The Hidden Cost Of Overthinking Everything - George Mack - #1111

30:28We're at the perfect, if you were to be slightly further away from the sun, life couldn't exist. If you were to be slightly nearer to the sun, life couldn't exist. Well, the only reason that, yes, and the fine-tuning-ness not only of the universe, but the fine-tuning of our planet in this system with the fact that we've got Jupiter that's this big hoover, it's basically a Roomba that's controlled with a fucking PlayStation, that hoovers up all of the bad asteroids that would come and hit us, all of the meteors that would come and hit us. It's just got such a big gravitational well. I think you can fit.

31:04It's unbelievably massive. And then the maddest one for me is the moon. So the only reason that life exists on Earth is because of the moon. If we didn't have the moon, it stabilizes the axial tilt. So we're at whatever it is, 23 degrees. That's why we have seasons. Because as you go around the sun, you've always got this sort of 23 degree angle. But if you didn't have the moon there, it's kind of like a counterweight. So imagine that I'm swinging something on a big rope and there's a weight at the end of it. If I wasn't holding onto it, you actually kind of run out, you get out of control quite quickly.

31:38But if you've got something that's holding on the other side, this mutual gravitational pull, it stabilizes the tilt or else it would be wobbling a lot. It'd be way more chaotic. Also, the moon does the tides, which without that, the weather would be way more chaotic too. The moon's the goat. The moon is the support staff that nobody sees behind the scenes. Everyone wants to talk about the Goldilocks zone. Everyone wants to talk about the fact that we've got liquid water, et cetera, but it's the moon, mate. Wow. Did you know your gut controls your energy, your recovery, how well you absorb everything that you eat, and the one nutrient that keeps it all running properly is fiber?

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32:46Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get up to 35 % off your first subscription and that 30 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom. A checkout. It feels, it's very trite to discuss how strange it is or why are we here? It almost feels like if you bring that up, people are like, oh, roll their eyes. It's like, it's the most absurd fucking thing. Well, I think the only way that you can answer why are we here is by trying to look for an answer outside of this. That's what most people are doing.

33:22Because you can either say there's no reason or there's a reason that's bigger than us. Neither of those are particularly satisfactory. So if you're looking for a reason that's outside of us, inherently that means it's difficult to prove. And if you're saying, well, it's nothing, it's just arbitrary fluctuations in, you know, fucking matter coming together. That's also pretty unsatisfactory. So I don't know why. I mean, humans are always personifying shit, right? We're always trying to put some sort of a narrative together. That's why the ancients would look up at the sky and they'd see thunder and it would be the gods fighting.

33:56well obviously because that makes way more sense than this microscopic interaction of clouds and electrons and fucking you know the lightning coming down to the earth why would you you wouldn't go to that you would go to something that suits you which is story and narrative and mythology and and shit so we're always trying to explain things away with story why are we here that's good stop it stop it okay i'm sweating i'm sweating in this outfit it's too hot it's too hot it's not breathable they haven't made these things breathable you look very comfortable actually where do you think let's say you would have been born uh 5 000 years ago 10 000 years ago how do you think you what do you who do you think you would have been do you think you'd be the same guy do you think you'd be so different you'd be unrecognizable to your current self?

34:49I think it would be difficult to be anything like the sort of guys that we are 5 ,000 years ago. There wasn't much room. Too much autoimmune conditions going on as well. You'd be wiped out. Well, I also wouldn't live in a moldy house, you know, and COVID and the vaccines wouldn't have been around. So I would have fucking escaped that.

35:08I think I'm at least a little bit fortunate that I would have been able to, did a good bit of sport that might have held me together. I mean, probably dead in childbirth, mate. That's just like everyone else, just like every other person, except for the small number that made it to five years old. Well, I once ran the numbers that if you had every single human being to ever exist, so everybody alive right now and everybody that ever existed. So assume that they're brought back on their final day as they go okay i think the average age of the room's about 14 so it means that assuming you're over the age of 14 15 okay you're already one of the oldest people to ever exist i find that so strange when you go through history and you're like how old certain people people were i think we discussed it before that the um the look as the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force were bombing our grandparents and great-grandparents.

