960
00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:02,680
Speaker 1: The hero has to start off normal UM. He has

961
00:55:02,719 --> 00:55:05,239
Speaker 1: to go on a journey with its pock marked with

962
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:08,319
Speaker 1: all sorts of defeats. He there has to be you know,

963
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:11,640
Speaker 1: defeat and recovery and defeat and recovery, and then finally

964
00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:15,080
Speaker 1: he has to accomplish something that is not only powerful

965
00:55:15,120 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 1: and gives him a glory, but that he learns from.

966
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:20,040
Speaker 1: And it makes me a better person because it tells

967
00:55:20,120 --> 00:55:22,959
Speaker 1: us that our own journeys are self improvements as well.

968
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 1: So as I'm reading this in the book, a name

969
00:55:25,600 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 1: pops into my head because it's so counter to that,

970
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:32,920
Speaker 1: and it's Kevin Spacey, and three movies jump out in me.

971
00:55:33,239 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 1: By the way these are, you can see this isn't

972
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:37,640
Speaker 1: anything I was doing deep research on. It was just

973
00:55:37,760 --> 00:55:42,560
Speaker 1: notes I scribbled in the margins. Usual suspects, l A

974
00:55:42,680 --> 00:55:47,880
Speaker 1: Confidential and American Beauty, none of the real Could you

975
00:55:47,960 --> 00:55:51,680
Speaker 1: think he's the main character in each but those usual

976
00:55:52,680 --> 00:55:57,200
Speaker 1: um art types of of UM narrative building to a

977
00:55:57,239 --> 00:56:00,399
Speaker 1: climax than the anti climax, and everybody learning their little

978
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 1: lessons along the way. They're not quite in those movies.

979
00:56:03,760 --> 00:56:05,840
Speaker 1: And it's a great point. I think that those movies

980
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily I mean, they are famous, and certainly I

981
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:12,879
Speaker 1: think I think the usual suspects. My guess that that's

982
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:16,960
Speaker 1: the biggest box office box office performer was pretty big

983
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:20,520
Speaker 1: also and an American, I mean, there's won awards among

984
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:24,400
Speaker 1: my favorites. I think that, you know, the the awards

985
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:29,160
Speaker 1: circuit movies follow slightly different rules. And I asked, when

986
00:56:29,200 --> 00:56:31,279
Speaker 1: I was talking to Vincent Bruces and talking to the

987
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 1: movie producer, what Bruces is the person who came up

988
00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:37,320
Speaker 1: with the algorithm for looking at what makes the script

989
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:40,480
Speaker 1: more popular us popular? Exactly exactly, So we're so the

990
00:56:40,520 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 1: first thing we're talking about, which is hero's journeys, I

991
00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:46,640
Speaker 1: think apply most specifically to blockbusters, right, two movies that

992
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 1: are not trying to be Best Picture nominees but are

993
00:56:49,640 --> 00:56:52,359
Speaker 1: just trying to maximize their audience. So I asked him,

994
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:55,560
Speaker 1: I said, okay, well, is there a formula? Is there

995
00:56:55,600 --> 00:56:59,520
Speaker 1: a rule to Best Picture movies? What would that rule be?

996
00:57:00,200 --> 00:57:02,839
Speaker 1: And he had an interesting answer. He said, look at

997
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:07,800
Speaker 1: Best Actor and Best Actress nominations every year and tie

998
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:11,240
Speaker 1: those two best Picture. You almost always have a very

999
00:57:11,280 --> 00:57:15,120
Speaker 1: clear relationship between the Best Leading Actor nominations and the

1000
00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:18,240
Speaker 1: Best Picture nominations, which says to me, him talking to me,

1001
00:57:18,720 --> 00:57:22,360
Speaker 1: which says to me that the what we consider to

1002
00:57:22,400 --> 00:57:28,240
Speaker 1: be quality movies are not heroes journeys, but complicated investigations

1003
00:57:28,280 --> 00:57:34,439
Speaker 1: of individuals into self into self, essentially stages for uh,

1004
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:38,440
Speaker 1: complex acting. And what you see American beauty. Both Kevin

1005
00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 1: Spacey and oh god, that Benning, we're both nominated for Oscars,

1006
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 1: And I forgot who the one she won? He didn't,

1007
00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:46,920
Speaker 1: although he's won before. And I forgot the woman who

1008
00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:50,880
Speaker 1: played one for age girl interest. Oh yeah, who became

1009
00:57:50,920 --> 00:57:54,640
Speaker 1: like a hot television actress for a while. Um uh,

1010
00:57:54,680 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 1: but you know his his performance in Usual Suspects and

1011
00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: astonishing is astonishing and l A Confidential is again for

1012
00:58:01,520 --> 00:58:04,880
Speaker 1: Guy Pearson, for Russell Crowe. It's it's ways for the

1013
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:09,640
Speaker 1: characters to grow. So great movies, quality movies, Best Picture

1014
00:58:09,640 --> 00:58:14,760
Speaker 1: nominee movies are are disproportionately character studies. And so the

1015
00:58:14,800 --> 00:58:17,640
Speaker 1: formula is not let's send this character on a hero's journey.

1016
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:20,880
Speaker 1: No no no, no, that is too conventional for a character study.

1017
00:58:20,880 --> 00:58:25,320
Speaker 1: A character study is an investigation of an individual's realization

1018
00:58:25,440 --> 00:58:27,960
Speaker 1: of self in a way that doesn't necessarily follow a

1019
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:31,440
Speaker 1: Campbell's art journey. And the book is just out recently.

1020
00:58:31,520 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: Have you gotten any of the comic book nerds telling

1021
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:37,000
Speaker 1: you how wrong you are about Superman? Uh? No, but

1022
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 1: maybe you can be the first to tell me Superman

1023
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:43,400
Speaker 1: wasn't born with superpowers. It's only the people from his

1024
00:58:43,520 --> 00:58:46,840
Speaker 1: planet in the light of the yellow sun of our

1025
00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 1: solar system that gives him his power. And by the way,

1026
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 1: I am not a comic book nerd, but I hang

1027
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:54,320
Speaker 1: out with enough comic book nerds that even I know that,

1028
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:57,320
Speaker 1: so you will get some I will get some angry readers.

