Mexican Batman, Britain’s Downfall, Mr Bean’s Comeback & Jimmy Carr - Rabbit Hole #5

A vigilante known as the Batman of Logos de Mareno has gone viral after catching alleged motorcycle thieves and ducttaking them to lamposts across logos de Mareno in Halisco. At least five suspected thieves have been found restrained to poles over the past 10 days. Some with their mouths taped and signs labeling them as thieves. Authorities are investigating and say those found tied up are being treated as victims. Police have added the vigilante to a wanted list are also looking into whether multiple people are behind the incidents. We've got some pictures of what these people look like. It's like a real The guy's a real life Mexican Batman >> that appears to be getting motorcycle thieves and duct tape. People are also calling him duct tape man, which is >> Oh, wow. But he's he's really doing it. >> Oh, that is I mean that's a Yeah. Okay. Sorry. So, you hear duct tape and you think I could get myself out of duct tape. >> No, that is Okay. I I notic he's left the motorcycle with them. That seems There's the evidence. That seems bad cuz someone's going to cut them free and they're going to disappear on the >> motorcycle. >> There it is. Duct tape man. >> Okay, that seems that's kind of great cuz normally if you see a story about crime in Mexico, you go, "Oh, this is going to be >> this is going to be eye bleach." This is the this is a very fluffy way to deal with crime in Mexico, it seems. >> How is he taken down two in one? I mean >> I mean they don't look particularly physically in intimidating. >> They look 14 and terrified. >> Yeah. I mean, it's Yeah. Don't steal motorcycles. There there's a message there. >> You would be, too, if you'd been taped to a lampost. The rise and fall of civilizations and the rise duct tape man brings back law and order. >> That's we talking about uh strong men make good times. They That is the strong man that uses duct tape. There was the case about 7 months ago in the UK where a guy purposely left his bike um I think outside of the HMP in London where all the police are based and put like a Apple Air Tag on it and it got lost. He calls up the police and it's like we have the Air Tag, I have the address, there's nothing we can do. There's nothing we can do. All of a sudden, he then takes us to the Telegraph, the Times. It becomes this huge story and then the police go, we're looking into it. So even when you have the GPS coordinates, they don't take it seriously. >> Yeah, it's good. I think it's a crime I could get behind that. The vigilante, it's like it's nice. You don't hear a lot about it these days. What was the last crime you committed? >> The last I I would say probably um probably some sort of tax avoidance uh was the last big one. I I had a like when that whole thing happened. This is years ago now, like 12, 13 years ago when it was all going on. I was like front of the papers and the prime minister was David Cameron at the time. He broke off from the G20 summit to comment on my personal tax. That is a red flag. But it was all going on. I never once mentioned the millions that I've given to charity because I thought, well, at this point, lion's not going to help. Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, because evasion is allowed, but avoidance is not. >> No, avoidance is allowed. Evasion, there's a big difference. About 18 months in prison, >> right? Or if you ask Gary Stevenson, then then there's a big difference. What was the docu? You watched the new >> Have you watched Gary Stevenson's new documentary? >> No. Go on. What's the documentary? >> I I think he's wonderful. I think he's the best. >> I heard you laughing while you were watching it last night. >> I think he's the best economist. I think he's the best economist of our times. And when the Soviet Great Britain becomes and you guys are fighting over a little bit of bread, me and Gary, I'll throw you a strip. I don't I don't want to say anything bad about Gary at all. >> Right. Because when the goolags come, Christopher, >> I'm going to be eating bread. This is the same as being kind to your AI in case an AI overlord. >> So, is this guy a Marxist economist or >> No, no, no. He's a he's a pioneer. He's a genius, Jimmy. Um, he his idea uh he wants to bring in a I think is it a two to 2% wealth tax on over 10 million per year inside of the UK is what the policy uh Gary's proposing. >> That's it. I thought there was more. The documentary is called How to Become Filthy Rich. Yes. Right. So, what's the thesis? Does tax wealth not work? >> Yeah, tax wealth not work, which I actually think you'd like that from a copy writing perspective, Mr. Dry. Um, but his Yeah, his whole thesis is uh with rising inequality, if we can bring in a 2% wealth tax to the UK in particular, then that will raise I think about 25 billion is Gary's thesis. But