Speaker 1: I think I've really evolved to a place now where
Speaker 1: my understanding of like what self help actually is, or
Speaker 1: like what good life actually is is. It's not like
Speaker 1: becoming whoever you want to be. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the Psychology podcast today. I'm really excited to introduce you
Speaker 1: to this podcast, improv Jam. This is an idea that
Speaker 1: Mark Manson and I had at a party a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago. We're like, you know what, we should
Speaker 1: just sit down and have a chat and whatever comes
Speaker 1: up comes up. We have so many mutual interests, so
Speaker 1: would assume that a lot of interesting things would come up,
Speaker 1: and a lot of interesting things did. In this episode,
Speaker 1: I talked to best selling author and badass self help
Speaker 1: guru Mark Manson about things such as what makes social
Speaker 1: media so polarizing, why are self help quote so cheesy?
Speaker 1: Are all pick up artists narcissists? And does free will exist?
Speaker 1: We also cover topics such as relationships, politics, self esteem,
Speaker 1: and ner diversity. This was a really broad and rich
Speaker 1: chat with motherfucker Mark Manson, who uses the word fucking
Speaker 1: almost all of his books. So anyway, I really hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this chat as much as I did. We
Speaker 1: had a blast, So let's get right into it. Hey, yo,
Speaker 1: how are you, man? I'm good. How are you? I'm good,
Speaker 1: I'm good. I got this new shirt just for this occasion.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, but in the top one. I hope that
Speaker 1: people can handle this. Oh my god, we're getting serious.
Speaker 1: We sure are we sure are. Let me give some
Speaker 1: context to people. This is an unplanned, unscripted well I
Speaker 1: mean it was planned, but it's unscripted chat about whatever
Speaker 1: comes up. Even though I made a little bit of
Speaker 1: a list of some topics. I put together some some
Speaker 1: items too. We should add that the only rule is
Speaker 1: that we're not allowed to talk about either of our books.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Yeah, thank you for thank you
Speaker 1: for hating that clarification. So Mark, actually I was worrying
Speaker 1: what were you like as a child? When I was
Speaker 1: particularly young, I was pretty happy, go lucky, and then
Speaker 1: my family life started to go south, I think around
Speaker 1: age nine or ten, and then I became quite rebellious
Speaker 1: and a little bit of a shithead starting around then
Speaker 1: the happy child, and then I was a very angry
Speaker 1: and obnoxious teenager and pre adolescent. Did you use the
Speaker 1: word fuck a lot? Oh yeah, I dude, I was
Speaker 1: that kid. I was always at detention. I was smoking
Speaker 1: cigarettes behind school. You know, I was wearing I used
Speaker 1: to wear Marilyn Manson T shirts. The Bible study. So
Speaker 1: I was, you know, every teacher and authority figures nightmare.
Speaker 1: But you know it's what I you know, you get
Speaker 1: by however you however you can Oh, I get it.
Speaker 1: I get it. I mean I was. I was one
Speaker 1: of the world's most notorious computer hackers when I was thirteen. Nice,
Speaker 1: so I took it in a white collar crime way.
Speaker 1: My angst. I had a lot of banks too, you know,
Speaker 1: for I was labeled special ed you know when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. So I was, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to regain power and control in some way. And
Speaker 1: I discovered computers. When I discovered my Apple two GS,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm going to hack the shit out
Speaker 1: two gs. Can you can you talk about what? What?
Speaker 1: What was your like greatest high? You mean, can I
Speaker 1: talk about without going to jail? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean a statue limitations is out. I'm pretty sure. I
Speaker 1: don't think I want to take any chances. But I
Speaker 1: had I was the wizard, and I had a whole
Speaker 1: Bolton board system BBS. And I don't expect anyone to
Speaker 1: know what that means, because I remember, do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about? Yeah, nineties internet and I shared
Speaker 1: one of my worst crimes. I shared Wolfenstein three D
Speaker 1: on the non shareware version for free. Again, I don't
Speaker 1: expect anyone to know what I'm talking about, Yeah, breaking
Speaker 1: the law, early piracy. Those were the days used to
Speaker 1: get all sorts of stuff for free. Yeah, yeah, those
Speaker 1: were the days. Those were the days in some ways,
Speaker 1: and then in some ways. I'm glad that I'm not
Speaker 1: in those days anymore. Sure, but these days aren't much better.
Speaker 1: What interesting days, I mean, the days of the last
Speaker 1: couple of years are fascinating, cultural changes, cultural shifts. I
Speaker 1: feel like conversations can't be had that were had ten
Speaker 1: years ago, And some people think that's rightly. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I get all different sides of perspectives. I get it.
Speaker 1: Part of my problem, Mark is that, like, I feel
Speaker 1: like I have radical perspective taking ability, so like it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to make a damn decision and take
Speaker 1: a damn side. I don't know if you relate to
Speaker 1: this at all, but I feel like it's hard for me.
Speaker 1: People are like pick US radical side, and I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: but I totally get what they're saying on the other side,
Speaker 1: Like I get it. Like I'm not saying maybe I
Speaker 1: necessarily agree with it, but like, yeah, I get it,
Speaker 1: you know, like I totally relate. So you know, I
Speaker 1: have just for your listeners who aren't familiar with me
Speaker 1: or my work, Like I'm primarily I'm in the self
Speaker 1: help space, so I'm not a psychologist. I'm not an academic.
Speaker 1: I'm in the self help space. I'm best known for
Speaker 1: writing the subtle art and not giving a fuck. But
Speaker 1: I've also been a blogger online for my god like
Speaker 1: fourteen years now, and I've built up, you know, a
Speaker 1: pretty large audience online and I have a newsletter that
Speaker 1: I send out regularly. And it was interesting because when
Speaker 1: twenty twenty hit, you know, traditionally, pre twenty twenty, I
Speaker 1: would always avoid political subjects just because in my mind,
Speaker 1: it's like if I was writing an article about I
Speaker 1: don't know, self esteem or self acceptance or you know whatever, anxiety,
Speaker 1: to bring any sort of political reference to it, in
Speaker 1: my mind, it like it narrowed my audience immediately, like
Speaker 1: it would immediately shut out a large percentage of people
Speaker 1: who could potentially read and benefit from whatever I was
Speaker 1: talking about. So I just think I avoided at all
Speaker 1: costs for many, many years, and in twenty twenty I
Speaker 1: felt compelled, I guess you could say ethically compelled to
Speaker 1: stop doing that because initially, with the pandemic, I felt
Speaker 1: like it was an important enough subject to talk about
Speaker 1: some things very plainly, and then with the protests that
Speaker 1: summer and then the election that followed it, I, you know,
Speaker 1: I throughout twenty twenty, I continually found myself in situations
Speaker 1: where I'm like, well, if I don't talk about this,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a large audience, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of influence, and if I don't talk about this,
Speaker 1: and I feel, you know, yeah, it just felt like
Speaker 1: the morally correct decision, right, But as a result, it
Speaker 1: kind of threw me into the middle of these a
Speaker 1: lot of political conversations that I didn't really want to
Speaker 1: be in the middle of, and I started to experience
Speaker 1: a lot of what you're talking about, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: well you shared this link to this paper. That means
Speaker 1: you're like a right wing or left wing fascist slash
Speaker 1: communist slash you know something is than you're the reason
Speaker 1: the world is being ruined and all this stuff. I
Speaker 1: started receiving a lot of hate mail from all over
Speaker 1: the political spectrum. It seemed like I couldn't there was
Speaker 1: nothing I could say that didn't piss off people somewhere
Speaker 1: on the political spectrum, And so I wrote a number
Speaker 1: of emails that tried to like address this. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of newsletters they're still on my site that
Speaker 1: tried to address this, And you know, I had an
Speaker 1: entire newsletter where I kind of like went point by point.
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, you know, just because I share a
Speaker 1: piece of information doesn't necessarily mean that like that's my
Speaker 1: conviction or my belief. I'm just sharing information, right, And
Speaker 1: even if I had if I share a belief, it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that I'm like not open to evidence
Speaker 1: counter evidence or discussion or debate. You know, there's just
Speaker 1: all these assumptions, these like kind of instinctual assumptions that
Speaker 1: seem to happen online these days that it's making I
Speaker 1: feel like it's kind of just poisoning discourse in general.
Speaker 1: And I would say this is not only limited to
Speaker 1: the political topics. I think you see it like if
Speaker 1: you get into like health and nutrition Twitter, You're like,
Speaker 1: you'll see like people arguing about carbs with like the
Speaker 1: same anger and fervor that you know, people argue about
Speaker 1: some of these other issues. You know, you see it
Speaker 1: in all over the place, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is about. Are you know something about the technology?
Speaker 1: The cultural moment, the interconnectedness of society is like, it's
Speaker 1: causing people to shorten their attention spans and double down
Speaker 1: on like their first inclinations. And it's just not I
Speaker 1: think there's there's a lot of health discourse that is
Speaker 1: prevented because of it. Yeah, that's a great point. I
Speaker 1: view it from a psychological entropy perspective, which gets nerdy
Speaker 1: real quick, but go on it from a systems entropy
Speaker 1: dynamic systems complex perspective. And I do. I do because
Speaker 1: I think that it makes sense that when you're in
Speaker 1: a situation where people their sense of coherence, which is
Speaker 1: a form of meaning. You know that people when they
Speaker 1: think of meeting, they often think of the need for purpose.
Speaker 1: But there's a different kind of meaning, which is just
Speaker 1: how much does your immediate environment make sense? How much
Speaker 1: can you predict? You know, our brain is a prediction machine,
Speaker 1: and when you have too much entropy, you feel like
Speaker 1: your brain can't predict anything anymore. And when you get
Speaker 1: to that point, you tend to cling as much as
Speaker 1: you can to certain beliefs that are unchanging. So I
Speaker 1: do think that we're living a time where people are
Speaker 1: are becoming so rigid in their beliefs because they're really
Speaker 1: lacking a sense of coherence and meaning in that sense.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense for sure? I've definitely I agree
Speaker 1: with that to a certain extent, Like I've do you
Speaker 1: think what do you think that's primarily do Do you
Speaker 1: think it's the amount of information? Do you think it's
Speaker 1: the amount of stimulation? Lack of trust? And so there's
Speaker 1: a real lack of trust, and people who are the
Speaker 1: leaders are fanning that flame, you know, on both sides. Again,
Speaker 1: every time you use the expression both sides, you get
Speaker 1: plumbled by both sides of course, or you get pumbled
Speaker 1: by the people are like, oh, that's both sides. Is like,
Speaker 1: you can't hide behind your both sides. It's like, well, wait,
Speaker 1: where am I supposed to go? Then? Exactly? That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And my point about both sides is because well, I'm
Speaker 1: a humanistic psychologist. I see things in terms of humans,
Speaker 1: not science, and that's people don't want to think that way,
Speaker 1: you know, but there is potential for these capacities in
Speaker 1: all of us, regardless of you know, you're not safe.