1029
00:58:57,360 --> 00:59:01,640
Speaker 1: I guess his his his His story in our universe,

1030
00:59:01,680 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 1: or at least in our solar system, clearly begins with invincibility,

1031
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:08,040
Speaker 1: which in a in a way makes him I think

1032
00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: a a interesting exception to the rule, which is that

1033
00:59:14,040 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 1: most of our superheroes begin without any element of invincibility.

1034
00:59:19,280 --> 00:59:23,800
Speaker 1: Begins Spider Man begin right exactly. I mean, obviously there's uh,

1035
00:59:23,840 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 1: you know, there's kryptonite. Um, but I wonder whether that

1036
00:59:28,200 --> 00:59:29,520
Speaker 1: is one of the things that has made it more

1037
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 1: difficult for Superman to catch on in in this century

1038
00:59:33,560 --> 00:59:35,720
Speaker 1: is that there are so many movies now that are

1039
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:39,160
Speaker 1: made in the familiar heroes journey formula where the character

1040
00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:43,480
Speaker 1: always begins um with obvious flaws that even the new

1041
00:59:43,520 --> 00:59:47,320
Speaker 1: Batman movies that came out you reference Iron Man in

1042
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:51,080
Speaker 1: the book because they're the flaws are so manifest even

1043
00:59:51,120 --> 00:59:54,640
Speaker 1: after he achieves his quote unquote superpowers, when this is

1044
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:57,280
Speaker 1: true with Batman as well. Um and even with Spider Man,

1045
00:59:57,280 --> 01:00:00,520
Speaker 1: there's this question of, you know, either the media hates

1046
01:00:00,600 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: him and he's always trying to, you know, realize whether

1047
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:04,040
Speaker 1: or not he wants to be Spider Man or be

1048
01:00:04,120 --> 01:00:07,840
Speaker 1: with Mary Jane. That that the his heroism is always

1049
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:09,960
Speaker 1: you know, darkened in a way by the fact that

1050
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 1: he can never truly sort of you know, transcend humanity

1051
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 1: in our problems. Really interesting, and I didn't mean to

1052
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:20,200
Speaker 1: go into a comic digression. Last question before we get

1053
01:00:20,240 --> 01:00:25,600
Speaker 1: to our our standard questions fake news. How does fake

1054
01:00:25,760 --> 01:00:31,200
Speaker 1: news go viral? Is it broadcast by something or is

1055
01:00:31,240 --> 01:00:34,600
Speaker 1: it a Because what what I've noticed and I don't

1056
01:00:34,640 --> 01:00:37,600
Speaker 1: want to throw rocks at Fox News or or bright

1057
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 1: Bord or other, but what I've noticed this Fox News

1058
01:00:40,280 --> 01:00:45,240
Speaker 1: is this giant broadcast entity, some not quite credible, not

1059
01:00:45,320 --> 01:00:51,400
Speaker 1: quite legitimate um fourth to your blog will write something outrageous.

1060
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:54,920
Speaker 1: We just saw this happen with the Swedish defense expert

1061
01:00:55,000 --> 01:00:58,880
Speaker 1: talking about the terrorist attacks. Turns out there was no

1062
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:02,360
Speaker 1: terrorist attack, and sweet and this guy Sweden has already disavowed.

1063
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:04,320
Speaker 1: You don't know who the hell this guy is, but

1064
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 1: some crazy wing nut blog references him. He gets picked

1065
01:01:09,320 --> 01:01:11,760
Speaker 1: up on Fox and now suddenly there's this whole and

1066
01:01:11,760 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 1: then the president sees it and starts talking about it.

1067
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:16,120
Speaker 1: Do you think I would say about this? First? As

1068
01:01:16,120 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 1: you've already acknowledged, there are obvious broadcast mechanisms by which

1069
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:23,080
Speaker 1: that which seems to be quote unquote viral fake news

1070
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:26,480
Speaker 1: is not actually viral at all. It is broadcast by

1071
01:01:26,720 --> 01:01:30,680
Speaker 1: Bright part or by info Wars, or by Macedonian teenagers

1072
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:34,360
Speaker 1: with a Russian propaganda backing UH and a whole bunch

1073
01:01:34,400 --> 01:01:37,520
Speaker 1: of botan net computers and a bunch of exactly The

1074
01:01:37,600 --> 01:01:43,600
Speaker 1: second deeper point, though, is that familiarity, the biased toward familiarity,

1075
01:01:43,680 --> 01:01:46,760
Speaker 1: is so powerful that in many ways what readers have

1076
01:01:46,840 --> 01:01:50,720
Speaker 1: always wanted from the news is to learn that that

1077
01:01:50,760 --> 01:01:54,080
Speaker 1: which they had previously intuited is in fact correct and

1078
01:01:54,200 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 1: backed by massive evidence confirmed my existing beliefs. Please, it's

1079
01:01:58,000 --> 01:02:05,240
Speaker 1: it is a confirmation bias cascade. And what fake news is, uh,

1080
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: it's sometimes just propaganda and that is pure broadcast, but

1081
01:02:08,680 --> 01:02:11,160
Speaker 1: lots of what is fake news, which by which actually

1082
01:02:11,160 --> 01:02:13,120
Speaker 1: just means news that turns out to not be true,

1083
01:02:13,120 --> 01:02:14,919
Speaker 1: which is something we've been living with a lot longer

1084
01:02:14,960 --> 01:02:18,440
Speaker 1: than just six months. We want to believe that the

1085
01:02:18,480 --> 01:02:21,440
Speaker 1: biases that we've just arrived at are correct, and we

1086
01:02:21,480 --> 01:02:24,400
Speaker 1: want to seek out places that will reliably tell us

1087
01:02:24,400 --> 01:02:26,800
Speaker 1: that our biases are correct. Because what was the first

1088
01:02:26,880 --> 01:02:30,680
Speaker 1: question of this entire segment, fluency. We like ideas that

1089
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:33,080
Speaker 1: are easy to think about, and there is nothing easier

1090
01:02:33,120 --> 01:02:36,680
Speaker 1: to think about than a beautiful essay that tells us

1091
01:02:36,720 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 1: that everything we think is true. Moreover, there's nothing more

1092
01:02:39,640 --> 01:02:43,520
Speaker 1: difficult to think about then an articulate essay that says

1093
01:02:43,560 --> 01:02:46,760
Speaker 1: that all these ideas we consider more ably abhorrent are

1094
01:02:46,880 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 1: in fact moral. That's a really tough thing to consume.

