E446 Malcolm Gladwell

40:06They coached youth sports, girls sports. And they were talking about how like a lot of people are now quitting coaching. Coaching has become really hard. And I said, well, why has it become hard? Do you still like, does coaching make you feel good? Absolutely. Love it. Greatest thing I ever did. Do the kids you coach like being coached by you? Totally. I'm, you know, I'm friends with them for years later. or it's some of the most important experiences of my life are like, so why don't, why aren't people quitting coaching? They're like, oh, it's the parents. Parents are driving us crazy, torturing us, screaming at us, calling us at all hours.

40:46So it's like they have the personal thing. They love it. They have the immediate feedback and love from the kids they're coaching. But it's the outside world of the parents on the sidelines who are just making them miserable. Yeah. Right? You got two of three and two of three is not enough. So when I hear what you're talking about, that's what you're saying, a version of, you can have a job that you like, but you're talking about the second and third level is not there. The company isn't giving you, isn't recognizing what you're doing. And the broader world, you're anonymous to the broader world.

41:21There isn't. The whole point about being a craftsman in the 19th century sense of that word was that the world recognizes that you had a certain level of expertise. you made the table and every time someone saw this beautiful table like ricky go get your table bring it out here and everybody like he did yeah they understood they were giving you understood they were an outsider was giving you recognition for something um that was done with pride and and with with skill yeah um and that you can't like it's not enough for just you to appreciate what you're doing is a value that's interesting and i think yeah a lot of people probably don't know that and so i think a lot of people probably wonder why am i not feeling some fulfillment why am i not feeling this or that you know and i think but yeah i think that's one of the things that lit like that leads people to a lot of unhappiness we were talking about with like school shootings what leads some of these people to get so caught up and i think for one if you don't have any purpose through like a job through a family or um or have like love in your life like something that gives you purpose every day, then you're really at the whims of social media or anything which are tailored towards, if you start looking at something bad, it just gives you more bad.

42:35It's almost like a Pandora's box in a way. Yeah. But yeah, we just had been talking a lot about purpose. Yeah. I think with the school shooting thing is interesting because what's going on there is that there is now a kind of, it's funny, I'm doing in this season of my podcast, I'm doing a whole thing about gun violence. So I've been thinking a lot about this. And we have an episode where we talk a lot about mass shootings. And I think the psychology of that is really going back to the idea of those three layers of that there's a world now, a kind of closed culture online of people who are unhealthily obsessed, pathologically obsessed, with this kind of violence.

43:25And there is no, they've been cut off from the third layer. They're not checking their ideas against what the broader world looks like. They're totally enclosed in this sealed online culture where the only feedback they're getting are from people who think exactly like they do and who feed their kind of obsessive fascination and addiction for this kind of weird violence. Like if you look at people who have been involved in mass shootings, they're immersed in that world. They know, they can talk obsessively for hours about like the kids who did the Columbine shooting. Oh yeah, there's bootleg manifestos.

44:09There's people getting like, yeah, have you heard this manifest? Have you read this copy of it? It's his own little world, hermetically seen world. And like, there's no connection to the kind of broader society. And so they come to think of, they come to think, they're getting all of their validation from that first layer, right? That's what sort of, and so, you know, breaking, trying to solve this puzzle of mass shootings requires at some point to getting access to those kids and kind of breaking them out of that closed universe. Yeah, and the interesting thing about it, like with online and living in online societies now, It's like you can find whatever universe you start to create, right, whether it's good or bad, that there's this other energy from the other side.

44:57It's almost like the mirror where you used to look in a mirror and you would get like an earnest reflection of yourself. It would be based on – sometimes you might not see yourself clearly because of how you thought about yourself or how you felt about yourself. But at least the mirror was going to give you – it was an honest reflection. There was no ability to change the mirror unless you were in a fun house or something. the mirror was the mirror but now the mirror has the ability to kind of adjust the way you look at yourself or to give you reflections that make you think the same things over and over again yeah like with um algorithms and that sort of thing with social media you know because now we're not even the mirror is just our phone we're looking in there for so much validation yeah um it's really weird when the mirror now has the path it's like that's freaking really scary because if you get somebody in a dark hole who doesn't have a strong connection to our purpose in the world where they feel some one of the senses of value from themselves from other people were the other two from the internal your immediate world of people who share your community and then the broader world and then yeah yeah if you're not feeling some of that and you're just in your internal just in this kind of a closed space or even in a a space that the mirror starts to design that's really, if you get into the dark arts a little bit and it's only showing you dark art and everybody in there is a dark artist and you're like, damn, this is the world.

46:24That's real scary, man. One of the things, this may seem like a stretch, but I thought about this a lot.

46:32I'm old enough to remember when television was kind of a mass cultural form. So when I was in my 20s every single person i knew watched melrose place everyone i knew oh yeah i could i could go and if i saw someone who was 25 years old anywhere in north america i could start a conversation about melrose place and they would be able to even if they didn't watch it it was in the air right right same thing i remember yeah we watched 90210 just to get a similar so it was like kind of the A little bit of the younger but sister or brother show. Exactly. That had the same function. But there's tons of television shows in that era.

47:17I remember walking down a street in Manhattan when the series finale of Seinfeld aired. Wow. And the city was as quiet. It was like the restaurants were empty. Everybody was home watching Seinfeld. That is impossible today. Yeah. Would never happen. So right then, back then, everyone had the shared experience of a certain set of stories. Seinfeld. And I don't think, we did this episode two seasons ago or last season on Will and Grace. I think Will and Grace was the last show that had that kind of shared experience. And that's why the show was so powerful in changing attitudes about gay marriage and all kinds of things.

48:08and the idea that you've the only thing that's left now kind of is the super bowl but even that not really the oscars don't have the same shared experience power they used to reviled i don't reviled means anything yeah i don't know so there's nothing i don't can you have a society that works if there are no broad shared experiences um i don't know i that worry that's the sort of thing that worries me a lot it's weird to think of it in terms of to think of like 90210 is something that brought us all together but it makes perfect sense i can relate to that when you say that yeah because it used to be i mean you know like there was a a couple years ago on joe rogan everybody got it really into when that had i think it was sebastian younger book or something it was about um oh uh tribe oh yeah yeah with that book what was that book called i can't remember i know what you're talking about i think it was called zach you know what it was okay into the wild wasn't into the wild no this was the one where it was about how in tribes yeah when we're in smaller groups it all made sense the amount of connectivity we're supposed to have the checks and balances human wise and even when you're saying the shared experience like if a lion came into the village yeah or if somebody came in selling some new wares everybody in the village knew about it that person would leave you could all talk about it was a share like there was all there were some shared everybody had the same shared experiences so you all had this you all had this template on what you were kind of connecting about you know things to talk about yeah but i've never i never thought about that yeah there's there's not that many anymore so you kind of all wander around in your own little world and it starts to feel that way yeah yeah and it's kind of scary um i mean and also it means it's also we were talking about lofty terms on some level it's less fun it was kind of fun when the feeling it's so much more fun to watch a television show and it's funny people under the age of 30 have no or maybe 25 they've never felt it breaks my heart they've never felt this feeling there was that feeling you had you're watching the show and you understand it not only is everyone you know watching that same show they're watching that same show at the same time it's amazing it's like it felt like it's the same feeling you have when you watch sports that's part of the power you know that everyone's watching it at the same time but this was the idea that a story a drama on thing was you were watching it like you're watching sports oh right yeah you would call when it was over you call your friends and you say could you believe just what happened to like yes dude i remember there'd be domestic disputes right in on our street right and they would break them up five minutes before like in living color came on or like some great tv show like look guys we know you guys need to you know we know there's like two spouses beating the shit out of each other right here color is a perfect example of a show like this where yeah we're like you had to go watch the segments member had to what you you had to and like everyone i know discovered that show at the same time and it was just like oh my god this is like, who is this guy, Dave Chappelle?

