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Speaker 1: The Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeartRadio. Good people,

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Speaker 1: What's up? How you doing? Today's episode is actually the

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Speaker 1: very first episode taped as the Quest Love Show. It

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Speaker 1: was with author podcast hosts and my pal Malcolm glad Well.

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Speaker 1: We did this live on stage at the iHeart Cafe

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Speaker 1: in can France back in June, and you'll hear me

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Speaker 1: explore with this format, asking some random questions to get

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Speaker 1: to know people in new ones. Malcolm seemed to have

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Speaker 1: fun with it, and along the way we discussed his

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Speaker 1: latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. So please enjoy

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Speaker 1: this episode and let's go back live to the iHeart Cafe.

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Speaker 2: All right, all right, who's excited to hear a great

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Speaker 2: podcast tonight? About five years ago we hear it. I

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Speaker 2: Heart had the chance to begin working with one of

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Speaker 2: the great podcasts out there. By the way, I'm Will Pearson,

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Speaker 2: President of iHeart Podcast. We are so happy to have

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Speaker 2: Well was that what that was about? Just was great, guys.

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Speaker 2: I'm just gonna sit down and chat for a bit.

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Speaker 2: Thank you now. But I'm pleased to introduce one of

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Speaker 2: our favorite podcasters, a true cultural powerhouse. Of course, he's

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Speaker 2: a founding member of the legendary roots. Let's give it

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Speaker 2: up for the roots. He's a best selling author. He's

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Speaker 2: gonna do the wander up here. He's never patient. He's

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Speaker 2: not a patient man. He's a historian, he's a creative

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Speaker 2: visionary and as of three years ago, an Academy Award winner.

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Speaker 2: Let's give it up for the Academy Award winner for

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Speaker 2: Summer of Soul, about the nineteen sixty nine Harlem Cultural Festival.

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Speaker 2: If you haven't checked out this year's documentary that he

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Speaker 2: did about the brilliant sly Stone. Unfortunately we lost him

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Speaker 2: just last week.

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Speaker 1: It is a.

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Speaker 2: Brilliant documentary as well. He's of course an incredible DJ.

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Speaker 2: I don't know if anybody got to hear Him's not

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Speaker 2: up at Hotel do Cap an incredible setup there, but

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Speaker 2: we here love to celebrate his genre hopping podcast, where

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Speaker 2: he gets the chance to chat with people such as

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Speaker 2: Michelle Obama, Chris Rock, Shaka Khan. The list goes on

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Speaker 2: and on and on. He's the ultimate multi hyphen it

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Speaker 2: and he is interviewing someone also incredibly interesting. Please join

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Speaker 2: me in welcoming the one and only Questlove.

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Speaker 1: How's everyone out there? All right? I was handing to

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Speaker 1: this le boo boo like five minutes ago. So I

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Speaker 1: know most of you don't know who this is, neither

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Speaker 1: do I, but I just learned what a lobuobu was. Well.

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Speaker 1: First of all, welcome to can Lyon. Thank you for coming.

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Speaker 1: Shout out to my iHeart family for organizing and putting

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Speaker 1: this together. Shout out to the two one five family

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Speaker 1: as well. So basically this platform is primarily known as

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Speaker 1: where I dissect music or musicians. Occasionally an actor, director

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Speaker 1: and author comes on the show, occasional politician. But we're

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Speaker 1: going to do something different today pretty much. I'll say

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Speaker 1: that our guests thinks different and probably specifically to me,

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Speaker 1: but for a lot of us. He taught me how

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Speaker 1: to think different and didn't think about the power of

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Speaker 1: critical thinking probably until the beginning of the aughts in

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Speaker 1: the early two thousands and whatnot. And I know he

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Speaker 1: hates all this attention, but no, he's really changed my

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Speaker 1: life as far as me understanding my personality for wanting

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Speaker 1: to practice or knowing the science of what's behind things

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Speaker 1: and whatnot. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Malcolm Gladwell to

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Speaker 1: quest Love Support. How you doing, man, I'm good, Okay,

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Speaker 1: delighted to be here. Well, let me start off asking

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Speaker 1: because you know, when I first met to you twenty

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Speaker 1: years ago, like both of us were arriving at a

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Speaker 1: new place where you know, we kind of reached our

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Speaker 1: prominence at the same time. Now that it's twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: five years later, I'll just ask you just off the cuff, like,

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Speaker 1: does it ever get exhausting when people are always running

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Speaker 1: to you for answers or how to explain things?

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Speaker 3: Well, it'd be worse if they didn't do that, right,

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Speaker 3: So you always have to think about the flip side

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Speaker 3: of it. If you produce stuff and no one it

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Speaker 3: never caused a ripple, that would be worse. Okay, So

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Speaker 3: this is a problem I'm happy to have.

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Speaker 1: Okay, I can accept that. Normally I start with a

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Speaker 1: music related question, but I know that's not your forte,

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Speaker 1: But I'm going to ask you anyway.

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Speaker 3: It's unfair to say it's not my forte. I don't

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Speaker 3: know next to you, I don't.

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Speaker 1: Know what about it. Okay, Well, I mean you told me before.

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Speaker 4: That, Well, I was worried you were going to start.

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Speaker 1: You know, That's why I'm asking this question, all right,

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Speaker 1: What was your first musical memory in life.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I know exactly what it was. We had just moved.

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Speaker 3: It was nineteen sixty nine. We just moved to Canada

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Speaker 3: from England. We did not have a television, but my

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Speaker 3: parents decided to buy a record player.

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Speaker 4: But we had no records, and so I went.

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Speaker 3: With my mother to the public library and we checked

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Speaker 3: out two records Peter PAULA. Mery Greatest Hits, which I

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Speaker 3: listened to once.

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Speaker 4: It was like EH and.

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Speaker 3: Bridge over Troubled Water, which Simon and Garrom Simon and Garfunkle.

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Speaker 1: I know, the a Wreatha Franklin version, so.

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Speaker 3: Which you know, if you think about sort of serendipitous

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Speaker 3: moments in your life, if that was really the the

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Speaker 3: first album I ever listened to, really the first mut

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Speaker 3: We didn't listen to the radio except for like news radio,

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Speaker 3: and we didn't have a TV. I had no exposure,

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Speaker 3: your zero to popular music. And the first popular music

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Speaker 3: I was ever exposed to in a concentrated way was

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Speaker 3: one of the greatest albums of all.

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Speaker 4: Time, which is pretty over Trouble.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 3: That's like if the first novel you read was War

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Speaker 3: in Peace, or the first scientist you met was like

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Speaker 3: Einstein or you know what I mean, it's like incredibly

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Speaker 3: lucky and that I was. To this day, I remember

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Speaker 3: exactly what it was like to listen to all those songs.

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Speaker 1: Well, I was going to ask you, what was it

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Speaker 1: about that record that spoke to you at the time, it.

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Speaker 4: Was It's funny because I didn't.

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Speaker 3: Later forty years later did an audiobook with Paul Simon,

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Speaker 3: who I interviewed him for like forty hours, and which

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Speaker 3: was this great sort of full circle. But I think

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Speaker 3: it was I hadn't realized how much joy there could

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Speaker 3: be in pop music. Remember, I had no exposure to it,

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Speaker 3: and if you have no exposure, you have no emotional

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Speaker 3: context for it. So I didn't know what pop music

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Speaker 3: was supposed to be. Was it supposed to be? All

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Speaker 3: I knew was church music. I knew music that was

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Speaker 3: supposed to be kind of ceremonial and formal and kind

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Speaker 3: of waited with moral meaning. I didn't know joy in music.

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Speaker 3: I knew Nursey rhymes, but they were silly, they weren't joyful.

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Speaker 3: That album is you know Cecilia and that drum solo

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Speaker 3: and on and on, and then the kind of in

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Speaker 3: the middle of it they dropped the bomb of Bridge

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Speaker 3: over Troubled Water, which is like a full on gospel

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Speaker 3: song sung by two Jewish guys from Queens, and like,

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Speaker 3: even then is genius. You discover the genius of a backtrack.

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Speaker 3: I grew up in a household that was a cultural contradiction,

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Speaker 3: a black mother and a white mother and a white father,

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Speaker 3: and I was aware of the fact that was a

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Speaker 3: discordant idea in the culture. I didn't know anyone else

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Speaker 3: who had that combination. And then I come across this

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Speaker 3: record which has a similar discordant thing. I know, I

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Speaker 3: know what gospel music was, and this was a gospel

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Speaker 3: song sung by two Jewish guys and queens.

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Speaker 4: Like that's in if.

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Speaker 3: You're seven six, that's really interesting and you're kind of

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Speaker 3: a student of this.

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Speaker 1: So even at the age of six, you had the

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Speaker 1: wherewithal the bandwidth to sort of differentiate emotion or well.

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Speaker 4: Remember I was well churched.

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Speaker 3: So I've been growing up in the evangelical churches of Jamaica,

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Speaker 3: the you know, the formal churches of England.

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Speaker 4: The so I knew if you if you're.

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Speaker 3: Well churched, you you quickly become acquainted with a whole

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Speaker 3: range of kind of cultural forms.

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Speaker 1: Was the air quotes secular music not allowed in the

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Speaker 1: household or did they frown upon it or not.

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Speaker 3: It's not that we was frowned upon, it was we

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Speaker 3: never got around to it.

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Speaker 1: You just never knew existed.

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Speaker 4: My mother, the first.

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Speaker 3: Movie she ever watched in its entirety was the movie

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Speaker 3: remember the Melanie Griffith movie Working Girl. Yeah, my mom

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Speaker 3: watched that with the sound off.

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Speaker 1: Because she did that was like late eighties.

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Speaker 3: My mother was born in nineteen thirty two. The first

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Speaker 3: movie she saw, It's full was on a plane and

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Speaker 3: she didn't realize she could buy the sound so she

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Speaker 3: just watched it, right, And her comment was, so we

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Speaker 3: didn't have a TV, so she was really encountering a

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Speaker 3: movie that form for the first time.

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Speaker 4: She was completely blown away by it. And I remember

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Speaker 4: as a kid thinking that is deeply hilarious that.

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Speaker 3: She thought, this is this is magical without the sound

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Speaker 3: mind you right, this is magical. Welcome that was an

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Speaker 3: extraordinary film. It is the is the comment that she goes.

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Speaker 3: But like, we didn't have a rule against it. We

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Speaker 3: just we just didn't do TV and we didn't go

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Speaker 3: to the movies, and we didn't buy records.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so I have a theory that boredom is necessary.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wait, I said I had a theory about

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Speaker 1: You're the one that showed me that theory. I think

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Speaker 1: your own theory.

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Speaker 3: No, it's my mom's theory, because I would say to

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Speaker 3: my mom repeatedly, I mean, I'm living in this what

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Speaker 3: I consider to be a cultural desert in the middle

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Speaker 3: of rural Canada. And I would say to my mom

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Speaker 3: every day on bored and she would say, Malcolm, that's

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Speaker 3: a good thing.

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Speaker 4: Your mind needs a rest.

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Speaker 1: I agree. Did you agree with her at the time.

