Rory Sutherland | Extraordinary Life Stories

18:42John Reynolds:whereas give those five to ten years there's a thing in design called maya m-a-y-a which is maximally advanced yet acceptable which i think was coined by raymond louis and when you come up with something genuinely innovative it has to have familiar elements to the other person buying because if you're too weird it's too difficult so that's why you know for example okay a digital camera goes click it doesn't need to go click digital but if you have a camera you know that doesn't click it weirds people out so the early stages of electric cars i think have to have that in the same way that digital radios used to have dials you know it's called skeuomorphic it's called a skeuomorphism which is the incorporation of an element from an earlier technology which only is there to add ease of familiarity and ease of adoption rather than for any functional reason and um it's greek temples had it so even though they they hadn't been built of wood for 50 years they still have these weird things called i think metops where the stone is carved as though there's a beam you know as though there's a kind of chamfer joint or whatever it might be and it's kind of like it's a carryover from an and actually i would argue that most electric cars are a bit boringly conventional but you there's a limit to how it came from i think a raymond lovey thing where he produced a fan an electric fan that was completely silent now logically that was a brilliant thing to do but it completely weirded people out and people kind of go this fan isn't working it doesn't cool me down because you expect a fan to make a noise and therefore if you have a fan that's completely silent effectively it's it's a bit similar to that uncanny valley thing you know it just weirds people out now in time what we'll see with electric cars i think will be really really interesting a kind of cambrian explosion of innovation one of them being very small forms of electric transportation in the heathrow pod i'm a big advocate of that i think it's a fantastic form of transport uh not least because people really enjoy riding in it and also because of something we can't say which is we love our own private mode of transport that's why a lot of people don't take public chances.

20:57John Reynolds:Nobody. Somebody said, a conservative politician once said it, that people prefer their cars because you don't have some smelly stranger sitting next to you. He could have also added that there's something lovely about getting back. If you've been on a plane for 12 hours and you get to that Heathrow car park and you climb into your car, you can you know, there are all kinds of things you can do in private. And there's that glorious feeling of decompression when you're no longer in a public space. We always joked about this. I was saying there must be a German word for it, which is the joy of climbing back into your own automobile after spending time in a public environment.

21:34John Reynolds:And it's like that time when you kind of leave a party and you get into your car. I mean, I got upgraded to first class one sort of flight back from, I think it was New York, and it was British Air was first class. You know, fine wines, Belgian chocolates, the finest wines known to humanity, the whole works. And it was magnificent. But the best bit of the whole journey was getting back into your own car. But nothing matches that feeling of, right, I'm finally in my own car. I'm autonomous. I'm private. You know, nobody can bother me. I'm safe. And so, I mean, you know, one of the interesting things I think will be micro mobility.

22:11John Reynolds:And by the way, we can include scooters in that. We can include, you know, cargo bikes deserve to be included in that. Electric bikes are really important. but also there's a thing called a micro lino which is modeled on a little the italian bubble car of the 1960s actually swiss made there's a dealership on the cromwell road i think um and i give my daughter absolutely strict instructions not to let me go past that dealership while i'm drunk okay because i just wander in and i'm impulse buy one of these crazy little electric you got that four on order already no no but i you know i think what happens is that if you want people to transition from one powertrain to another give them one thing to cope with at once if you also give them a really weird car it's behavioral change is difficult and people find that frightening and so there is an element now in fairness i think electric cars are you know some of them i bought a lotus elettro recently which is i think really really interesting from a design point of view it's actually too big but i quite like that well actually i quite like the fact that when you've got a really it's awful confession one of the reasons you have a people drive these big cars is that it makes driving a bit difficult i don't sound completely counterintuitive but it's so easy to drive a small modern car on british roads that there's a little bit of me which thinks that actually the sense of accomplishment you felt from getting someone there's a challenge that adding a small degree of difficulty might act might make something more enjoyable i'm not quite sure but it's fantastic car in terms of in terms of its design and the effort put into the uh functionality it it and i actually bought the minimalist base model precisely for the aesthetics of you know the simplicity of the thing um but i think it will start i think what we'll see is 5 10 15 years time we'll start to see genuinely a kind of explosion of different forms of transport which is made possible just by the electric motor which you can miniaturize, which is actually extremely reliable, which has very few moving parts.