1095
01:02:50,960 --> 01:02:54,200
Speaker 1: So naturally, attention markets like Facebook, which is just you know,

1096
01:02:54,200 --> 01:02:59,040
Speaker 1: an attention clearing house, will gravitate toward fluency, even though

1097
01:02:59,080 --> 01:03:02,280
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily great for our civic body. So your

1098
01:03:02,320 --> 01:03:05,680
Speaker 1: book did two things for me that that I find

1099
01:03:05,760 --> 01:03:09,000
Speaker 1: interesting and and within now I'll get a little fractal

1100
01:03:09,120 --> 01:03:11,880
Speaker 1: and a little metap depending if I look down or

1101
01:03:11,920 --> 01:03:14,400
Speaker 1: look up first. One of the things within the book

1102
01:03:14,440 --> 01:03:20,360
Speaker 1: tells us why we like things that make us feel smart, knowledgeable,

1103
01:03:20,880 --> 01:03:23,360
Speaker 1: A member of occult that gets to look with some

1104
01:03:23,480 --> 01:03:28,480
Speaker 1: disdain at at the non members. My career long interest

1105
01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:34,840
Speaker 1: in behavioral economics basically is just a little bit of egotism, saying, oh, look,

1106
01:03:34,920 --> 01:03:37,880
Speaker 1: I figured out that everybody's wet wear is flawed. Are

1107
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:40,520
Speaker 1: and I smart? And it turns out no, you're just

1108
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:45,479
Speaker 1: confirming your own um issues. But the more interesting one.

1109
01:03:46,080 --> 01:03:49,720
Speaker 1: A previous guest uh is Lawrence Juwber. We were talking

1110
01:03:49,760 --> 01:03:54,280
Speaker 1: about off the air, and he's this guitar prodigy and

1111
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:57,840
Speaker 1: well known in fact, before the led Zeppelin Stairway to

1112
01:03:57,920 --> 01:04:02,959
Speaker 1: Heaven decision came out, he explained how both the stair

1113
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:06,480
Speaker 1: with to Heaven and the piece that it's supposedly stole

1114
01:04:06,600 --> 01:04:10,320
Speaker 1: from are both based on this classic prod chord progression

1115
01:04:10,400 --> 01:04:13,880
Speaker 1: from the sixteen hundreds, and he plays the original. He

1116
01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:16,640
Speaker 1: plays Zepp when he plays the one that's supposedly stolen,

1117
01:04:16,680 --> 01:04:19,560
Speaker 1: and it's pretty clear they're both derivative of the multi

1118
01:04:19,600 --> 01:04:23,320
Speaker 1: century old one. But and I really like his his

1119
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:28,080
Speaker 1: classical music, and I like his original recordings. But he's

1120
01:04:28,120 --> 01:04:31,480
Speaker 1: done a couple of albums of of Beatles covers, and

1121
01:04:31,720 --> 01:04:34,760
Speaker 1: you explain why I am so totally in love with

1122
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:37,800
Speaker 1: his work. It's the Beatles songs you know and love,

1123
01:04:37,880 --> 01:04:42,000
Speaker 1: but presented in such a unique no recording tricks, it's

1124
01:04:42,040 --> 01:04:46,160
Speaker 1: just him an acoustic guitar with a um. I think

1125
01:04:46,160 --> 01:04:48,360
Speaker 1: it's gad mad. Is the tuning, it's an it's an

1126
01:04:48,360 --> 01:04:52,720
Speaker 1: open tuning approach. And it's your book explained why he

1127
01:04:52,760 --> 01:04:55,280
Speaker 1: has two Beatle albums. He has a Wings album, and

1128
01:04:55,280 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 1: I used to think I didn't like Wings because it

1129
01:04:58,040 --> 01:04:59,920
Speaker 1: was sappy, and and then you find out, oh the

1130
01:05:00,200 --> 01:05:03,520
Speaker 1: beautiful songs when presented correctly. And now coming next month

1131
01:05:03,560 --> 01:05:06,560
Speaker 1: he has coming in March, he has another Beatles albums.

1132
01:05:06,560 --> 01:05:10,240
Speaker 1: He's he's got about two dozen albums. But your book

1133
01:05:10,280 --> 01:05:13,480
Speaker 1: helped me figure out why I am just completely entranced

1134
01:05:13,880 --> 01:05:17,960
Speaker 1: by his covers of Beatles. They're familiar enough that you

1135
01:05:18,040 --> 01:05:22,400
Speaker 1: immediately recognize the melody, but they're so different and so

1136
01:05:22,520 --> 01:05:25,440
Speaker 1: well done. You can't help but say, ah, that's a

1137
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:28,560
Speaker 1: song I know really well but with the twist, and

1138
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:31,200
Speaker 1: thank you for explaining that. Thank you. The last thing

1139
01:05:31,240 --> 01:05:34,200
Speaker 1: I would say is that, well, first of the time

1140
01:05:34,200 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 1: we're listening to music, we're listening to a song we've

1141
01:05:36,360 --> 01:05:41,040
Speaker 1: already heard, according to musicologists, makes sense. Yeah, powerful bias

1142
01:05:41,080 --> 01:05:45,360
Speaker 1: for familiarity in song. But more broadly, I think there

1143
01:05:45,480 --> 01:05:50,920
Speaker 1: is obviously a commercial economic interest in what I call neophilia,

1144
01:05:51,120 --> 01:05:55,000
Speaker 1: making consumers love new things. The way that GDP grows,

1145
01:05:55,120 --> 01:05:58,120
Speaker 1: the way that profits are made is by getting people

1146
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:00,800
Speaker 1: to buy new stuff. That is, the will get people

1147
01:06:00,840 --> 01:06:06,560
Speaker 1: to buy new stuff. But this macro economic instinct toward

1148
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:10,680
Speaker 1: the aphilia is always cross cut with consumers actual preference

1149
01:06:10,680 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 1: with that which is familiar. We are very happy wearing

1150
01:06:14,200 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 1: the same clothes over and over. In fact, we did

1151
01:06:16,440 --> 01:06:19,120
Speaker 1: so for thousands of years until the thirteen hundreds. We