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Speaker 4: Or I do now. I was aware of.

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Speaker 3: How I was forced to manufacture my own fund and

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Speaker 3: I grew to really, really love there was a kind of,

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Speaker 3: in a wonderful way, a pressure to make my own

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Speaker 3: fun and I would the hijinks I did as a

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Speaker 3: kid were so elaborate and so complex and so ironic

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Speaker 3: in kind of many layers that it was the result

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Speaker 3: of that.

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Speaker 1: So no cousins or siblings on the other side of

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Speaker 1: the town you never knew about, or.

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Speaker 4: We're living in the middle of rural Ontario.

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Speaker 3: In our neighbors are Old Order Mennonites who drive horses

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Speaker 3: and buggies and don't have electricity, And like I said,

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Speaker 3: we have no TV, and we don't.

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Speaker 4: Go to the movies.

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Speaker 3: We don't really ever go to restaurants. We go to

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Speaker 3: Jamaica once a year at Christmas, and we read a

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Speaker 3: lot of books.

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Speaker 4: That's what's going on.

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Speaker 1: So give me an example of how you would entertain

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Speaker 1: yourself in your childhood.

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Speaker 3: Well, my best friend was a guy named Terry Martin,

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Speaker 3: who I was again, just as I was lucky to

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Speaker 3: have encountered Bridge over Trouble Water as the first real record,

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Speaker 3: my first really close friend was this guy Terry Martin,

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Speaker 3: who was another Neither of his parents went to college.

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Speaker 3: He grew up his dad was a chicken farmer, he

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Speaker 3: grew up down the road. He's now, by the way,

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Speaker 3: a tenured professor at Harvard. But that's the luck. He

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Speaker 3: happened to be the guy I ran into in elementary school.

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Speaker 3: And he's genius, okay, And he had a sense. He

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Speaker 3: thought that all rules should be broken. And we convinced

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Speaker 3: our moms that this was true because our moms knew

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Speaker 3: each other, and so our moms basically let us do

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Speaker 3: whatever we want, including not go to school and wait.

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Speaker 1: You would tell them that you're cutting school.

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Speaker 4: Oh, my mom was complicit. We had a thing.

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Speaker 3: Terry and I decided that it was too easy. We

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Speaker 3: were recompetitive. It was too easy to compete on who

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Speaker 3: could get the best grades, because like, how hard was that?

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Speaker 3: Because no one my school, like ten people went to

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Speaker 3: college every year from high school. So we decided what

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Speaker 3: we would do is we would create I never forgot

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Speaker 3: what we called it. But the number we cared about

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Speaker 3: was your average times a number of absences you had

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Speaker 3: that year, and the winner was the one with the

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Speaker 3: highest number. So we competed not only to get good grades,

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Speaker 3: but to see how many days of school we could skip.

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Speaker 3: It was fantastic. That's an example of the kind of

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Speaker 3: shit that we were doing. And so you seem like

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Speaker 3: it's no, but it's not. The genius was it's rebellion,

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Speaker 3: but it's highly constrained, institutionalized rebellion, because the point was

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Speaker 3: to excel at school while never going there. Right, that

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Speaker 3: it was the contray that interests That's what interested it.

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Speaker 1: I'm so smart that I was.

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Speaker 3: We're not gonna we're not blowing off school. On the contrary, right,

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Speaker 3: we're like, we intend to ace out while never showing up,

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Speaker 3: and then I terry won that. But then I decided

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Speaker 3: what I would do is skip a year of high

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Speaker 3: school basically without telling anyone. So I just enrolled in

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Speaker 3: one year ahead classes in my senior year and no

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Speaker 3: one appeared to notice, which tells us about Canada in

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Speaker 3: the seventies.

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Speaker 1: And wait, Charlotmagne's face right now, like, I'm that, how

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Speaker 1: is this scientifically possible to happen?

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Speaker 4: Well?

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Speaker 3: No, So the key I thought about this a lot

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Speaker 3: when I was a kid. I realized that the only

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Speaker 3: subject matter where this was going to be hard was

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Speaker 3: math because math was sequential, right, So if you were

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Speaker 3: going to skip junior year math is what I was

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Speaker 3: intending to do, then you might have a problem.

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Speaker 4: But then what's my ace in the hole?

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Speaker 3: My dad's a mathematician, so I just had him like

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Speaker 3: whenever I had a problem, I was like, Okay, what

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Speaker 3: am I missing here?

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Speaker 4: And he'd say, oh, yeah, it's just this, this, this.

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Speaker 3: I don't know why I'm going on about high school years,

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Speaker 3: but they were such fun. I also realized you didn't

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Speaker 3: have to graduate from high school once that in Canada

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Speaker 3: at the time you did, they were loopholes which I

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Speaker 3: was too boring to go into. But I had this

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Speaker 3: insight at fifteen that I didn't have to get a

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Speaker 3: diploma to go to college. And once I realized, I

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Speaker 3: was like, well, all that's are off. That means why

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Speaker 3: I don't have to show up for school. I don't

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Speaker 3: have to take my junior year. It all kept skated.

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Speaker 1: But did you generally just not like school?

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Speaker 3: Like?

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Speaker 1: What about the whole social angle of it?

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Speaker 4: All came later?

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Speaker 1: Nevermind I didn't like it, So what would you consider

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Speaker 1: your first foray into this cold world we have outside?

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Speaker 1: Like if you're inside of an isolated bubble where yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, you're allowed to cut school and without repercussions.

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Speaker 3: Or yeah, you know, I think I'm still inside the bubble.

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Speaker 3: I don't think i've ever I'm not. You have to

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Speaker 3: to backtrack. I was raised to believe and it was

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Speaker 3: a correct belief, and my greatest frustration with people in

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Speaker 3: my positions they don't recognize it, which was I was

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Speaker 3: a middle class male growing up in a developed country

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Speaker 3: in the seventies who had came from a healthy, happy

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Speaker 3: home life. The world was constructed for me. The whole

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Speaker 3: architecture of western society was constructed so the people who

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Speaker 3: were like me would succeed, Like you had to really

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Speaker 3: work hard not to That was my I think that's

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Speaker 3: the correct positions. Why I have such frustration with like

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Speaker 3: people in my position who whine about their lives. It's like,

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Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Like the whole world was built for you.

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Speaker 4: You have no business whinding about anything.

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Speaker 3: Ever, there were no obstacles, like institutionally every obstacle. All

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Speaker 3: around me were people who faced obstacles, but not me.

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Speaker 1: By three, I had a fight or flight situation, you know,

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Speaker 1: like growing up in my neighborhood where you instantly had

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Speaker 1: radar of which route was safe to go to school,

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Speaker 1: go home, Like growing up in crack Era West Philadelphia. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you never had a fight or flight existence.

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Speaker 3: My mom was like friends with the principal, and if

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Speaker 3: I got in trouble, she would lecture in about like

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Speaker 3: wait wait what oh yeah, she would call him up.

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Speaker 4: Same was Roger Millican. She knew Roger. She'd call him

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Speaker 4: up and say what are you doing?

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Speaker 3: Like you have bigger problems than worrying about Malcolm, which

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Speaker 3: I think was a correct position. Wow, she's now in

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Speaker 3: a nursing home. But she's still like doing battle with

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Speaker 3: the Nursing Home administration. Still, oh yeah, you can't like

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Speaker 3: the West Indian Lady is an is an indefatigable and implacable.

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Speaker 1: Force for you. What were your aspirations of did you

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Speaker 1: know from the gate that you wanted to be like

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Speaker 1: in the social structure?

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Speaker 4: I didn't think about it.

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Speaker 3: Never occurred to me to think about the future in

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Speaker 3: that way, and I still don't in a I'm not

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Speaker 3: someone who I'm not a plan and I'm not a

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Speaker 3: I don't really think beyond next week.

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Speaker 4: I assume or even tomorrow. I assume.

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Speaker 3: I'm optimistic enough that I assume things will work out.

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Speaker 1: So you've always lived in the present, Yeah, I don't.

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Speaker 3: I'm not someone who once the day is over, it

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Speaker 3: is erased.

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Speaker 1: From my living in this administration, Yeah, forced me to

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Speaker 1: start living in the present like right now. Ever, since

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Speaker 1: November seventh, my only goal in life is to have

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Speaker 1: the best June seventeenth, of twenty twenty five that I

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Speaker 1: can have. So will mean I'm not doing it, no, no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: I'm not doing a four polow some thank you. But

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Speaker 1: previously my thing was literally strategic planning, like professionally, as Questlove,

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Speaker 1: my life is planned in three year increments, where I

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Speaker 1: at least know that I still have work booked until

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty eight. But like living day to day, like

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00:19:01,240 --> 00:19:06,240
Speaker 1: the undoing of waking up every morning thinking like financially,

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00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:12,520
Speaker 1: like my bills, my staff, growth, my survival, and so

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Speaker 1: for you, is this always like twenty four hours a day.

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Speaker 3: I probably have, on an unconscious level all the same

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Speaker 3: anxieties you do, but I have, as a psychologist say,

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Speaker 3: I'm probably better defended. Living in the present is my

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Speaker 3: way of warding off those anxieties. If I open that

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Speaker 3: door and start thinking about next year, I worry that

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Speaker 3: an avalanche of things will bury me.

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Speaker 1: So when you release a book, you're not instantly thinking

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Speaker 1: what's my next project in two years?

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Speaker 4: Or no I have I know what I'm working on now.

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Speaker 3: But what I know is that the process of inspiration

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00:19:54,600 --> 00:19:59,600
Speaker 3: is so serendipitous and unpredictable that it's just foolish to

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Speaker 3: try and plant it out. It will always like I

351
00:20:02,040 --> 00:20:05,160
Speaker 3: was doing this thing this, I'm doing this big podcast

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00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:09,080
Speaker 3: right now, which is this long series about a true

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Speaker 3: crime thing about a murder in Alabama, And I thought

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Speaker 3: I was going to do it one way. And then

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Speaker 3: I go and make a reporting trip to Muscle Sholes.

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Speaker 3: It'square the stake place in the Quad Cities. Muscle Sholes

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Speaker 3: is Alabama. Yeah, Florence, Discumbria. And I'm sitting in a

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Speaker 3: coffee shop in Florence, Alabama, and a guy comes up

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Speaker 3: to me and says, hey, you're Malcolm Melalla.

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Speaker 4: What you What are you doing here?

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Speaker 3: Oh, I'm doing this thing about this murder took place

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Speaker 3: forty years ago. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, you know

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Speaker 3: you should talk to my friend Grant. I was like, okay,

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Speaker 3: So I call up Grant. He's like, oh yeah, I

365
00:20:44,359 --> 00:20:47,439
Speaker 3: know all about that. And Grant fixes me up with

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Speaker 3: like fifteen people who knew everything about this murder. And

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Speaker 3: then I go back in the second time and I

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Speaker 3: meet some of those people, and then one of the

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Speaker 3: guys says, Oh, my friend Ricky, who I have breakfast

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Speaker 3: with every morning, he actually investigated murder.

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Speaker 4: I thought everyone who investigated with dad.