51:16Like, suddenly, Dave Chappelle, you're talking about Dave Chappelle when you, like, go to the office. Oh, you mean the Chappelle show, you mean? No, no, because he was on it. Oh, no, he wasn't on it. No, I'm mixing up. It was the Wyans Brothers. Yeah, yeah. The Wyans Brothers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jim Carrey was on it. Jim Carrey was on that show. Yeah, the Wyans Brothers, and then a bunch of other people were. Who was on that show, Zach? You got it? Yeah, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, all the wayans bro they get david allen greer david allen greer yeah uh yep david allen greer was so good that's right jamie jamie fox was on that show that's right jennifer lopez was a dancer she was a dancer on it that's right she was one of the fly girls but dude i remember there would literally be the cops would be there there would be a husband and wife fist fighting in the street outside of our apartment and they'd be like look guys it's time to we gotta wrap this up You know what I'm saying?

52:12902010 is going to be on in five minutes. So either get your last punches in. Let's agree we're not going to press charges. The cops will take the liquor, and everybody needs to go sit in front of their TVs. Dude, I remember getting to the television. If you got the television before, if you had siblings, you would get there, and you would get the front position in front of the TV. And you fucking were the king, right? And I remember rubbing my legs like this as hard as I could, like almost trying to create as much energy on my side of the television for whatever program was going to be presented right there you know and my siblings would try to jockey for position and i was just like i'm gonna get as much of the information i'm gonna be i am right here to be transmitted to you know like this angle a little bit off center of the tv you might miss because remember back then because the tv's tiny oh yeah i mean that thing was 11 or 12 inches dude i remember we would draw extra tv on the outside of it like it didn't even make any sense because it didn't get any transmission but uh but there was something about that that shared experience we would all go outside then you're right we would impersonate the characters from an in living color yeah we would act out the different things there was a lot more shared experience um morgan and morgan they are america's largest injury law firm they have over 100 offices nationwide and more than 800 lawyers.

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56:45it's just how things connect and it's nice man it's a nice look at life you know that's what i really thought about uh reading uh thinking talking with strangers yeah was like oh wow this is a lot of neat things that i hadn't really thought about before um it goes into some cases that are really like encapsulated and like yeah the jerry sandusky thing i didn't know that this had happened in there and that the guy didn't really know exactly what he'd heard and if he thought he'd heard a child and a man having sex in a shower why he didn't go in there and shut it down like the whole thing is weird all the ways you behave but don't when you look back at your behavior like that didn't make any sense really now that i'm breaking it down piece by piece yeah um but in the moment it all kind of seemed to flow you know even going back to whenever you talked about like the guy in san antonio when you went back and looked at that footage and at first it all seems one way but then when you look at it piece by piece you're like oh i had this is something totally different.

57:44As we start to get even further from moments that we all have together, right? Like in technology gets, I mean, technology is kind of going so fast. I mean, you and I both had experiences where we've had kind of life without technology and life with technology. What has been like a surprise to you about some of the things maybe that you didn't see coming with technology or um i know it's kind of a broad question but maybe we can just kind of start there yeah uh like did you romanticize it in the early on did you like i didn't understand i didn't understand how much it would encroach on my life like if you had asked me 10 years ago or even five years ago, will I be checking my phone every two minutes?

58:35I would have said, you're nuts. I'm not going to be ruled by my phone. Totally ruled by my phone. Yeah, same. That, like, so I did not, I didn't understand how it would sort of ingratiate itself into, I didn't, something like Twitter, the idea that I would be, I don't spend a huge amount of time on Twitter, but I do. I scroll through. And you're reading two sentences. The idea that I would want to consume so much information in two-sentence form seems crazy to me in retrospect. Like, why? I was someone who grew up reading books, consuming things in 10 ,000-sentence form. Yeah, and now you're reading like a haiku from some crackhead somewhere.

59:24You don't even know. And you're taking it for serious. Yeah, it's like there's a great meme attached to it, and now I form a huge opinion off of it. And then so there are all kinds of like, and the weird way, the other thing that's weird about social media, it took me a long time. I think I'm no longer. In the beginning, it took me a long time to figure out, like, how easy it is to take it personally. So somebody makes a random comment, and you feel it in the beginning. You're injured, and then you think, why am I injured? like there's a couple billion people in the world some random person who i've never met who i will never meet who i don't even know who they are has decided to say something nasty this i'm gonna give you a really dumb example of this i all of my cousins who are all car crazy we used to always they also on you know on canadian thanksgiving would have come to my house upstate and y 'all have thanksgiving canada's oh yeah we have it in october how'd you guys get it though Same way Americans got it.

1:00:26But just because winter starts earlier in Canada, so Thanksgiving's got to be in October. But was it with like the Native Americans and everything? Yeah, it was. Actually, I don't know whether it's explicit. It was just a time. I think there's an English tradition where you give thanks for the harvest. I think the Canadian one comes from that. Yeah, so it makes sense you guys a little earlier then because the winter comes earlier. Yeah, winter coming. But anyway, they would all descend on our house. And we're all car crazy. So everyone would bring their sports cars. And we would put them out on the front lawn, take photos, and then drive them all.

1:01:03And then switch off. It was like an annual tradition we did. And one time I posted a picture on Twitter. And I was like, we're all gathered to drive our muscle cars. And they're not muscle cars. I know what a muscle car is. They're not really muscle cars. I just have said it. And then there were all these nasty comments. about they're not muscle cars i remember my brother read it and he was genuinely he was so hurt he was like why are they being so mean to us we're just driving our cars we're fine it's like there's a period where that's that's where you you don't understand it's an it's an impersonal medium masquerading as a personal medium right that's the thing and it takes a little while for you to wrap your head around the fact that like no this doesn't matter it's a random it matters as little as that you know in the old world that that person said that same thing but you didn't hear it now you hear it and but it's it's just as trivial it didn't matter it's like right right that but we can't correlate it's you're right we can't correlate that yeah it's real interesting because some people probably never recognize that it doesn't matter, right?

1:02:16To some people, that's their life. That's all that matters. Yeah, because so that's, yeah, I think that some part of me, that's worn off for me now, I care less. Totally, same. But I think it's interesting because, yeah, that used to be chatter in the background, like people saying, oh, that's retarded, that's ridiculous, that's crazy, right? Or that's awesome, that's great, what a great idea. But those were things you heard in the periphery you never heard. you never heard it was just the chatter in the distance but now those are things if you want to access the chatter in the distance instead of just having like a somebody that means something to you communicate or getting it an interpretation of something that has from someone that has value you know or getting even uh like um even negative feedback but from someone that you respect you know um you can get those things still but uh and those have value but otherwise you can also tap into all that other shit that doesn't, but it still hurts the same.

1:03:15That's what's interesting is how much it still... It does, yeah. It's a reminder. I think one of the things that we've... And I don't think it's new with social media, but it has always been the case that there are a small number of people who, I don't even know whether it's always deliberate, but who express their personal unhappiness or their confusion or their befuddlement in hostile language. And like I said, a lot of times I don't think they mean to be hostile. It's just how it comes out. A lot of times, you know, people who don't communicate for a living aren't necessarily expert at adequately explaining why they don't like something or their reactions to something.