1152
01:06:19,160 --> 01:06:21,880
Speaker 1: are very happy naming our kids the same names over

1153
01:06:21,920 --> 01:06:24,760
Speaker 1: and over throughout history. In fact, first names only became

1154
01:06:24,760 --> 01:06:27,840
Speaker 1: a fashion in the eighteen hundreds. We're happy to listen

1155
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:30,160
Speaker 1: to watch the same Netflix shows over and over, listen

1156
01:06:30,160 --> 01:06:32,800
Speaker 1: to the same songs over and over. In many ways,

1157
01:06:32,840 --> 01:06:37,000
Speaker 1: I think the cultural appetite for new products is an

1158
01:06:37,040 --> 01:06:40,800
Speaker 1: economic creation. It is something that had to be created

1159
01:06:40,840 --> 01:06:44,640
Speaker 1: after the Industrial age in order to allow the factories

1160
01:06:44,720 --> 01:06:47,760
Speaker 1: to sell as much as they could make. You references

1161
01:06:47,800 --> 01:06:52,320
Speaker 1: with cars in particular with fashion today that if because

1162
01:06:52,400 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 1: most clothes you buy, you could buy them and wear

1163
01:06:54,200 --> 01:06:56,240
Speaker 1: them forever, But if you have to go out and

1164
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:58,720
Speaker 1: buy the new color this year or the new pattern,

1165
01:06:59,000 --> 01:07:01,920
Speaker 1: well that's that's quite good for the manufact right. In short,

1166
01:07:02,000 --> 01:07:06,560
Speaker 1: markets are neo philick, consumers are neophobic, and hits are

1167
01:07:06,640 --> 01:07:10,480
Speaker 1: that special place in the middle just new enough, just

1168
01:07:10,920 --> 01:07:15,480
Speaker 1: surprising enough, and yet perfectly familiar, most advanced yet acceptable.

1169
01:07:15,520 --> 01:07:19,440
Speaker 1: MAYA All right, so let's jump right into our favorite questions.

1170
01:07:19,800 --> 01:07:22,440
Speaker 1: So you've been at the Atlantic? What what were you

1171
01:07:22,480 --> 01:07:24,160
Speaker 1: doing before you were at the Atlantic? I was a

1172
01:07:24,200 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 1: journalism student at Northwestern University and you were a triple major.

1173
01:07:28,200 --> 01:07:30,520
Speaker 1: If I read your background, I was a triple major.

1174
01:07:30,640 --> 01:07:33,680
Speaker 1: I should take that record, so it does not count.

1175
01:07:33,720 --> 01:07:37,560
Speaker 1: So first of all, every journalism major is uh invited to,

1176
01:07:37,680 --> 01:07:41,320
Speaker 1: if not practically demanded, to major in something else. That

1177
01:07:41,360 --> 01:07:43,760
Speaker 1: was political science for me, And then I realized there

1178
01:07:43,800 --> 01:07:46,240
Speaker 1: was this special trick in Northwestern where if you double

1179
01:07:46,280 --> 01:07:48,600
Speaker 1: counted a lot of classes and wrote a five thousand

1180
01:07:48,640 --> 01:07:51,240
Speaker 1: word paper, you could get a legal studies major. And

1181
01:07:51,280 --> 01:07:53,640
Speaker 1: I figured that, in sort of the long tail possibility

1182
01:07:53,680 --> 01:07:55,200
Speaker 1: that I would want to become a lawyer, I should

1183
01:07:55,200 --> 01:07:58,240
Speaker 1: do that. But I sit before you today, having not

1184
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:00,840
Speaker 1: taken a single law class, sense I said, before you,

1185
01:08:00,920 --> 01:08:03,720
Speaker 1: having gone to law school, and I'm so happy I don't,

1186
01:08:04,640 --> 01:08:08,320
Speaker 1: as do the majority of law school graduates. Um, let's

1187
01:08:08,320 --> 01:08:11,360
Speaker 1: talk about early mentors. Who who were the people who

1188
01:08:11,680 --> 01:08:14,880
Speaker 1: helped god your career along. I had some great teachers

1189
01:08:15,480 --> 01:08:18,680
Speaker 1: in high school and in college. A lot of my

1190
01:08:18,800 --> 01:08:22,240
Speaker 1: mentors were actually theater directors. I was an actor before

1191
01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:24,800
Speaker 1: I was a journalist, and I think that acting is

1192
01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:32,840
Speaker 1: a very useful education in journalism because it requires the

1193
01:08:32,880 --> 01:08:36,960
Speaker 1: individual to develop a kind of internal sense of authenticity

1194
01:08:37,080 --> 01:08:40,280
Speaker 1: and an external sense of entertainment. And so much of

1195
01:08:40,360 --> 01:08:43,719
Speaker 1: great journalism, I think is that which is informative is true,

1196
01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:48,240
Speaker 1: but also is informative truth expressed in entertaining ways storytelling.

1197
01:08:48,280 --> 01:08:52,439
Speaker 1: Storytelling absolutely, let's let's talk about authors before we get

1198
01:08:52,479 --> 01:08:57,439
Speaker 1: to books. Who what authors, journalists? Writers influenced your approach

1199
01:08:57,479 --> 01:09:00,080
Speaker 1: to write? Uh, this is a great question and of

1200
01:09:00,080 --> 01:09:03,680
Speaker 1: a question because you were, in fact one of them. Well,

1201
01:09:04,040 --> 01:09:05,920
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. When I started off writing in

1202
01:09:05,920 --> 01:09:09,840
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, there were a handful of blogs that

1203
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:15,400
Speaker 1: were absolute must for me to develop an expertise in economics,

1204
01:09:16,080 --> 01:09:18,639
Speaker 1: as re Klein was one, Matti Glecias, Ryan A Event,

1205
01:09:18,760 --> 01:09:22,559
Speaker 1: Felix Salmon, the Big Picture. Um, so there were a

1206
01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:25,760
Speaker 1: handful of these blogs that I absolutely needed to read

1207
01:09:25,840 --> 01:09:27,720
Speaker 1: every single week to stay on top of the crap,

1208
01:09:27,800 --> 01:09:30,479
Speaker 1: the financial crash and the recovery. And so you were

1209
01:09:30,640 --> 01:09:34,000
Speaker 1: a huge up there. How about someone else? Oh, I

1210
01:09:34,160 --> 01:09:36,559
Speaker 1: think I named four others, but yeah, Ryan A. Van

1211
01:09:36,960 --> 01:09:41,680
Speaker 1: matt Ezra. Occasionally people will say stuff like that, and

1212
01:09:41,760 --> 01:09:46,240
Speaker 1: I still have not learned how to accept a compliment.