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Speaker 3: So I just like get in my car and drive

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Speaker 3: one mile and there's Ricky and Ricky tells me everything

374
00:21:07,200 --> 00:21:10,280
Speaker 3: like if that's your that's to my mind, is the

375
00:21:10,280 --> 00:21:12,800
Speaker 3: way not just the world works. But it's the way

376
00:21:12,840 --> 00:21:17,840
Speaker 3: that creative process works is you just put yourself in

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00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:22,640
Speaker 3: harm's way of something and things will hit you. And

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Speaker 3: I kind of, on some level have a confidence. The

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00:21:28,040 --> 00:21:30,960
Speaker 3: reason I went there is on some unconscious level, I

380
00:21:31,040 --> 00:21:32,880
Speaker 3: knew that I would have an encounter like that one

381
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Speaker 3: in the coffee shop. Maybe it was I didn't inveage

382
00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:37,880
Speaker 3: in that particular thing, but I knew if I went

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Speaker 3: there something would come out of it.

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Speaker 4: So I went there without a plan.

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Speaker 1: I like, what's your creative ecosystem, Like, are you just

386
00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:49,960
Speaker 1: a circle of one? Or do you least have someone

387
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:52,760
Speaker 1: that bounce ideas off of someone that says that's not

388
00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:53,320
Speaker 1: a good look?

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00:21:53,440 --> 00:21:57,480
Speaker 3: Or I have Informally, I think I have a fair

390
00:21:57,480 --> 00:22:03,120
Speaker 3: amount of that. I'm operating within and Pushkin my audio company,

391
00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:07,200
Speaker 3: where I have a built in ecosystem of editors and

392
00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:09,679
Speaker 3: when we have you know, table reads where we and

393
00:22:10,520 --> 00:22:12,280
Speaker 3: where I read stuff alout and get feedback.

394
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Speaker 4: And I've realized how valuable that is.

395
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Speaker 3: What I've always believed is that if you have an idea,

396
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:19,919
Speaker 3: what you should do is talk about it obsessively. So

397
00:22:20,280 --> 00:22:22,560
Speaker 3: the minute you have what you think is a special idea,

398
00:22:22,560 --> 00:22:23,800
Speaker 3: the first thing you should do is share it with

399
00:22:23,800 --> 00:22:27,520
Speaker 3: as many people as humanly possible, which is counterintuitive, right,

400
00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:31,280
Speaker 3: because your instinct is to hold on to something that

401
00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:33,720
Speaker 3: you think is special. But you have to fight that

402
00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:38,400
Speaker 3: instinct because only it's not just that there is value on.

403
00:22:38,359 --> 00:22:41,440
Speaker 4: People tell you when they hear the idea, but there

404
00:22:41,520 --> 00:22:42,640
Speaker 4: is value in you.

405
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:48,760
Speaker 3: Iterating on the idea in conversation because you will. You

406
00:22:48,800 --> 00:22:52,000
Speaker 3: won't explain it the same way twice. The tenth time

407
00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:54,119
Speaker 3: you've explaining it to someone, you realize you're explaining it

408
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:56,600
Speaker 3: in a totally different way, because it's the same way

409
00:22:56,680 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 3: up a stand up comic does for months of practice

410
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,440
Speaker 3: in comedy bys before they do their Netflix special, right,

411
00:23:04,960 --> 00:23:09,600
Speaker 3: because it's incredibly valuable to say something to somebody and

412
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:13,399
Speaker 3: to listen to their pauses, and to a musician is

413
00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:16,000
Speaker 3: the same way, right, And so I think you had to.

414
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:17,480
Speaker 4: You have to if you're a.

415
00:23:17,440 --> 00:23:21,960
Speaker 3: Writer, you have to build that into your sort of practice.

416
00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:25,600
Speaker 3: And so I have a really good friend who's a

417
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:29,680
Speaker 3: very successful screenwriter and my best friend, and I tell

418
00:23:29,760 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 3: him everything.

419
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:34,880
Speaker 4: I just watch his eyes and he will.

420
00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:36,560
Speaker 3: Let you know if he just didn't work for him,

421
00:23:36,640 --> 00:23:38,719
Speaker 3: or if it's why are you doing it?

422
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:40,119
Speaker 4: That, like, he's really honest, you know.

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Speaker 1: And I was going to say, are people lowed to

424
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:45,240
Speaker 1: be honest with you? Even now that you're Malcolm glad

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00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:48,160
Speaker 1: Well You're past You're an adjective. People now just say

426
00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 1: glad Wellian or like in describing.

427
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:53,000
Speaker 4: Usually in disparagement. But yes, they do.

428
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 1: Use that glad Wellian theory.

429
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 3: No, because the older and more successful I've gotten, the

430
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:05,480
Speaker 3: more willing I am to accept criticism because like I

431
00:24:05,480 --> 00:24:08,680
Speaker 3: don't have any the stake so lower, right, Like.

432
00:24:09,520 --> 00:24:12,560
Speaker 1: When's the first time you got pushed back for one

433
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: of your theories?

434
00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:17,120
Speaker 4: Oh? Well, I mean so often I can't even keep trying.

435
00:24:17,160 --> 00:24:19,960
Speaker 1: When's the first time you took it personal? I'm only

436
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:23,239
Speaker 1: asking this simply because the irony is, of course, you know,

437
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:26,479
Speaker 1: I read your book in two thousand, right when the

438
00:24:26,520 --> 00:24:31,520
Speaker 1: height of my recording career was just starting. And you know,

439
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 1: the one album in my canon that's kind of like

440
00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:42,840
Speaker 1: the Redheaded Stepchild is The Tipping Point, which that's the

441
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:45,760
Speaker 1: first time, you know, as someone that was a straight

442
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:48,920
Speaker 1: a student with critics and always on the top ten

443
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 1: lists at the end of the year and all that stuff,

444
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:53,560
Speaker 1: that's the first time we got pushback and so wow,

445
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:58,520
Speaker 1: when people are like, but we're still friends, We're still

446
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 1: no non playing, No, we are. But for you, though,

447
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 1: what now? I have a good relationship with what they

448
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:14,560
Speaker 1: call failure one. I don't take the undesirable result as

449
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:18,160
Speaker 1: personal as I used to. And you know, it's depressing,

450
00:25:18,240 --> 00:25:22,240
Speaker 1: like I'd have many times. I've had panic attacks, and

451
00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: you know, artists are always in their head and all

452
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:27,720
Speaker 1: that stuff. But for you, though, you just you knew

453
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:29,480
Speaker 1: out the gate ped No.

454
00:25:29,640 --> 00:25:31,320
Speaker 4: It's I don't.

455
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:35,920
Speaker 3: My feeling is it's you know, I'm a distance runner

456
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 3: and that has really powerfully shaped my perspective on life.

457
00:25:43,600 --> 00:25:46,280
Speaker 3: And I really, I mean it sounds corny, but I'm

458
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:50,240
Speaker 3: running a very long race. So somebody disliking a critic

459
00:25:50,280 --> 00:25:53,160
Speaker 3: attacking something that I've done is like someone pulls ahead

460
00:25:53,200 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 3: of you in lap two and my position is well,

461
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,680
Speaker 3: but the race is fifty laps, so like, who care?

462
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:01,520
Speaker 3: I mean not, who cares? It her at sea will sting.

463
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:06,640
Speaker 3: But it's not a terminal, it's not devastating. I once

464
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:09,560
Speaker 3: read years ago this thing that has always stayed with me,

465
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 3: which I think is incredibly interesting. It was a guy

466
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:15,159
Speaker 3: named Dean Simonson who studied creativity he was trying to

467
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 3: figure out what distinguishes highly created people from people who

468
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:23,520
Speaker 3: are not as creative, and his initial thought was a

469
00:26:23,560 --> 00:26:27,160
Speaker 3: creative person, a successful creative person, a genius is someone

470
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 3: who has a higher hit rate. So for every ten

471
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 3: ideas they have, eight would be good, whereas someone who

472
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 3: was mediocre, they'd have ten ideas and they'd have two

473
00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:37,640
Speaker 3: of them would be good.

474
00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:38,760
Speaker 4: That's what he thought.

475
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:42,400
Speaker 3: He does this long, complicated analysis of like two hundred geniuses,

476
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:46,080
Speaker 3: and he realizes he's totally wrong. The hit rate is

477
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 3: exactly the same, except that the genius has ten times

478
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:54,880
Speaker 3: as many ideas. So like by definition, the genius has

479
00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 3: more failures than the mediocre person because their output is

480
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:01,200
Speaker 3: just greater. Right, I thought that was It's so interesting

481
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 3: Einstein has a jillion bad ideas, but he has so

482
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 3: many ideas it doesn't matter.

483
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:11,639
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you them, because, uh, kind of

484
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: in my field of work, you know, oftentimes, especially in music,

485
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: the word genius is completely overused. And you know, I'm

486
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 1: also in a field of entertainment in which those that

487
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:33,320
Speaker 1: put numbers on the board are often rewarded with accolades

488
00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing, and oftentimes people that I

489
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 1: really think that are making artistic strides and whatever they

490
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 1: do don't get hits whatever. So in music especially, I

491
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: tend to think that the geniuses are often overlooked and

492
00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: under celebrated, as opposed to oh, I had a good

493
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 1: idea and it works. I mean, do you agree with

494
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 1: that or yeah?

495
00:27:56,280 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 3: I'm not what I'm talking about success in this context,

496
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:02,960
Speaker 3: I'm not necessarily necessarily talking about commercial success. Like to

497
00:28:03,000 --> 00:28:07,119
Speaker 3: go back to my Paul Simon, one of my favorite artists.

498
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,719
Speaker 3: I thought his last album, which was done when he

499
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:15,240
Speaker 3: was whatever, eighty seven seals, it might be my favorite

500
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 3: Paul Simon album.

501
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 4: So that's in his repertoire. What is that number?

502
00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:22,920
Speaker 3: I don't know, eighteen, I don't know how many albums

503
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 3: he's done. But to my mind, what qualifies him as

504
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:31,480
Speaker 3: being at the very top of the pinnacle is sustained

505
00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 3: excellence over a very long period and an unwillingness to

506
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:40,960
Speaker 3: accept the notion that he he didn't stop, He didn't

507
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 3: sort of accept the fact that his commercial decline was

508
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:49,640
Speaker 3: somehow indicative of his own creative failure. He persisted, and

509
00:28:50,160 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 3: I think seven seals, seven seals like it took me

510
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 3: like five listens by the fifth listen, I was like.

511
00:28:58,040 --> 00:28:59,320
Speaker 4: This is unbelievable.

512
00:28:59,600 --> 00:29:03,800
Speaker 3: This is such a mature, complicated, brilliant more than a

513
00:29:03,840 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 3: summation of his previous work, but a departure in this

514
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 3: really beautiful way. And that's what I'm talking about that

515
00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 3: he had he'd be the first time. He's had some

516
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 3: crappy albums along the way. But that's my point that

517
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 3: the truly creative person is defined by their productivity and

518
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 3: not by their success rate.