36:12They were 27, right? But the RAF that fought them off, the average age was 21, which means that, and you know how averages work. There's a few Gordons in there that are 37 in the RAF that are bringing it up. And the life expectancy was two weeks when you signed up initially. well there's that sketch in blackadder do you remember where he joins the air force it's in blackadder it goes over the top from world war one and i think it was even less time because that was imagine that when you you know the wright brothers when were planes invented uh it would have been late 1800s early 1900s is when it's a pretty much turn of the century yeah okay and within the space of 14 years you've got something that's fucking battle ready bro this thing just flew this thing just flew and nobody believed and now you're telling me that i'm gonna the red baron with his triple stacked wings like i told you so in the book the splendor in the vial which is an incredible book he talks about how lingerie sales went up significantly during the world war ii bombings sorry no it's the wrong way around laundry sales went down significantly during World War II bombings, but casual relationships went up significantly.

37:34Why? I guess the theory would be, don't have time to go shopping for lingerie, or don't even care how I think that I look when I might not be here tomorrow.

37:49People having ugly sex whilst being bombed, that's your theory. Yeah. It might be true, but what would that be 5 ,000 years ago? Or even in World War II, if, for example, you was trying to have the maximum impact on World War II that you could have, just based off your personality type, your archetype, where do you think they would have put you? I would have probably been pretty good at one of the people pushing the troops around on the board, helping feed up to some commander person at the top. That could be good. not bad as an operator. I quite like operating. I said before, if I didn't have this career, I'd quite like to be an air traffic controller.

38:31I think that'd be pretty fun. Why? I don't know. I just, do you not think it'd be fun to do that? Like air traffic control, very sort of rigid and strict operational guidelines. It's quite intense. It's, but, but you know, you, you know that you've got it under control. I think that'd be, that'd be, that'd be a rush. That'd be pretty fun. Consequences if you have a bad day. Yeah, of course. But that adds, that adds some value. You know what I mean? Uh, yeah, I think 5 ,000 years ago, probably dead in childbirth. If not, uh, I would be breeder. Breeder. I'd be a breeder. What do you mean? I'd be, I'd be doing the breeding.

39:08Well, like just. Breeding. Okay. But what, why would you, why would you be the breeder versus all the other eligible mates that are trying to breed? Better at breeding. Okay. Based off zero children that you've had so far, what do you mean? That's correct. That's correct. it's correct i'd be i'd be the i'd be the the lead breeder okay the leader breeder the leader of the breeders correct wow um what about you interesting because i thought that you'd have said that i i i think i would have been um some kind of pseudoscientist alchemist you'd have been burned at the fucking yeah yeah yeah wizard yeah i would have been um either caught jester or pseudoscientist i could have seen you as a druid i could see you as a druid kind of like what you i think it's a little bit like what you're talking about he's basically trying to do tech before tech exists yes yes he's like mixing herbs and stuff but the dyspraxia would actually cause a massive error here yes your ability to measure shit forgetting things you would definitely kill an entire tribe that'd be a nightmare yeah that would go badly uh speaking of stuff that you haven't seen before a cow has been filmed using tools for the first time ever Stunning scientists Tools Tools The first ever known example Of a multi-purpose tool Used by a cow Was reported With a brown Swiss Named Veronica Using both ends of a broom To scratch her own back And underside Nice cow It's a slow news day It was a slow news day here Wasn't it?

40:35Brown Swiss mate

40:39Now she uses the smooth bit When she's got to do Her delicate underparts Wow I was thinking about this when I watched it the first time and now look at this so she's used the smooth bit and now she's going to she's going to use the scratchy bit to get up there multi-use and then drops it I was thinking about this the physiology of a cow highly inefficient if you've got an itch physiology of a dog actually but I think dogs are pretty bendy You know, they can scratch themselves quite easily. Cow, you're screwed. And then you've got a hoof. How satisfying is a hoof for scratching? Not very. It's the famous anecdote that you can take a cow upstairs, but you can't take a cow downstairs.

41:27And there's this old British joke of, which farmer found that out the rock the hard way?