Speaker 1: Just you say I'm a leftist doesn't make you safe
Speaker 1: all of a sudden from being human. Like it's crazy,
Speaker 1: like people act as though, like, oh, if you're on
Speaker 1: the right side, then you can do anything. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: how many atrocities over the course of human history have
Speaker 1: stemmed from that one single philosophy, which is I'm on
Speaker 1: the right side, therefore I can do anything. Oh all
Speaker 1: of them, yeah, like all of them. Yeah. It's it's
Speaker 1: a you know, nobody who pulls the trigger thinks they're
Speaker 1: unjustified and bullying trigger. You know. I think there's another
Speaker 1: element of this that I've thought about a lot, which
Speaker 1: is there's kind of an asymmetrical relationship in online discourse.
Speaker 1: Which is what I mean by that is that you know,
Speaker 1: if you and I are at a dinner party, right
Speaker 1: and let's say there's twenty people in the room and
Speaker 1: one person is just a belligerent asshole, the other nineteen
Speaker 1: people in the room can all kind of look at
Speaker 1: each other and kind of, you know, give that knowing
Speaker 1: nod and just ignore that one obnoxious person and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and things don't spiral out of like everybody just kind
Speaker 1: of tacitly agrees to ignore that person. Online, you have
Speaker 1: that one person out of twenty, and it just derails everything.
Speaker 1: Like there's something about online discourse that it's that trollish
Speaker 1: behavior has an asymmetric influence on the overall conversation and discourse.
Speaker 1: And there's actually I've actually seen research on this where
Speaker 1: they've found that it only takes I think the threshold
Speaker 1: is around like four or five percent of people in
Speaker 1: a forum. I think they did it with Reddit threads.
Speaker 1: It only takes like four or five percent of the
Speaker 1: people in a thread to instigate, like start be combative basically,
Speaker 1: and everything goes to shit like the other ninety five
Speaker 1: percent of people get sucked down into it. And and
Speaker 1: so I think there's something inherent about the medium, you know,
Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean that you know, Reddit or Facebook
Speaker 1: or Twitter like built these you know, they're like intentionally
Speaker 1: making everybody angry because it gets they get more clicks.
Speaker 1: It's just like there's just something about the psychological experience
Speaker 1: of seeing words on a screen, not seeing a person's face,
Speaker 1: not knowing who's behind that screen, and all the kind
Speaker 1: of heuristics and biases that we all have when we
Speaker 1: see something that we don't like on a screen that
Speaker 1: causes us to despiral in this way when we try
Speaker 1: to communicate with each other. That's a great point. I mean,
Speaker 1: Twitter is a great example of how we see it
Speaker 1: is to be anonymous. But the greater point there is
Speaker 1: when you're lacking verbal cues and facial cues, You're lacking
Speaker 1: whole of cues that you have no idea someone's intense intonation.
Speaker 1: There's so much information conveyed when you just have a
Speaker 1: conversation with someone that does not conveyed on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: what you see is an awful lot of So what
Speaker 1: you're saying is that people are filling in blanks for
Speaker 1: such a lack of information. That's horrible. The other day
Speaker 1: I wrote a tweet about just questioning about the far left,
Speaker 1: why don't you see much controversial that label used as
Speaker 1: much in the mainstream media linguistically? I was just curious.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I just perplexed me. You don't really use
Speaker 1: that you know, you don't see that linguistic label used
Speaker 1: on the far left as much as described as everything's
Speaker 1: automatically controversial in the far right. You know, fair enough,
Speaker 1: but you just don't see that label. It was a
Speaker 1: really nerdy It was more of a nerdy point. I
Speaker 1: wasn't trying to like start a war, but people will say.
Speaker 1: People came in and said, so, what you're saying is
Speaker 1: genocide is just as you know, a fighting racism is
Speaker 1: just as bad as genocide. That's that's what you're saying.
Speaker 1: What I say that, Yeah, it's it's I saw that
Speaker 1: thread and actually I thought, I think that's a really
Speaker 1: interesting question. It actually got me. It got me thinking
Speaker 1: about that quite a bit. But I also knew better
Speaker 1: than to go into your comments because I knew. I
Speaker 1: knew what was going to happen. Monster expired out of control.
Speaker 1: You know, So why do you think the language is
Speaker 1: different for say, like radical left beliefs versus radical right beliefs.
Speaker 1: I you know, part of why I outsources Twitter. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can be really naive. I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: wonder what my thoughtful followers because I want to the
Speaker 1: thing that's so insane about the climate we're in now
Speaker 1: is I didn't even state with certainty and opinion. I
Speaker 1: actually outsourced my question because I actually have respect and
Speaker 1: care for I'm basically saying you've I'm giving you a
Speaker 1: voice and I want to listen to you. And they're like,
Speaker 1: go go kill him. I mean, that's where we are
Speaker 1: in America right now. Someone can't even be curious anymore
Speaker 1: about things that you're not even allowed to be curious about.
Speaker 1: But sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt you really quick. I
Speaker 1: just want to I want to point one thing out,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, like maybe I can. I don't
Speaker 1: have the thread in front of me right now, right.
Speaker 1: But it's like I bet if you, oh, did you really? So?
Speaker 1: I bet if you if you went into the stats
Speaker 1: on that threat, like looked at the analytics, you know
Speaker 1: you probably I don't know. Let's say you, let's say
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people saw it and then you had I
Speaker 1: don't know, let's say you had two hundred comments and
Speaker 1: of those two hundred comments, you know, forty were of
Speaker 1: the like how dare you kill him? Type? Right? And
Speaker 1: it's and so we end up like social media, we
Speaker 1: are constantly in this like tail wagging the dog situation
Speaker 1: of there's a silent majority who thinks you're reasonable, but
Speaker 1: they have better things to do so they don't comment,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's people who are super angry and
Speaker 1: psychophantic and zell like obsessed, you know, fanatical, who do
Speaker 1: stop whatever they're doing and are like, I gotta tell
Speaker 1: this guy, Scott Kaufman that he's a horrible human being
Speaker 1: because I'm like protecting my tribe and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: That's a great point, mark because he got four thousand likes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go, and it got like almost a thousand reshares,
Speaker 1: So so there, you're right. You're right. And in terms
Speaker 1: of the point I was trying to make again, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't really know the answer, which why I
Speaker 1: really wanted to outsource it. But it just dawned on me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, because I watch a lot of you know, CNN,
Speaker 1: and then I flipped a Fox News. I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: the contrast between the two and the issues. There is
Speaker 1: a psychologist. It's fascinating, it's a fascinating, But I never
Speaker 1: have heard Don Lemon say we now have a critical
Speaker 1: race theorist on our show and that the theory is
Speaker 1: a little controversial within academia. Some factions of academia have
Speaker 1: written some published papers that have said maybe this is
Speaker 1: not rock solid science, and others haven't. So I just
Speaker 1: wanted to make that clear before the discussion happened. I've
Speaker 1: never once, never, once, once heard any admission that an
Speaker 1: idea could be controversial from the coming from their own side.
Speaker 1: But automatically everything coming from the right is controversial. You know,
Speaker 1: we have this controversial guest now on they never say
Speaker 1: this guest is controversial. That was my only point, and
Speaker 1: I think it Isn't it a reasonable point? I do,
Speaker 1: I do, and it's it. It's interesting because I do think,
Speaker 1: you know, the far right and the far left, like
Speaker 1: they're not mirror image. They inhabit different spaces, they're different
Speaker 1: demographics of people. You know, far left people tend to
Speaker 1: be very educated. They tend to be younger, middle aged.
Speaker 1: Far right people tend to be older, they tend to
Speaker 1: be less educated. You know, left people tend to be
Speaker 1: on the coast. Right people tend to be in the
Speaker 1: middle of the country. And I also just think influence there,
Speaker 1: you know, their influence is different as well, Like it's
Speaker 1: the far left has a very strong influence in academia
Speaker 1: and media, and those two things are usually upstream of
Speaker 1: most cultural ideas, whereas the right far right is very influential,
Speaker 1: say in religion, churches, small communities, rural communities, things like that,
Speaker 1: which is not upstream of culture and ideas. It's it's
Speaker 1: actually upstream of politics because the American system is favored
Speaker 1: towards more rural communities. So you can get this like
Speaker 1: this weird dynamic where it's you know, each side is
Speaker 1: kind of flexing in different places. And I guess controversy
Speaker 1: is technically it's a it's ideas that are taboo, right
Speaker 1: like it's and so if a left dominates the the
Speaker 1: space of idea creation, then that would make sense. But
Speaker 1: that's just me spitballing. I'm sure I'm gonna get hate
Speaker 1: mail after after this. Yeah, it's so funny, will too.
Speaker 1: I don't really understand why it's taboo to criticize your
Speaker 1: in group. That to me, that that signals insecurity, That
Speaker 1: signals like such deep insecurity that you can't even bear
Speaker 1: the thought that an idea is not perfect, you know,
Speaker 1: within your own side. I mean, it's just I feel
Speaker 1: like it'd be unfathomable. For for CNN too, they twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. All they do is talk about how
Speaker 1: much Trump sucks and how much you know, can you
Speaker 1: don't believe that's all if you every time you turn
Speaker 1: on January sixth, like, oh my god, can you believe
Speaker 1: how much of an asshole this guy is? But I
Speaker 1: never hear like a criticism of of anything anything from
Speaker 1: their own side. And then the same thing on Fox News.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, they're not they're not safe. No, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, like I do you ever hear Tacker Carlson ever?
Speaker 1: Be Like, I don't know if I agree with what
Speaker 1: some people in the writer are saying right now about X,
Speaker 1: Like I never hear that, and I don't understand, like
Speaker 1: why that's the case. I am so critical of myself,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't consider myself part of my
Speaker 1: own group. Yeah, right, enough enough that I don't criticize myself.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you know what? I don't get it.
Speaker 1: It's just not the way I think. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: ask you this, because I've noticed that you've been you know,
Speaker 1: you've been more at least on Twitter. I don't know
Speaker 1: about on this podcast, but you've been You've been, you know,
Speaker 1: investigating these subjects more, a little bit more. And you
Speaker 1: said that now you're watching you're watching cable news to
Speaker 1: kind of observe and understand what's your relationship to this
Speaker 1: these in queries like this subject matter, like is it?