24:18John Reynolds:And so, you know, I mean, if you think about it, golf carts were always electric for a very simple reason, you know. And actually, golf carts would be highly horrible if they had a petrol engine. The petrol engine would be probably too stroke and nasty and so on. Would be a quad bike, wouldn't it? And actually, electric motorbikes are going to be something else, right? In terms of performance, it's going to be extraordinary. so no i'm forgiving the car industry for that because you have to take the consumer with you but but the property industry the level of boringness so i wrote a piece in the spectator about this which is let's say you're a really really successful lawyer in london and you're earning six figures and you're thinking of buying a house in fulham now there are all the things you can spend your money on that have been invented since 1910 okay you know jet travel you know charter a yacht think of the things you could do with sort of 900 000 pounds right the creative amazing things you could do you know extraordinary technological developments but what you're doing when you're buying that house in fulham as a really successful corporate lawyer earning six figures is you're saying i know what i'm going to do for the next 25 years the vast majority of my discretionary income is going to be spent owning a place which a postman would have lived in in 1910.

25:40John Reynolds:Now all I'm saying is I'm not saying go and buy a Bugatti Veyron and sleep in a tent okay well actually I'm a bit okay because if you look at you know if you look at what you get for six figures in the car market it's a work of art it's something magnificent it's You know, hundreds of PhDs have put all their intelligence into designing this thing. And it's genuinely magnificent. Now, Louis XIV, if he saw a car or a flat screen TV or, you know, an Internet terminal, would give you half of Gascony in return for just the telly with a sky package. And yet we pay sort of£40 a month for that grumble about it.

26:18John Reynolds:The one thing Louis XIV wouldn't understand genuinely about today, he would look at these people and go, look at the wealth, look at the riches you have. Why do you live in such a house? And housing has taken up a greater and greater part of people's discretionary income. It's mopped up most of the gains to the two income household. Two income household, great news for the government. You've got twice as many people to tax. Fantastic news for people who own property. We've got twice as many people to pay rent. For the two people themselves, let's say husband and wife, but we don't have to be gender specific.

26:51John Reynolds:they've lost 35 to 40 hours of discretionary time every week in return for no improvement in their overall living standards you know not a great success no and now if you're single in london and i you know i don't sound weird you know saying you know we must campaign for the rights of single people but you're unless unless you're earning megabucks not being in a relationship or having a bunch of friends maybe maybe you're just a bit of a loner you're frozen out of london completely, I'd argue. I mean, it's just impossible. When you want your spring break to feel like and your kids' pool

27:28Rory Sutherland:day to feel like and your hotel bed to feel like and room service to feel like because at Hilton, hospitality feels like it matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton for this day. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing Virtuo Up, the latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso. It's innovation you can touch, sense, and taste in every single cup. With a three-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew over ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself.

28:16John Reynolds:Shop Virtuo up exclusively at Nespresso.com.

28:21Rory Sutherland:On that, and on that, what sort of relates to a lot of stress and kind of potential mental health kind of connotation. Yep, absolutely right. I wanted to just switch your brain to mental health. Almost flowing on from this conversation, property, cars, branding, marketing. can you name a cool really cool mental health platform business charity the reason why i ask is interesting question the reason why i ask that is that it's it affects all of us it affects us in a positive way in a negative way um and we're all being told to talk more i'm gonna really mischievous answer there i just i don't know okay that nobody's ever going to say this