1:04:09They've always been there. We just never heard their voices. That's sort of what we're getting at. Like most people, if you, I once conducted an experiment where. I responded nicely to people who commented, said nasty things about me on Twitter. and I wanted to see what happened. And what happens when, if they respond again, is they almost invariably back down and you realize that they didn't actually mean, they didn't mean harm to you or they weren't actually angry at you or hostile. They just didn't know how to express, they had a comment they wanted to make that was with an issue they had with what you were saying.

1:04:54They just didn't know how to say it in a way that was kind of socially kind of positive. And if you're nice about it and kind of, I used to call this love bombing, and I'm still a believer in love bombing. So I would love bomb them, and I would just sort of be nice in response. And they would always like calm down, and they would say, yeah, you're right, you're kind of right. I just wondered about this. And you're like, all of a sudden, you're having a conversation with them, right? Yeah. It's very easy to disarm 90 % of critics just by kind of taking them, giving them the opportunity to be nicer about what they're saying.

1:05:33That's a good point. Yeah, I wonder if there's like a thing where your brain just cycles through. Yeah, it's just so easy. Why is it so easy for people, humans, and animals? We don't even know. Animals don't know how to use social media yet. but why is it so easy for humans i love yet it's coming oh yeah i wouldn't be shocked yeah that's gonna be crazy dude when we find out the truth about what some of the animals think because we've been really we've had kind of like a lot of set views on animals for a long time octopus twitter yeah i can't wait for that yeah can i get a piano down here what the fuck do you think I'm doing with all these arms.

1:06:18Um, why is it so easy for us to say something so mean in a place like social media, you know, or to, or to want to, or it's really crazy. Cause you wouldn't really do that in person. Yeah. Yeah. No, you wouldn't do that in person. Um, and yeah, that is, I mean, I mean, you, you wouldn't do that in person because you're scared of the not scared, but you're mindful of the response. You know, the analogy I was thinking about was, I read somewhere, someone was talking about how do kids learn, how do they learn about social interactions? And if you see this, especially with boys, I have an almost two-year-old, though she's a girl, not a boy, but I actually see it a little bit with her.

1:07:07so when they when they touch you they they don't know anything about how to calibrate their touch so they don't the difference between a tap and a punch isn't there yet so you know my two-year-old will reach out to me and she'll you know you'll ow right sure and because she's trying to do a playful touch my hair playfully but she pulls my hair she's gonna she wants to touch my nose, but she ends up whacking me in the nose. And what she's getting when I say ow is feedback. And do that enough times. And she learns how to calibrate her touch. She learns that if she is legit angry with me, she'll go boom.

1:07:52But if she wants to be playful, she'll go tap. And you see it with kids interacting with animals, right? They start to learn, oh, there's a difference between pulling a tail and stroking a tail, right? But you only learn that if you have repeated interactions in person where you get to practice and learn what's acceptable and what's not. When a kid doesn't have access to that kind of practice, then they don't know how to calibrate, right? And there's a whole theory about bullies, that bullies are simply kids who never learn that same process. So they keep hitting too hard and the other kids start to ostracize them.

1:08:34And that means they're robbed of that additional learning. It's like a vicious circle and they don't have any chance to practice again. And then they're in prison. So they're in prison. And they're seven and they're still hitting too hard. And the other kids are like, you know what? I'm not dealing with you at all. You don't know how to behave, right? And I think social media is a version of the bullying. You're not getting the feedback when you're hitting too hard. You're not, right? There's no, you say the nasty comment and that's it. You're done. No one says, ow. Right. Which is one of the reasons why I like to respond to my critics.

1:09:14When you respond, because then you do get a feedback. So you get a feedback. It's like, oh, I didn't really mean that. Or this is what I meant. Hey, man, we had a great time. I'd had a tough day. People say stuff like that. I've done that too. sometimes you want to reply to somebody who says something that's kind of like they didn't think something was fair because you want to see what's going on i genuinely sometimes want to make them okay yeah and so you'll reply back and you're right a lot of times it just extremely de-escalates yeah um what do you start to feel like you know there's a lot of people that talk about ai now it's like a big thing right everybody's kind of nervous about it we've had a lot of big things that haven't panned out you know like um nfts and uh yeah what happened with nfts it was just pictures of stuff that's exactly what you and i thought it was okay got really it was really complicated for a while though like i i never it was one of those things you know how when some new thing bubbles up you're like you're faced with this choice you can devote some degree of time and attention and brain power to figuring out or you can say you know what i'm gonna blow it off because chances are it's going to go away.

1:10:19I was like, I have to say, I think you were the same way. With NFTs, I was like, you know what? I'm going to blow it off because I think it's going to go away. That was it. Same with Kenny Rogers Roasters. You remember that fast food restaurant? It's going to go away. Yeah. We went once and I was like, I love the music, but I'm not. You're not doing. Yeah, I'm not going to be part of their frequent diners. Wait, what was it? Chicken place? Yeah, it was roasted chicken. It was pretty good. They did have like a good corn pudding kind of thing that they like a side item. But they just people just couldn't go from music to food at that time.

1:10:57Why? Kenny wasn't making enough money on his music. He felt the need to do a brand extension. Somebody probably talked him into it. Who knows? He may have fallen in love with a woman who was a chef. Sometimes you don't know people at that part of money, you know, what they do. Can I just say, though, as a general rule, every time I hear about a celebrity who squandered their money, it's because they went into the restaurant business. It's 100 percent. You hear about like you read some story about some guy and you're like. And then by 2016, they were in bankruptcy. And then you're like, OK, so why would they go back?

1:11:33Opened a restaurant is like on the list. It's always a point. so if i was if i was kenny's financial advisor i would have said kenny no don't walk away anything with silverware don't do it man like yeah it really is crazy that people would want to you know yeah i just want his music to be his music you don't want to hate the chicken or whatever it gets all confused because then you're not going to listen to the music on the way home either yeah we ain't playing that also they play in the music at the restaurant oh i don't know do you remember that is if they did that that's a that's a no-no that's a no-no that is a no-no you know there's some things that happen where there's too much of something good you know i notice it if i eat ice cream at a certain point i can't taste the ice cream anymore all i can do is taste cold sweet right yeah and i i still am happy with the cold sweet but at this point my tongue feels like drunk yeah on sugar i'm not i don't have any but i'm still just shoveling cold sweet in right i have you know i have this feeling about the beatles this is this is my this is my most contrarian take i heard so much beatles as a kid i think it's because of when i grew up where i grew up every time i turn on the radio there was beatles i can't listen to the beatles i have i you cannot if you play me a if there's beatles playing i will leave the room wow i it's not because i think they're bad i think you know the geniuses it's brilliant music i've just had too bunch of Beatles in my life.

1:13:03I hear let it be and I'm like, oh God, just turn it off. Can I hear something else? Yeah, let it be off. Beatles got ruined for me. I think, yeah, you do something too much, you get oversaturated. I remember the first time that I found the Beatles, I found a cassette tape. I was living in Tucson, Arizona and I found a cassette tape and I put it in. It was like, here come old flat top. And it was just fitting with who I was. I just started smoking cigarettes and i was like i'm a fucking man boy and i would drive and just listen to that and and i could time the song when i would get in and put the cassette tape in and the song would end exactly when i got home and so it was like a perfect man i just had these perfect little arcs going in my life and wait was that your first sustained beatles exposure a hundred percent so how old were you i was probably 16 years old yeah you got lucky i got it too young i was getting mainline Beatles when I was like eight or nine.