Speaker 1: Are you excited by it? Does it feel like something?
Speaker 1: Does it make you miserable? But you feel like, as
Speaker 1: a good citizen and a good psychologist, you need to
Speaker 1: do it. It sounds like that's what it is. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no. I was just saying, is that where
Speaker 1: you're going with that question? Yeah? Yeah, But it's a
Speaker 1: great question. And I don't feel authentic talking about these topics.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like it's me. I don't It's not
Speaker 1: the core of what I'm here on this earth to do.
Speaker 1: I would love to spend as much time as human
Speaker 1: possible talking about how we can coach people to greatness,
Speaker 1: how we can help kids who are falling between the
Speaker 1: crafts and the education system. When I talk about a
Speaker 1: whole slew of other topics, I get lit up and
Speaker 1: inspired and feel like I'm a valuable human being. But
Speaker 1: every time I talk about politics, I feel the exact opposite.
Speaker 1: I feel so horrible, feel depressed, I feel like no
Speaker 1: hope and I hate and yet so then then therefore
Speaker 1: the obvious question and why why do you do it? Now?
Speaker 1: I don't in this podcast, but these conversations are on
Speaker 1: my mind because I'm an intellectual, I'm a nerd, and
Speaker 1: I have questions. Well that's the problem is I have
Speaker 1: questions and the way the world is, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think these are topics that any intelligent person is worried
Speaker 1: about right now, Like I don't. I know, in my
Speaker 1: friend groups it comes up all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: and even people who aren't podcasters or writers or psychologists,
Speaker 1: like it's you know, just family members, people on the
Speaker 1: right and the left, like everybody seem everybody. It's like,
Speaker 1: we have this black hole in our culture right now.
Speaker 1: And you know, I felt myself getting sucked into it
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and I made a very
Speaker 1: conscious decision last year to just get back out and
Speaker 1: stay out. And because I found the same thing, like
Speaker 1: it just was it was making me miserable. It was
Speaker 1: really like it made me loathe turning on my computer
Speaker 1: in the morning, which you know, that's no good. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's where I need to get to that that's the
Speaker 1: one potential route is where I make a commitment to
Speaker 1: staying out. I mean, we have mutual friends. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna mention this, but they feel their public figures,
Speaker 1: you know, they feel the same way. I've talked to
Speaker 1: them personally about this as well, and they they're like,
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to even touch any of those issues.
Speaker 1: I think part of the problem of being a ravenously
Speaker 1: curious person such as myself is that it's almost like
Speaker 1: a dopamine thing. If I if I can't get like,
Speaker 1: who can I talk to this? So maybe I just
Speaker 1: talk to you privately. Maybe we just get a beer
Speaker 1: and talk about these topics. Maybe I don't need to
Speaker 1: talk about them in public, you know, but yeah, talk
Speaker 1: about them. I want to. I'm craving to talk to
Speaker 1: someone about them because I think there's so much nab
Speaker 1: that's going on right now and I want to understand
Speaker 1: it for sure, since for sure, and yeah, I limit
Speaker 1: it to my private life. But a lot of that
Speaker 1: is kind of just it's just calculated, because it's like
Speaker 1: I recognize that, like I'm of most value, you know,
Speaker 1: my my brain and career is most value to the
Speaker 1: society if I'm talking about more universal subjects, like you
Speaker 1: know a lot of subjects, you know, the subjects you
Speaker 1: talk about on this podcast. And it's and so as
Speaker 1: much as I might be, you know, freaking out or
Speaker 1: troubled or curious about a lot of these topics, I've
Speaker 1: just found like the cost benefit of bringing you know,
Speaker 1: engaging online on the internet, it's just it's not there,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's really not. I might get there, I
Speaker 1: might get there soon. Really, let's transition for a second
Speaker 1: to this to the self help industry, a discussion of
Speaker 1: the self industry and where you are unique value and
Speaker 1: I'd love to know more about your unique value from
Speaker 1: your own perspective. I noticed something you wrote in not
Speaker 1: that you wrote, but there was a profile view in
Speaker 1: the New Yorker big response to why you do what
Speaker 1: you did was your a reaction to tiny Buddha. I
Speaker 1: was wondering, why you're hitting on tiny Buddha. I love
Speaker 1: tiny Buddha. He's only a tiny Buddha. He's a vulnerable,
Speaker 1: vulnerable tiny Buddha. And I love tiny Buddha and I
Speaker 1: share those things, and I was just I was wondering,
Speaker 1: that's one thing I wanted to discuss with you is
Speaker 1: why why? Why? Okay? Okay? Well, so, first of all,
Speaker 1: public apology to tiny Buddha. Nothing against tiny Buddha, It's fine.
Speaker 1: I'm a very competitive person. And if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: like the Last like the documentary about Michael Jordan, or
Speaker 1: like Michael Jordan has it like he was so competitive
Speaker 1: that he would like invent enemies in his own mind
Speaker 1: to motivate himself, you know. And I think early in
Speaker 1: my career I had a little bit of that. I
Speaker 1: was in my twenties. I was writing online no like
Speaker 1: nobody had ever heard of me, and I didn't like
Speaker 1: the self help industry. I thought it was a little
Speaker 1: bit too cheesy, powder puffy, you know. It needs to
Speaker 1: be a little bit more real and more raw. And
Speaker 1: so there were a number of very popular sites at
Speaker 1: the time that I would kind of look at and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, fuck that guy, like I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna beat them, you know, like kind of like Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan getting before a game. That makes sense, it's not personal.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so when I was talking to the journalist,
Speaker 1: he was like, so, like what sites And I was like, ah, well,
Speaker 1: there's a site Tiny Buddha like posted a million like
Speaker 1: little you know love yourself today because your special you
Speaker 1: know type things, and and I wanted to be the
Speaker 1: antithesis to that, and so it was just kind of
Speaker 1: a tool of motivation. It's nothing against tiny Buddha. So
Speaker 1: if Tiny if the I don't even know who runs
Speaker 1: Tiny Buddha, but if they're listening, he's a lovely guy.
Speaker 1: He's a lovely guy. I just opened up their page
Speaker 1: and I just thought this would be fun. Let me
Speaker 1: read the last three quotes and you tell me what
Speaker 1: your reaction to them are. Okay, okay, Never be a
Speaker 1: shame again. This is all improv I didn't plan any
Speaker 1: of this. Never never be ashamed to say I'm worn out.
Speaker 1: I've had it. Oh boy already, I'm like rolling my eyes.
Speaker 1: Never be ashamed to say, quote I'm worn out, I've
Speaker 1: had enough. I need some time for myself. End quote.
Speaker 1: That isn't being selfish, that isn't being weak, that's being
Speaker 1: human to for Kirby said that, what's your immediate gut
Speaker 1: reaction to that? I mean, yeah, I don't like, I
Speaker 1: don't know. So that's a good example. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of like quotes in the self help world that
Speaker 1: just strike me is so obvious that they're not really
Speaker 1: And I understand there's some people out there that it's
Speaker 1: not obvious, but like it's so plain that I wonder
Speaker 1: why it needs to be said. Well, it's not Edgy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you like Edgy. I do like Edgy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really be honest, let's get to the core of this, sir.
Speaker 1: From a psychoanalytic perspective, I think that like if something's
Speaker 1: too milk toast, I think you kind of yes, like no, no,
Speaker 1: I can do better. Yeah, that's absolutely part of it.
Speaker 1: I also think, so you have that same bone you do,
Speaker 1: by the way, I get it, like I get it.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that from a person who gets it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's I also think that you know a lot
Speaker 1: of traditional self help, like that quote, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of it. I think a lot of the industry
Speaker 1: kind of originated from And I'm sorry that I'm about
Speaker 1: the stereotype, but I think just understanding the demographics of
Speaker 1: the self help industry, I believe this is true. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of the industry kind of spawned from
Speaker 1: a lot of housewives in the seventies, eighties, and nineties
Speaker 1: who were very codependent and very bored and probably felt
Speaker 1: exhausted and burnt out all the time. And so I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of the traditional quotes are like
Speaker 1: very like laser directed at that. So like that person,
Speaker 1: that audience. I think that quote makes total sense for it,
Speaker 1: and it's probably a very powerful quote for a person
Speaker 1: like that to hear. It's just that, you know, these days,
Speaker 1: especially like the last ten to fifteen years, everybody reads
Speaker 1: self help, like self help is everybody now. It's young people,
Speaker 1: it's old people, it's single people, married people, parents, people
Speaker 1: without kids, you know, super ambitious people, people who just
Speaker 1: want to like hang out at the beach, Like everybody
Speaker 1: is reading self help and so there. To me, it
Speaker 1: feels like that quote no longer casts a wide, super
Speaker 1: wide net. There's now a large audience of people who
Speaker 1: are looking for good advice and information who will see
Speaker 1: that quote and just be like, well, yeah, duh, like dude,
Speaker 1: take a day off, like you know. I actually I
Speaker 1: read an interesting study ones that I think is a
Speaker 1: very underrated study. It found that people who are most
Speaker 1: insecure and low self esteem just gravitate towards self help
Speaker 1: quotes more than others. Now this and again that in
Speaker 1: itself is probably no duh sort of thing. But isn't
Speaker 1: so much of these kind of stuff just it's just
Speaker 1: stuff to make people feel better? Like Forens, I'm going
Speaker 1: to read another one to you. Yep. And the dandelion
Speaker 1: does not stop growing because it is told it is
Speaker 1: a weed. The dandelion does not care what others see.
Speaker 1: It says, one day they'll be making wishes upon me,
Speaker 1: see Atkinson, Now, isn't that Isn't that just a motivator?
Speaker 1: It's like a It's like as let's say, you're insecure
Speaker 1: and you feel like you're a schlub. You know, you're
Speaker 1: eating pizza there on the couch and you you know,
Speaker 1: you just don't you know, you're lazy? You read that?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that even going to motivate you? Though?