29:06John Reynolds:but I'm going to be mischievous about it, which is, you know, there are interesting, okay, there, I mean, there are some really interesting moves, by the way, to explore recreational drugs as cures for certain mental health problems, including psychedelics. And all I can say is we need to explore those because we created a ludicrously false dichotomy between recreational drugs and medicinal drugs. So the definition of a medicinal drug was one that wasn't enjoyable to take, almost again you know in other words tasted horrible you know and had unpleasant side effects and as soon as a drug became enjoyable we immediately said it's a recreational drug now one of the side effects of that was nobody researched the positive upsides of recreational drugs i'm not into apart from nicotine i don't even drink very much cannabis is a good example i'm also wary by the way i'm wary about it the complete legalization for complex reasons not because I think it's bad for 95 % of people it's probably a bit like alcohol actually it's probably neutral or beneficial for the vast majority of people but catastrophically bad for a certain percentage and often it's catastrophically bad for people who are in a bad way already gambling what I put in the same category you know you know general gambling most people know how to handle it they enjoy it to a reasonable extent but there is a group of people who for circumstantial or genetic reasons and you know i've always sort of defended nicotine there i wouldn't defend smoking anymore because you can vape but my only defense of smoking is that the the second order externalities of people smoking although people complained about passive smoking and the smell compared to alcohol or gambling or um some some other drugs the knock-on effects to other people nobody ever says i can't go into town on saturday night because they're all these smokers there I made this point.

31:00John Reynolds:If you're an unborn child and you were asked, would you like to be born into the household where the dad, say, is a heavy smoker, a heavy gambler or a heavy drinker, you choose the smoker. Now, smoking is slightly different because it's quite bad for a lot of people. But you could argue that some behaviors are worse because they're catastrophically bad for a few people. yeah so i mean generally people didn't die at 20 i've known quite a lot of people who died in their 30s and 40s because of drink i don't know anybody who's died in their 30s and 40s because of smoking quite a few people who died in their 60s fair enough but there's a difference between a bummer and a tragedy um now the only point i'd make is that i think one there was a very interesting statistic which is 95 of schizophrenics smoked and one of the theories is it was self-medication it helped and one of the things I think we need to be open-minded about people like David Nutt have done much more important work than me I've merely looked at the behavioral biases behind how we categorize drugs and an investigation of the possible beneficial effects because let's face it if people are choosing to take these things yes there's a totally trivial explanation for that which is they like to get out of their heads.

32:16John Reynolds:But it's highly likely that psychoactive drugs might have beneficial effects if administered in the right way to people in particular circumstances. And we've brought and of course, if you think about it, OK, let's say you're a research company or you're trying to get funding for a research and go, yeah, we're going to research ketamine. OK, it's going to be a lot more difficult to get funding for what looks like a highly kind of irresponsible study than researching some boring thing that might vaguely affect angina or whatever it may be but this you know i mean we should be open-minded about this that's all i'm saying i'm kind of wary about the cannabis thing because my argument is that it almost certainly is really enjoyable and probably pretty harmful for harmless sorry for a lot of people but then what about the five percent of people for whom it's catastrophic i know i mean only asked about cannabis or brought

33:10Rory Sutherland:it up because there are clearly in my opinion from the sort of experience i've got people around me that have explored it from a business point of view there are really good benefits health-wise that are not about smoking a spliff you know it's a cbd obviously is different from thc i mean you separate those exactly but just but just felt like it was untapped and it was almost like a no-go area because yeah that's my point and it's like well why would you not explore that because what if you could actually produce...

33:39John Reynolds:So I actually had to defend a colleague of mine who kind of almost got into trouble with HR for writing in favour of psychedelic research because it was considered... And I said, no, no, no, no. This is a business where if we can't ask slightly unfashionable questions here, we're not a proper advertising company anymore. And I basically leapt in and said, I'm not sure I agree with her, but I absolutely agree with her right to raise the topic.