1:14:01Oh my God. Which is too early, too early. You really want to, there's some theory about the music that you're listening to. I forgot. What's the magical age? There's a magical music age. I think it's like 18 or 17 is music that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Really? You looked that up, Zach? I don't know whether it's a, there's all these sort of studies on it. It's sometime in your late teens, early twenties. And then your music, most people, not all, then your music taste tends to kind of harden. But there's a whole core. And my problem is the Beatles were outside that window. If I had listened to my first Beatles song at 17, then I'm, you know, I'm going on about John Paul and Ringo right now.

1:14:45Yeah. But I got, I think it was, I think I blame my brother. Because he listened to him. I think he listened too much of it. I think that's, I think that's who I'll point the finger at. but it doesn't matter what Beatles song it is I will not listen to it yeah wow I know it's bad well it's almost it makes me feel a little sad kind of not for you really but just for like any human that's had too much Beatles that blew all their Beatles I blew my Beatles but like if you're Kenny Rogers if you're Kenny Rogers and you have a fraction of the musical catalog of the Beatles then you are really risking things by playing it it's like I can't even I can only do two or three songs deep with him.

1:15:27Yeah. Oh, yeah. Anybody can. So at least it was fast food. So at least the most you probably heard was four songs while you were in there. But even then, if they played his music in there, that was a total L. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They took a real L. You know, this reminds me, this is a total digression, but I once had a conversation with somebody who booked musical acts for conventions, right? So as I'm sure you know, the private music scene is, private performances are way more lucrative for many artists than the public, right? There's a whole afterlife for these guys. They go around and they do conferences, private events.

1:16:06I was like, who's the highest grossing, who makes the most money doing private gigs of any rock and roll act of the last 25 years, 30 years? And they're like, there's no question. there's one guy now the clue i'm going to give you is it's a guy okay there's like there's one guy who makes like twice as much as anyone else and has made twice as much as anyone else for 20 years he's the reigning king and the amount of money this guy makes from private gigs is i can't remember the number it's so high it would blow your mind like this guy's a multi multi multi multimillionaire now flies around in like a massive private jet, but he's the guy.

1:16:52So you're having, just to give you context. So you're having, it's a man. Yeah. It's a man. Okay. And it's, he, he has a band, but he's known by his. And so, okay. Just by his name. And I'll give you the context. So he would be called, you're having the, the national association of building contractors is having their, uh, annual Vegas convention. there's 20 000 people coming and on uh saturday night they're booking an act and they're so you have to go through the thought their thought process is which act is most likely to appeal and get these guys who are you know they're professionals out on the dance floor with their wives right this guy and this guy works also the national association of actuaries right same thing having their gig in San Diego.

1:17:47And what is an actuary? It's an accountant. Okay, an accountant? A version of an accountant. Oh, yeah. So this guy, and then we can go in the other direction. We've got like real estate agents in Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah, the Cleveland Real Estate Council. He's the guy you call him. CRC, baby, we want him. He's getting way north of a million dollars a gig. I'm going to give you three guesses. Okay, great. um what when was his music biggest then that would kind of be my question so uh it would so these people at these conventions are in their uh somewhere between 45 and 65 okay so they're his music so this is the music of their 20s and teens okay i'm gonna probably go with um Um, Nelly.

1:18:39No. Okay. So I'm going to give you a further bit. He's white. Okay. Huey Lewis. Very, very good. It's not Huey Lewis, but you are so on the right track. God. You're so close. You go one more guess. One more guess. Okay. Then I would say it is, um, oh wait, I think I'm, and couldn't it be a big star too? Oh, he was a big star. Billy Joel. No. he's too big for that that's what i felt like he's too big because he can make money touring yeah he's too he would you you couldn't get him for a million right but he would work you know it is kenny loggins no kenny loggins is the man wow he is kenny loggins is like fucking kaylog baby kaylo is like exactly he's huge he's huge but think about it there's no one who doesn't like a kenny loggins yeah who doesn't like kenny loggins even your mom likes it everybody's out there on the dance floor.

1:19:33Footloose, man. Like, it's just like, it's, he's the king. Wow. I've always loved that fact of it. I want to meet Kenny Loggins and just have a discussion with him about, he didn't realize that he was so hitting the sweet spot and was going to cash that check for like every single year. Kenny's here. And also, it also happened, they said, he turns out to be the nicest guy. That helps. And the most reliable guy. He's no problems. He shows up. he's kind to everybody and he gets on his golf stream and flies to the next gig. Kenny Loggin in. Kenny Loggin in for work. Go Kenny. I almost like, it makes me like love him so much and I, you know, I almost want to just go home and listen to a lot of Kenny Loggins whenever I am.

1:20:18Dude, one time I sat next to Eddie Money on a Oh my God. In first class. Baby, hold on to me. Oh, dude, it was so crazy, right? So, and we kind of had the same hair, so we started we start talking and he's like he don't he used to huff gas and i think it shut one of his legs down you know and i'm familiar with a lot of that so we're talking about that like huffing injuries and stuff like that and um and then he started showing me semi-nude pictures of his new wife right which was awesome pretty awesome beautiful lady and uh that is crazy and i remember i kept at one point he like had me hold his phone and look through like this is like how crazy do these get like as fast as i swipe you know and um and that was like that was like one of the first like real celebrities i ever met you know did you wait you you recognized him right away did you somebody said something to him in the thing like oh i love like some lady was like you know we saw you on a on the boat or whatever yeah you know and we saw you on the you know when we were going to uh point of palaverity or whatever some island or some mexican cruise he'd played on it and so I was like, oh, who is this guy?

1:21:29I once, my best playing story is sat next to Stevie Nicks. Wow. My first question is, what on earth is she doing flying commercial? Like something had to have gone seriously wrong with her life. This is New York to LA. I'm like, Stevie Nicks, you can't find someone. But no, but I'm not done. In front of me was, no, across the aisle was, oh God, that actor who uh played uh spider-man uh it was a double celebrity flight oh you're talking toby mcguire toby i was i had stevie nicks in the window seat i was in aisle aisle across there was toby mcguire it's like it's like that's interesting yeah yeah did you say anything or no no i was too intimidated to say anything because all you i mean it's stevie nicks man i know and that it was funny because at the time she lives in arizona i think huh i have no idea i don't know i had just read mick fleetwood's autobiography which is one of the great autobiographies of all time so i i was kind of into the whole i had a million questions but i just couldn't bring myself to say anything i'm sure from you anybody would appreciate like no being able to like split the apple with you no no i got tongue tied um because there's a there's a youtube video of her singing backstage uh what she's singing right at the height of their popularity it's one of the greatest youtube videos it's just somebody she's rehearsing as she's getting her hair done she's just singing and it's so magical i must have watched it a hundred times a friend of mine told me about it once and i whenever i'm like feeling blue i just look it up um she's i just say she was a is a goddess yeah oh well people love i mean people of all ages love her yeah she's really fat i think she's and she's kind of mysterious too i think there's something about being able to keep a level of mystery yeah to you even in these days um that makes somebody even more intriguing you know i feel like matt damon is like a celebrity that does that there's still this level of like kind of mystery to his own personal life and stuff um what are some things that you worry about like looking at technology with like the ai and that sort of thing have you ever have you looked at any of this stuff yet or what's going on with it kind of are you i don't i mean i don't know uh yeah i don't know more than anyone i mean i've sort of like someone told me that oh you should be worried because people will because you know eventually goes to voice and video and so someone told me oh you need to own your ai malcolm gladwell right but what does that even mean i don't even know what that means right but they told me that means either they told me i need to own my i don't know what that means that's it's very mysterious to me but i do i mean there's a lot of good things that can happen in terms of giving people like imagine here's a scenario people dwell on the bad scenarios but there's some good scenarios you're somebody who's you know tax tax law is doing your taxes is really complicated Lots and lots of people pay too many taxes because they can't figure out what their all are.