Speaker 1: Like is it gonna work? Okay, So no offence to
Speaker 1: dandelions either, yeah, pizzas, couches or couches. Yeah anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so this kind of like falls into a little
Speaker 1: bit of a theory I have about the self help
Speaker 1: industry in general. Is that like okay, so at the
Speaker 1: core of that statement, right, like Basically, what that quote
Speaker 1: is saying is is like, look, hater's gonna hate, you know,
Speaker 1: like and just keep working on yourself. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're gonna do, if you're gonna become
Speaker 1: an admirable person, there's always gonna be people who are
Speaker 1: gonna try to tear you down. Like that's just the
Speaker 1: truism about life. I think it's something that we all
Speaker 1: need to hear occasionally, and I think that's essentially what
Speaker 1: this quote is accomplishing. My complaint with stuff like that,
Speaker 1: it's more about the packaging, and my belief about the
Speaker 1: self help industry in general is that there's nothing new
Speaker 1: in self help, Like ninety nine percent of what's in
Speaker 1: self help is been around in philosophy and religion for
Speaker 1: thousands of years. The thing that changes and the thing
Speaker 1: that people the reason why there's so much demand for
Speaker 1: it is that the packaging changes. So from generation to
Speaker 1: generation and demographic to demographic, you get the same message
Speaker 1: but with different stories, different language, different packaging around it.
Speaker 1: Because that reaches people differently, and sometimes if you change
Speaker 1: the packaging around an idea, it lands a little bit
Speaker 1: more powerfully, like it incites a little bit more emotional
Speaker 1: reaction in people, which is important if you're trying to
Speaker 1: change your behavior. So I think a quote like that,
Speaker 1: you know, when I hear it, it's like, Okay, the
Speaker 1: idea is fine, it's it's something that we all need
Speaker 1: to hear, the whole thing with the dandeline or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, My question is who is who is that package?
Speaker 1: Like why is it packaged that way? And who is
Speaker 1: that landing for? And it's just that's it's not my style.
Speaker 1: It's not what lands for me. You know, it gets
Speaker 1: a little bit of an eye roll out of me.
Speaker 1: But that's fine. Like there's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: it does land for, and as long as it lands
Speaker 1: for them, that's totally fine. And a lot of what
Speaker 1: I do in my work is just it's repackaging for
Speaker 1: a different audience, a different demographic of people. And you've
Speaker 1: really done a tremendous job. I mean, kudos, like the
Speaker 1: audience you've built, and you really know your audience and
Speaker 1: you really you really give them what they want. You
Speaker 1: give the people what they want. That is great. I
Speaker 1: was reading an article you wrote four ways I've changed
Speaker 1: my mind in the past ten years, and you wrote
Speaker 1: that when you turn thirty. How old are you right now?
Speaker 1: By the way, I am thirty eight. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: was almost ten years ago that you wrote. Again word,
Speaker 1: I write because ten years before that, which makes me think,
Speaker 1: now have you written another ten years one? But yeah,
Speaker 1: have your well when you turn forty, maybe you're right,
Speaker 1: you'll write about the pieties. But you I believe you
Speaker 1: do not know what article I'm talking about. Dude. I've
Speaker 1: written so many things over the years, I do not
Speaker 1: remember this one yet. One of them is because I
Speaker 1: have a lot more respect for genetics than I used to. Mmm.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was really interesting because no one
Speaker 1: uses the G word in the self help world. It's controversial.
Speaker 1: It's controversial. Everyone asks us though, well, look it's all
Speaker 1: in your mind, you know. Just change your thinking the
Speaker 1: way you think about it, and you'll attract it into
Speaker 1: your life. Yeah. Like, I don't know. It's like what
Speaker 1: if you said, well, actually, personality traits are heritable to
Speaker 1: a very large degree. Doesn't mean they're unchangeable, but it
Speaker 1: means that it for some people, there are individual differences.
Speaker 1: For some people, it's going to be harder, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a greater uphill battle. I mean that's the truth.
Speaker 1: I mean that nuance is the truth. But you never
Speaker 1: see the nuance in those in those kinds of quotes.
Speaker 1: So I was wondering what you're thinking of that was
Speaker 1: when you wrote that, and where you are now eight
Speaker 1: years after you wrote that. I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: I've developed a tremendous amount of respect for genetics and
Speaker 1: its role and outcomes of well being. And I honestly think,
Speaker 1: you know, I I don't know how to start this,
Speaker 1: you know, so so I mentioned earlier, you know my
Speaker 1: role is really I just say this without being canceled.
Speaker 1: How do I say, yeah, that that ship is sailed? No?
Speaker 1: I mean so, I you know, I see myself as
Speaker 1: a repackager, and you know, one of that is one
Speaker 1: of one of the ways that's repackaged is you know,
Speaker 1: taking ideas from I don't know, stoicism, ors and Buddhism
Speaker 1: and repackaging them for people nowadays. But another way I
Speaker 1: see myself is taking ideas from academia and kind of
Speaker 1: simplifying them, translating them for the lay person, you know,
Speaker 1: taking those conclusions. And so a lot of my work
Speaker 1: over the last ten or twelve years has just been
Speaker 1: reading a lot of research and under trying to understand
Speaker 1: data and understand like where the field is. And if
Speaker 1: you're gonna anybody who's going to seriously dive into psychology
Speaker 1: or pretty much any science, like you can't. The power
Speaker 1: of genetics is just like so clear and all the
Speaker 1: data and all the evidence that you can't ignore it.
Speaker 1: And on the flip side too, you know, once I
Speaker 1: was in this industry for enough years, you know, so
Speaker 1: when I started out in this industry, I also kind
Speaker 1: of had a naive view. I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you could be whoever you want to be, and you know,
Speaker 1: sign up for my coaching, Well we'll get you there
Speaker 1: together and all this stuff. And you know, once I
Speaker 1: got five or six years into it and kept in
Speaker 1: touch with a lot of people over that period, like
Speaker 1: you just start to realize that, Yeah, Like it's like
Speaker 1: there are certain things that's like, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: five foot seven and you want to be in the NBA, like, dude,
Speaker 1: you can practice basketball all you want, It's probably not
Speaker 1: going to happen, right, And there are certain things with
Speaker 1: you know, personality traits and just the way your brain works.
Speaker 1: And I think I've really evolved to a place now
Speaker 1: where my understanding of like what self help actually is
Speaker 1: or like what a good life actually is is. It's
Speaker 1: not like becoming whoever you want to be, Like there's
Speaker 1: always going to be things that you want to be
Speaker 1: that you're not gonna Yeah, you're never going to fully
Speaker 1: get there. Right to me, being a very like mentally
Speaker 1: emotionally healthy person is having a very strong understanding of
Speaker 1: who you are in terms of personality disposition, as you
Speaker 1: would put it, neurodiversity, you know, learning different aptitudes, different styles,
Speaker 1: different talents and capabilities, and then adapting well to those
Speaker 1: aspects of yourself, like developing learning skills and finding tools
Speaker 1: to help you like move well through the world with
Speaker 1: an understanding of you know, the machinery you've got up
Speaker 1: you know, in your head. And that's not like an
Speaker 1: easily it doesn't that doesn't mark it super well, like
Speaker 1: you know, it's you can't really build an infomercial out
Speaker 1: of like you know, you know, hey, probably fifty five
Speaker 1: percent of your personality is set in stone, so let's
Speaker 1: just get let's just try to deal with what you've
Speaker 1: got Like that doesn't that doesn't like move super expensive
Speaker 1: audio courses like like hotcakes. But I do think it's
Speaker 1: the truth, and I think it's an important truth, and
Speaker 1: it's something I do try to expose people to. You
Speaker 1: and I are very very much on the same page.
Speaker 1: I don't think you invented it, but I heard about
Speaker 1: it through you. This term of neurodiversity. I love it
Speaker 1: because it's it's so important, I think, not only for
Speaker 1: our self acceptance to you know, kind of accept the
Speaker 1: ways that our brains are different, but also like empathize
Speaker 1: with others. That's like a real diversity, right, Like it's like,
Speaker 1: I agree, all of our brains are different, and let's
Speaker 1: honor and respect and enjoy those differences and learn from
Speaker 1: each other. Now, I wouldn't say the real diversity, because
Speaker 1: I do think that like skin color is an important
Speaker 1: form of diversity and other things. But before people misunderstand,
Speaker 1: but I do make the point that diversity is more
Speaker 1: than skin deep and point, and that is a point
Speaker 1: I really try to make to people. I gave a
Speaker 1: commencement address recently. Yes I'm bragging a little bit. Look
Speaker 1: at you Bridge's Academy, which is a special school for
Speaker 1: kids who are twice exceptionals and they're very gifted, but
Speaker 1: they're also have a major area of learning stability, and
Speaker 1: they're definitely urgent. Most of them are on the autism spectrum.
Speaker 1: And I made that point and I got a lot
Speaker 1: of cheers because I do think often they're left out
Speaker 1: of the conversation of diversity, because I think we're on
Speaker 1: the same page with that for sure. So I've got
Speaker 1: a little bullet here that I wrote down. I've got
Speaker 1: a little pet theory that I've written about before go
Speaker 1: on which I want to get your reaction. And then
Speaker 1: I also want to ask you specifically, you know about
Speaker 1: yourself a little bit. So I've got this theory that
Speaker 1: the best part about somebody is well, so the headline
Speaker 1: is the best part of about somebody is also the
Speaker 1: worst part about them. What I actually mean by that
Speaker 1: is that generally the aspect of ourselves that is our
Speaker 1: greatest strength or like gives us the most benefits in
Speaker 1: our life is often also the same thing that is
Speaker 1: partially responsible for most of the problems in our life.
Speaker 1: Like it's we all tend seem to have these traits
Speaker 1: that are double edged swords, and it's often the play
Speaker 1: the area of our lives that we're very strong in
Speaker 1: there's that strength causes a weakness in another part of
Speaker 1: our life. And so I want to ask you A
Speaker 1: do you think that's true? And B If so, what
Speaker 1: would you say that is about you? What is what
Speaker 1: is the best and worst thing about you? It's a
Speaker 1: great question, Leel Freeman. Is there's a real academic to
Speaker 1: be As I put forward to my book twice exception
Speaker 1: know about whether or not everything that's neurodiversent about a
Speaker 1: person has a hidden amazing benefit automatically you know or
Speaker 1: twice exceptional people or those who tend to have some
Speaker 1: significant challenges that are challenges, but they also have that
Speaker 1: person tends to have a gift. You know, they're amazing
Speaker 1: talent and is creative and it's necessarily stemming from their disability.
Speaker 1: So there's different camps about this, and I think this
Speaker 1: relates to the question you asked. I actually don't think
Speaker 1: that everything has a secret gift to it. I think
Speaker 1: the field of neudiversity goes to bonkers on that sometimes
Speaker 1: saying everything like it's like a taboo to say, you
Speaker 1: know what, this sucks. I can't I have IDHD, I
Speaker 1: can't concentrate where shit and you know what, I don't
Speaker 1: like that. It's like taboo. You have to you have
Speaker 1: to say, but you're creative, but you're it's like almost
Speaker 1: like a knee jerk, sort of like compulsive thing to like,
Speaker 1: god forbid you face that someone could not be perfect,
Speaker 1: whereas I as you, I think we both share this
Speaker 1: thing is telling people, you know what, it's okay to
Speaker 1: not be perfect. You're not perfect. I'm not perfect either.