519
00:29:25,160 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 1: I call it the Thriller effect. So the Thriller effect

520
00:29:30,280 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: to me was, you know, when Michael Jackson's previous album,

521
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 1: Off the Wall came out, it was critically acclaimed and

522
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:41,320
Speaker 1: it was a success. It sold eight million copies. He

523
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 1: thought it was a failure because he only got two

524
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:47,640
Speaker 1: Grammy nominations and basically had his joker, what way they

525
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: get a load of me? Like that was his Thriller

526
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: is going to be his revenge. Now, the thing is,

527
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,920
Speaker 1: as an artistic statement, Thriller is a success, but what

528
00:29:57,080 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 1: happens is people the conversation of Thriller was the first time,

529
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: especially music in which the quantity was at focus and

530
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 1: not the quality of it. So in other words, it

531
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 1: won eight Grammys, it's old sixty four, blah blah blah,

532
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:18,920
Speaker 1: a million, it made him hundreds of hundreds and hundreds

533
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars. So and then suddenly that became

534
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,920
Speaker 1: our north star. And I understand the need for survival

535
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: and security, especially for black artist is important. But suddenly

536
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: that to me is sort of when the conversation changed

537
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: with art, where now it's like how many units did

538
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: you sell? How many?

539
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:40,880
Speaker 4: Yeah?

540
00:30:41,360 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 1: Do you think that's problematic? Like can we ever get

541
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: to a place where people genuinely judge art or just

542
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: get taste? I think taste is kind of the I

543
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 1: don't know if we still have good taste and are

544
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 1: chasing success.

545
00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 3: The kind of thought experiment is, would your cultural consumption

546
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:09,320
Speaker 3: be different if you were unaware of any of those

547
00:31:09,920 --> 00:31:14,479
Speaker 3: indices of creative work success? So if you never knew

548
00:31:15,160 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 3: where a song charted when you listen to the song,

549
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 3: if you never knew whether a book was a bestseller

550
00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 3: or not when you read the book, or on and

551
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 3: on and on. I kind of think our choices and

552
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:33,040
Speaker 3: our preferences would be quite different. And I'm guessing in

553
00:31:33,080 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 3: a really lovely way.

554
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: That is correct. So often my friends laugh at my

555
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: rock choices because my rock knowledge is coming from that

556
00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 1: standpoint that I will get something without me knowing the

557
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 1: history or the background of it. In other words, the

558
00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: first Dylan record I like was Self Portrait, which was

559
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 1: like the Christian phase of Dylan, which critics were like,

560
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:01,239
Speaker 1: get out, you know, they didn't like it, and I

561
00:32:01,360 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 1: dug it because I didn't have the knowledge of it.

562
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: Or even with the the Stones releasing an emotional rescue,

563
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: or when rat on Hum came out from you like,

564
00:32:14,000 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: if it's critically bad, then that's the album.

565
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:18,240
Speaker 3: I like, well, you were seeing it. It's like my

566
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 3: mom with Working Girl. You were seeing it with fresh

567
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 3: eyes right exactly.

568
00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: And only then like years later, I was like, oh

569
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: that Almo was critically planned or people think that that's

570
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: his worst album. Yeah, Dylan fans hated that record, but

571
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: one I liked it because as a hip hop artist,

572
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:38,920
Speaker 1: it's just like at least four gems on there that

573
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:42,720
Speaker 1: I hear music different than you know, the average person.

574
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:46,280
Speaker 1: So but I believe that's true if you don't have

575
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: the knowledge of Yeah.

576
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 3: A lot of this also has to do with the

577
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:56,200
Speaker 3: kind of failure of the critical function cultural function in society.

578
00:32:56,640 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 3: So in its original sense. The role of critics was

579
00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:04,840
Speaker 3: to help us understand the intention of the artists, right.

580
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 3: It wasn't to kind of pass judgment on whether we

581
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 3: thought we it was in my I mean I mean,

582
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:14,880
Speaker 3: I don't mean when I say original, I mean in

583
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:18,280
Speaker 3: the best sense of what criticism was supposed to do.

584
00:33:18,360 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: I thought, after like Lester Bangs and seventy three, like

585
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: the whole point of critics was just a flex for

586
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 1: each other, like watch this take.

587
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm talking pre seventy three then okay, But when

588
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 3: I say original, I mean original, original, or at least how.

589
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 4: We would like criticism to work.

590
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 3: Is it someone who knows more than us about a

591
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 3: cultural subject helps us to understand the intention of the

592
00:33:45,160 --> 00:33:48,920
Speaker 3: work of art and whether the art succeeds it by

593
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 3: its own and according to its own intentions.

594
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 4: Right.

595
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 3: In other words, the critic has to be faceless and

596
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 3: selfless in their evaluation. That notion has gone out the window,

597
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 3: and with the result, it has corrupted.

598
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:05,240
Speaker 4: Our appreciation of a lot of art.

599
00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:09,480
Speaker 3: And instead of helping me understand, well, why is you know,

600
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:13,840
Speaker 3: pat sounds a great album. I listened to that and

601
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:16,680
Speaker 3: I think I can't what is this about? I need

602
00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:18,839
Speaker 3: someone to help me. I feel the same way about

603
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 3: I once trod something about Norm McDonald, who was the

604
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 3: Comedians comedian, and I would listen to all these routines

605
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:27,799
Speaker 3: and I would be like, you know, I don't find I.

606
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:29,160
Speaker 1: Never even get a file.

607
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 3: It worked for me, but I knew that people who

608
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:36,320
Speaker 3: knew a lot about comedy thought he was a genius.

609
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 3: And what I wanted was someone who knew a lot

610
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,560
Speaker 3: about comedy to tell me why they thought he was

611
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 3: a genius. My first thought it was like, I don't

612
00:34:44,960 --> 00:34:47,839
Speaker 3: like this, but people who know more than me do,

613
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:51,040
Speaker 3: and so my first thought was curiosity about Okay, what

614
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:53,880
Speaker 3: am I missing? So the critic's role is to explain

615
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 3: to me what I'm missing it. Maybe he doesn't get

616
00:34:56,280 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 3: me to the point where I love Norm McDonald, but

617
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:00,400
Speaker 3: it gets me to the point where I receive spect

618
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:04,000
Speaker 3: normal right. But when critics have abandoned that role and

619
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:06,719
Speaker 3: they're simply saying I hate this, it didn't work for me,

620
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 3: or this art is violating some ideological predisposition I have,

621
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:14,759
Speaker 3: it's like, well, what's the point of your criticism? Like

622
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 3: why don't I just walk down the street and like

623
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 3: ask some random person what they think of it.

624
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,480
Speaker 4: Right, So it's like the failure of that.

625
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 3: That's why I say that when we remove evidence of

626
00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 3: something's marketplace power, essentially what we're doing is we are

627
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:35,040
Speaker 3: removing a kind of criticism, right, a bad criticism, and

628
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 3: allowing us to see the art with fresh eyes.

629
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:41,800
Speaker 1: Side note, has anyone ever sent you Norm McDonald's chorus

630
00:35:41,960 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: Leachman roast?

631
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 4: Duh?

632
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:49,359
Speaker 1: Okay, this is what I gotta tell you. So this

633
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:53,439
Speaker 1: is what I thought was genius because you've seen those

634
00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 1: like celebrity roasts that they have on Comedy Central. So

635
00:35:56,840 --> 00:36:02,800
Speaker 1: Chlorus Leachman is getting roasted, and or McDonald decides early

636
00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 1: that he's going to fall on his sword, but not

637
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: in that the Aristocrats way. Are you guys familiar with

638
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 1: the Aristocrats joke? It's a joke where if a comedian

639
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: is having a bad set on stage, he will somehow

640
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:22,120
Speaker 1: signal to his friends in the back, his fellow comedians,

641
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: that I failed, and he'll tell this Aristocrats joke, clearly

642
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:31,239
Speaker 1: freaking out the audience. But you know, he's again performing

643
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:35,000
Speaker 1: for the eight people in the back. So McDonald decides

644
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:40,280
Speaker 1: that he is going to tell not even flat jokes,

645
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:45,319
Speaker 1: but horrible jokes, but he's not going to wink, like

646
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: there's a way where you're going to give a bad performance. Yeah,

647
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:51,080
Speaker 1: but maybe thirty seconds suit and to it, you'll like

648
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 1: win to the audience, like I'm doing this on purpose.

649
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:56,920
Speaker 4: Like he would not portray that dude the way.

650
00:36:57,400 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: The first of all his set was like ten minutes

651
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:03,719
Speaker 1: and the collective look of horror on the people in

652
00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:06,759
Speaker 1: the audience, like you know when you're forcing yourself to

653
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 1: laugh at somebody like I was normally that I was funny,

654
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 1: but they were all looking like he lost it or

655
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:17,000
Speaker 1: but he did it on purpose, like he never once

656
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: let up, like psych I was reading these jokes from

657
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 1: a nineteen forty joke, that's what he was doing. He

658
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:24,680
Speaker 1: got a joke book from nineteen forty to see if

659
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:28,320
Speaker 1: I could work in the new millennial and it didn't.

660
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:33,120
Speaker 1: And he literally didn't care. And you know, at the

661
00:37:33,160 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 1: time when I'm in therapy, one of the things I

662
00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:40,280
Speaker 1: had to learn was you have to care so much

663
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: that you don't care, you know, like that's zero Fox

664
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: times twelve billion, where you just operat in life where

665
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 1: you literally don't care what people think. And yeah, once

666
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: I saw that, then I looked at his.

667
00:37:57,200 --> 00:38:00,200
Speaker 3: It's a classic thing that insiders do for other insiders,

668
00:38:00,239 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 3: which is, for the outsider, what you're interested in is

669
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 3: the quality of the spectacle, without absent any kind of

670
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:14,400
Speaker 3: larger context. What the insider's interested in is that plus

671
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 3: degree of difficulty. So the reason the comedians are laughing

672
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:22,600
Speaker 3: at Norm McDonald is they understand that what he's doing

673
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 3: is insanely difficult and courageous, and they know they could

674
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 3: never pull it off themselves, and it's hilarious to them

675
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 3: that they know someone who would attempt it. Right, you

676
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 3: have to have done stand up and bombed to know

677
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:42,320
Speaker 3: why that's genius. And I've not done stand up and bombs,

678
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 3: so I don't know that feeling right. So that's why

679
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 3: it's inaccessible to me. But I still understand why it's

680
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 3: appealing to the insider.

681
00:38:50,120 --> 00:38:53,319
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you, Ben, could you pull off

682
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:57,560
Speaker 1: a children's book, a book for a three year old

683
00:38:57,600 --> 00:39:04,200
Speaker 1: where you're limited to just if that sixty words? Yeah,

684
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:05,439
Speaker 1: do you think you can pull it off?

685
00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:07,439
Speaker 3: Well? I have a three year old and I tell

686
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:13,640
Speaker 3: her I make up bedtime stories. Does that count?

687
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:17,440
Speaker 1: Well? I mean, but that's that's in the safety of

688
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:20,960
Speaker 1: your your your own bubble, Like, yeah, could you release

689
00:39:21,080 --> 00:39:24,120
Speaker 1: a children's book and be as effective in thatgy?