1213
01:09:46,479 --> 01:09:49,360
Speaker 1: It's just like, come on, stop because because my wife

1214
01:09:49,400 --> 01:09:52,000
Speaker 1: will tell you. My wife will tell you that I'm

1215
01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:54,720
Speaker 1: still the same idiot I was twenty years ago. But

1216
01:09:55,400 --> 01:09:58,719
Speaker 1: you know, well, your your economic idiocy was absolutely illuminating

1217
01:09:58,720 --> 01:10:00,400
Speaker 1: for me in two thousand nine. Weren't when we were

1218
01:10:00,400 --> 01:10:02,360
Speaker 1: all idiots. And so to be the smartest man in

1219
01:10:02,360 --> 01:10:06,320
Speaker 1: the room nearly to be the say I frequently say,

1220
01:10:06,360 --> 01:10:09,720
Speaker 1: I am unburned by a classical economics education. And that

1221
01:10:09,800 --> 01:10:13,879
Speaker 1: was a huge extremely unburned by that education. But sometimes

1222
01:10:13,880 --> 01:10:16,639
Speaker 1: that's an advantage when you're looking at things and you're

1223
01:10:16,720 --> 01:10:20,840
Speaker 1: not you know, talk about hit makers and factories every

1224
01:10:20,840 --> 01:10:24,240
Speaker 1: wolf Street. Economists them come from the same schools, the

1225
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:26,880
Speaker 1: same training, training programs, so when something is a little

1226
01:10:26,880 --> 01:10:29,439
Speaker 1: outside the box, they're oblivious to it. And it took

1227
01:10:30,280 --> 01:10:32,880
Speaker 1: all The people who saw the crisis coming were none,

1228
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:37,759
Speaker 1: for the most part, non economists, right as mathematicians, some

1229
01:10:37,760 --> 01:10:40,240
Speaker 1: some unusual background. I would say this. I think that

1230
01:10:40,360 --> 01:10:42,559
Speaker 1: when I didn't know anything about economics, it was useful

1231
01:10:42,560 --> 01:10:45,160
Speaker 1: because if I if at nine am I had a

1232
01:10:45,240 --> 01:10:47,600
Speaker 1: question I needed the answer to, and I talked to

1233
01:10:47,680 --> 01:10:50,559
Speaker 1: a couple of economists before one pm. At two pm,

1234
01:10:50,720 --> 01:10:55,439
Speaker 1: I could write the story remembering my ignorance at eight

1235
01:10:55,479 --> 01:10:57,200
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning. And so in a way, I

1236
01:10:57,240 --> 01:10:59,800
Speaker 1: think I was able to explain some of these really

1237
01:11:00,000 --> 01:11:03,840
Speaker 1: amplicated issues in simpler ways because I remembered what the

1238
01:11:03,840 --> 01:11:07,600
Speaker 1: first questions were of the ignorant person. I was so

1239
01:11:07,600 --> 01:11:09,920
Speaker 1: so I had so recently departed from the land of ignorance.

1240
01:11:09,960 --> 01:11:11,960
Speaker 1: And you've done a really good job. A lot of

1241
01:11:12,000 --> 01:11:16,559
Speaker 1: the things that you've written in our mutual admiration society.

1242
01:11:16,880 --> 01:11:22,000
Speaker 1: They're very, very are well articulated to somebody who may

1243
01:11:22,000 --> 01:11:24,760
Speaker 1: be a late person but wants to understand a more

1244
01:11:24,800 --> 01:11:27,920
Speaker 1: complex or nuanced issue. And you've always done a really

1245
01:11:28,040 --> 01:11:30,679
Speaker 1: nice job with that, which is probably why the book

1246
01:11:31,280 --> 01:11:34,760
Speaker 1: is so interesting and does such a nice job explaining

1247
01:11:34,840 --> 01:11:39,479
Speaker 1: some really interesting concepts. Speaking of books, tell us about

1248
01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:41,479
Speaker 1: some of your favorite books. By the way, this is

1249
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:44,200
Speaker 1: the question I get more than any other from readers.

1250
01:11:44,200 --> 01:11:48,280
Speaker 1: Are Hey, what books do your your guests like? Yeah, Um,

1251
01:11:48,320 --> 01:11:51,360
Speaker 1: there's a handful of books about cognitive psychology that are

1252
01:11:51,439 --> 01:11:54,040
Speaker 1: just mainstays and uninteresting, like Thinking Fast and Slow. I

1253
01:11:54,080 --> 01:11:58,360
Speaker 1: thought was utterly fascinating. Uh. I get a lot of

1254
01:11:58,760 --> 01:12:02,280
Speaker 1: my insight about the world and particularly about how to

1255
01:12:02,320 --> 01:12:06,120
Speaker 1: write from novels. Um. There's a couple sort of hidden

1256
01:12:06,200 --> 01:12:09,280
Speaker 1: allusions to the Corrections throughout this book. Some of my

1257
01:12:09,280 --> 01:12:12,680
Speaker 1: favorite lines the corrections sort of um slightly modulated to

1258
01:12:13,080 --> 01:12:16,200
Speaker 1: UH to talk about new issues. There's a line from

1259
01:12:16,200 --> 01:12:21,320
Speaker 1: from Frandsen's book where he says, um, uh afternoons are

1260
01:12:21,479 --> 01:12:26,840
Speaker 1: a cavity in which infections breed um uh lazy afternoons,

1261
01:12:26,880 --> 01:12:29,439
Speaker 1: or cavity in which infections breed Um when he's talking

1262
01:12:29,439 --> 01:12:31,880
Speaker 1: about the frustrations of a of an older character, and

1263
01:12:31,920 --> 01:12:33,960
Speaker 1: I think I have a line where I I um,

1264
01:12:34,000 --> 01:12:36,800
Speaker 1: I steal from him a bit, while noting in the