Speaker 1: There's a real reality there. I don't think me and
Speaker 1: you like bullshit, you know what I mean? Like and
Speaker 1: I don't like bullshit. So I I really think that
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that do have a
Speaker 1: hidden benefit. And I think that's true, But I don't
Speaker 1: think everything has a hidden benefit. Well what would you?
Speaker 1: Can you give me an example of something that would
Speaker 1: not have a hidden benefit, right, because maybe someone could
Speaker 1: do an intellectual exercise and for everything they can come
Speaker 1: up with some way in some context in which that
Speaker 1: could be beneficial. That's true. Well, and I and and
Speaker 1: I also think a lot of this is contextual based
Speaker 1: on the person, right, Like it's instance. Yeah, so like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I was diagnosed with ADHD. I was a
Speaker 1: very very mediocre student, but god, I have ADHD two.
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is this is could this explain
Speaker 1: some of our own sort of cheekiness. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: was just about to say, like, that's a hidden benefit.
Speaker 1: I think, Well, I think the hidden benefit of my
Speaker 1: ADHD is that I get bored with topics and ideas
Speaker 1: very very quickly. And so you you spoke earlier of
Speaker 1: like I like edginess. Well, I think part of me
Speaker 1: is like I look for that edginess because it keeps
Speaker 1: me engaged with stuff and I and I think I
Speaker 1: think a lot of what people like about my writing
Speaker 1: is that edginess of like I can take I can
Speaker 1: take a topic that is a little bit academic and
Speaker 1: stale and make it edgy and put a crazy story
Speaker 1: on it and keep people you know, hooked on it
Speaker 1: for a while. Absolutely, So that is the point I
Speaker 1: wanted to make is it's very personal. What I'm saying is,
Speaker 1: who do are we to tell someone if they really
Speaker 1: find something that sucks in their experience? Who are we
Speaker 1: to come in and play saviors and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: actually it's wonderful. That's the only point I want to make.
Speaker 1: I agree with that. I would say that this is
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that you can really is. It's
Speaker 1: only valid if the person identifies it in themselves, you know,
Speaker 1: like I would. I would not want somebody coming to me,
Speaker 1: you know, eighteen year old me and being like, well
Speaker 1: your ADHD is actually a great thing, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: go fuck yourself. But you know, it's like it took
Speaker 1: years for me to discover the great thing from that.
Speaker 1: So my question to you is have you found that
Speaker 1: in your own experience with yourself? I have, in many
Speaker 1: many ways as someone who has always been quirky, to
Speaker 1: be able to like be described as quirky as an
Speaker 1: adult in a positive way feels great. It really does
Speaker 1: for great, Like people like, oh Scott's he's quirky, and
Speaker 1: I think they mean that. I think they mean that,
Speaker 1: like you know, and then I'm endearing. Yeah, I'm endearing.
Speaker 1: But I didn't feel that way as a kid at all,
Speaker 1: you know, I felt like a freak. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: are certainly ways for me personally where there has been
Speaker 1: the case and we're also just my literalness, which I
Speaker 1: got made fun of a lot as a kid, has
Speaker 1: helped me as a scientist. It has helped me write
Speaker 1: a lot of do research and do papers. I really do,
Speaker 1: and I always have had a not just an aversion to,
Speaker 1: but a I just can't understand it game playing fat
Speaker 1: around something like politics. I'm baded. This is why I'm
Speaker 1: bad at politics. This I'll say something of a question,
Speaker 1: a genuinely curious question. I'll ask it, not knowing and
Speaker 1: realizing what landmines I'm stepping on, with no intention of
Speaker 1: hurting anyone's feelings, no intention whatsoever of causing fires and
Speaker 1: chaos and World War three. I just had a question
Speaker 1: I could totally relate to that. It's funny I have
Speaker 1: that problem. Like I'm not very active in my own
Speaker 1: social media, Like it's it's very smart. Yeah, it's there's
Speaker 1: like an arms length distance between. So it's it's not
Speaker 1: there so much. But I've noticed whenever I have to
Speaker 1: deal with kind of like more corporate cultures in my career,
Speaker 1: like if I need to, you know, discuss plans for
Speaker 1: a book contract or something, or like I get added
Speaker 1: to an email thread like, well, I just we just
Speaker 1: produced a film last year in New Zealand, and so
Speaker 1: I'll get added to an email thread with a bunch
Speaker 1: of people at a production company, and I'll just like
Speaker 1: it's the same thing in my head. I'm just asking
Speaker 1: some questions and it's like all of a sudden, there's
Speaker 1: just fires everywhere that people are putting out because apparently
Speaker 1: I said the wrong thing and I wasn't supposed to
Speaker 1: say this to this person or this, you know, not
Speaker 1: with that person on the email thread, and like, I'm
Speaker 1: just I have no patience for that stuff. I hate it.
Speaker 1: I have no patience. I hate it. And I also
Speaker 1: really think I have a learning disability because I don't
Speaker 1: get it. Like I don't get I mean, this is
Speaker 1: actually a nice transition to your entry away into the
Speaker 1: pickupart this world. You're part of the pickup ours world. Now,
Speaker 1: my experience with the pickup oars world is I wrote
Speaker 1: a book called Mating Intelligence unleasht which I never tell
Speaker 1: anyone about because I don't know about that book. But
Speaker 1: that came out in twenty eleven, a co authored with
Speaker 1: Glenn gear who's a wonderful evolutionary psychologist. But when that
Speaker 1: book around that time, I was invited once to attend.
Speaker 1: They loved the book in the pickup artist community, and
Speaker 1: they invited me to attend a summit in New York
Speaker 1: City and it was the most fascinating thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It was like a room full of the people who
Speaker 1: were teaching the course were narcissists and the people in
Speaker 1: the audience were autistic people. That was the dynamic. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you resonate with that at all, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was They're very well intentioned, they didn't
Speaker 1: understand the rules. They didn't under they did understand the
Speaker 1: rules of the game. They want to understand. They want rules,
Speaker 1: they want the people in the audience, they have a
Speaker 1: wet And then the people who were selling the products
Speaker 1: to me came across as like hucksters. You know, obviously
Speaker 1: it's not everyone in the community. It wasn't. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be canceled by the pickup artist community. This
Speaker 1: was mine. This was my observation, and I can honestly
Speaker 1: say that I really had a lot of empathy for
Speaker 1: the people in the audience. I talked to some of them.
Speaker 1: They're like, you really don't understand game playing. Now. What
Speaker 1: the most ironic thing I noticed from that whole community
Speaker 1: is well, then therefore they're being taught how to how
Speaker 1: to be a game player. Yeah, And that's transformation from
Speaker 1: not understanding it at all and not understanding those kinds
Speaker 1: of social directions to becoming like this master player. It's
Speaker 1: just fascinating to me. So I wanted to does this
Speaker 1: resonate at all? One hundred? Actually I have, Well, the
Speaker 1: posts I wrote are long gone from that era, but
Speaker 1: I actually wrote deleted them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: actually wrote about this back then. You know, so I
Speaker 1: I coached in that industry for a few years and
Speaker 1: I what was her handle? Were you coincidentally? Oh? Whoa? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So yeah. So my observation is that there were really
Speaker 1: two types of guys, and I think you nailed one
Speaker 1: of them. Is a lot of I'd say about fifty
Speaker 1: percent of them. You know, they were probably on the
Speaker 1: spectrum really socially underdeveloped. A lot of guys who were
Speaker 1: intensely sheltered, bullied, you know, just like had never socialized
Speaker 1: really and they were confused and googled online how to
Speaker 1: socialize or how to talk to a girl, and like
Speaker 1: they ended up at one of these seminars. And so
Speaker 1: for those guys, and what was interesting about those guys too,
Speaker 1: is that they didn't really suffer as much from the anxiety.
Speaker 1: Like you could take one of those guys into you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a bookstore or a coffee shop or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you know be like, you know, hey, that blonde girl,
Speaker 1: like go introduce yourself to that girl over there, and
Speaker 1: they go do it, and they'd have no problem. And
Speaker 1: then they, you know, within twenty seconds, say something super
Speaker 1: weird and the girl would be like, uh, can you
Speaker 1: go away? And then they go away. And so a
Speaker 1: lot of them, the work with them was getting them
Speaker 1: to understand like, Okay, so you said this thing that
Speaker 1: feels weird to her, and this is why it feels weird,
Speaker 1: and you like explain kind of like the social context
Speaker 1: and everything. That sounds valuable. And actually I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of those guys it was. If it was
Speaker 1: just that, it would have been very valuable. The problem
Speaker 1: is yeah, yeah, the problem is that the big up artist.
Speaker 1: The next the next step is call them ugly. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and and I'm just speaking to like how I worked
Speaker 1: with these guys. You know, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: baggage and weird beliefs and misogyny and stuff that was
Speaker 1: went on in that community too. So a lot of
Speaker 1: those guys got that as well. But I'd say the
Speaker 1: other fifty percent of guys, and I would include myself
Speaker 1: in this category, is that they were actually pretty well socialized,
Speaker 1: They had pretty good emotional intelligence. They were just intensely
Speaker 1: low self esteem slash codependent. They had I say codependent
Speaker 1: because it's like a lot of them were very high
Speaker 1: functioning in other areas of their life. They had great jobs,
Speaker 1: they had great groups of friends, they had you know,
Speaker 1: went on cool trips and stuff. But you put them
Speaker 1: in front of an attractive woman and they are just terrified,
Speaker 1: absolutely terrified, Mark, Really, can I just pause right there? Sure,
Speaker 1: for the sake of conversation. My observation is that fifty
Speaker 1: percent there on ourtice inspectum, and you fifty percent who
Speaker 1: have vulnerable narcissism, and the ones in space have grandiose
Speaker 1: narcissism one hundred percent. That's why. That's that's that was
Speaker 1: my exact analysis. Yeah, so, and you you actually beat
Speaker 1: me to it, because I was gonna I was actually
Speaker 1: heading my study vulnerable narcisism. I study it, and it's
Speaker 1: a textbook. It's textbook that fear of rejection, such such
Speaker 1: a strong fear of rejection that you need to become
Speaker 1: something else exactly exactly So with those guys, it was
Speaker 1: all about It was mostly about the anxiety. It was
Speaker 1: getting them to deal with because and it was interesting
Speaker 1: because a lot of guys would have you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you kind of see like the courtship process is,
Speaker 1: like you know, from like meeting to first date to
Speaker 1: you know, say kissing to actually getting physically intimate, guys
Speaker 1: would have like this like ball of anxiety on like
Speaker 1: one spot on that line, you know. So it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of guys were just terrified of like talking
Speaker 1: to somebody. Other guys could talk, but it was like
Speaker 1: as soon as it was time like to kiss her
Speaker 1: or whatever, like they would just kind of lose their mind.