41:38Is that true? Yeah, you can take a cow upstairs, but because of its joints, you can't take it downstairs. You can't take a cow downstairs because of its joints. I always think that when I see, is it emus, I think, and their knees go backwards. Like our knees bend forwards. If we were to squat down, our knees bend forwards. Their knees go the other way. Oh, wow. Okay. Cows can walk upstairs fairly well, but walking downstairs is a different story. The main issue comes down to anatomy and perception. The cow has knee and leg joints that don't bend easily in a way that supports controlled downward stepping.

42:15The weight distribution cows carry a lot of weight toward the front of their bodies, making descending steep steps risky and unstable. Depth perception. They have poor perception for vertical drops, so stairs can look like a confusing or even dangerous surface. An instinct is prey animals they're cautious about terrain that could trap or trip them. So while a cow can technically go downstairs, in some situations, especially shallow ones. They usually avoid it and often need guidance or special ramps instead. Wow. You know, keeping on the cow theme, a cow's stomach is called the rumen. A few different mammals have it where they have like six to seven different stomachs inside of it.

42:57And the way a cow eats, you'll see it in a field, it'll be grazing. And it's just constantly grazing all day long. And essentially what it's doing is grazing - It's like you with carbonated beverages. It's like me with carbonated beverages, where it's grazing, regurgitating it, then grazing on it again, swallowing it, regurgitating it, and it's this loop from the root. And so it goes from mouth to one, then mouth to one to two, then mouth to one to two to three. I don't know if it goes in the sequential order, but it goes through its stomachs, regurgitates it, and through like that, which is why when you see a cow in a field, it's constantly chewing.

43:34and then - But you don't realize - If it's not putting new food in, that's old food. It's old food. And does it for a process of up to six to seven hours, which is where the word rumination comes from. So when a human being loops on the same thoughts, it's the process from a cow. What do you think about the rumination, retard maxing, great men of history didn't think too much? Yeah, introspection. What do you think of that? It seems like one giant test of the difference between the words. If you say rumination, I think everybody agrees that rumination for the most part is mainly negative. But if you say introspection, that's when it gets into this.

44:19You know what it is? That introspection debate is the current version of the blue and gold dress. It's like that where some people imply introspection that they're meaning the word rumination, where other people imply the word introspection that they're using some kind of form of clear thinking or reflecting to take action. And it's just one giant game of semantics. But how do you get around that? Because it's always hard unless someone's going to define something, unless somebody on one side is going to define it and no one's defining the terms. And you always, if you can try and win an argument on the internet, you're always going to straw man what the other person's saying, always.

44:59Which means that you're going to say, great men of history didn't spend their time worrying about their problems and overthinking things. You go, no, no, no, I don't mean that. I don't mean ruminating. I mean, reflecting, thinking, improving, acting in a loop, like an OODA loop type thing. But the response will never get that the conversation is never allowed to have enough nuance to be able to get there. What do you think? Bias for action is a big deal. Yes, 100%. Having a bias for action and it's the advice hyper responders thing where most people, on average, most people probably need to think more.

45:40They probably need to be less rash, more rational, more considered and considerate when they go and do stuff. But there's a small cohort of people, mostly the sort of people that listen to podcasts like San Rose or this one, who don't need to hear that. They actually need to hear the opposite message. They actually need to be doing retard maxing, which is why retard maxing, I think, has taken off. because it's a countervailing force to people who already thought too much, were told that thinking and doing your journaling and having a Ali Abdaal 90-day sprint broken down into daily actions and 25-minute Pomodoro blocks, that doing that, that's the way to get to success.

46:25But that already played into the thing that they had a predisposition for. What they didn't have a predisposition for was a bias for action. So if there was some way of being able to gift those people. But the problem is you're getting people who overthink and have a tendency to overthink to work against their nature, which is always going to be hard. But lots of the people, I look at Dana White, I do not see a person who has a problem with overthinking. I look at Marc Andreessen, I don't see a person who has a problem for overthinking. But if you were to say that advice to someone else, it's going to go down very differently.

46:59So the whole advice hyper-responders, advice doesn't land evenly. It distributes unevenly to the people who, me too, right? Guys that were told don't be pushy with women that were already blowing through boundaries, they just disregarded it. They already disregarded the boundaries. The guys that were already a bit nervous and worried about approaching a woman, they were the ones that took it to heart. So it just makes you more of what you are. A lot of the time advice makes you more of what you are. I think it comes down to you need new words. So I like low agency thinking and high agency thinking.