34:06Rory Sutherland:is that is that a constant with you um and what i mean by that is i use that analogy of going against the tide for you to be able to get to the heart of a problem to get to um people's emotions from a marketing point of advertising point of view you've got to basically turn around and sort of break tradition or stop and where would you draw the line well here's a naughty one

34:26John Reynolds:which okay i mean it's too early to say whether it succeeded but i occasionally annoy my wife by in very select areas defending Donald Trump. OK, my argument was, if you take the Middle East, my simple argument is what the hell people go, what the hell's you doing now? This is crazy. To which I often reply. Yeah, it's not like all the rational people solve this problem, is it? You know, we've had hundreds and thousands of highly educated, completely rational people looking at that problem and no one's got anywhere. arguably if you have a problem that seems immune to rational solution the only sensible approach is to try something that doesn't make sense uh because you know you know i i mean and actually i would also argue that one of the things that entrepreneurs are really interesting in well i mentioned the fact that they have a fundamentally different way of valuing information that information that they have that nobody else has they see as much more valuable than information that everybody shares so conventional people are looking for the consensus and entrepreneurs are in fact looking for the counterintuitive or the deviant opinion or the and by the way you know you don't have to be 100 right to be a successful entrepreneur if 20 of people do a weird thing or even 5 of people do something which is the opposite of somebody else there's still a business in that market you know if you can get 100 of 5 percent of any particular you're you're doing fine but the interesting thing i always noticed with entrepreneurs is if you said something that was a bit counterintuitive or a bit um mischievous even if you say that to a bureaucrat they become annoyed because it messes with their model of the world and their model of the world is designed for neatness entrepreneurs take a completely different approach which is the more counterintuitive or ridiculous the theory the more likely they are to entertain it because if it is true which it may well not be but if it is true it's disproportionately valuable precisely because of its non-obviousness i think that makes sense

36:34Rory Sutherland:i love that and we a key part of our sort of connection if you like is the entrepreneur community you know i came down to breakfast at the ideas fest uh event and you were you were right in front of me. And that optimism, that sort of innovative, I used that word disruptive earlier, that sort of lives in that entrepreneurial ecosystem is something that I've found really interesting and I thrive in, but I also wanted to bring up something. You can't be a pessimistic opportunist, can you? No. You see what I mean? I mean, it goes back to what you were saying. You're looking for something. There is no path.

37:07Rory Sutherland:Back to what you were saying earlier, there's no process. And I thrive in that environment. like kind of how am I going to how could I make that happen looking around you but have no idea how I'm going to get they're very good company aren't they they are good company I wanted to we touched on this just before we started filming funny observation by the way combining mental

37:24John Reynolds:health I hope I can say this but Dan Ariely the behavioral scientist says that when he deals with bureaucrats in other words people whose only interest is not the quality of the outcome or the value of the activity but the adherence to process or adherence to policy Dan said something very interesting he said when I deal with those people I kind of know what it's like to be autistic in the sense that I know what it's like to live in a world where you have a system of thought that is completely at odds with the people around you because he said it's so alien to me which is that you derive pleasure from stopping something happening on spurious kind of legalistic or technical grounds.

38:09John Reynolds:To him, it's so counter to his nature that he says, you know, this is literally an alien intelligence.

38:16Rory Sutherland:You know, it's so interesting you want an autistic side of things because I was going to bring up ADHD. Yeah. We touched on it just before we started filming. And I'm conscious of time. This is probably the last bit we can open up. Go on a little bit longer. But, yes, but this is really interesting. If we're going to talk about ADHD, it would be ridiculous to keep it to a tight schedule. Exactly. It wouldn't be very ADHD at all. And I've gone through my own personal journey with this, where at Ideas Fest last year, I started to show a real interest in the fact that there were so many people around me talking about it and saying it's because of their ADHD or this is why the ADHD allows them to have this hyper-focus, relentless energy.

38:54Rory Sutherland:It's very weird.