Speaker 1: So a lot of those guys, it was more the
Speaker 1: emotional side. It was getting them to like conquer their fears,
Speaker 1: deal with anxiety. What actually ended up happening in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases though, is you nailed it is it
Speaker 1: was a lot of the coaching in that industry was
Speaker 1: grandiose narcissists teaching vulnerable narcissists how to be grandiose narcissists.
Speaker 1: But they were codependent on each other. Yes, And I
Speaker 1: wrote a tweet about that about just in general self
Speaker 1: help industry is essentially a codependency between vulnerable narcissist and
Speaker 1: grandiose narcissist. Absolutely, dude, absolutely, And yeah, it's a gross dynamic.
Speaker 1: And you know, if there's a if there's kind of
Speaker 1: a unifying thread of my career, it is me kind
Speaker 1: of discovering that gross dynamic in the pickup artist community,
Speaker 1: creating the content to kind of get out of that.
Speaker 1: Like I wrote my book Models Attract Women through Honesty
Speaker 1: as like an antidote to that, and then coming into
Speaker 1: the self help industry and finding that same dynamic happening
Speaker 1: and being grossed out by it and wanting to, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of write the antidote for the self help industry
Speaker 1: as well. That that's like my twelve year career in
Speaker 1: a nutshell. And you did, you did? You know, well done?
Speaker 1: Because what is different about yours? And again, this has
Speaker 1: been a long conversation to say it was your unique
Speaker 1: value proposition we started off. That was the thread, That
Speaker 1: was the thread that started this. In my view, you
Speaker 1: don't come across to me as grandi as narcissistic because
Speaker 1: you're not, or at least that dependency, that codependency is
Speaker 1: not evident. So at least in the relationship between you
Speaker 1: and your audience, because you're not taking people who are
Speaker 1: woefully insecure and building them up and puffing them up
Speaker 1: so much so they feel so great that they don't
Speaker 1: have to deal with their insecurities anymore. Because that's that's
Speaker 1: the code depenze I'm referring to is you know, and
Speaker 1: I don't see that with you, which is which I
Speaker 1: love and I say as well, modesty. I'd like to
Speaker 1: think that's the same kind of relationship I have with
Speaker 1: my audience. I like to give them science backed information,
Speaker 1: but I also have I tell them to embrace their darks,
Speaker 1: embrace their dark side, explore their dark side, explore their insecurities,
Speaker 1: explore their fears. It's more about exploration than it is
Speaker 1: me saying you're great, you know, Like I'm not going
Speaker 1: to write a book called you are great, you know,
Speaker 1: because I actually don't think that most people are great.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so well, I think there is a
Speaker 1: book called You Are a Badass, Number one New York
Speaker 1: Times number one. It is sold very very well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me ask you actually, Well, first of all, what
Speaker 1: do you think is your unique value proposition? Well, definitely
Speaker 1: evidence based already puts me. Yeah, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: of the credentials in this world, like this world of
Speaker 1: podcasting and blogging and stuff. It's yeah, like I saw
Speaker 1: a lane, right, Like there's a point like when I
Speaker 1: started this podcast, like I saw I was like, you
Speaker 1: know what, there's an empty lane where I do want
Speaker 1: to help people, Like I do have an impulse to
Speaker 1: help people, and that weird hybrid of being a scientist
Speaker 1: and being really really science minded and nerding it to
Speaker 1: that level of truth seeking, but also I really do
Speaker 1: want to help people. And then I think there may
Speaker 1: be an extra dimension, which is maybe like my unique
Speaker 1: Diuye proposition is also my personality, like when you add
Speaker 1: that and integrate that into those other two things, because
Speaker 1: I don't take things so seriously, I hope people appreciate
Speaker 1: my sense of humor. I don't know, what do you
Speaker 1: think I would say? Well, to bring it back to
Speaker 1: your quirkiness, right, your superpower. I think your quirkiness is
Speaker 1: kind of because ultimately, like psychology and the self exploration
Speaker 1: that happens through understanding psychology, like it's it's dealing with
Speaker 1: uncomfortable aspects of yourself and dealing with ideas of judgments
Speaker 1: and shame and stuff from others. And so I think
Speaker 1: your quirkiness is probably kind of the sugar that helps
Speaker 1: some of the medicine go down. You know, if people
Speaker 1: see you not taking yourself so seriously, it helps them
Speaker 1: lighten up on themselves to hear some of the things
Speaker 1: they need to hear. Yeah, and I also I've just
Speaker 1: chounded even just with friends, they say that they feel
Speaker 1: very comfortable with me because I think I don't take
Speaker 1: myself so seriously, you know, like I want people to
Speaker 1: feel comfortable around me, you know, and I think I
Speaker 1: bring that out on my guess. I guess admit things
Speaker 1: that they never mitten any other podcasts. For instance, I said,
Speaker 1: I had this one guy he was crying. He was
Speaker 1: talking about his childhood and then yeah, like I asked
Speaker 1: for his signature. I met up with him in Santa
Speaker 1: Monica's for a signature on his book, and his inscription
Speaker 1: was thanks for making me cry. Like, you know, like,
Speaker 1: I I don't know why I said any of those
Speaker 1: things I said, So maybe maybe that's part of it.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. So can you compare
Speaker 1: in contrast to me the pickup artist life versus the
Speaker 1: married life. What's the difference, what's the There's got to
Speaker 1: be benefits on both sides, and this age is on
Speaker 1: both sides. It's not like one's perfect and one's not
Speaker 1: perfect for sure. The and I hate calling it the
Speaker 1: pickup artist life. Let's call it. Let's call it. Let's
Speaker 1: call it the uh seduction lifestyle. That's you know where
Speaker 1: Let's call it the bachelor lifestyle. You know, I was
Speaker 1: a very I was a big party guy and intentionally
Speaker 1: dated a lot of women, you know that like models book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't even want you, like, I don't
Speaker 1: even want to. It was it was a double entendre
Speaker 1: of models and mental models. But anyway, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: Way are you serious? Was that part of it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool. Wait, I had no idea that it actually
Speaker 1: had a double on tundre for mental models. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's called models Attract Women through Honesty. But if you
Speaker 1: actually read the introduction, it says that the problem that
Speaker 1: most men have is that they have poor mental models
Speaker 1: of how dating relationships women masculine. That's actually brilliant. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. Yeah. All right, so the bachelor lifestyle,
Speaker 1: I'd say is more fun and exciting, but it's also
Speaker 1: you know, the highs well, no, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say highs are higher. I would say it's it's more exciting,
Speaker 1: it's more stimulating, thrilled, thrilling, uh, venture seeking. Married life
Speaker 1: is happier, which I think is contingent on marrying the
Speaker 1: right person and you know, the relationship being healthy. But
Speaker 1: I would say overall, it's it's everything's more even keel.
Speaker 1: You know, days are just consistently good and and over
Speaker 1: enough time that starts to add up into something that
Speaker 1: feels very very special, you know, and it's I think
Speaker 1: five years ago. Sometimes I'd get a little bit wistful
Speaker 1: of my my party days, you know, and every once
Speaker 1: in a while, like a guy friend of mine would like,
Speaker 1: you know, be like, dude, we should go to Vegas
Speaker 1: and like do this and that and whatever. I'd be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I should do that. But it's funny now I'm
Speaker 1: the last few years, I'm just like, really no desire
Speaker 1: because there's I hear you. I'm not there yet, but
Speaker 1: I'm still in my party stage to a very large degree.
Speaker 1: But I hear you because the contrast between the feeling
Speaker 1: of thrilling versus the feeling of contentness. They're different feelings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thrilling feeling never feels content Yep, it doesn't. But
Speaker 1: then I will also say, on the other side, the
Speaker 1: content feeling very rarely feels fit thrilling. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and and so that's tricky. Yeah, but look, wouldn't a
Speaker 1: home Slice Homegirl what's her name, Esther Pearrell didn't she
Speaker 1: wouldn't she say this is like probably the most like raw,
Speaker 1: unscripted interview I've ever done in a psychology podcast. I
Speaker 1: love it, I actually love it. I actually could I've
Speaker 1: enjoyed it too, man. Yeah, wouldn't Esther Pearell say like, well,
Speaker 1: you couldn't have it to both, That's why that's not
Speaker 1: her accent at all. But wouldn't she say that, like
Speaker 1: if she was talking to you, wouldn't she say, well,
Speaker 1: don't you have thrilling moments with your wife? For sure?
Speaker 1: But it's different because a lot of the thrills in
Speaker 1: in I guess single bachelor life, it's it's around novelty.
Speaker 1: It's around new person, new experiences, kissing a person for
Speaker 1: the first time, having sex with them for the first time,
Speaker 1: going out with them, for the first time, you know,
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of novelty stimulation, Whereas I would say,
Speaker 1: so the downside of Mary is that you have to
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time with somebody. You have to
Speaker 1: both of you have to very consciously work on creating
Speaker 1: novelty to like kind of Yeah, you have to find
Speaker 1: ways to like keep things novel, whether that's like little
Speaker 1: romantic getaways or date nights or you know, putting on
Speaker 1: sexy lingerie or what you know, whatever people want to
Speaker 1: do to make things a little bit novel. You have
Speaker 1: to like find a way to include that. Is that
Speaker 1: why people have open marriages? And I mean isn't that
Speaker 1: what polyamory satisfies some of that as well? So you
Speaker 1: decide to live in monogamous lifestyle, is that correct? Yeah? Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're like you're like for the most part, the most part, Yes,
Speaker 1: we are. My wife and I are monogamous. I have
Speaker 1: I do you know what I mean? Yeah? No, I
Speaker 1: mean I've I've experimented with non monogamy and previous relationships.