47:36So the clear difference between the two is, is one getting you closer to some form of action? Are you progressing or are you ruminating? I think a clear issue with rumination or overthinking is when three things, one, most of your thoughts aren't new, they're repetitive, they're cycling. Two, most of your thoughts aren't useful. They're not looking at ways you might fix this problem. They're just replaying a certain scenario again and again and again. And three, the most important thought is that most of them aren't even true. Most of our thoughts that we think aren't even true. So the difference between, I would say, when you're in low agency thinking is new, useful, true.

48:23And if you can have new thoughts, if you can find useful thoughts and you can find true thoughts, that's the difference. That's so good. That's really great. I guess. How do you get around the bias for action, even if you've managed to do that? Or do you think that having new, useful, and true thoughts tends to encourage you to act? Exactly. Low agency thinking will lead to more thinking, more rumination by definition, and high agency thinking will soon. It's almost like the Claude or ChatGPT thinking time. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Boom, and a head. However, I think we've discussed this, that net-net, which I know you love the term net-net.

49:06Yeah. Net-net, I would, you'd rather be a bit of a idiot than a bit of a coward. What's the difference? I'd rather be make an error with high conviction than make an error with low conviction. And again, you've got a huge generalization there where it's kind of Charlie Munger's advice of don't race trains, don't get involved in AIDS situations. There's the obvious nuance there, but it's better to be quick to act whilst thinking through some initial risks and looking at the downside and moving fast than just sitting there for years without ever finding out. Type one, type two decisions. Yeah. The reason that that's interesting is most people who probably are making decisions that are too rash aren't that fussed about listening to nerdy podcasts, right?

50:00So you almost don't need to caveat it. If you're the sort of person that's reading Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power and is thinking about what time they get up and tracking the whoop scores. You've already pre-selected. You're not going to be in the retard maxing bin by nature. You're going to have to learn retard maxing through discipline, through trial. And yeah, I guess that means that if it's the sort of thing that you're listening to, it's probably the sort of thing that you need to hear because the platform that you're listening to it on is exactly the sort of one that the sort of person who needs to hear it would listen to.

50:40Does that make sense? Yeah.

50:46Where do you think you need to do it more? Fucking everywhere, dude. Yeah? Jesus Christ. Yeah. I mean, horrendous. Horrendous overthinking. I mean, I've got a good bias for action, but it takes too long. My confidence threshold, if I could get in and adjust the settings in my brain. Have a shit yourself and have a stroke. that's actually that's a great idea yeah if i was to go if i was to go and have a really really really hard shit which i had the other day you couldn't believe that i had a shit in the middle of the day yeah it was impressive that was the most surprising thing of all of the things that i've done since we've lived together just having a shit at 1 p.m to you was four it wasn't it was like four okay well i mean look i'm a i'm an equal opportunity shitter and i'm desperately trying to have a fucking aneurysm so i acquire savant syndrome my latent so you finally become an artist if hitler if hitler had this if hitler had had a hard enough significant artwork being produced if hitler had had a hard enough shit we wouldn't have had world war ii yeah if hitler had shat himself more and more aggressively yeah yeah but the pussy numbers do you know i mean he's got the face yeah he's got a face wasn't there a guy there was a guy who laughed so hard at a guy missing a football kick recently that it caused him to have an aneurysm in his brain or i think he had a stroke.

52:00And then when they went in to find, to work out what the fuck had gone on, there was this huge tumor that was going to kill him. And he had that done. And it was because some guy had missed kicking the ball in a NFL game. And a fan of the opposing team laughed so hard that he basically did kind of similar to the savant syndrome thing. Just had a full-on a full-on explosion, head explosion. Most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit. But what if I told you there was a solution? Something that identifies low T faster than a high school bully and it won't cost you all your lunch money.