690
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:24,799
Speaker 3: No?

691
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: You know't think so?

692
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:28,759
Speaker 4: No, I think, actually could I do it?

693
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:30,920
Speaker 3: I mean, now that I know children's books because I

694
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:33,760
Speaker 3: have a three year old, I'm aware of that eighty

695
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:37,400
Speaker 3: five to ninety percent of them are really terrible. So

696
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 3: I'm aware of how hard it's really hard to make

697
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:42,720
Speaker 3: a good look. Really, I don't I'm not dissing children's

698
00:39:42,719 --> 00:39:47,640
Speaker 3: books writers, but the genre is fiendishly difficult, it is,

699
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 3: and so I don't think absent like a good ten

700
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 3: years of immersion in that. Like even when I'm telling

701
00:39:54,960 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 3: a story to my daughter. I told her story for

702
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:00,000
Speaker 3: like a couple of weeks and now she's like no, no, no, Daddy,

703
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,600
Speaker 3: Like she gives me the story. It's like, we're going

704
00:40:03,640 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 3: to do a story by cat Is called Biggie Smalls.

705
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 3: So she says, Biggie Smalls is going to be, you know,

706
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,719
Speaker 3: out at a party with his best friend something like go.

707
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:15,320
Speaker 1: So she doesn't even premise.

708
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:16,160
Speaker 4: She doesn't even.

709
00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 3: Trust me anymore. Like basically she's saying, Daddy, you're set up, suck.

710
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:22,360
Speaker 3: I have to step in here, and like this is

711
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:24,839
Speaker 3: how it's gonna do it. Like for me, so I've

712
00:40:24,840 --> 00:40:26,719
Speaker 3: already you know, the market has judged me, and it's

713
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 3: judged me harshly.

714
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: Maybe she'll teach you. You know, I think you could

715
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: do it. I know that you're a passionate runner. Yeah,

716
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: And I believe that in order for someone to be

717
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 1: creatively successful, there has to be an element of breathing

718
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: that sort of releases the endorphins or whatever it is

719
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,799
Speaker 1: that our brain gives us. And at first I thought

720
00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: people who were obsessive joggers did this just for you know,

721
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: health's sake. But I didn't realize that, Oh, at the

722
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 1: end of jogging, you're doing a lot of breathing, which

723
00:41:17,840 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 1: for me meditative breathing or DMT breathwork or advanced level

724
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:25,799
Speaker 1: of breath work. It's kind of how I do it.

725
00:41:25,840 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: But what was it about running? Like, did you at

726
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: any point in life dream of professionally running?

727
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:32,880
Speaker 4: Like?

728
00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 3: I was quite a good high school runner, but very

729
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 3: very early on I realized that I was, you know,

730
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 3: one massive tier below the great You know, even at

731
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:48,360
Speaker 3: thirteen and fourteen, you recognize the kids you're running with

732
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:50,680
Speaker 3: who are going to the Olympics. You just I mean

733
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:53,239
Speaker 3: they're just on a different level, right, So I never

734
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:58,280
Speaker 3: had that. That fantasy lasted a very very very short time,

735
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 3: but I found it.

736
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:00,760
Speaker 4: It's funny.

737
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 3: It is valuable to me as an adult in a

738
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 3: way that it wasn't as a kid, for that exact

739
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:10,759
Speaker 3: reason that I don't have any other escapes, right, I mean,

740
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 3: every other aspect of my life is and I have

741
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:16,720
Speaker 3: no the kind of opportunities just to let your mind

742
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 3: wander are so limited, and I think creativity begins in

743
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 3: that kind of free association.

744
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:28,360
Speaker 1: So what is it creative process with the tipping point

745
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:33,120
Speaker 1: versus your creative process for revenge at the tipping point?

746
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 1: And that twenty five year gap, like what walked me through?

747
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:41,920
Speaker 1: Like do you use music? Do you like?

748
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:45,200
Speaker 3: There's usually a story that I want to tell. That's

749
00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:47,399
Speaker 3: the It's not the beginning of the book, but it's

750
00:42:47,400 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 3: the heart of the book. And the first tipping point

751
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:52,360
Speaker 3: it was just I was living in New York and

752
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:54,959
Speaker 3: New York suddenly got safe and I didn't understand why

753
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:57,839
Speaker 3: that was as simple. I just wanted to explain that

754
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 3: how that could happen? This one I was thinking a

755
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 3: lot and writing about COVID and this idea which people

756
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:12,399
Speaker 3: couldn't understand in COVID, which was COVID was spread by

757
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 3: one person in a hundred. In other words, if everyone

758
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:18,719
Speaker 3: in this room had COVID right now, only one of

759
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:23,160
Speaker 3: you would pose any substantial risk of transmitting your virus

760
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:26,399
Speaker 3: to anyone else. And that's because, for reasons we don't

761
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:31,240
Speaker 3: understand a tiny fraction of human beings, you spread COVID

762
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,920
Speaker 3: with what are called aerosols. In this room, there is

763
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 3: someone who produces one hundred or a thousand x more

764
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:40,319
Speaker 3: aerosols than the rest of us. Again, we don't know why.

765
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:44,399
Speaker 3: It's just a random genetic thing. That person gets everybody sick.

766
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 3: The rest of us do not. And nobody during COVID

767
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:53,160
Speaker 3: would appreciate this fact, like we're scientists saying it's not

768
00:43:53,400 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 3: every one of us, it's one in one hundred. If

769
00:43:56,120 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 3: you understand who they are, you could stop this thing cold.

770
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 3: No one was interested in that message, and I was

771
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,000
Speaker 3: fascinated by that, and to me, it was this beautiful

772
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 3: illustration of one of the fundamental principles of epidemics, which

773
00:44:07,719 --> 00:44:09,160
Speaker 3: is they are profoundly asymmetrical.

774
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 4: Right, small number of people.

775
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:13,799
Speaker 3: Do all the work, So that kind of rekindled my

776
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:15,720
Speaker 3: interest in the idea, and I just then I started

777
00:44:15,719 --> 00:44:18,440
Speaker 3: to build on that. Why do we have trouble with that?

778
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 3: What would the implications of the fact we overlooked it?

779
00:44:22,600 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 3: What are other examples of this?

780
00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 1: You know? On it?

781
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 3: You just kind of like build out from a lot

782
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 3: of that's just kind of very random musing about what

783
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:35,600
Speaker 3: you're learning as you as you write about that phenomenon.

784
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:40,240
Speaker 1: So, in the pandemic, in which I always say seventy

785
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:43,400
Speaker 1: five percent, other people were faced with a challenge of

786
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:49,319
Speaker 1: a pivot or a tipping point or a change in

787
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:53,120
Speaker 1: their life, which basically, I mean, unless you're under a rock,

788
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:57,240
Speaker 1: your life, whatever your life was before March of twenty twenty,

789
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:01,320
Speaker 1: was not the same after twenty twenty, whether you regressed

790
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: even further for the worst or thrived in a whole

791
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 1: nother area. Was that true for you, Like, how was

792
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: twenty twenty or twenty twenty one different from you as

793
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: opposed to what was now in your rear view mirror.

794
00:45:17,440 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 3: It's a really interesting question, and I'm going to cop

795
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 3: out in a sense that that's the kind of question

796
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 3: that I don't think I have.

797
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 4: I totally agree with you, Okay, but I.

798
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 3: Also think that I don't think I will really know

799
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 3: the answer to that question for a long time. I

800
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:36,080
Speaker 3: think we forget how recent all this was. And not

801
00:45:36,120 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 3: only is it recent, but also we did a spectacular

802
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:42,480
Speaker 3: job of burying this phenomenon. So it's this weird combination

803
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 3: of something catastrophic happened, which we then very successfully swept

804
00:45:48,239 --> 00:45:52,360
Speaker 3: under a rug like a million American deciderer close to

805
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 3: a million American size, the hell of a lot of people,

806
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,279
Speaker 3: like an insane amount of people. Yeah, and then around

807
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 3: the world. You know, we just kind of like decided

808
00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:04,319
Speaker 3: we weren't going to talk about it anymore, and we

809
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:08,359
Speaker 3: weren't going to So it's like, under those circumstances, how

810
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:10,960
Speaker 3: do I know what the impact? Well, how do I

811
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:14,040
Speaker 3: know now what the impact was? It's just give me

812
00:46:14,080 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 3: another five years.

813
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:20,480
Speaker 1: Well, since you live in the present, and I consider

814
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 1: you a historian, like, how does that work?

815
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 3: Well, I live in the present with respect to myself,

816
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 3: which is why I'm struggling with this question, right because I.

817
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:29,319
Speaker 4: Don't like to think about I'm one of those people

818
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 4: who buried it.

819
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:35,799
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, Well, for you, then, is your infamous ten

820
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:41,960
Speaker 1: thousand hour equals perfection theory still relevant in twenty twenty five,

821
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 1: or are we playing with a new set of.

822
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:48,960
Speaker 3: Rules with my version or the version that people mistakenly

823
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:49,560
Speaker 3: took when.

824
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:52,120
Speaker 1: They Okay, so what's I was going to ask you,

825
00:46:52,160 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 1: what's the one fact about you that people get wrong

826
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:57,840
Speaker 1: all the time? And well, are you tired of the

827
00:46:57,880 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: ten thousand hour theory? No?

828
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:02,959
Speaker 4: I mean it's like whatever, but it's you know, let.

829
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: Me make clear, ten thousand hours of practice equals genius.

830
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:09,720
Speaker 4: That's that's not the theory.

831
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:12,760
Speaker 1: Okay, Wait, so is that Am I doing a Mandela

832
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:13,920
Speaker 1: effect right now?

833
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 3: Like?

834
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:14,640
Speaker 4: No, no, No.

835
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:18,040
Speaker 3: The idea was ten thousand It takes a long time,

836
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 3: I e. Something like ten thousand hours for talent to

837
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 3: be manifested. I could spend ten thousand hours on a

838
00:47:24,960 --> 00:47:28,320
Speaker 3: golf course and I'm not turning into Scotti Scheffler.

839
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:29,600
Speaker 1: Okay, right.

840
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 4: But the idea was that.

841
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 3: It's about the insufficiency of talent and it's about the

842
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:42,240
Speaker 3: duration of practice. It's those two ideas in combination. And

843
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:46,280
Speaker 3: what people wanted to the way that idea was misunderstood

844
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,960
Speaker 3: was that people thought I was saying that with practice,

845
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 3: any kind of excellence is accessible. And no, that's nonsense.

846
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 3: Who would think that? That's like nuts? Do you think

847
00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:00,239
Speaker 3: if could I turn myself into you? Tend to know

848
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:04,040
Speaker 3: you have some god given thing which you have carefully

849
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 3: cultivated over time, But it begins with you having some

850
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:12,040
Speaker 3: God given thing. I could have if we had a

851
00:48:12,040 --> 00:48:15,760
Speaker 3: conversation as five year olds, I would have said, there's.

852
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:16,360
Speaker 4: Something going on with you.