1265
01:12:36,800 --> 01:12:39,360
Speaker 1: index where I say boredom is a cavity in which

1266
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:42,760
Speaker 1: creativity breeds, because I do find that sometimes it's those

1267
01:12:42,760 --> 01:12:44,600
Speaker 1: moments when you're bored when you come up with that

1268
01:12:44,680 --> 01:12:48,360
Speaker 1: aha insight that answers the question you previously couldn't when

1269
01:12:48,360 --> 01:12:50,720
Speaker 1: you were at work. UM. So that's a that's a

1270
01:12:50,720 --> 01:12:53,080
Speaker 1: great book that I love. UM. I love the work

1271
01:12:53,080 --> 01:12:56,519
Speaker 1: of Bill Bryson, A Short History of nearly Everything was

1272
01:12:56,760 --> 01:13:00,120
Speaker 1: in the Woods at Home one summer. He is is

1273
01:13:00,120 --> 01:13:06,240
Speaker 1: a brilliant popular historian and a genius at using topic

1274
01:13:06,360 --> 01:13:10,479
Speaker 1: A to discuss topics be through Z. He's wonderful. It's

1275
01:13:10,479 --> 01:13:12,760
Speaker 1: sort of zooming in on a topic and then broadening out.

1276
01:13:13,000 --> 01:13:17,639
Speaker 1: And I love writing that understands that every every question

1277
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:21,880
Speaker 1: has historical context. Here's a question, a new question. You'll

1278
01:13:21,920 --> 01:13:24,679
Speaker 1: be the first the guinea pig for this one. UM,

1279
01:13:24,720 --> 01:13:27,439
Speaker 1: tell us about failure. Tell us about a time you

1280
01:13:27,560 --> 01:13:30,240
Speaker 1: failed and what you learned from it. I think every

1281
01:13:30,320 --> 01:13:34,120
Speaker 1: article that I write is a failure. Large or small,

1282
01:13:34,479 --> 01:13:36,800
Speaker 1: and well, now that's a little bit of an exaggeration,

1283
01:13:36,880 --> 01:13:38,880
Speaker 1: is no, no, but but of course it is every

1284
01:13:39,120 --> 01:13:41,439
Speaker 1: everything that I've written this book, the last column that

1285
01:13:41,479 --> 01:13:43,639
Speaker 1: I wrote. I'll look back on it after two weeks,

1286
01:13:43,640 --> 01:13:45,200
Speaker 1: back on it after a month, and I'll think, I

1287
01:13:45,240 --> 01:13:47,720
Speaker 1: miss this, I miss this. And I think that one

1288
01:13:47,760 --> 01:13:49,840
Speaker 1: of the more important things for writers to do is

1289
01:13:49,880 --> 01:13:53,759
Speaker 1: to maintain this awareness that everything that they write, everything

1290
01:13:53,760 --> 01:13:56,040
Speaker 1: they will ever do, is a failure in some way.

1291
01:13:56,080 --> 01:13:58,960
Speaker 1: And it's dispiriting when I see some uh, some older

1292
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:01,240
Speaker 1: journalists who I will name and certainly don't sit in

1293
01:14:01,240 --> 01:14:05,000
Speaker 1: the room where I'll see that they they they've attained

1294
01:14:05,000 --> 01:14:07,920
Speaker 1: a level of fame at which they no longer need

1295
01:14:08,000 --> 01:14:09,960
Speaker 1: that feedback loop. They no longer feel like they have

1296
01:14:10,040 --> 01:14:12,880
Speaker 1: to read the comments or read the mean tweets. They'll

1297
01:14:12,880 --> 01:14:16,200
Speaker 1: just say, I'm above it. And when you lose that

1298
01:14:16,280 --> 01:14:21,120
Speaker 1: feedback loop, and you lose the the expected rush of criticism,

1299
01:14:21,200 --> 01:14:23,719
Speaker 1: you lose touch with the thing that journalism is supposed

1300
01:14:23,760 --> 01:14:26,280
Speaker 1: to be about, which is a journey out of wrongness,

1301
01:14:26,320 --> 01:14:30,680
Speaker 1: not necessarily to truth, but always out of wrongness. And

1302
01:14:31,400 --> 01:14:34,760
Speaker 1: journey out of wrongness. Yeah, and and and that's you know,

1303
01:14:34,840 --> 01:14:36,800
Speaker 1: this book is a journey out of wrongness. There there

1304
01:14:36,840 --> 01:14:39,280
Speaker 1: are dozens of things I can tell you right now

1305
01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:41,640
Speaker 1: that I wish i'd put in it, But um, you know,

1306
01:14:41,720 --> 01:14:44,799
Speaker 1: that's why we have an opportunity to write new articles,

1307
01:14:44,840 --> 01:14:48,519
Speaker 1: do new podcasts, write new books. You describe that lack

1308
01:14:48,560 --> 01:14:53,040
Speaker 1: of feedback loop. As you were just putting words to that,

1309
01:14:53,920 --> 01:14:58,280
Speaker 1: my mental image was, oh, he's describing former journalists who

1310
01:14:58,320 --> 01:15:03,600
Speaker 1: become TV pundits. Am I today some degree? That's I

1311
01:15:03,600 --> 01:15:06,880
Speaker 1: don't know if you were referencing anybody specifically, but I

1312
01:15:06,760 --> 01:15:10,000
Speaker 1: immediately thought of, well, this guy is basically hasn't done

1313
01:15:10,000 --> 01:15:12,960
Speaker 1: anything new for twenty years, and and that's why they're

1314
01:15:12,960 --> 01:15:15,800
Speaker 1: so out of touch because their frame of reference is

1315
01:15:16,040 --> 01:15:19,800
Speaker 1: decades removed from what's happening today. If that was your implication,

1316
01:15:19,840 --> 01:15:23,360
Speaker 1: then I accurately communicated my thought. So I know I

1317
01:15:23,400 --> 01:15:26,240
Speaker 1: only have you for another eight minutes or so. Let's

1318
01:15:26,320 --> 01:15:30,639
Speaker 1: let's jump to our our last three questions, and and

1319
01:15:30,720 --> 01:15:34,439
Speaker 1: these are my favorite questions. Another yet another question, which

1320
01:15:34,479 --> 01:15:38,040
Speaker 1: was reader or listener derived What do you do to

1321
01:15:38,160 --> 01:15:41,040
Speaker 1: keep mentally and or physically fit? What do you do

1322
01:15:41,120 --> 01:15:44,920
Speaker 1: to relax or for enjoyment outside of work? Uh? So

1323
01:15:45,000 --> 01:15:48,840
Speaker 1: let's start with physically fit. UM. I hate working out.