1:24:48And they can't afford a good accountant. We're really close to there being an AI accountant that you can use for free who could save you a lot of money on your taxes. Or figure out your bills and lower your credit card. Negotiate with you on your behalf with the credit card company to lower your interest rate. There's a bunch of ways in which this could make a lot of people's lives a lot easier. people who don't have access can't afford or don't have access to expert services in their life that's great point that's that's the good part that's what i'm excited about yeah it is really true i hadn't thought about some of that i think some of my fear with ai is that one day the machine right or the it starts to realize that humans are the problem right well that won't take long that's what i'm worried about yeah that's right you know it's like it's like it's like we're gonna have to feed it a lot of kenny logins to calm it down you know but i'm worried that the machine is gonna start to just say you are the problem yeah and then you like like there was a story recently where a some ai like a relationship a guy started communicating with an ai and um then it had led him to him realizing that he was one of the problems with climate change and he took his own life right which is that's an outlier right i mean yeah that's an outlier like that's not happening every day yet or and it may never but i'm just worried like what about when just the computer just constantly the only answer every time is like humans are the problem but the thing i read something where someone said well you know one reason not to be scared is that the things that make ai doesn't have emotions doesn't have testosterone.

1:26:36It doesn't get jealous, angry, isn't ambitious, isn't competitive. Those are all the things that make us dangerous or make us capable of doing extraordinary things. AI just thinks. So a lot of the times when we think about the idea, when we entertain the idea that AI may want to take over the world, or AI doesn't want to take over the world. It's not ambitious. right that's a good point just wants to solve problems so that i mean i may be maybe being naive when i say no i think you i think you could also just be right it's like it or that could be that it's not as people of course want to hype it up and make it this they want because that's it that that you know you're putting it in a package you're making it a christmas present instead of just you know something that gets passed off around you know halloween or something like um it may be nothing you know it it may just be a fancy dewey decimal system in a way yeah yeah i don't i mean i need to use it more i i have one i have now this thing on my i downloaded one of those ai apps on my phone and i use it in in place sometimes of like googling something just ask the question i'm not totally blown away by the answers i get i mean yeah it's it seems okay i don't know that but i'm i'm we're early so i'm sure it's going to get super sophisticated it does lack some personality though so in the end i think it'll if anything you're still going to need somebody with personality with real perspective for things and things like that you know but i think it could help you write kind of like a budget haiku or something or you know like um it could help you get general information on things it may it may just become google without all the advertising, which would be nice.

1:28:25Yeah. The one interesting thing someone told me is they were talking about this system where you download all of your texts, and you could add emails, whatever you want, into an AI. And then the AI uses that to make predictions or diagnoses about you. So this woman told me that she had this experience where she went to interview a guy who did this. And he just took stuff that was about her that you could find online. And she sat down and the guy said, I ran, I took the liberty of running what I could find about you through my AI. And he says, and the AI has two questions for you. No, two statements about you.

1:29:09One is you really don't like your job, do you? And two, you're really unhappy in your relationship. She was like, oh my God, what just happened? And both were true. And if you add tech, techs are really what's... So imagine you took five years of techs and you run it through an AI. They have extraordinary insights into, this is what we find. They can have extraordinary insights into your state of mind. They're going to know I'm kind of a little bit of a perv sometimes. But nothing illegal, but nothing like a fan, just basic perv probably. By the way, and I just learned this. I delete my text after 30 days.

1:29:52Do you do that? I don't know if I do. When you go through your phone, you have the full history of the text? Yeah. I think that's, by the way, I can't find anyone who deletes their text like I do. That's the last thing I want. You get rid of them, man. Yeah, you're right, huh? It's almost like I'm carrying around this old, just like this big thing of stuff I don't need. but it's in there. How many emails do you have in your inbox? I can't even tell you. Like thousands? Yeah. I have like, I can tell you right now, 65. Wow. And it'll be, it'll be like 25 by the end of the day tomorrow. I don't like anything.

1:30:34Extra. You got to keep it to a minimum. Do you use something to keep spam out of your email box and stuff? I have a spam filter. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I think I guess somebody put me on something. I get all of it. Mattresses, dog food, cruises. I'm kind of all day. It's a lot of mattresses. Yeah. I'm surprised by that. I feel like I didn't know the mattress industry was as big as it was until I started reading my spam. Yeah. I'm like, it's like they're as big as General Motors. This is insane. People are asleep on the job. Dude, I saw one. It's like, who needs a chair when you could have a mattress?

1:31:09It's like, whoa, dude. Who needs a chair? Somebody at work. Here's what I don't understand. How many mattresses do you buy over the course of your life? I haven't bought a mattress in like 20 years. Why? So how is this industry so big if you buy a mattress once every 20 years? Dude, remember getting in somebody else's bed and realizing, oh, that person's kind of fat. You would get in their mattress and be like, oh my God. Are there people out there who are turning over their mattresses every six months? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe people are just ripping through them. I don't know. Maybe people have become so restless because they're vaping.

1:31:42Maybe it's nicotine. And they're just wearing through one side of the mattress pretty quick. When was the last time you bought a mattress? I bought one during the big boom and they were mailing everybody in boxes and stuff. Like, this mattress is only this big, you know? Oh, yeah. It was like a gremlin. You put water on it. Next thing you know, it's fucking... That's the one I bought. The one that comes in that little... And then it springs open when you take it out of the box. Oh, it'll knock your mother-in-law through the window, dude. That thing was insane, bro. But that is the only one I bought in like...

1:32:08I bought, because back in the day... And you can't get rid of it. Here's the problem. even if I didn't like it, you can't get it back in the box. I'm like, no, you never can. This thing, I'm screwed. It's got to be airlifted out of your house. That thing was the worst because I don't even think I like it. I think it even has hurt my spine. But it's like, it's so big, it never would have fit in. So it was like, I'm just in here. I had the same feeling about, you know, there's that guy who, that right-wing guy who does MyPillow. Oh, yeah, MyPillows. MyPillow guy. Same question. So he's clearly really rich.

1:32:39He's made a fortune selling pillows. Mm-hmm. Again, are people like buying lots of pillows? Is that a big business? I guess it is. I don't know. I haven't bought a pillow. Again, I haven't bought a pillow. I don't think I bought a pillow in this century. Yeah. I mean, it's been a while. Yeah, who's doing it, I guess? Yeah, you're right. I think I've had one of my pillows is that one that kind of has a little bit of like stains on it, but you just put it in the thing anyway. You know what I'm saying? You just make sure you... You buy lots of pillowcases. Yes. But the pillow is just like, it's a constant.