Speaker 1: You know, non monogamy is it's a cost benefit thing,
Speaker 1: and I you know what I get My audience asked
Speaker 1: me about non you know polyamory quite a bit, And
Speaker 1: the answer I always give is, I think it's probably
Speaker 1: you know, there are there's like a minority of people
Speaker 1: that their personality is well suited for it. I think
Speaker 1: it's people hear it and they get very excited about
Speaker 1: the idea of like, oh my god, you can have
Speaker 1: sex with other people and not be jealous or like
Speaker 1: even include them in your relationship. And you like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is very exciting and it's sexy too, like you know,
Speaker 1: like you sit there and fantasize about it, and it
Speaker 1: can get pretty exciting. The thing. The thing is, we
Speaker 1: don't like the human mind. We're bad at We're very
Speaker 1: bad at considering trade offs, particularly emotional trade offs. And
Speaker 1: so what you don't think about is like all, like
Speaker 1: the many, many awkward and difficult conversations you will have
Speaker 1: to have not just with your partner but with you know,
Speaker 1: whoever else you want to hook up with. There will
Speaker 1: be feelings of jealousy and adequacy shame that will come
Speaker 1: up that will need to be dealt with. You'll need
Speaker 1: to have good lines of communication with all your partners
Speaker 1: about those, and then on you know, you just throw
Speaker 1: on top of that. It's like it's it is a
Speaker 1: large emotional load to be a good partner in one relationship,
Speaker 1: Like now imagine doubling that and adding a second person.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an old joke where I forget who
Speaker 1: said it, but they're like, yeah, it's like I barely
Speaker 1: have enough energy to handle one one woman, Like why
Speaker 1: would I want to? Like I could barely handle one wife,
Speaker 1: why would I want to have four? It's a it's
Speaker 1: a real thing, Like there's there's like an emotional exhaustion.
Speaker 1: So I think some people are well disposed to that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. They are good at those conversations, they
Speaker 1: enjoy them. They have a very high sex drive, very
Speaker 1: high need for novelty in their life. And so if
Speaker 1: you happen, like if your personality lines up in all
Speaker 1: those checks, all those boxes, then I think it could
Speaker 1: work for you. But I also think I feel like today,
Speaker 1: maybe I think more people, more people are excited about
Speaker 1: the idea. I think, you know, if they experiment with it,
Speaker 1: you quickly, at least from what I've scene of myself
Speaker 1: and friends and stuff, it's like people get excited, they
Speaker 1: experiment with it, and then they're like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna do that again. So that's true. It's
Speaker 1: and then it works for some people speaking of polyamory,
Speaker 1: How's Will Smith doing? Oh? God, come on, that was
Speaker 1: that was good? That was good. I've been trying to
Speaker 1: figure out a way of asking how Will Smith is doing? No, dude,
Speaker 1: that that is the best way you could have possibly asked.
Speaker 1: Like people are gonna think this is scripted. That was
Speaker 1: so good. Everything is not scripted. Actually everything is not scripted.
Speaker 1: Whole conversation. Yeah, this is this is stand up comedian Scott.
Speaker 1: But now you wrote he wrote his h his autobiography.
Speaker 1: He wrote. That sounds a good funny thing to say.
Speaker 1: He wrote his autobiography, but you co wrote it and
Speaker 1: your friends, you guys are friends, so well, how's your
Speaker 1: friend doing. I've not talked to him in a while,
Speaker 1: but I imagine knowing him. I know immediately after this
Speaker 1: slap he was pretty bummed out and pretty pretty sad
Speaker 1: about everything, remorseful. But I haven't talked to him in
Speaker 1: a couple months. Knowing him, he's Will has maybe the
Speaker 1: highest capacity out of any person I've ever met in
Speaker 1: my life to take whatever situation he is in and
Speaker 1: psychologically adapt to it and like turn it into a
Speaker 1: positive for himself. So I haven't spoken to him, but
Speaker 1: I guarantee you he's somewhere right now living his best life,
Speaker 1: and he's probably decided that this is, you know, this
Speaker 1: forced sabbatical from his career is like the best thing
Speaker 1: that's happening to him right now. He's probably reconnecting with
Speaker 1: friends and family. He's probably fine in all sorts of useful,
Speaker 1: productive things to do. Cool. I hope that that him
Speaker 1: and Chris Rock can joke someday in public. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm hoping for that. I actually saw a concert. I
Speaker 1: recently saw Chris Rock and concert, and I can tell
Speaker 1: you some of the jokes he made. He walks immediately
Speaker 1: on stage. I wrote that, I wrote, they still they
Speaker 1: not stole her phones, but they kept her phones in
Speaker 1: a thing. So I couldn't write down, but I committed
Speaker 1: it's all to memory, and he said. He walks on
Speaker 1: stage and he goes, don't worry, I'm okay, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: Finally got my hearing back. And then later later in
Speaker 1: the show, he goes, everyone is doing performative outrage these days.
Speaker 1: Those words hurt. Those words hurt anyone who tells you
Speaker 1: that has never been slapped in the face. That was
Speaker 1: another joke he said. And yeah, he had another one.
Speaker 1: That's a third one which I'm black and around. He
Speaker 1: called him like Sugar Smith Shug Shug Smith is that
Speaker 1: they called him. Later on he said something about he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm no victim of Shug Smith is something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he's laughing about it. I I what would warm
Speaker 1: my heart is just to watch them both someday come
Speaker 1: together and kind of you know joke, you know, a
Speaker 1: human have a human connection. I think they will. I
Speaker 1: mean will Is. Honestly, he he's a really good guy.
Speaker 1: It was it was a terrible thing that he did.
Speaker 1: It was a moment of weakness, I think, like a
Speaker 1: significant vulnerability slash insecurity. But like, deep down he's a
Speaker 1: great guy. He is, and he's great at doing the
Speaker 1: right thing when it needs to be done. And so
Speaker 1: he's I would be shocked if he doesn't find a
Speaker 1: way to like bury the hatchet and laugh about it
Speaker 1: with Chris at some point. So it sounds like it
Speaker 1: was a great experience writing that book with him and
Speaker 1: getting to know him. I love the dude. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really unfortunate that you know what happens, but it's
Speaker 1: I have nothing but great things to say about him.
Speaker 1: It was honestly one of the best professional experiences in
Speaker 1: my life. He was wonderful to work with, really sweet
Speaker 1: and nice. His team is great. Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: fascinating life, really enjoyed. Like I had full access to
Speaker 1: his family, his childhood friends, everybody's worked with. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's what an incredible privilege. It was, honestly, like I
Speaker 1: basically just got to It's like, here, here's full access
Speaker 1: to one of the most successful human beings in the
Speaker 1: world and everything that makes him tick. And guess what,
Speaker 1: you can write whatever you want about him. You know.
Speaker 1: It was such a joy and I have only glowing
Speaker 1: things to say about him, beautiful Mark. I was wondering,
Speaker 1: do you think we have free will? Oh? By the way,
Speaker 1: it's like, do you want to have the fish or
Speaker 1: the Chicka tacos? O? By the way, do you have
Speaker 1: free will? I'm keeping this going. I'm keeping this going,
Speaker 1: so you let me know when you have to go.
Speaker 1: Oh good, I found a emergency level for the last hour.
Speaker 1: But I'm keeping this going. I am what I believe
Speaker 1: his call a soft determinist we probably do not have
Speaker 1: free will, but I also believe that it doesn't really
Speaker 1: matter because we perceive ourselves and others as having free will,
Speaker 1: so and ultimately like that that's what matters for our socialization,
Speaker 1: psychological well being, things like that. So we might as
Speaker 1: well just act as though we do, even though we
Speaker 1: probably don't. What about the implications though, for the law
Speaker 1: and for the way that we h you know, punishment,
Speaker 1: we hand out punishment. I think that's a fallacy, you know,
Speaker 1: in our inside our own heads, we are all experiencing
Speaker 1: our lives as though we have free will, And I
Speaker 1: don't think you know, it's like if let's say somebody
Speaker 1: goes into a rage and kill somebody else, you know,
Speaker 1: the arguing that he didn't have free will, Like that's
Speaker 1: not a valid argument. He still killed somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: and we still have the moral question of like what
Speaker 1: do you do with a murderer and a functioning society, Well,
Speaker 1: you probably put him somewhere to keep everybody safe. Doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you have free will or not. Like that's
Speaker 1: just how it yeah to me. It's just too it's
Speaker 1: like unnecessarily crossing philosophical questions between two domains. There was
Speaker 1: a really fascinating conversation recently that was published between Daniel
Speaker 1: Dennett on the one side, and I believe his name
Speaker 1: is Greg Caruso, a philosopher on the other side, where
Speaker 1: they really got into this. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: complexities and nuances, of course, as there is in philosophy.
Speaker 1: I don't think the question is that we should let
Speaker 1: someone off the hook. You know, it's not like someone
Speaker 1: kills everyone. They're like I heard Sam Harris says, we
Speaker 1: don't have free will, so so you know, it's all good, folks,
Speaker 1: it's all good. Nothing to see here. I don't think
Speaker 1: either of them arguing that's the case. But there are
Speaker 1: some interesting implications on how you think about this, for
Speaker 1: how you punish, you know, so I think Greg has
Speaker 1: more of a theory of retribution, which is more of
Speaker 1: getting them back out into society and teaching them the
Speaker 1: errors of their ways and being kinder think in how
Speaker 1: we how we treat criminals, and so there might be
Speaker 1: there might be some some different nuances here, but I
Speaker 1: still don't see. I mean, this is what makes me
Speaker 1: a self determinus. I don't see how that conversation has
Speaker 1: anything to do with free will. I mean it's like,
Speaker 1: I think, ultimately, what you do with criminals or say,
Speaker 1: violent offenders, you know, you want to find the most
Speaker 1: effective and humane way to deal with the offenders and
Speaker 1: to protect the people in society. And to me, it's
Speaker 1: like whether there's philosophical free will or not, like that
Speaker 1: doesn't really come into it. Like, to me, this is
Speaker 1: just us. It's a sociological question more than anything. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting. The question with free will is a
Speaker 1: sociological question. I never hear sociology sociologists debating whether or
Speaker 1: not we have free will, which is interesting because they
Speaker 1: could well no, no, no, I'm saying what to do
Speaker 1: with violent offenders is more of a socio Oh I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It's like, how I bet the philosophical fosspy of mine question?
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no,
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, how what how? What do we do
Speaker 1: with our criminals? I think is more of a sociology
Speaker 1: It's not a philosophical Questionhi, gotcha, that's a great, great point. Well,
Speaker 1: I've sort of exhausted my burning questions. Now you said
Speaker 1: you made a little bit of a list. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: what have I left out. Do you have any burning
Speaker 1: questions for SBK? Well, why why don't we do this?