853
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 3: That's really I mean, if I was a sophisticated five

854
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:24,839
Speaker 3: year olds, I would have said, and you've had this.

855
00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 3: Now that I'm in the world of kids, it's always

856
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 3: astonishing to me. Like you meet kids and you and

857
00:48:31,680 --> 00:48:35,080
Speaker 3: one in a hundred you realize, oh, they've got that thing.

858
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is yet, but oh, this kid,

859
00:48:38,440 --> 00:48:41,040
Speaker 3: you can see it right, like something's going on there.

860
00:48:41,160 --> 00:48:43,560
Speaker 3: And then you pray that they're going to be able

861
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:47,840
Speaker 3: to nourish it and access it and get support for it.

862
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:52,799
Speaker 3: But it's clearly there, right, it's some I was at

863
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:56,560
Speaker 3: the my daughter's pre K graduation. The idea this is

864
00:48:56,560 --> 00:49:00,040
Speaker 3: a pre K graduation, by the way, it's like that

865
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 3: is like how preposterous our society has become. It's pre

866
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 3: They they barely know they're at PreK. How do they

867
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:09,239
Speaker 3: know they're graduating. Nonetheless, this is an opportunity to shake

868
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 3: down the parents. But there's this kid my daughter's playing.

869
00:49:14,239 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 3: My daughter is like clearly has a crush on this

870
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 3: kid called THEO. We've been hearing about THEO for months,

871
00:49:20,080 --> 00:49:24,320
Speaker 3: and THEO like pushes her over and she's constantly reporting

872
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:25,720
Speaker 3: on some new indignity that's.

873
00:49:25,600 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 4: Been visited on her by THEO.

874
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:29,279
Speaker 3: We're like, well, why are you hanging? She goes and

875
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 3: THEO should come over for a play date. Well, THEO

876
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:35,640
Speaker 3: is white. So finally I meet THEO with the play date.

877
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:41,280
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, Theo's just God charisma, Like he's three,

878
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,440
Speaker 3: and it's like, I get it. If I was you,

879
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:47,600
Speaker 3: I would be hanging out with THEO like he's in

880
00:49:47,640 --> 00:49:48,759
Speaker 3: a world by himself.

881
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:51,800
Speaker 4: It's magical. But can I make another comment?

882
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 3: I'm just can I do this incredibly tiresome thing that

883
00:49:55,120 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 3: parents do? This is the beginning of cultural I'd never

884
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 3: I never figured out where cultural discernment comes from. How

885
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:09,040
Speaker 3: do you learn to decide what you like and what

886
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:09,680
Speaker 3: you don't like?

887
00:50:10,160 --> 00:50:12,279
Speaker 4: Write? It's a mystery to me.

888
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 3: So I drove my daughter to preschool every morning and

889
00:50:17,120 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 3: we listen to some kids music collection on Spotify, and

890
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 3: in the beginning, it's all the same forty songs on rotation.

891
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:32,360
Speaker 3: By the way, Spotify, surely there are more than forty

892
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:35,320
Speaker 3: children's songs like let's get our act together, right, right,

893
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:39,359
Speaker 3: But the first time round she listens to them all,

894
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 3: and the second time round she says, oh, no, no,

895
00:50:43,520 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 3: like for like two of them, don't play that one.

896
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:49,480
Speaker 3: The third time round she's rejecting six of them. And

897
00:50:49,520 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 3: now she's basically rejecting two thirds of them. And I'm

898
00:50:54,160 --> 00:50:58,879
Speaker 3: realizing that what I'm witnessing is the rise of discernment, right,

899
00:50:59,280 --> 00:51:04,120
Speaker 3: Like she's figured out that it's okay to have a

900
00:51:04,160 --> 00:51:08,760
Speaker 3: position on a work of art, right, and that her position.

901
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:11,279
Speaker 3: She's not asking me, daddy, do you like it? She's

902
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 3: not deferring. She's affirmatively saying, like she has turned on Raffi.

903
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 4: No more Raffi.

904
00:51:17,560 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: Wait, Raffi is still a thing?

905
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:20,920
Speaker 4: They play them on Spotify.

906
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:24,359
Speaker 1: Oh, there is way more kids, There.

907
00:51:24,280 --> 00:51:25,239
Speaker 4: Is way more way.

908
00:51:25,239 --> 00:51:31,040
Speaker 3: There's a genius guy called uh a Randy Kaplan. Randy

909
00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 3: Kaplan gets two thumbs up every one of his songs.

910
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 3: Don't fill up on chips.

911
00:51:35,520 --> 00:51:39,320
Speaker 1: This is a masterpiece, masterpiece, don't fill up on chips.

912
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:39,600
Speaker 4: Yeah.

913
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:43,320
Speaker 3: Then the chorus is kids going, why Mom, why Mom?

914
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 4: Salsa, m guacamole, They're just dips. They're just dips. Goes

915
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:48,840
Speaker 4: on like that.

916
00:51:49,200 --> 00:51:52,719
Speaker 3: But but I'm realizing that, and there's a lot I'm

917
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:55,640
Speaker 3: also detecting the beginnings of a logic in her choices.

918
00:51:56,480 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 3: She's steadily rejecting the ones that don't have extra level

919
00:52:00,800 --> 00:52:05,279
Speaker 3: of cleverness or and it's like fascinating.

920
00:52:04,719 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: Like is she your case study? Now? Like are you?

921
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:08,799
Speaker 4: I think you're gonna do.

922
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:10,480
Speaker 3: The thing that's so tires in, which is people have

923
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 3: a kid and then they all to do is right

924
00:52:11,640 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 3: about their kid.

925
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:14,160
Speaker 1: But I will bore you, Oh you know you are.

926
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 3: So I will bore people in a setting what you

927
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:19,120
Speaker 3: can't leave. I will bore you with stories about my daughter.

928
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:24,840
Speaker 3: So now that I'm in conversation with you, I'm gonna

929
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:29,360
Speaker 3: guess that at three and four you were doing that

930
00:52:30,040 --> 00:52:32,640
Speaker 3: exact same thing with even more sophistication.

931
00:52:33,600 --> 00:52:34,799
Speaker 4: I didn't convinced of it.

932
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So here's the deal. I grew up in

933
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:45,600
Speaker 1: a three thousand album household. But here's the rule. Yeah,

934
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 1: don't touch my stereo or else. And you gotta put

935
00:52:51,680 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: a lot of emphasis on those last two words. Yeah,

936
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:57,799
Speaker 1: and if you see what my dad looks like, you

937
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:00,720
Speaker 1: know that or else it comes with a heavy price

938
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:05,560
Speaker 1: to pay. So as a result, I think between the

939
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:09,919
Speaker 1: ages of two maybe fourteen, like I did not have

940
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:14,920
Speaker 1: a cynical bone in my body, and to grow up

941
00:53:14,960 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 1: in a household where Glenn Campbell's ron Stone Cowboy and

942
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: the Jackson five Dancing Machine are getting equal time. You know,

943
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:29,200
Speaker 1: Rita Coolidge and Natalie Cole are getting equal time, the

944
00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 1: Hudson Brothers and Tavars are getting equal time. I didn't

945
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:37,520
Speaker 1: know what discernment me I didn't have. The first time

946
00:53:37,560 --> 00:53:42,200
Speaker 1: I heard my dad panned something, he left music altogether.

947
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:45,960
Speaker 1: So we were waiting for Stevie Wonder to release his

948
00:53:46,000 --> 00:53:48,960
Speaker 1: follow up to Songs in the Key of Life Now

949
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:55,360
Speaker 1: my household. Stevie Wonder records were like events, like to

950
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:59,280
Speaker 1: think of War of the worlds Orson Wells nineteen thirty

951
00:53:59,640 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: where we're sitting as a family, staring at the turntable

952
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:06,160
Speaker 1: and putting on side one of the songs in the

953
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 1: Cave of Life and listening into all six sides of

954
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 1: that record, going through the liner notes and I'm five,

955
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:15,320
Speaker 1: and like, I've completely had an adults understanding of music.

956
00:54:16,200 --> 00:54:18,720
Speaker 1: And he takes three years to do his follow up record,

957
00:54:18,840 --> 00:54:23,239
Speaker 1: and of course he does the departure album, which, for

958
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 1: those of you don't know, if you release an established classic,

959
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 1: oftentimes when you have fear of follow up, and Stevie

960
00:54:32,239 --> 00:54:35,839
Speaker 1: will deny that Still Cows Come Home, you do an

961
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:39,160
Speaker 1: album that's the complete opposite of what you were known for.

962
00:54:39,239 --> 00:54:44,600
Speaker 1: And some say it's a psychological exercise of not wanting

963
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:46,640
Speaker 1: to face a fear. So don't make an album that's

964
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: even remotely close to songs than Cave Life. Do a

965
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,799
Speaker 1: classical album, which is what he did without warning. So

966
00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:57,600
Speaker 1: my dad was, I mean, he was so heartbroken over

967
00:54:57,640 --> 00:55:01,520
Speaker 1: that record where and defeated. Then I could touch the

968
00:55:01,560 --> 00:55:03,760
Speaker 1: stereo like he just stopped listening to music.

969
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 4: A broke you wonder broke your dad.

970
00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:09,840
Speaker 1: It totally broke. But I mean he was also forty

971
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:12,880
Speaker 1: at the time, which I think in the eighties forty

972
00:55:13,040 --> 00:55:16,320
Speaker 1: might as well have been sixty. So the whole point

973
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:20,440
Speaker 1: was that I never knew what I didn't know what

974
00:55:20,480 --> 00:55:22,359
Speaker 1: cynicism was until.

975
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 3: So you didn't have the ability to do what my

976
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:27,640
Speaker 3: daughter does, which is skip that song.

977
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 4: But yeah, but you're.

978
00:55:29,960 --> 00:55:33,680
Speaker 3: Getting actually an even better at education, which is he

979
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:36,799
Speaker 3: your father is implicitly forcing you to find what is

980
00:55:36,840 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 3: beautiful in an incredibly wide variety of music, which is

981
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 3: that is the education that allowed you to be you?

982
00:55:43,800 --> 00:55:47,280
Speaker 1: Right it is. But I do wonder if there's an

983
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:51,359
Speaker 1: alternate Earth version of me that listens to all these

984
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:56,560
Speaker 1: albums completely without skipping, without the fear of I will

985
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 1: get hit if I do this to go to the

986
00:55:58,600 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 1: next gong or skip to the next By.