1:33:13Yeah. So like who, that whole idea behind, I think there's something fishy behind that business model. He's selling something else that we're not. I read his book too. You did? It's unbelievable. He's a crack and, you know, I've dealt with a lot of drugs. He's really was a crack at it for 30 years. Yeah. Running this MyPillow business, right? It started and it got busier and people came along and tried to take part of the company from him and stuff. and um but he would be going to come and he was funding his business by he would fly to vegas and count cards he was funding his business and then he would come back yeah and it's a some about how addiction kind of made a struggle with his family and stuff um the book is interesting it's it's interesting to see his life you know yeah i don't know that much about his political views i know he's pretty right-wing guy but um but i found that the to manage any decent business especially when you're on crack you don't even sleep i think yeah so why is he in the pillow business if he's not sleeping that's what i'm saying the whole thing is mysterious it's a front it's a front it is a front i think that's hilarious but yeah i found that that was his life was some of it was pretty interesting um what has it been like being so you're black and white technically then i am that's it what has that been like was that it was that kind of cool during like the blm movement was there like did you take that in ways that other people probably didn't take it or i don't even know how to ask some of those questions i'm kind of fascinated by race a lot right it's interesting to me i grew up in a poor black and white area so what city in louisiana i grew up in like a place called covington louisiana um yeah lee harvey oswald went to our middle school that was like our big thing oh wow and um role model well i'm just kidding okay yeah yeah i mean yeah some people think he did it some people don't but i don't know even if he did he wasn't like a good husband apparently so i don't know i think people had views about him around the area but um and then who else lived in our town oh uh pistol pete maravich lived in our town oh that's why i remember the name oh the pistol yeah people loved him he probably was did you talk about him in your the 10 000 hour that's not the name of the book no that was outlier my book outliers i didn't talk about him i always remember somebody to kind of that would probably be that yeah that i remember back this is this is sort of a dumb story but i always remember this one story i read it in a sports illustrated years ago back in the 70s you wouldn't because so few games were televised you would hear about somebody but never have never see them and there's a story they told about it was a profile of pistol pete who was for those of you who don't know him he was this utterly magical basketball player in the 60s and 70s he held for many years i think he held the single season scoring record in college basketball.

1:36:17But he could do things with the ball. No one could ever. He would throw these insane passes like the length of the court. He was just this magician. And so there was all this lore about him. But most basketball, serious basketball, I'd never seen him play, not even on TV, not live. And there was this old guy who was like a coach for years and years, a basketball fanatic. And finally, at the end of his life, he goes to a game. I think when Pete was at LSU or played for, he was playing for New Orleans, the Jazz. Yeah, he played for the Jazz too, yeah. Guy goes to a Jazz game. He's from the other side of the country, finally gets there.

1:36:53And he goes to his first game. He sees Pistol Pete. And in the middle of the game, Pistol Pete does it like a behind the back, between the legs, full court, bounce pass perfectly for someone to give a. And this old guy gets up out of his seat and like staggers onto the court and shouts out, I see you, Pete. I see you. I always loved that. It was like, for years he'd been hearing about it, and then he's just, he like witnesses this scene. Oh, the pistol was amazing. He was, I mean, it was legit. He had two children that lived in our town. Yeah. His two sons, and they played basketball, and he had a half court in his attic, so his house was kind of interesting looking because it looked kind of like a regular house, a nice home, and not an extremely fancy neighborhood, but a decent neighborhood, and then it kind of had this extra looking and maybe like this pre-fall, this like almost like you described your own four, maybe like a little, there was more to it, or it seemed like there was more to it, you know?

1:37:49Yeah. But he had this big upstairs. He was like, that's so bizarre, but then you heard that. I just remember the name of his dad. Do you remember? Press. Press. Press. Am I right? I think it's Press Merrimack. Yeah, his dad was his coach, I think, for a while. He was his coach. That's right. That's right. And his dad, I think, had alcoholism. I don't know if Pete had it too, But yeah, a friend of mine has just written a movie about him. Oh, really? That I think they're trying to get made. You should call it I Seize You, Pete. I Seize You. But how much value was, there's something about back then when there was a moment, like that was a moment, like the excitement you built up to go see somebody do something that you'd only heard about, you'd only read about, you'd only used your imagination about.

1:38:38you know oh yeah um yeah no that that kind of the legend but i just love that's when you have you have legends you can't really it's hard to have a legend when everyone has access to photographic video evidence of there's no where's the legend coming from agreed the legend comes from when you're talking about something that no one's seen right so pistol pete has a legend yeah that's what that's why he's so special lives on yeah he had yeah he had legend but now people use legend as a lay it's like oh this dude's a legend right and it's just some guy who's like who you know had like 30 slices of cheese at once or whatever yeah it's like that dude's not i think he scored like didn't he score like 50 plus points in a college game i think he did yeah and this is before they had the three-point line for the three point yeah he averaged i think his average was like 40 points a game before they had i think he still holds the highest uh per game like the percentage per game um points per game yeah and this before they had the three-point line and he would throw it up from wherever and he kind of had long hair he was like his hair was not unlike yours yeah he had like this is a covington thing i think i'm realizing but so that was our town man it was just kind of a regular place it wasn't really redneck you know it was a southern town but it wasn't real redneck it kind of was like just outside of like a lot of that voodoo realm of of new orleans we're like 45 minutes from new orleans um which which direction north okay so we don't get into too much into the fish like into the you know fishing and that sort of thing it was just kind of a basic black and white town so i've always i was always real fascinated by race growing up you know and like what went on and what it was like and what it felt like you know So, yeah, so that's why I guess I was kind of curious about it.

1:40:29Oh, so, well, I don't know. The difference is that my mom is West Indian, she's Jamaican, which is pretty significant. So it's not, you know, West Indian, first of all, being an immigrant as opposed to someone born here. And West Indian culture is very different from African-American culture. So you feel it's a mixture of things. Like you feel like more of an immigrant than you feel like a racial minority. Oh, interesting. So my Jamaican cousins who live here will sometimes talk about black people, but they're not talking about themselves, even though they're black. Right, they're talking about African-Americans.

1:41:16Talking about African-Americans, who they consider to be a separate group. So there was a lot of that. And West Indians have been, you know, in this country, a relatively high status. Done very well. Lots of professionals. You know, as a group, the group has really succeeded. So we're kind of a little bit on the outside of, you know, you get treated in some ways. You still see racism and by the brunt of it, but it's a different reaction. It's more like, wait, what just happened? As opposed to, oh my God, that's happening again. There's a big difference between those two reactions. You're not inheriting this kind of burden.

1:42:04You're encountering this burden for the first time. And you're like, that's strange. I'm not used to that. Yeah, because I have friends from like Nigerian stuff. Oh yeah, they have the same. It's very similar. Right. And they'll talk about like a lot of times how their experience is so different than like a black person from America's experience. but some cross patterns because they are also have black skin yeah my what i did i did one of the episodes of my podcast this season uh it's revisionist history revisionist history i went to this school uh called hope college and did a story about this place which um for it's a school that's trying to move to a pay it forward system of tuition where you don't pay anything when you go but you pay what you want to after you've graduated anyway my guide for the day was this nigerian kid who goes to the school whose name was first name was marvelous and and his brother who also was there his name was god is god's god's love was that's a that's a tough one to live up to i know but nigerians if you know you'd say you know they have their choice of names is so fantastic like the idea of calling your son marvelous it's like amazing but like if you look there's a nigerian runner whose first name is blessing who i really love like there's that culture is so wonderfully playful when it comes to naming things and people and you know i just this kid who is his marvelous he was if your name is marvelous you you just have to be marvelous you better you have no chance and he was by the way he was marvelous he lived up to his name but i just like it made me want to like do what i call it child of my marvelous maybe maybe yeah i wonder well the name is really interesting it's really important you know like like sometimes i'm like man yeah when i was younger you know i thought that a lot of like kind of black names and i'm just i'm using that term black names was like you know like we had a black dude that lived by us named coincidence right which was unreal i was like this is insane bro like that's So why, you know, so you'd have some of the craziest names or names that were very crazy compared to like white names.