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53:09That's$1 a day to stop guessing with your health and start knowing. And right now, you can get$25 off, bringing it down to$340. So get the exact same blood panels that I do and save$25 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com slash modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom at checkout. Are you not got into American sports since moving here? Fan of Rangers. I'm a fan of the Texas Rangers, dude. I thought you meant Rangers FC. No, fan of Texas Rangers. So baseball, became a fan of the Rangers. They won the World Series. First year that was a fan. I was like, this is easy.

53:44This is brilliant. Following year, not as successful. I have got into baseball. Baseball is the closest proxy for cricket. Huh. But that's it. I watched the Super Bowl. We watched the Super Bowl. That was good. What else? Basketball's all right, but highlights, which is strange because baseball and American football are much slower moving sports. Hmm. And even though basketball's a much faster moving sport, generally. I think per minute of broadcast. How long's an NFL game? Like 80 minutes? No, it's an hour. An hour. 15 minute quarters. An hour. I think the total amount of playtime typical in a one hour NFL game, I swear it's less than 10 minutes.

54:31Damn. Of action. It's a sport entirely reverse engineered to allow adverts to be played. The American dream. It is. Well, I mean, that's the most sort of American thing that you can do, right? To flog a drain cleaner. In between. It's a fucking Ponzi scheme. This country's sport system is a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, it's rough. I've struggled to get into American sports so far. And you realize that Yusef, I tried to sell him on getting into sports because wherever you are in the world, you can have a conversation with a taxi driver. Apart from America, I can go anywhere in the world. And if football comes up, if I say I'm from Manchester, we can immediately have a great conversation for about 20 minutes.

55:18but we're in American sports. It's just slightly, it just, none of it makes sense the same way British sports makes sense. What is it? The premier football league. Is that technically what it's called? Premier league. Right. But I swear that people, I swear that when I meet people in America, they say, Oh, who'd you support in the PFL? Yeah. I'm like, Hey. They might call it the EPL. EPL. That's it. Yeah. Who'd you support in the EPL? And it took a little while for me to go what are you talking to tommy robinson edl uh i just i that's not that we don't speak like that in england no we don't talk about the ecc the english cricket or ecb english cricket board we're not talking about stuff like that but yeah i i like baseball baseball's good it's fucking slow it's really slow have you heard hurry up dude have you heard of uh ali dyer no british football ali abdahl no he's no relation to ali abdahl unfortunately so ali dyer was a southampton player how he joined was ever heard of george weah so george weah was like the african player of the year i think he briefly played for manchester city back in the day but um he was one of the best players of all like certainly from africa but one of the best players in the world at the time he might have even won a Ballon d 'Or and Graham Souness was the manager of Southampton and he gets a phone call from George Weyer saying there's this new guy who has just played the African Cup of Nations he's like incredible I think he even claims it's his nephew because you've got to give him a trial for Southampton so Ali Dyer turns up at Southampton it's like one training session before the game and they have such a small squad at the minute that they just put him on the bench um one of the key southampton players gets injured they sub ali dyer on and it's the worst like debut of all time this guy's fucking terrible so much so and this almost never happens in football he gets subbed on and then subbed off which is extremely rare yeah and he never played for southampton ever again and then when they begin to investigate it it wasn't george wayer on the phone it was him this guy used to play like sunday league so he managed to blag his way to play in premier league football so there's always a chant now with the southampton fans of ali dyer he's a liar he's a liar so so he just blagged his way in jamie vardy's got a documentary coming out i wonder i saw that this morning i wanted to show you i want to watch that jamie vardy i don't even think started playing professional level until the age of 25 and he's just the thing is you almost need like so much british knowledge to understand who jamie vardy is couched inside of a very deep and spirally community and where does he come from and what does it mean and what's his background unless you've been to magaluf zante he is he is jamie vardy is magaluf if magaluf coalesced into human form it would be jamie he would take that as a compliment like he i think he would he fucking loves it yeah but he uh he ends up making it pro at such a later age in life but just plays like a conference league player so he even in the documentary the trailer i watched he talks about no striker tackles but this guy tackles or he's drinking like two red balls before the game he's just constantly he almost quit at like 27 28 after making it pro because he wanted to go and do a season in zante he wanted to go and be a full-time nightclub promoter it's a an alluring industry to get into and then because he was in yeah some bullshit sunday league team yeah and then got picked up by leicester and then went on to have the most insane the first wins wins the premier league with leicester which is it's the biggest you'd argue it's one of the biggest sporting achievements of all time it's one of the biggest underdog stories and a lot of that was because of him and his performance he he broke the premier league record for the most amount of consecutive goals like i think it was 12 games 12 or 13 he scored 13 games in a row right which is insane whilst like eating monster munch and just being an absolute chapter yeah i that's another thing that i think americans really struggle with which is there are some very good niche british snacks that you can't get over here because there's American aisles, American candy aisles now at Tesco's in the UK.