1324
01:15:49,000 --> 01:15:51,320
Speaker 1: I working out to me is like brushing my teeth.

1325
01:15:51,680 --> 01:15:54,400
Speaker 1: I don't like the process, but I hate having not

1326
01:15:54,560 --> 01:15:59,160
Speaker 1: done it. Um. And so I have a very nice physic.

1327
01:15:59,240 --> 01:16:01,240
Speaker 1: My only urge in life is that I have a

1328
01:16:01,280 --> 01:16:04,759
Speaker 1: physical trainer. Um. And I pay him to kick my butt,

1329
01:16:05,040 --> 01:16:06,800
Speaker 1: because if I didn't pay him to kick my butt,

1330
01:16:06,840 --> 01:16:08,479
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go to the gym, and I would just

1331
01:16:08,600 --> 01:16:11,920
Speaker 1: feel sad about myself. I am a huge proponent of

1332
01:16:11,920 --> 01:16:18,160
Speaker 1: procrastination and um, mindless, pointless relaxation. I will take some

1333
01:16:18,200 --> 01:16:20,720
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoons and I will just lie down on a

1334
01:16:20,800 --> 01:16:23,559
Speaker 1: couch with a coffee and a bagel and watch ten

1335
01:16:23,640 --> 01:16:26,560
Speaker 1: hours of Law and Order. And I think, if you

1336
01:16:26,640 --> 01:16:29,200
Speaker 1: don't strike me as that sort of oh, if they

1337
01:16:29,360 --> 01:16:32,120
Speaker 1: book looks like it was written by someone who reads

1338
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:36,040
Speaker 1: deeply and widely. I love reading deeply. I love reading widely,

1339
01:16:36,120 --> 01:16:37,800
Speaker 1: and I like reading deeply and widely so that I

1340
01:16:37,800 --> 01:16:39,920
Speaker 1: can reward myself with ten hours of Law and Order

1341
01:16:39,960 --> 01:16:43,920
Speaker 1: on the couch. I I think that you know, everyone,

1342
01:16:44,840 --> 01:16:47,439
Speaker 1: let's put it this way. Meditation is a hot concept

1343
01:16:47,560 --> 01:16:50,040
Speaker 1: right now. This idea of you know, reaching a sort

1344
01:16:50,080 --> 01:16:54,240
Speaker 1: of a personal nirvana or allowing a quietude to descend

1345
01:16:54,280 --> 01:16:58,640
Speaker 1: upon one's self. Um, my meditation is Law and Order SVU.

1346
01:16:58,800 --> 01:17:02,040
Speaker 1: That sounds sick. You know exactly what is happening on

1347
01:17:02,120 --> 01:17:07,360
Speaker 1: Leader SPU. But there's something just so beautifully predictable and

1348
01:17:07,479 --> 01:17:11,200
Speaker 1: satisfying about every episode. A problem a solution, a problem

1349
01:17:11,240 --> 01:17:14,640
Speaker 1: a solution, and it's so tidy and so neat, and

1350
01:17:14,680 --> 01:17:17,519
Speaker 1: it allows for a kind of, um a mental spring

1351
01:17:17,520 --> 01:17:20,160
Speaker 1: cleaning every Saturday. That's great. I'm gonna I'm gonna share

1352
01:17:20,200 --> 01:17:24,000
Speaker 1: something odd television wise with you. About five years ago,

1353
01:17:25,200 --> 01:17:28,360
Speaker 1: we're watching some lure in Order and there's the scene

1354
01:17:28,360 --> 01:17:32,200
Speaker 1: where they're doing the autopsy explaining what happened, and I

1355
01:17:32,680 --> 01:17:35,639
Speaker 1: decide I don't need to see yet another human body.

1356
01:17:36,439 --> 01:17:39,559
Speaker 1: And by the way, I love these cartoon war movies,

1357
01:17:39,600 --> 01:17:42,839
Speaker 1: and I love these superhero movies, but it's cartoonish violence.

1358
01:17:42,840 --> 01:17:45,519
Speaker 1: And the problem with C S I and Lawyer it's

1359
01:17:45,640 --> 01:17:48,719
Speaker 1: real and it's visceral. And I just decided to stop

1360
01:17:49,320 --> 01:17:51,760
Speaker 1: every last one of those. And so when I see

1361
01:17:51,840 --> 01:17:55,920
Speaker 1: somebody get killed or blown up, it's purely cartoonish. It's

1362
01:17:55,960 --> 01:17:58,759
Speaker 1: not real. Because and then when you see a movie

1363
01:17:58,840 --> 01:18:03,920
Speaker 1: like um, saving Private Private Ryan. The impact is so

1364
01:18:04,040 --> 01:18:06,519
Speaker 1: much greater than because you do get I'm a little

1365
01:18:06,520 --> 01:18:10,320
Speaker 1: bit desensitized, so much so much c s I that

1366
01:18:10,360 --> 01:18:12,680
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you know, like of course, like say,

1367
01:18:12,680 --> 01:18:17,160
Speaker 1: the Private Ryan's opening scene is absolutely start wrenching. Yeah. Um,

1368
01:18:17,240 --> 01:18:21,439
Speaker 1: but there is a lot of ghoulish stuff on broadcast television.