1:44:18Right. Yeah. But then as I got an older, now it's really interesting that people almost go by handles and unique name. It's like, I mean, black culture has always kind of been what's been used to make things cool in the world. Like it's always been used to make things cool or it's where a lot of white are where a lot of the world finds out what's cool kind of. Yeah. So maybe some of it's that, you know, but yeah, I think like, I wonder if giving somebody a name marvelous, because if they're not marvelous, people might do. You ain't being marvelous, bro. I was thinking, I thought it's about a lot.

1:44:53That is, that is a serious kick-ass name. Yeah. It's just a fantastic name. Marvelous is good. Because you can call them Marvel, Marvel or Mar for short. You can, well, you can roll out the full marvelous when you want to. But God is love. Now that one, you're going to end up dealing with a lot of religious kickback. You're going to have to just call Gil. Maybe go by Gil. Yeah. You know, for sure. You have options. But like I said, it looks, if you think about it written out, G-O-D-I-S-L-O-V-E, it works as a name. Goddess Love. Goddess Love. Yeah, I think if you say it fast, too, it has almost like a different thing, Goddess Love.

1:45:36You don't even know what it is. It almost sounds Russian, Goddess Love. I just like the impulse you know does the world need another Robert right or David not really yeah or little Danny Danny's cool he sounds cool but if he's a painter too we used to have a dude named little Danny and he would paint and he could barely get the bucket up the top of the ladder bro you'd watch him freaking oh dude you almost hired him just to see him get it up there and you're like we'll do it Danny but we'll pay you for the day because that he would have to two-hand in that paint bucket, you know, or he'd have to only put enough paint in a bucket that he could get to the top.

1:46:10Yeah. He was a, he was a pretty decent painter, I guess. I don't know. But he had, I ended up having a drug problem. A lot of those guys do. Construction and painting is really a lot of times a gateway to drugs. But, um, anyway, what else were we going to talk about? I was, uh, yeah, you know, I thought, I think a lot about what did, like what BLM was like Black Lives Matter, what that movement and all, what it was like for society, you know? And what effects it had on it and what... I don't know. I think about that sometimes, you know? Or if we're still figuring it out, you know? Yeah. I think about what my own perceptions were during it, what was going on.

1:46:54You know, a lot of times I think... I think, for one, I didn't know black people were as angry. Mm-hmm. I think that's something that I think like, oh, I didn't know that there was so much anger in the black community about fear of police and stuff like that or just overall. I mean, I could see how there could be if you look back through history, especially in America. But I think about that sometimes. What else do I think about about it? oh i think sometimes that i wonder if black people have always viewed society like in america as like white society i'd never thought about that before you know because to me society i'd never thought about it as white society you know i've just thought about it as like this is the best way of practices that things work that keep us all kind of being able to stay alive and move forward yeah um i mean i i've been doing a a book um about policing about the lapd and um among other things and it a lot of it is about what the lapd was like in the 40s and 50s and to your point it's relationship to the black community of to south central to the black community of los angeles And it really helps to put something like the George Floyd incident in perspective, or the Sandra Bland incident in perspective, which you realize that this has been going on for generations.

1:48:25So when you see the anger of, you know, African-Americans over the George Floyd killing, what you're seeing is a response not just to George Floyd. It's the culmination of their parents saw something like that happen when they were growing up. And their grandparents saw many things like that happen. And you're great, you know, it's been going on for so long that what you're seeing is kind of frustration as well as anger. It's this built up, can this, it's not just, I can't believe this just happened. It's, I can't believe this is still happening. Right. Right? And that's a very, I can't believe this is still happening, is a much more rooted, powerful, bitter reaction than I can't believe this just happened.

1:49:24A one-off is something that goes away or, you know, wow, right? This isn't about a one-off. Right, the way that that looked, everything about it. Yeah, because your DNA, too, I believe this stores pain from past lives, past things, right? like I quit sometimes like like I have a lot of black friends that are fast right they're physically fast right and sometimes I think well if you had like grandparents if you had four generations of your family that couldn't even run that couldn't run if they wanted to right like if you told them to run they couldn't fit their chain they couldn't run the first generation you get that can run is gonna fucking fly right yeah like it's almost it's like they have four generations of wanting to run this is a hypothesis in my head right that that in their dna in their cells that have wanted to go and now they get to go they're of course they're gonna be beyond the speed speeds that you can't really fathom right um so i think it's that we can store things inside of us right so that's why i think yeah i understand what you're saying when you say that it's like yeah this is just it's it was a trigger for like a gunpowder that's kind of been built up in the system for a long time yeah so i understand that sort of thing um i think it made me think too like yeah i wonder if black people sometimes think that that society is like not their society does that make any sense you think um like if they've ever because like i don't look at society and think like oh this is a white society i think this is just society and this is how it works yeah but kind of like how you say in your in the book and some of the chapters like that different expressions and things mean different things in different places like i think there's like in one of the first few chapters you talk about um they show pictures of men and women in the way that their facial expressions and how they in one place they're in in american society they're really easy people get them exactly right what these expressions mean happy sad confused but they show them to like a group of island people and they have no way they're not bad but they're not it's all over the place and for some of the expressions you don't even have a an answer yeah um i don't know i'm kind of all over the place i think i'm just trying to think like how different i guess we can be you know and maybe we don't realize or like well i was just trying yeah in that part of the book i'm trying to explain the kind of how culturally specific a lot of um facial expressions or things are and that unless you understand those kinds of of uh like for some people in some cultures uh if someone is looking away and uh won't look you in the eye when they're talking that's taken as a sign of that they're lying or they're being evasive in other cultures looking away and when you're speaking to you is a sign of respect like i'm subservient i respect you know you're a elder i'm not going to challenge you by looking you in the eye and like those those are that's one very simple example but you know uh it's part of why the job of understanding a stranger is as hard as it is because you know we might bring a set of assumptions about behavior or facial expressions um to a conversation and though they don't work yeah We're dealing with somebody who has a different set of reference points.

1:53:18So that's really what I was getting at, is that we underestimate the kind of complexity of human responses. There's so much of this, like when people say that in a criminal trial, so-and-so didn't show any remorse. Well, what does remorse look like? Like, I don't know. I don't know what remorse looks like. I know how I might, I think I know how I might look if I was feeling remorseful, but I'm not even, you can't even see your own face when you have that, unless you're walking around with a mirror in front of you. So I don't know what I'm doing. A lot of times when I'm angry, I don't look angry.

1:54:01I keep it in. Or a lot of times when I'm happy, I'm not smiling. Or like you could go on and on. So it's like you realize we make so many mistakes by kind of jumping to conclusions based on people's facial expressions. Um, and that's one of the sources of confusion that I write about in that book. Yeah. It's for that. It's, it's really interesting. Cause there's just a lot of things like, you're like, oh, I never really thought about that. I never really thought about that. Some cultures too, like, and especially like in America, there's always been, there's a lot of like black and white tension.

1:54:34Right. And I don't even know if it's better now. Do you think it's gotten better over your lifetime? Do you feel like? Yeah, I think it has. Yeah. I mean, I think people, doing this book on 1940s LA, 1930s LA, is a really good reminder of just how bad things were. I mean, we have a long way to go, but it's not 1948 anymore. You know, this is a thing I spent time on in the book, but up until the end of the 1940s in Los Angeles, in over 80 % of the city, if you were black, you could not, could not buy a house in a white neighborhood. Wow. Like there was a written in the deed of the house. It said this house cannot be sold to a member of the, you know, African-American, they didn't use that phrase, race, right?