987
00:56:00,719 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 3: The way, you mentioned Stevie and Glen Campbell, I trust

988
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:07,920
Speaker 3: I watched this maybe a thousand times, the YouTube of

989
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:11,000
Speaker 3: the two of them singing the Blown in the Wind,

990
00:56:11,600 --> 00:56:16,880
Speaker 3: which is like so un believable, and it it's for

991
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 3: so many reasons, but like the sheer delight. Glen Campbell,

992
00:56:20,640 --> 00:56:22,680
Speaker 3: by the way, because you know, is a legend in

993
00:56:22,680 --> 00:56:24,759
Speaker 3: his own right, like a brilliant guitar player, like an

994
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:29,440
Speaker 3: incredible voice. Is the absolute The look on his face,

995
00:56:30,160 --> 00:56:32,799
Speaker 3: it's like he's saying, this is I am sitting on

996
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:36,600
Speaker 3: a piano bench next to Stevie. Wonder it's never going

997
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 3: to get better than this. It's like it's just it's

998
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:41,879
Speaker 3: and Jack Ben Campbell is like a Church of Christ

999
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:46,040
Speaker 3: guy from Alabama wherever he's from. It's like he could

1000
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:49,399
Speaker 3: culturally that this has been him and Stevie is It's

1001
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:53,120
Speaker 3: thousands of miles of cultural difference, and he to see

1002
00:56:54,239 --> 00:56:56,800
Speaker 3: the look in his eyes when like, none of that matters.

1003
00:56:57,400 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 4: I'm sitting next to Stevie, I see it like and

1004
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:01,839
Speaker 4: egging them on, Like.

1005
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 3: I mean, if you've never watched this on YouTube, it's like,

1006
00:57:05,640 --> 00:57:07,120
Speaker 3: this is what you should watch when you go home.

1007
00:57:07,160 --> 00:57:08,000
Speaker 4: It's so magical.

1008
00:57:20,440 --> 00:57:23,280
Speaker 1: So wait, because you told me that my theory was wrong,

1009
00:57:23,320 --> 00:57:27,720
Speaker 1: which was ten thousand hours equal genius. So the thing is,

1010
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:31,160
Speaker 1: until this moment, I will accept that that's not what

1011
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:33,360
Speaker 1: you meant, but in my mind, that's what you meant.

1012
00:57:33,960 --> 00:57:41,120
Speaker 1: So that said, I've made a decision. Maybe seven months ago,

1013
00:57:41,320 --> 00:57:46,640
Speaker 1: I had a life redo and I decided that I'm

1014
00:57:46,680 --> 00:57:50,960
Speaker 1: going to be an amateur and with a child's mind

1015
00:57:51,080 --> 00:57:53,400
Speaker 1: of everything I do creatively. Now this is coming from

1016
00:57:53,480 --> 00:57:59,240
Speaker 1: someone that's a studied obsessive. I gotta figure out like

1017
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:03,000
Speaker 1: everything about the thing that I'm interested in and do

1018
00:58:03,320 --> 00:58:07,920
Speaker 1: all this thorough research to it. And now I believe

1019
00:58:08,800 --> 00:58:10,919
Speaker 1: do you believe that the opposite can be true. Now,

1020
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:13,480
Speaker 1: like someone that doesn't put in ten thousand hours, someone

1021
00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:18,160
Speaker 1: that just walks into a type rope situation and successfully

1022
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 1: gets to it. Do you think that it' seemed impossible

1023
00:58:21,360 --> 00:58:24,400
Speaker 1: to sort of wild the same results of.

1024
00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:28,960
Speaker 3: Well, what you can get is a different, but in

1025
00:58:29,040 --> 00:58:34,280
Speaker 3: many ways just as beautiful experience. So this is something

1026
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:36,520
Speaker 3: that I thought about when I was running as a kid,

1027
00:58:37,120 --> 00:58:40,400
Speaker 3: and I was a very competitive runner. I liked running

1028
00:58:40,400 --> 00:58:42,880
Speaker 3: and I enjoyed it, but I was also aware of

1029
00:58:42,880 --> 00:58:45,760
Speaker 3: how stressful and difficult it was. And then I came

1030
00:58:45,800 --> 00:58:50,680
Speaker 3: back to running as a much older person and was

1031
00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:54,600
Speaker 3: no longer an elite runner. I was now a good

1032
00:58:54,680 --> 00:58:58,720
Speaker 3: runner all right, and I found running as a good

1033
00:58:58,800 --> 00:59:02,080
Speaker 3: runner to be in every way superior to running when

1034
00:59:02,120 --> 00:59:05,200
Speaker 3: I was an elite runner. And I realized that there

1035
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 3: was a there's a category of enjoyment that is only

1036
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:12,800
Speaker 3: open to you if you're not an expert. If you're

1037
00:59:13,160 --> 00:59:17,920
Speaker 3: encountering things. It comes back to the my to my

1038
00:59:18,120 --> 00:59:21,360
Speaker 3: mom and working girl. Seeing things with fresh eyes and

1039
00:59:21,360 --> 00:59:24,840
Speaker 3: being unencumbered by all of the kind of contexts that

1040
00:59:25,560 --> 00:59:30,000
Speaker 3: comes with the steady acquisition of expertise allows you to

1041
00:59:30,240 --> 00:59:33,439
Speaker 3: enjoy things in a really kind of simple and pure

1042
00:59:33,480 --> 00:59:36,960
Speaker 3: way that maybe would be impossible if you were immersed

1043
00:59:36,960 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 3: in something like my friend Charles is a screenwriter.

1044
00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: All right.

1045
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:43,080
Speaker 4: You have a number of screenwriter friends of mine.

1046
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:45,520
Speaker 3: If you go with them to the movies and you say,

1047
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 3: and I'll say that's a great movie, they'll say, actually, no, no,

1048
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:51,280
Speaker 3: you don't understand. Act one was all wrong for the

1049
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:55,960
Speaker 3: following reasons. If I was doing it, I'm like, they

1050
00:59:55,960 --> 00:59:58,919
Speaker 3: didn't enjoy the movie. They knew too much. I just thought,

1051
00:59:59,400 --> 01:00:02,600
Speaker 3: I don't know, I thought it was great. I'm done right.

1052
01:00:02,920 --> 01:00:06,920
Speaker 3: And so I think that we underestimate those the kind

1053
01:00:06,920 --> 01:00:11,600
Speaker 3: of simple joy that comes from an amateur's perspective, and

1054
01:00:11,640 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 3: we overstate I think, the pleasure, not the value, but

1055
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:19,160
Speaker 3: the pleasure that comes from being an expert.

1056
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:22,680
Speaker 1: All right, So I have a last question. I'm gonna

1057
01:00:22,720 --> 01:00:27,640
Speaker 1: do quick lightning around with you. So my final question is,

1058
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 1: because twenty twenty five is defined by I guess what

1059
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:41,520
Speaker 1: I dub research versus research? Is it frustrating to you

1060
01:00:41,720 --> 01:00:45,680
Speaker 1: to live in a time in which having an amplified

1061
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:53,600
Speaker 1: microphone doesn't necessarily mean that you're saying anything factual at all? Like,

1062
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:59,080
Speaker 1: as a person who's like creative existence is doing research

1063
01:00:59,160 --> 01:01:05,080
Speaker 1: and gathering. Do you trust the next generation of writers

1064
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 1: to continue what you started twenty five years ago?

1065
01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:13,160
Speaker 4: I mean, yes, I do find it frustrating.

1066
01:01:13,640 --> 01:01:17,200
Speaker 3: I did a podcast episode of Revision's history basically going

1067
01:01:17,240 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 3: after Joe Rogan for being a terrible interviewer and letting like, yeah,

1068
01:01:23,200 --> 01:01:25,960
Speaker 3: who's on his show and like never calling them on anything. Right,

1069
01:01:26,360 --> 01:01:29,280
Speaker 3: that's frustrating because he's someone with a lot of cultural authority.

1070
01:01:29,560 --> 01:01:32,560
Speaker 3: On the other hand, like we're always going to have

1071
01:01:32,600 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 3: that there was an equivalent to him in some other

1072
01:01:36,640 --> 01:01:38,760
Speaker 3: form twenty five and thirty and fifty years ago. So,

1073
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:42,439
Speaker 3: and I think these things are self correcting. You can't

1074
01:01:42,480 --> 01:01:47,320
Speaker 3: persist indefinitely with that level of intellectual laziness and still

1075
01:01:47,320 --> 01:01:51,320
Speaker 3: be a part of the conversation. So there's so I

1076
01:01:51,360 --> 01:01:54,240
Speaker 3: have some I don't. I'm not a gloom and duomer

1077
01:01:54,320 --> 01:01:55,600
Speaker 3: about that question.

1078
01:01:56,200 --> 01:02:00,920
Speaker 1: Okay, However, I mean, as far as the future of

1079
01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: storytelling and research, especially with not the obsession the discussion

1080
01:02:06,680 --> 01:02:12,600
Speaker 1: of AI technology and whatnot, do you have any concerns

1081
01:02:13,240 --> 01:02:16,880
Speaker 1: as far as the value of what we used to

1082
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:18,400
Speaker 1: know as facts.

1083
01:02:18,640 --> 01:02:23,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, AI is actually a pretty useful corrective to

1084
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:28,160
Speaker 3: a lot of nonsense. So if you type do vaccines

1085
01:02:28,200 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 3: cause autism into chat GPT, chat GPT will tell you

1086
01:02:31,160 --> 01:02:35,080
Speaker 3: that they don't, because chat GPT surveys the whole literature

1087
01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:38,720
Speaker 3: and doesn't take something out of If you ask RFK

1088
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:42,200
Speaker 3: Jr that you'll get a different answer. So do I

1089
01:02:42,320 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 3: in a world without chat GPT and only RFK Junior.

1090
01:02:45,520 --> 01:02:46,240
Speaker 4: We're in trouble.

1091
01:02:46,760 --> 01:02:50,600
Speaker 3: But at least now there's a corrective to the nonsense

1092
01:02:50,680 --> 01:02:55,880
Speaker 3: of people like him. So not in that sense, I'm optimistic.

1093
01:02:55,240 --> 01:03:00,000
Speaker 1: About Okay, rapid fire time. What was the first job

1094
01:03:00,240 --> 01:03:00,800
Speaker 1: you ever had?

1095
01:03:01,840 --> 01:03:05,440
Speaker 3: A dishwasher at the Stonecock restaurant in Elmira, Ontario.

1096
01:03:05,840 --> 01:03:07,680
Speaker 4: Fifteen years old? Fourteen years old?

1097
01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:09,400
Speaker 1: Favorite cereal?

1098
01:03:11,000 --> 01:03:13,000
Speaker 4: Don't eat cereal, never.

1099
01:03:12,840 --> 01:03:17,480
Speaker 1: Have, never have. You don't know the joys of Captain Crunch.

1100
01:03:19,240 --> 01:03:20,880
Speaker 3: I will add to the list of things I did

1101
01:03:20,920 --> 01:03:22,720
Speaker 3: not grow up with cereal.

1102
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:28,680
Speaker 1: Really doing to cereal? Okay, by choice or by just

1103
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:30,920
Speaker 1: not happen, it's.

1104
01:03:30,760 --> 01:03:34,280
Speaker 3: Not I mean, I can conceive of the utility of

1105
01:03:34,280 --> 01:03:37,120
Speaker 3: a bowl of corn flakes, but it's like dessert.

1106
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:40,560
Speaker 4: It's not breakfast food. Right way?

1107
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:44,760
Speaker 3: Did you offer me corn flake crisp after a nice dinner.

1108
01:03:44,760 --> 01:03:47,440
Speaker 3: I would say, yeah, that's appropriate, But why would I

1109
01:03:47,440 --> 01:03:48,520
Speaker 3: have it at seven in the morning?