59:56So if you go and look and you'll be able to get Lucky Charms and Cheetos with all of the seed oils and the Red 40 and stuff included. But you can't come over here and get Jaffa Cakes and Jammie Dodgers and Cadbury's Fingers and stuff like that. And I think we're missing out. That would be, I think that would be a gift that we could give back to America. I wrote this thing recently about the Roman Empire. I'll relate it back to Britain. But I think we've spoken about this previously, but I did a research for this piece called Don't Wait for the News. And essentially, the Roman Empire, do you know when the Roman Empire fell?

1:00:36400-ish. So the thing with the Roman Empire falling, it's up for debate. Even historians debate it. But the mainstream historical point of view, which is not the weird niche stuff that you get into, but the mainstream historical point of view is 476 AD that Romulus, who was the founder of Rome, so it's poetic. I think this is why we like that as the ending. Romulus, who was the founder of Rome, then young Romulus, who was in the throne when it ended, got replaced by the barbarian Odessa. So Romulus saw Rome rise and Romulus saw Rome fall. For clarity, it's not the same blow. It's not the same blow.

1:01:15This is over hundreds of years, but that's just the poetry of why they say that day. But if you woke up that day after the Roman empire that we now say has fallen, there was no big announcement. There was no news. The book The Sovereign Individual has this beautiful line, which if the CNN existed during the fall of the Roman empire, the headline would not have been the Roman empire has just fallen. So you have the split of the Roman empire, you have the Eastern Roman empire, and you have the Western Roman empire. The Eastern Roman empire goes on to about 1300 AD. Charlemagne becomes the emperor.

1:01:55He calls himself the emperor of Rome in about 700 to 800 AD. So the Eastern Empire falls. Voltaire famously says in 1700 that the entity that calls itself the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. So that was in 1700s. It was only in the 1800s when Napoleon was invading, did, I think it's francis ii dissolve the roman empire so if you would have waited to be told that the roman empire was over it would have been your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchild.

1:02:5448 generations. It would have taken. So I kind of wrote this piece. And then I said that this story terrified me because when today's biggest empire falls, nobody's going to tell me. Nobody's going to tell me that the British empire is no longer the most powerful empire in the world. We already know that. Obviously it is right now. Obviously the British empire is the most powerful empire that exists right now. I can't tell if you - But what I don't want to have happen is for me to be the one that lives in denial long after the event. I think you already are. The rise of Gary Stevenson. Well, Gary Stevenson will be like the 1800s.

1:03:35That's when Gary's in office with the fucking tucked in, tucked in like this. That'll be when it's like the British empire we all admit the british empire is over yeah but it's funny so i posted that as a like a trolling like kind of sarcasm statement of like oh lettering about the history of the roman empire whilst pretending that i still think the british empire is the biggest thing and there was quite a few people in the comment section who was going along with the the humor of it but the amount of emails i got of people saying you do realize the british empire is no longer the most powerful thing and i was like let's just go full it fully in with the joke i'm like why are you still talking English.

1:04:10I just kept going back and forth with them that the British Empire. But you know what? That's actually the saddest thing. I know we don't really do geopolitics on the show, but the saddest thing of the Ayatollah dying is that when he used to address the world stage, he would often talk about Great Britain as if we're still the most powerful country in the world or one of the leading countries. So that's the one thing I did appreciate about the ayatollah of a rant that it's something that completely blows my mind that i don't understand people who regularly get into small back and forth spats in the comment section james does this all the time who smith yeah all the time mate he loves it he loves it he just loves winding people up but i i just i i sometimes will post something on twitter and there'll be all of these replies and all of these people.