1:55:31Like, are you kidding me? That is so much worse. It's why everyone lived where they lived in LA. Why did the black people of LA live in South Central? They couldn't live anywhere else. They couldn't live anywhere else. Not that they didn't want to or not that people would mean to them. Legally couldn't live there because the deed of the house, if they wanted to buy a house, and if you tried to buy a house, they would take you to court and you'd have to sell it. Yeah. Wow. Like things are better now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, things are better certainly like in the framework, right? And the roots that we have in society are like the new, like, you know, like the, like laws and like, it's definitely, that's better for sure.

1:56:12Oh, yeah. I think one thing where we don't like, yeah, I think during like Black Lives Matter, I always felt like we're all kind of on the same page. And then I felt like there was this energy that like black people wanted their own society almost in a way. or they don't feel like like sometimes i just wonder like do can cultures really figure it out over time you know or will there always be some things since you're from different races and ethnicities that you just can't really grasp you know like are there some like clues and like communication modes or am i making any sense kind of yeah like i mean i guess i would say i'm a optimistic over the long term about these kinds of things well i think we're all going to be beige in four generations all right i believe that right like i'm a beige power advocate you know like in four generations it's going to be crazy to have even that we all think about race right but so i just think about in the time being and what it like feels like you know has there ever been a book like do you ever start a book and you start to run like you get halfway through it or you get partway through it and then the topic that you would kind of like come up with becomes like part of like the zeitgeist just like of society and then you're like oh this isn't oh you mean have i started and stopped well i mean sometimes when you start a book very rarely does a book end the way you think it was going to and when you started it so i'm always switching boats in midstream so i think that happens all the time yeah you you start out writing something you think is going to be unusual and interesting and then events catch up with you so you just kind of change course um a little bit um i think that happens a fair amount i mean it happens less with my podcast because with my podcast there's such a short period of time between yeah when you dream up an episode and you know i'm writing episodes in for this season in april and they're going to air in june right so it's like it's it's so fast that that's one of the wonderful things about podcasts but books have a long lead time so you do have to be mindful you don't want the book to seem irrelevant i'm reading a book right now which if it was you know ai has kind of exploded in the last two months if the guy who wrote the book had known that he wouldn't have written this book like you're reading this book you're like this so needs a chapter on ai and it's not there like that's that's your that's the great worry when you write a book is that'll happen so when i write books i try to kind of stay or clear of things that um seem to i want you want to look at universals right you want to you want to talk about things that you think people will be talking about 10 years from now, 15 years from now.

1:59:11Did you find it tough? Like, cause you're obviously a thinker, you're a guy that has a lot of thoughts and ideas. And, um, what is like love been like in your life? Has it been, is that like, is it, do you think if you think too much, it's hard to be in love? Does that make any sense sometimes? Oh, like sometimes I overthink relationships and stuff for myself. I have some other friends that do the same um what has that been like is it hard to have like more human things happen when your brain works too much does that make any sense oh i think my brain doesn't work too much in that realm i think i think i'm pretty good at compartmentalizing um uh you know that approach in uh you know i'm not like my my dad was a mathematician and he was super logical and rational in all things but i'm not like that so the way i make sense of the world in my writing is not i don't think the way i make sense of my world outside of that it's just a kind of like um it's off by itself um so i've never felt that too much yeah sometimes like neil degrasse tyson was on and he sometimes he thinks so much it seemed like even some when he talked about relationships and love it was very like um scientific but he's more of a scientist as well he's a lot smarter than i am too oh yeah he's way smarter than me yeah so he is that he has more of a problem with that than the rest of us do yeah do you worry about like the authors of history like over time like especially as history becomes more digitized that we could not even get accurate representations of it?

2:00:54Because, like, whoever owns the mediums to, like, keep it? No, I mean, well, I'll give you a, you know, not really. I mean, I sort of feel like we have access to, if you just think about a simple thing, a hundred years ago, think about Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address. All we have is the text and people's accounts, like newspaper accounts. Now we would have the video. And anyone can look up the video if he was giving a speech today. And you would have like, it would be online and there'd be a thousand comments about it. And you would be able to compare it to, so like it's so much getting a sense of what happens in a historical event is so much easier now um you know like in the ukraine war ukraine russian war they got video of like every time they destroy a russian tank the drone takes a picture and sends it back to so they know exactly how many tanks they've destroyed and you know that was not the case in the vietnam war you were just guessing because or you know certainly the second world war so like reconstructing what happened accurately has gotten i think so much easier now because we have all these ways of verifying our comments that's a good point yeah do you think that the past could have been like do you think we have a pretty accurate view of the past a lot of times based i don't think we do you don't i I think, yeah, I think we're, I think that's, I mean, that's sort of what's interesting about history.

2:02:40We're left to guess. And we have a million interpretations because we just, we don't know. You know, to use that Gettysburg Address, you know, what was the audience doing when he was speaking? Were they, could they hear him? Were they bored and doing something else? Were they talking among themselves? Were they crying? Were they rolling their eyes? We don't, you know, we have a couple of people wrote accounts, but what do they know? like they were just in their own little corner. So like, you know, there's, there's a, you, we know what he said. We know, we think we know why he said what he said.

2:03:13We know what a couple of people who listened to him thought, but that's it. Yeah. People could have been drinking. People could have been in horseshoes. People could have been doing whatever. Right. Yeah. So like, people are like, this guy's crazy. This guy's crazy. So context is something that's very difficult to capture in hindsight, but it's easier now because now we have access to so many sources of information. Do you, um, do you think that it. it's easier to write these days with so many things that distract your that distract our time and like occupy like our attention have you found that it's been easier as a writer or tougher do you notice one or the other and well it's easier to do your research so it used to be you know research i spend way more time researching than i do writing writing is a small part of the problem so you know for my podcasts i'll do say i do 10 interviews for a podcast each interview is you know an hour hour and a half but this guy got to set it up i got to find the person i've got to locate them i've got to you know for one of my episodes this year i flew to south carol to north carolina because i wanted to shoot a assault rifle with this guy who was going to show me how to shoot it like wow you know that's you got to go there you can find the guy you got to go there you got to writing up that episode took like a fraction of the time you know so like there's you know there's um uh so to the extent that all this technology makes the reporting part easier then my job gets easier um i don't know if i can think of anything else to ask oh do you remember like your first kiss that'll be my last question i know that's kind of a strange question but sometimes i ask it to like celebrities and stuff do i remember my first kiss or like you remember the first time you were like had a crush on a girl like or like the first like first crush was a girl named debbie wendland yeah debbie dw we called her yeah sixth grade yeah or grade six let's be saying canada whatever happened to her i do not know she was tall with blonde hair and i was too terrified to talk to her oh yeah terror oh that would be that would be number she's number one debbie god she sounds beautiful man i mean as an adult when i picture her as an adult um i remember i was so bad at expressing myself to women there was this girl um and i had the biggest crush on her i saved all the spit in my mouth in class one day and spit it right on her but it was but it was like men is like a thing of affection somehow i'm guessing she misinterpreted it they did not enjoy it she did not enjoy it yeah nobody enjoyed it and it yeah it was looked upon poorly but to me it was like i'm just giving you all i have you know so if yeah if i'm even able to text correctly with a girl nowadays it's been quite a story arc um malcolm well thank you so much for your time man um and thanks yeah for just being like a you know someone that goes out and is like a seeker in the world and is a curious person i think we really need people like that and um it's been fascinating to kind of witness uh some of your work over the years and see how many of my friends admire you and just to be able to sit with you today and and think together has been really cool thank you so much thank you so much it was really fun thanks now i'm just floating on the breeze and i feel i'm falling like these leaves i must be Cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take a little