38:54John Reynolds:I think a lot of people with ADHD, because they also have this hyper focus thing, it's never occurred to them that they have ADHD because they're capable of supreme acts of concentration and therefore they reject the diagnosis. That's me. And I'm three months into being diagnosed. So I wanted to flip that to you. I've never been diagnosed. Having said that, I've never been tested. One daughter of mine has been. I don't see it as a problem, actually. I I see it as, okay, let's talk about Helen, oh, crikey, I need to remember her name. I think it's Helen Taylor at UCL. She's an academic who argues that neurodiversity is a natural evolutionary process in the sense that groups which contained no neurodiverse people would be at a disadvantage in the evolutionary environment because if everybody sees things the same way effectively your collective consciousness your collective information gathering and information processing would probably get stuck in a local maximum in other words you need other people to see the world differently sometimes to shake everybody out of their conformity and her argument is that we've evolved to be neurodiverse and it's a natural part of, you know, what makes us human and therefore diagnosing a minority mental state as necessarily something that needs to be medicalised.

40:24John Reynolds:No, this is really interesting. Because you could say, well, maybe it's the environment that's wrong. Totally. You know that interesting thing? Okay, are you using the ruler to measure the table or are you using the table to measure the ruler? I had a discussion once with Daniel Kahneman and it always amuses me to take a Nobel Prize winner and talk about something really trivial. about a speed camera on the M11 near Chigwell. And my argument is, if you have a speed camera that catches an unusual number of people, there are two possible interpretations. Either it's in the right place, because it's an area where loads of people speed, or it's actually in the wrong place, because what you've done actually near Chigwell on the M11 is you have a motorway where people are tooling down the M11 at 80 miles an hour.

41:02John Reynolds:They suddenly see a sign that says 50. And a couple of hundred yards further on, there's this bloody speed camera, which makes more money than all the other speed cameras in Essex. Now, I would argue that's either because the drivers are in the wrong or the signage is in the wrong place. In fairness, if you're going at 80 on a motorway, all your instincts say do not brake unexpectedly, do not do anything dramatic on a motorway because it's dangerous. And then you have a speed limit that demands that you decelerate very, very fast. And so your instincts come into conflict with the law and your instincts win.

41:36John Reynolds:And therefore, what the extraordinarily high rate of activation of that speed camera means is that you need to make you need to basically move the speed camera a bit down the road or the 50 mile an hour limit. That there's something wrong with the sign, not with the driver. The signage is at fault, not the driver. Now, equally, in the case of ADHD, you might well argue that it's a perfectly normal, healthy mental state, which is only made difficult because of the environment in which we insist people operate. ADHD. I mean, our environment is totally unnatural compared to what we've evolved for.

42:10John Reynolds:And so you might argue that all that is is effectively, in a sense, demonizing a natural human mental diversity which is supposed to exist simply because someone doesn't conform to a majority norm. On that. And we're generally not in favour of that in other fields like ethnicity or sexuality. So, you know, ask the same question. It's got the word disorder in it.

42:41Rory Sutherland:Yeah, I know. And so you said... It's a superpower, perhaps. And then you get told off for that. So this is the journey I've been on, right? So I have something that I've now been diagnosed with that's got the word disorder in. I've never felt... I've felt...

42:57John Reynolds:You know... I haven't tried to take a medication.

42:59Rory Sutherland:You made a load of money as a property developer. You seem perfectly fine. I don't feel like it's the superpower. I get I totally get the reference for that. I am relentless when I'm focused on something. You know, I have a disproportionate amount of energy compared to what other people might.

43:14John Reynolds:I would argue that the ability to concentrate for long periods of time on something that's boring and pointless, which is commonly found in bureaucrats, is a bigger disorder than the ability to get distracted from something that's a waste of time. I mean, you know, strict adherence to a kind of procedural neatness creates much more economic inefficiency than people with ADHD do, surely. No, I totally get it. The person from the council who can't make an exception, even though the context makes it absolutely obvious that the law doesn't shouldn't really apply. That's a far weirder and more annoying mind state, I would have thought.

43:55Rory Sutherland:but with your brain knowledge and all this incredible creativeness that you've got what would you call ADHD?