1:05:06And weeks later, there'll be two people still going at it. It's fucking infuriating because it's in my notifications. It's in my notifications. It's like, do you know what it's like? It's like having two neighbors that are having an argument with each other, but you live in the house that's in between. I'm like, can you not go over to his house directly because at the moment i'm caught in this crossfire unbelievable have you ever seen the meme it's one of my favorite ones uh where it's a guy on his deathbed and he's kind of like lay there like just about to die and he's got like the speech bubble for like the brawny wear deathbed regrets and it's just i wish i spent more time arguing with people on the internet yeah But yeah, I mean, I rarely ever do the spats, but when it's pure, oh, this person doesn't understand the joke, that's fun.

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1:07:10So I'm just thinking about what's the longest ever internet argument is is still ongoing it's something from 2008 that's still going in a weird forum somewhere mum's net or whatever uh there are two different records people people usually mean when talking about the longest traffic jam ever longest by duration the most infamous was the china national highway 110 traffic jam in 2010 stretched about 100 kilometers near beijing and lasted 12 days from august 14th to august 26th some drives reportedly moved only one kilometer per day It was caused by a mix of roadworks, overloaded coal trucks, and traffic volumes far beyond the highway's design capacity.

1:07:48The longest by distance, Guinness World Records listed traffic jam in France in 1980 as the longest by length. It was a 109-mile backup between Lyon and Paris caused by holiday traffic and bad weather. It's also a bizarre contender by sheer scale after German reunification in 1990. Reports described around 18 million cars clogging routes at the east-west German border. Do you imagine living through that reunification? You'd been part of the same country, but essentially different universes. Jesus. If you like traffic data, I've got some, go on. Cracking traffic data. Go on. So, in the 1960s, here's a little question.

1:08:32Okay. Can you guess where the most deadly roads in Europe were? Isle of Man? No. In the UK? No. Right. We're not in Europe. Brexit means Brexit, Christopher. It does. That's true. Ireland? No. Okay. I was trying to own something close to home there. So it's Belgium. Surprising location of Belgium. Okay. So they had a policy which was known as the 18th birthday party gift by Belgians. So here's how it'd work. you'd turn 18 walk downstairs parents would do happy birthday can you do it in belgium no can you no um happy birthday to you um they'd then take you down to the car dealership you'd get a little birthday plaque from them they'd say happy birthday as well you'd pay for a car show you'd get a buff, you'd get the car, and you'd attempt to drive away.

1:09:34So Belgium had no driving test policies at all. So you could just full-on libertarian style, just attempt to drive away. And the 18th 30-party gift in Belgium was the number one killer of Belgians between the age of 18 to 24. So Belgium had the most deadliest roads in Europe, certainly per capita. So you know what the government did to try and fix it? They said, right, we're putting an end to this. In 1969, they said, before you can drive, you have to do a mandatory theory test. Because if you go and study and then drive, at least we'll prevent these mistakes. So what happens is 1969, there's this cutoff.

1:10:17Everybody from then onwards has to do theory tests. And this Belgian transport official releases the results. And he goes, it appears to be the case that the accident rate amongst the theory drivers is higher than the ones who never got theory tested at all. So the death rate went up by 32 % with the theory test drivers. Why? One theory is that they have this kind of false sense of confidence going into the roads that at least the ones that knew they couldn't drive didn't have. But the Belgian traffic stuff goes on for years. There's iconic cartoons of how dangerous the roads are in Belgium. And there's a great thing in the 80s where I think Jean-Luc de Haan could have butchered that, but we'll go with it.

1:11:10Jean-Luc de Haan, he becomes transport minister. This man ends up becoming PM, but just listen to the job that he did, transport minister. So he one day gets into office to fix the Belgium road. So he's done all this campaigning about the issues around it. He gets clocked going, I think it's like 70 and a 40. And he does the beautiful politician's answer where he says, it wasn't me, it was my daughter. And then they quickly find out it wasn't his daughter, it was him in the car. So he goes, okay, I'll hire a chauffeur from now on. So I'll only get driven by a chauffeur. So he starts with a chauffeur and a journalist one day tailgates the chauffeur.