1369
01:18:21,640 --> 01:18:25,639
Speaker 1: Tons absolutely tons. Um. Let's talk about advice. So you're

1370
01:18:25,680 --> 01:18:29,160
Speaker 1: not that far removed from college, and I kind of

1371
01:18:29,200 --> 01:18:31,880
Speaker 1: would say, you're still a millennial, right I am. So

1372
01:18:32,080 --> 01:18:35,280
Speaker 1: what advice do you give to a recent college grad

1373
01:18:35,439 --> 01:18:37,599
Speaker 1: or a college student who comes up to you and says,

1374
01:18:38,080 --> 01:18:42,200
Speaker 1: I'm interested in journalism, becoming an author, writing books. What

1375
01:18:42,240 --> 01:18:44,680
Speaker 1: do you say to a person like that? The this

1376
01:18:44,760 --> 01:18:48,439
Speaker 1: is a lesson, a piece of advice that comes out

1377
01:18:48,439 --> 01:18:50,559
Speaker 1: of that chapter. The audience of my audience, which is

1378
01:18:50,600 --> 01:18:54,479
Speaker 1: that there's a paradox to scale. I think, Um, people

1379
01:18:54,520 --> 01:18:56,559
Speaker 1: who want to be big sometimes think I have to

1380
01:18:57,200 --> 01:19:01,640
Speaker 1: immediately reach the largest possible audience. But no, weird way. Um.

1381
01:19:01,800 --> 01:19:05,080
Speaker 1: The best way to produce things that take off is

1382
01:19:05,160 --> 01:19:08,920
Speaker 1: to produce small things. To become a small expert, to

1383
01:19:09,040 --> 01:19:12,759
Speaker 1: become the you know, the best person on the internet

1384
01:19:13,320 --> 01:19:19,120
Speaker 1: at understanding the application of medicaid uh to on minority

1385
01:19:19,200 --> 01:19:21,400
Speaker 1: children or something like that. And the reason I think

1386
01:19:21,400 --> 01:19:23,679
Speaker 1: this is true is I call it's like my Tokyo example.

1387
01:19:24,040 --> 01:19:26,080
Speaker 1: If you go to Tokyo, you'll see there are all

1388
01:19:26,120 --> 01:19:28,479
Speaker 1: sorts of really really strange shops. They'll be like a

1389
01:19:28,479 --> 01:19:32,160
Speaker 1: shop that's like only nineteen seventies vinyl and like nineteen

1390
01:19:32,200 --> 01:19:35,799
Speaker 1: eighties whiskey or something, And that doesn't make any sense

1391
01:19:35,880 --> 01:19:39,160
Speaker 1: if it's a shop in like a Des Moines suburb, right,

1392
01:19:39,479 --> 01:19:41,799
Speaker 1: de Moines suburbs to exist, you have to be subway.

1393
01:19:41,880 --> 01:19:44,959
Speaker 1: You have to hit the mass market immediately. But in Tokyo,

1394
01:19:45,040 --> 01:19:49,120
Speaker 1: where there's thirty forty million people within a train ride

1395
01:19:49,120 --> 01:19:54,000
Speaker 1: of the city, right then your market is forty million.

1396
01:19:54,040 --> 01:19:55,920
Speaker 1: And within that forty million, sure there's a couple of

1397
01:19:55,920 --> 01:19:59,240
Speaker 1: thousand people who love nineteen seventies music and nineteen ettie whiskey.

1398
01:19:59,280 --> 01:20:02,880
Speaker 1: The Internet is Tokyo. The Internet allows you to be

1399
01:20:03,040 --> 01:20:06,960
Speaker 1: niche at scale and ironically, the best which at scale

1400
01:20:07,120 --> 01:20:09,640
Speaker 1: Niche at scale uh And this is a concept in

1401
01:20:09,880 --> 01:20:13,439
Speaker 1: the last chapter of the book um and Uh. Niche

1402
01:20:13,439 --> 01:20:15,679
Speaker 1: at scale, I think is something that young people should

1403
01:20:15,720 --> 01:20:19,280
Speaker 1: aspire to. And our final question, what is it that

1404
01:20:19,360 --> 01:20:22,439
Speaker 1: you know about journalism today that you wish you knew

1405
01:20:22,880 --> 01:20:27,000
Speaker 1: when you just got out of school. Um, I wish

1406
01:20:27,160 --> 01:20:29,280
Speaker 1: coming out of school. You know I was in I

1407
01:20:29,360 --> 01:20:31,720
Speaker 1: was a political science major, and I do wish I

1408
01:20:31,720 --> 01:20:35,479
Speaker 1: had taken more economic classes number one, but also really

1409
01:20:35,560 --> 01:20:38,760
Speaker 1: history classes that I've had to catch up on my

1410
01:20:38,800 --> 01:20:41,800
Speaker 1: history education since they graduated from school. I think that

1411
01:20:42,320 --> 01:20:48,879
Speaker 1: understanding academia, understanding research papers, that isn't the most important

1412
01:20:48,880 --> 01:20:50,639
Speaker 1: thing I think of being a good journalist. I think

1413
01:20:50,640 --> 01:20:53,360
Speaker 1: the most important thing is understanding where we've come from.

1414
01:20:54,080 --> 01:20:56,960
Speaker 1: I wish I had taken more history in college, and

1415
01:20:57,000 --> 01:20:59,479
Speaker 1: I and still in the process of catching up. We

1416
01:20:59,520 --> 01:21:02,240
Speaker 1: have been speed king with Derek Thompson. He is the

1417
01:21:02,280 --> 01:21:06,040
Speaker 1: author of hit Makers, The Science of Popularity, and an

1418
01:21:06,040 --> 01:21:09,840
Speaker 1: Age of Distraction. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure

1419
01:21:09,840 --> 01:21:11,640
Speaker 1: and look up an Inch or down an inch on

1420
01:21:11,720 --> 01:21:14,360
Speaker 1: Apple iTunes. You can see any of the other hundred

1421
01:21:14,439 --> 01:21:19,000
Speaker 1: and forty two or so such previous conversations. We love

1422
01:21:19,040 --> 01:21:24,160
Speaker 1: your comments, feedback, end suggestions right to us at m

1423
01:21:24,200 --> 01:21:28,160
Speaker 1: IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would be remiss

1424
01:21:28,240 --> 01:21:30,679
Speaker 1: if I did not thank our crack staff who helps

1425
01:21:30,760 --> 01:21:34,920
Speaker 1: us put together this podcast each week. Medina Parwana is

1426
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:39,439
Speaker 1: my recording engineer. Taylor Riggs is my booker. Producer. Mike

1427
01:21:39,479 --> 01:21:43,559
Speaker 1: Battnick our head of research. I'm Barry Reholts. You're listening

1428
01:21:43,600 --> 01:21:50,599
Speaker 1: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Masters in Business

1429
01:21:50,760 --> 01:21:53,720
Speaker 1: is brought to you by proper Cloth, the leader in

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