44:05John Reynolds:Well I mean it's painting a spectrum disorder isn't it I mean that's probably fair to say and undoubtedly it would be problematic in extremes as our other spectrum disorders I mean again bear in mind I'm you know I'm not a psychiatrist in any way this is where it becomes really interesting because there's a book written by a guy called joseph fishkin who's a law professor at ucla called bottlenecks and i'm planning to interview him as part of the bottlenecks podcast series fairly obviously as he's written a book called bottleneck and he argues that we've made this weird mistake which seems perfectly intelligent it's micro rational but macro stupid and what it is is we we're obsessed with equality of opportunity Now, the first requirement, if you like, of equality of opportunity is you apply the same criteria to everybody.

44:55John Reynolds:Now, the problem with that is it's notionally fair at the level of the individual, but it's collectively catastrophic because you overweight for certain qualities, like the ability to write essays or solve mathematical equations. And you underweight for other really valuable human attributes. so in other words the same you probably change the order of people in the queue a bit and make it a little bit fairer for people from slightly worse backgrounds but the problem is someone who's brilliant otherwise but happens not to be brilliant at the criteria you've determined should dominate the sorting process is at a completely unfair disadvantage now i'll do an analogy here okay if someone's really good at chess they're probably in some respect quite clever yeah i'd accept that can you say the opposite that someone who's bad at chess is stupid no now similarly if you take academia as a weird selection process like two one and above yes i think you can confidently say that someone who gets a two one assuming they haven't done grade inflation hasn't become completely insane i mean i was at oxford the visiting oxford go there for god's sake uh but i was visiting oxford the other day and you know about 40 percent of people get a first now now you know i was at cambridge obviously higher standards but when i was at cambridge it was you know there were there were subjects where like music where nobody had got a first for 25 years so there is great inflation but if you make that the criterion now yes it's probably fair that someone who can do well under those circumstances is both reasonably committed and pretty bright and capable and will make a desirable employee yeah fair i think that you know just as someone who's good at chess patently has some sort of special intelligence but can you make the opposite assertion which is someone who doesn't like writing essays about Thucydides is a bad employee no yeah and the advertising industry used to be very interesting in this front because you occasionally there are parts of the world where working in advertising was unbelievably unfashionable so you couldn't really recruit you know you know there you know there Parts of the world, Switzerland, famously, you were expected to go into banking or a large multinational.

47:08John Reynolds:So if you went into advertising, it was basically like saying, you know, my son's a crack addict or something. And so you had to recruit in a really imaginative, random way. And some of the people you recruited from completely non-standard sources turned out to be brilliant. There are a whole bunch of advertising millionaires who came into the industry with no degree entirely by chance. and so what we've done is we've we've privileged fairness of process over quality of outcome and i would argue that a good organization needs a mix of talents that are complementary that's how human society's evolved you know the you know the person in the tribe with adhd was probably a pain in the in some respects but disproportionately valuable in others same probably being for the person who as you know aspergic um there are plenty of inventors if you think about it are not neurotypical plenty of entrepreneurs are not at one stage let me get this right the majority i think it might have been all but three of the people on the board of tesco were dyslexic so you know at some level we've evolved as a social species and there's a kind of complementarity to that that and what we're doing instead is we're saying no no in order for for successful people to feel virtuous and that they've entirely deserved their success we must deploy this very narrow criterion for what it is to be legitimately successful which is you go through that academic channel and it's it's unbelievably it's a bottleneck exactly why fishkin called his book bottlenecks it's created this ludicrous bottleneck where there aren't even enough jobs for those people to begin with so it's a shit show you know now as i said people who aren't good at chess are not stupid people who are good at chess probably you know i'm going to accept the fact that some grandmaster although to be absolutely honest i wouldn't want to spend an evening in the pub with them they do have some really valuable mental capacity for pattern recognition memory whatever it may be i don't know but they're special but no you know and i'm saying that making academic attainment a criteria the sole criterion in the name of fairness is just as stupid as making chess the sole criterion i get that now interestingly in city trading there were cases i think where they looked for traders among backgammon players because it was a compliment it was kind of predictive ability the ability to think of different odds and different outcomes backgammon is actually a really interesting game and the ability to kind of think of diff effectively to think of five possible futures at the same time was just really valuable in that particular field that's breeding strategy isn't it that's creativity a guy called dave horrey an art director not a copywriter got a job in an ad agency because he turned up for an interview at nine o 'clock in the morning and he already finished the times crossword and actually they looked at his work i don't know what his work was like but the fact that he'd finished the times crossword before 9 a.m was basically okay good enough give you a try now actually you know people who are really good at word games you know sensible ad agency we probably should recruit a countdown champion every now and then or something like that and what we've done instead is we go no no it's got to be fair because if we start you know looking for different attributes um it will be unfair because one person can succeed on one basis and another person can succeed on another basis but but but we haven't got a we haven't got a frame of comparison so how can it be fair if we don't have a comparative frame of reference and it's it's actually it looks it looks intelligent through a very narrow pinhole once you take the bird's eye view of the whole thing it's stupid it's really really stupid