Speaker 1: Actually I do have a Bernie, I have a couple
Speaker 1: of things here, but we can. Let's finish up with this,
Speaker 1: because this is I I'd like to do a little
Speaker 1: bit of like a machine gun overrated underrated question with you,
Speaker 1: and so I'm just going to throw some things at you,
Speaker 1: and I want you to say overrated, underrated, and then
Speaker 1: just explain why ready, Yes, okay, first one meditation, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I'm going to say overrated. Okay, say overrated.
Speaker 1: Even though I bold first love, I personally love meditation,
Speaker 1: but it's such a personal thing and it has become
Speaker 1: this sort of thing where like you're shamed if you
Speaker 1: don't like meditation, Like if meditation doesn't is not for you,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, ain't doing it right? Yeah yeah. And
Speaker 1: I don't really like that sort of spirit about it.
Speaker 1: That's it's antithetical the whole spirit of what meditation should be.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people in the space
Speaker 1: that the meditation space who do in a non spiritually
Speaker 1: narcissistic way, but there are a lot who do do
Speaker 1: do it in a spiritually narcissistic way. Very good point,
Speaker 1: very good point. I will just comment really quick that
Speaker 1: I think what I'm enjoying right now. You know, meditation
Speaker 1: was kind of like a the this this star, the
Speaker 1: darling child I think of, you know, became very fashionable
Speaker 1: ten or fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, and there
Speaker 1: was a lot of initial research into it that had
Speaker 1: like stellar results for people and had all these claims
Speaker 1: about how it improved well being. And what I find
Speaker 1: really fascinating now is that there's a lot of research
Speaker 1: coming out saying the opposite. And it's it's like, I'm
Speaker 1: just enjoying watching the subject. I mean, I personally enjoy meditating,
Speaker 1: but I don't really have a horse in this race
Speaker 1: a whole lot anymore. I think it's just a tool,
Speaker 1: another tool that people can use if it if it's good, firm, great.
Speaker 1: If it's not, that's fine. But it's been interesting watching
Speaker 1: from afar how it's kind of gone from this like
Speaker 1: almost panacea to now all this new research coming out
Speaker 1: showing it like it actually in some cases not only
Speaker 1: does it not make people better off, but some people,
Speaker 1: a minority of people might even make them worse off.
Speaker 1: And there is research something that makes assholes often more Yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're more mindful of their asshole right now though, yep,
Speaker 1: waiting for waiting for a laugh. Okay, Next, overrated, underrated,
Speaker 1: twin studies, overrated interesting? Oh oh what a I mean?
Speaker 1: You're asking someone who studied all the complexities around it
Speaker 1: to come up with a binary answer to this. Of
Speaker 1: course we're going to tweet this out later, so make
Speaker 1: it good. Well, look, I guess I'm gonna say overrated,
Speaker 1: but insuring circles, underrated in other circles, underrated within sociology. Yep,
Speaker 1: the G word is a dirty word in sociology, yeah,
Speaker 1: the G being genes. But within other areas, I think overrated,
Speaker 1: and I think within behavioral genetics the field it's overrated. Interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a bit of a tet tet
Speaker 1: with just tet tet mean like disagreement. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We can google it, look at us. It's just sounds good,
Speaker 1: it sounds good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got a PhD.
Speaker 1: I've written a bunch of best sellers. Go for it.
Speaker 1: So we don't even know what these words. Ned's an
Speaker 1: S shaped sofa on which two people can sit face
Speaker 1: to face, involving involving or happening or happening between two
Speaker 1: people in private. So okay, it wasn't a tech to
Speaker 1: tech because this was public podcast. I had a bit
Speaker 1: of a confrontation with with Pullman, the leading one of
Speaker 1: the leading world's leading behavioral genetesis. Nothing against him as
Speaker 1: a person, but I do think he overrated uh, he
Speaker 1: overrated he in his book on Jeanes, he he downplayed
Speaker 1: the role of the environment, I think, and it just
Speaker 1: went too much in one direction and and relying too
Speaker 1: much on twin studies to make your point. I think
Speaker 1: is also can be problematic, even though I hate that word.
Speaker 1: It can make you blind to the ways in which
Speaker 1: our immediate environment can influence our immediate behaviors, even if
Speaker 1: in the long term it doesn't sculpt us as much
Speaker 1: as much as we'd like to think it does. Yeah. Interesting,
Speaker 1: it's funny. Twin studies were kind of the thing that
Speaker 1: kicked me out of my I guess naive beliefs. You
Speaker 1: know that you can be whatever you want to be,
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was it was discovering the
Speaker 1: twin study research that that about ten years ago that
Speaker 1: kind of like woke me up to that. But it's
Speaker 1: funny because as years have gone on, I have gone
Speaker 1: back and looked at some of that research, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually it's very limited. Like I don't it's probably
Speaker 1: not telling as much as a lot of people say
Speaker 1: it is telling us. Depends on the context, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, definitely is underrated in certain context. That's true.
Speaker 1: For sure. For sure, self esteem as a concept, as
Speaker 1: an like a constructed concept, underrated. Interesting, underrated because there's
Speaker 1: a backlash against the self esteem movement in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but I think that was really a backlash against a
Speaker 1: narcissism movement. I agree that don't make this distinction between
Speaker 1: narcissism and self esteem. I've tried gone great pains to
Speaker 1: make that distinction, because all high selfesteem means is that
Speaker 1: you feel like you're good enough. It doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: you're greater than others, but you have a basic sense
Speaker 1: of self worth and a basic sense of competency that
Speaker 1: you can reach your goals in life. And I think
Speaker 1: those two things are wholly underrated as important things to
Speaker 1: instill in children. How often do we focus as much
Speaker 1: time on teaching kids' maths skills as we do and
Speaker 1: building up their basic sense of self worth, for instance,
Speaker 1: especially around a tumultuous time and you know adolescence when
Speaker 1: they tend to feel very low self worth and it
Speaker 1: causes them to act down in all sorts of ways,
Speaker 1: like become a computer hacker. Right, But narcissism is a
Speaker 1: real problem. But I think there are different things I
Speaker 1: agree with that I've bought into the backup lash a
Speaker 1: little bit. Don't you think it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a misnomer, like self esteem? Like it because you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people coming out with self compassion,
Speaker 1: self acceptance, self worth value like it's yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like the debate around this is
Speaker 1: actually just semantics. Yeah, it's a great point. What part
Speaker 1: of the word esteem is triggering you? Because to me
Speaker 1: it's the second E to be honest, just like really
Speaker 1: don't like it? Well part no, to me? Esteem? You
Speaker 1: know those original studies and I think it was Bambmeister
Speaker 1: did who like that found that like violent criminals and
Speaker 1: narciss like exhibited very high self esteem. You know. To me,
Speaker 1: it kind of when I think of esteem, I think
Speaker 1: of just simply like does a person like themselves do
Speaker 1: they have positive feelings self regard essentially, just positive self regard.
Speaker 1: And I think positive self regard is very different from
Speaker 1: like believing that you're a good person or believing that
Speaker 1: you are like morally good, I guess is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And and and believing that you're capable or that self esteem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: positive self evaluation and defending that at all times is narcissism. Yeah.
Speaker 1: M it's a defending that at all times that it
Speaker 1: makes it the narcissism. People who tend to be grand
Speaker 1: score high in grandiose narcissism. Must like they're defending a fort, defend,
Speaker 1: must defend a positive image of themselves. They can't handle criticism,
Speaker 1: even the slightest criticism. Then they become a victim. Yep,
Speaker 1: right for sure. So you're on something. Yeah, okay, last
Speaker 1: one overrated? Underrated. Social media totally overrated. And it may
Speaker 1: depend on the platform because here's the thing. I find
Speaker 1: Instagram perfectly cordial. I can post something very innocuous like
Speaker 1: love much love to everyone on Twitter and I'll get
Speaker 1: go to hell, you suck. Love is overrated. I go
Speaker 1: on Instagram and I'll write that hands clapped a mode
Speaker 1: love love, love, hearts. I love you, Scott. It's fascinating
Speaker 1: the difference between those two platforms. I agree with that.
Speaker 1: So I think there's nuance there in that some are
Speaker 1: more uplifting and supportive than other platforms. But I think
Speaker 1: I think Twitter is really overrated. I'm not convinced that
Speaker 1: there is that much productive conversations going on there. I'm
Speaker 1: not convinced that the kind of conversations that happen on
Speaker 1: Twitter are moving the needle in our society in a
Speaker 1: positive direction. In fact, I would, if I had to,
Speaker 1: like intuitively, guess, I would say it's moving society in
Speaker 1: a negative direction. Yeah, I would agree with all that.
Speaker 1: I find the same thing. Platforms are different. I'm very
Speaker 1: skeptical that any useful discourse happens on social media. I'm
Speaker 1: going to add to that. You know, I've last year
Speaker 1: I wrote a little bit about this and it was
Speaker 1: met with crickets. But you know, it's the research into
Speaker 1: the negative effects of social media is pretty weak. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not the studies showing that bad things happen, you know,
Speaker 1: social media causes bad things to happen and people is like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty weak data sets. And then the studies with
Speaker 1: strong data sets show that nothing bad happens, and I
Speaker 1: think people have forgotten the excitement and the beauty of
Speaker 1: connecting that everybody that you've ever known in your life,
Speaker 1: Like it's you know, it's just I just remember when
Speaker 1: Facebook came out in two thousand and five, like just
Speaker 1: how unbelievably awesome it was to like go back and
Speaker 1: just like see you know, your friend in high school
Speaker 1: what they're doing now, and seeing your roommate in college
Speaker 1: and what they're doing now. And I think we that's
Speaker 1: become such a normal part of our life that we
Speaker 1: take it for granted and forget how amazing that is.
Speaker 1: So I'm with you. I think that the hate is overrated,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of it is just people.
Speaker 1: I think we as people need to like adjust and
Speaker 1: learn how to use these platforms better. I agree, I agree.
Speaker 1: Let's end in this note. If you agree with me,
Speaker 1: hate is overrated. Love is underrated these days? Oh for sure?
Speaker 1: Do you agree with that? For sure? For sure? Yeah?
Speaker 1: The value of love, Yeah, the empathizing listening, yeah for sure. Awesome.
Speaker 1: It would be awkward if you disagreed with that. No, Scott,
Speaker 1: I'm all hate all the time. That's been really awkward,
Speaker 1: really freaking awkward. Thank you so much, Mark, This was
Speaker 1: so much fun. Thanks for for just just going with it.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you. Man. Yeah, dude, I had a blast.
Speaker 1: I had a blast. It was great, awesome. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thusycology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.