1:11:52The chauffeur commits 12 driving offenses in 30 minutes. And this is one of the best political statements of all time. When the transport ministry was pressed, well, are you going to fire the chauffeur now? The lady who's the spokeswoman, just a rare moment of honesty. And she said, if we fired everybody in the Belgian transport ministry that was committing traffic offenses, there'd be nobody left here to work. So that's some cracking traffic data. Well, I know that Egypt's got the, I think it's the easiest driving test in the world, which is crazy because I've done the one in America and that explains a lot about American drivers.

1:12:28It's not, the British one's kind of hard. You must know what, what do you reckon the failure rate among your friends was for the first time test? Did you pass first time? I passed first time. You catch me as a first timer. Yeah. Well, yeah, I know. Fucking Hermione Granger over here. But then you look at somewhere like Bali, and these guys are essentially surgeons with scooters. And they're able to thread this needle. I remember the first time I went to, because I'd spent time in Thailand, but I'd gone up north. And up north in Pai, really, really close to the northern border, there's no traffic.

1:13:03So yeah, people are riding around a family of five on a single scooter and there's a goat on the back and stuff. But there wasn't any of that crazy weaving shit. And I flew back through Chiang Mai and it was insane. And you've been to Thailand. Yes. And you've seen the roads, right? In Bangkok and Chiang Mai. It is out of this world. It is fucking insane, just how chaotic it is. And it really, they kind of scared me a bit. Like, holy fuck, it's just so dangerous. I was in a car, so I'm going to be okay, I guess, unless someone smashes through the window. But it made me kind of fearful for all of the other people.

1:13:43This is your day-to-day. You're arriving at work. That's your commute. Right, now let's sit down and go over the quarterly earnings report, thinking, I'm sorry, my adrenaline is just as if I've been in a fight with a bear. But I wonder, with time, do you adapt to it? I think where it doesn't get enough criticism for their roads is everybody talks about how safe Dubai is, and it's this hub of safety. The roads in Dubai, I think you're four times more likely to die on than the British roads. And one of the explanations - Because of the drivers or because of the roads? Definitely the design of the roads are peculiar and not optimal.

1:14:23But I have a theory that there where you have 90 % expats from all over the world, that there's actually no cultural grounding on the roads. Because you've got one guy from Pakistan here. One person thinks that you should let you out. One guy from the UK here. One guy from France here. One guy from Germany here. One lady from Uzbekistan here. A lady from Uzbekistan is not allowed to drive, but go on. I think you can drive in Uzbekistan. I don't know. um but as a result there's no cultural crossover where for example if i'm driving in the uk i know that if a guy gets really angry beeping his horn at me it's like it's what it is like it's chill whereas i also wouldn't do that i would know i'm not a big horn beeper anyway but i would be way more like to beep in the uk than i would here everyone's got guns yes so it's just understanding the lay of the land but when you're in somewhere like dubai where it's just there's no cultural uh attitudes on the roads it's just it's too much of a melting pot and you need consensus because that's the only way that it works i told you about the the guy who uh i was in a uber it was like a this was in dubai and it's like a sprinter van and i'm in the back of the sprinter van and on the roads and there's like loads of people in the uber on the way to a steak restaurant and i'm just kind of lonely looking out the window and i kind of look at the driver and he's on his phone and he goes off the the maps for a second i go what's he going on and i look at it and he's on trading 212 trading crypto wasn't he and he was if he was shorting i think the japanese yen as he's going 70 on the highway and i so i shouted at him i go i go stop right now when this you know this is the most british thing ever i thought might not say don't want to say anything i'll risk yeah i don't want to make a fuss if i shouldn't make if i shouldn't make a fuss if i die because some guys trying to short the japanese yen so i shouted at him and he stopped i sat looking out the window again come back he's doing it against the pound yeah the issue was my issue wasn't the currency my issue wasn't the currency it wasn't the trade it was the fact that you were doing the trading i'm here for the self-driving cars so you can do as much trading as you want yeah yeah yeah fuck yeah alright I appreciate you man until next time so much fun see you everybody Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much please for the love of everything good in this world stop with Mint you can get premium wireless for just$15 a month of course if you enjoy overpaying no judgements but that's weird okay one judgement anyway give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan, equivalent to$15 per month required.

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