50:57Rory Sutherland:we are going to run out of time and you are unbelievable to listen to you are incredible to talk with thanks your brain undiagnosed by the way i've never i don't know i'm not diagnosing you and i'm complimenting you as a human being like but also that learned knowledge that you've got it's clear like you are someone if ever i need to go to a pub quiz with yeah just like you're

51:19John Reynolds:you're you must know the most random things the football questions would come up and i'd be absolutely use this is another point about a pub quiz team right what do you optimize for breadth yeah actually the pub quiz team is a very very good analogy i could not be on any although i I did once recognise Wayne Gretzky from a photograph, which was a bit weird. But I actually probably account really obscure sports, but football is totally boring. You know, this scandal about the West Midlands police refusing to police. I don't think they're going far enough. I'd refuse to allow anybody to attend any football match.

51:53John Reynolds:I think they should be because all it means. OK, how many other people think one of the most annoying things about being middle class in 2025 is you've got to pretend to be interested in football. I'm just not it means there are a load of annoying people on the train every time there's a bloody match oh my god it's so obvious football is far worse than smoking in terms of it's you know passive football nobody ever talks about that but it just brings massive annoyance to everybody else

52:19Rory Sutherland:this is where the other blokes should be able to tell me I'll fill in the football knowledge and I can't

52:23John Reynolds:I can't I think we should extend that West Midlands police policy to all football games that no fans should be allowed to attend because it's just annoying

52:33Rory Sutherland:Oh, I just realised my face is hurting from smiling and just being... I'm marinating in your voice. I don't want this to end, but it has to. But I'm going to just thank you for the speed of your brain and how busy you are with everything you do. You've made time to come and talk with me and educate me.

52:49John Reynolds:In truth, one of the great problems we've got is we've privileged rational argumentation as a mode of decision-making over anything else. Now, that brings me back to my Trump point. It's not like all the rational people solve the problem. I'm not defending him in general. I think he's a deeply, you know, disturbed and in many ways, you know, unattractive human being in all manner of ways. But his ability sometimes just to go in and do you remember his surgical use of the word? A really interesting approach, which Americans are not good at generally in terms of foreign policy, is attacking both sides.

53:26John Reynolds:you know they've been fighting each other for so long they don't know what they're doing and by the way that mirrors we were talking to a primatologist at nudge stock and there's an alpha male move uh in primatology which is two junior chimps are fighting okay and the big alpha male just goes in and bashes both of them now it's if you like it doesn't seem to be a sensible move by the sort of rational scheme of things. But for whatever reason, it's an instinctive manoeuvre which probably sometimes works. I've got to stop.

54:02Rory Sutherland:My face is hurting. And I can hear these guys all giggling and laughing behind camera. You are so awesome to speak with.

54:09John Reynolds:That's been a joy. Likewise. Yeah, absolutely. I think we've got a kind of Vulcan mind meld going on here. So, yeah, it's quite interesting. I love you.

54:16Rory Sutherland:You are electric. Thank you so much. Pleasure. What a joy. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.