1110
01:03:48,680 --> 01:03:49,920
Speaker 1: Cereal at nighttime?

1111
01:03:50,080 --> 01:03:52,160
Speaker 4: Okay, it's sugar, it's.

1112
01:03:52,040 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 1: A delivery system for sugar. Okay. For you, what artists

1113
01:03:57,160 --> 01:03:59,200
Speaker 1: do you wish that you discovered earlier?

1114
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:04,000
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a really good question. When you say artists,

1115
01:04:04,040 --> 01:04:05,280
Speaker 3: you mean very broadly.

1116
01:04:05,960 --> 01:04:10,360
Speaker 1: I'man you know, I'm a music platform. But for you,

1117
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:13,520
Speaker 1: acting author.

1118
01:04:14,200 --> 01:04:17,040
Speaker 3: I think the greatest nonfiction writer of my generation is

1119
01:04:17,960 --> 01:04:22,560
Speaker 3: was she died, Janet Malcolm, And I wish i'd been

1120
01:04:22,560 --> 01:04:26,040
Speaker 3: reading Janet Malcolm from the beginning of Janet Malcolm. I

1121
01:04:26,120 --> 01:04:28,960
Speaker 3: discovered her in my fifteen years ago. I wish i'd

1122
01:04:28,960 --> 01:04:33,160
Speaker 3: discovered her much before then, because she's influenced by writing a.

1123
01:04:33,160 --> 01:04:37,000
Speaker 1: Law okay, and what is next for you?

1124
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:43,200
Speaker 3: My big Alabama true crime thing. And then I've been

1125
01:04:43,240 --> 01:04:47,520
Speaker 3: working forever on this book about Tom.

1126
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:51,840
Speaker 1: Bradley, mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, and what's your angle?

1127
01:04:52,640 --> 01:04:54,800
Speaker 4: I'm really interested in the uses.

1128
01:04:54,480 --> 01:04:56,920
Speaker 1: Of anger, the uses of anger.

1129
01:04:57,240 --> 01:04:57,439
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1130
01:04:57,480 --> 01:05:03,720
Speaker 3: The idea is that people who are disenfranchised are angry inevitably,

1131
01:05:04,120 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 3: but they have a series of choices about how to

1132
01:05:05,840 --> 01:05:10,560
Speaker 3: express that anger. And he was part of a cohort

1133
01:05:10,560 --> 01:05:13,720
Speaker 3: of people who grew up in South Central in the

1134
01:05:13,760 --> 01:05:17,920
Speaker 3: thirties who all made very dramatically different choices about what

1135
01:05:17,960 --> 01:05:20,760
Speaker 3: to do with their anger, and his was the most stark,

1136
01:05:21,480 --> 01:05:24,520
Speaker 3: and he was the one that went furthest and he

1137
01:05:24,680 --> 01:05:26,640
Speaker 3: was the one who makes the least sense to us today.

1138
01:05:27,160 --> 01:05:29,800
Speaker 3: And so I want to tell that he grew up

1139
01:05:29,800 --> 01:05:34,160
Speaker 3: with Jackie Robinson, Right, Jackie Robinson goes this way with

1140
01:05:34,240 --> 01:05:37,040
Speaker 3: his anger. Tom Bradley goes this way with his anger.

1141
01:05:38,080 --> 01:05:38,880
Speaker 3: Super interesting.

1142
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:45,080
Speaker 1: That is interesting because I think historically Black people and anger,

1143
01:05:46,120 --> 01:05:49,280
Speaker 1: There's like I grew up in you weren't allowed to

1144
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:52,360
Speaker 1: be angry in my household without paying a price for it.

1145
01:05:52,960 --> 01:05:56,280
Speaker 1: And even today, you know, for black people to walk around,

1146
01:05:56,800 --> 01:05:59,000
Speaker 1: no one wants to get tag, you know, the angry

1147
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:02,240
Speaker 1: black person at work or exactly. You know, for me,

1148
01:06:03,080 --> 01:06:08,440
Speaker 1: so many years of unexpressed emotions, I fear that that

1149
01:06:08,520 --> 01:06:11,400
Speaker 1: anger might result into something else, which is why I like,

1150
01:06:12,520 --> 01:06:14,680
Speaker 1: maybe I chose music to.

1151
01:06:15,240 --> 01:06:20,400
Speaker 3: So Tom Bradley, the central drama of his life is

1152
01:06:20,400 --> 01:06:24,200
Speaker 3: that he honestly he joins the LAPD in the nineteen forties, okay,

1153
01:06:24,680 --> 01:06:26,840
Speaker 3: and honestly believes that he could be the first black

1154
01:06:28,000 --> 01:06:31,360
Speaker 3: police chief of LA because in his own eyes, he's

1155
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:36,800
Speaker 3: the smartest, he's the he's the biggest, he's the handsomest,

1156
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:40,680
Speaker 3: he's the best, and he's that all that is true.

1157
01:06:40,720 --> 01:06:43,680
Speaker 3: The guy was like a super star like you cannot imagine,

1158
01:06:44,160 --> 01:06:46,520
Speaker 3: and he naively believed that would be enough to allow

1159
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:49,880
Speaker 3: him to be chief of the LAPD. And he gets

1160
01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:54,560
Speaker 3: this far and they they shut him down, and he

1161
01:06:54,600 --> 01:07:00,480
Speaker 3: spends the rest of his life dealing with the consequences.

1162
01:06:59,720 --> 01:07:03,080
Speaker 1: Of that rejection, despite being the mayor of Los Angeles.

1163
01:07:03,080 --> 01:07:04,560
Speaker 4: Mayor is the consolation prize.

1164
01:07:06,000 --> 01:07:08,560
Speaker 1: He'd rather be Oh my god.

1165
01:07:08,400 --> 01:07:10,400
Speaker 3: That was your this is the this is the thing

1166
01:07:10,400 --> 01:07:12,120
Speaker 3: about him that's so fascinating.

1167
01:07:12,680 --> 01:07:14,440
Speaker 4: Mayor is the consolation prize.

1168
01:07:14,480 --> 01:07:17,000
Speaker 3: It's what he did because he couldn't be LAPD chief

1169
01:07:17,720 --> 01:07:21,360
Speaker 3: and Rodney King is his. He waits thirty years for

1170
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:24,560
Speaker 3: his revenge and keeps his anger in check until Rodney

1171
01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:27,040
Speaker 3: King allows him to go back and eviscerate the LAPD.

1172
01:07:27,760 --> 01:07:30,880
Speaker 3: It is like that. It is all about revenge. Is

1173
01:07:30,880 --> 01:07:33,840
Speaker 3: a dish best served cold. That's his whole life. He

1174
01:07:34,040 --> 01:07:40,400
Speaker 3: like didn't let anyone see how absolutely devastated and furious

1175
01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:41,040
Speaker 3: he was over.

1176
01:07:40,920 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 1: That regispite being mayor.

1177
01:07:43,480 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 3: It was it was not it was all about. It

1178
01:07:45,640 --> 01:07:50,360
Speaker 3: was all about. It's an incredibly, incredibly and there's this story.

1179
01:07:51,200 --> 01:07:52,600
Speaker 4: Okay, we're going on, but I can tell you one

1180
01:07:52,640 --> 01:07:53,600
Speaker 4: last Braddy story.

1181
01:07:53,720 --> 01:07:57,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's the first black guy to move into a

1182
01:07:57,240 --> 01:08:04,160
Speaker 3: neighborhood in in our which was previously a redlined, all

1183
01:08:04,160 --> 01:08:04,920
Speaker 3: white neighborhood.

1184
01:08:05,720 --> 01:08:08,840
Speaker 4: And they change. The Supreme Court has out ruling.

1185
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:11,880
Speaker 3: It allows a lot people to move in, and it

1186
01:08:11,960 --> 01:08:13,880
Speaker 3: still has his resistance. He gets a white person to

1187
01:08:13,880 --> 01:08:17,000
Speaker 3: buy the property forum and then they switch the.

1188
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:19,440
Speaker 4: Thing and he drives with his family.

1189
01:08:20,280 --> 01:08:22,640
Speaker 3: Through the streets and all of the other people in

1190
01:08:22,680 --> 01:08:24,880
Speaker 3: the neighborhood come out on the sidewalk to watch the

1191
01:08:24,920 --> 01:08:26,479
Speaker 3: first black family move in, and.

1192
01:08:26,400 --> 01:08:29,800
Speaker 4: They are, you know, screaming at him and yelling.

1193
01:08:30,320 --> 01:08:33,599
Speaker 3: And remember he's six foot six two point fifty and

1194
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:37,679
Speaker 3: like he parks his car in his driveway, gets out,

1195
01:08:37,960 --> 01:08:41,559
Speaker 3: and out emerges this enormous man in his policeman's unique form.

1196
01:08:41,760 --> 01:08:44,240
Speaker 3: He takes out his gun and he holds it up

1197
01:08:44,320 --> 01:08:47,320
Speaker 3: like this. He turns and faces everyone and marches his

1198
01:08:47,320 --> 01:08:50,920
Speaker 3: family into his house. And then this is the best part.

1199
01:08:51,840 --> 01:08:54,400
Speaker 3: The next morning he knocks on his neighbor's door, the

1200
01:08:54,439 --> 01:08:56,439
Speaker 3: neighbor who is the most upset about him moving in

1201
01:08:56,760 --> 01:09:00,679
Speaker 3: and says, you know, ma'am, I see your lawn needs mowing.

1202
01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:02,439
Speaker 3: I'd like to mow your lawn. And he mows her

1203
01:09:02,520 --> 01:09:07,760
Speaker 3: lawn every week until she does. That's Tom Bradley. Think

1204
01:09:07,800 --> 01:09:08,240
Speaker 3: of that out.

1205
01:09:09,080 --> 01:09:11,280
Speaker 1: I need you to write this book. Ladies and gentlemen.

1206
01:09:11,360 --> 01:09:19,600
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell, thank you for joining me on QLs and

1207
01:09:19,600 --> 01:09:21,439
Speaker 1: I'll see you all the next go around. See y'all.

1208
01:09:30,360 --> 01:09:33,839
Speaker 1: Quest Love Shows hosted by me Amir quest Love Thompson.

1209
01:09:34,720 --> 01:09:38,600
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me.

1210
01:09:40,200 --> 01:09:45,439
Speaker 1: Produced by Britney Benjamin and Jake Paine. Produced for iHeart

1211
01:09:45,920 --> 01:09:51,439
Speaker 1: by Noel Brown, Edited by Alex Conroy. iHeart video support

1212
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:57,080
Speaker 1: by Mark Canton, Logos Graphics and animation by Nick Lowe.

1213
01:09:58,760 --> 01:10:03,479
Speaker 1: Additional support by That's Covid Special thanks to Kathy Brown.

1214
01:10:05,000 --> 01:10:09,759
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1215
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1216
01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:16,400
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1217
01:10:16,600 --> 01:10:22,759
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1218
01:10:22,760 --> 01:10:26,320
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1219
01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:31,440
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