quite impressively inside the documentary they actually keep on actually a smart economist who argues a little bit back with him and his whole thesis is well actually the GDP will probably go down by about four to 5%. Because if you're a foreign investor, why go why not go to France? Why not go to Sweden? Why not go to United States of America? >> I was I was talking about this. We were chatting about it earlier, but I was think like Britain needs to be more competitive, right? It's like that thing of like we're competing with other nations. People have the ability to move anywhere they want to move now. And there's a lot of talk about billionaires and millionaires leaving the UK, whatever. Like you just got to compete. So that idea of going the big thing, the big kind of controversial thing is I think the currency is overvalued. I think if you the the great play every nation has when you print your own currency, you could devalue it. You could devalue the currency. You make it very cheap to invest in Great Britain and just have all the money come to you. It's like you are it's like a zero sum game the world. You want people to come. People want to live there. There's good schools. It's a great place, wonderful people, wonderful culture. You want more people to come there. So devaluing the currency has always been seen as a humiliation. But every time the currency has been devalued, there's been 18 months of incredible growth. >> But you don't have inflation as the currency gets devalued. Um, you could do. I mean, you've got to mitigate against that, but I mean, we've got massive inflation anyway, so what are you going to do? >> So, we'd be weaker than the dollar. That's your That's the car the car mission statement. >> Yeah. Super weak. Super weak currency that that attracts a lot of people. Well, China China have been doing it for 20 years. They've massively devalued their currency artificially in order that people Chinese goods are very cheap in the rest of the world. That's great. So, they export a lot of stuff and they do very well as an economy. They've they've brought more people out of poverty the last 20 years than than you could dream of. It's incredible. I guess the idea is then that four British guys podcast back in London and not America. You know, I feel like this is living proof almost of some of the troubles. >> Yeah. I mean, it's it is that thing of like you've just got to be better than other places, you know? So, how do we compete? I thought when when Brexit happened, I thought the next day we would have undercut Ireland. I I carry an Irish passport. I love being Irish, but I thought we would have undercut Ireland and Ireland had the the corporation tax of like 12%. So, that's why all the tech companies are based in Ireland. if you get your um uh whatever bill from Anthropic, it comes from Dublin if you buy it in the UK, right? So, but we didn't undercut them. We just went, "Oh, great. Let them do that." If if you're prime minister for the day, what what are some of your not like less uh maybe less obvious policies that you do? Roger policies that you'd implement. >> Okay. Okay. So, devalue the currency would be the first thing. >> Away mission. >> Yeah. Quite not that much, but specifically how >> you you could just talk it down. >> Honestly, you could talk it down in an afternoon. the right people at the Bank of England, it's it it will go it will Yeah, it will go down. I mean, it's going to happen anyway. >> But isn't that a bit problem? >> But if we went if we went Yeah. But when when the currency naturally devalues, when there's when there's something something bad happens, do you do you go to the IMF and try and bail out the pound or do you just go great things are now cheap in the UK, come the rest of the world, sales on? >> It's a bit like rope a dope like Ali just sort of sitting on the ropes. >> Sitting on the ropes and then you come out and you >> I'm going to wait for that. I'm going to let him punch me in the face so much that he gets tired >> until our labor's cheaper than China and Vietnam. >> Yeah. But then invest in infrastructure and and you know, you have to you have to have to make it. Yeah. It's a serious idea. But then the other thing that you do is energy. Energy cost is four times higher in the UK than America. And every business has that as a factor, right? So things are very expensive to produce and it's expensive to even run an office in the UK because energy prices are very high. That affects everyone. That's a that's got to be like 20 25 year problem, right? So you got to fix that. You've got to be as um technologically advanced as 70s France who built 56 nuclear power plants in 10 years. >> If you do that, you you're off to the races. >> I've I've got to say, Mr. Kai, you're you're talking a very educated young man. Well, you're talking like a man who might be having a bit of a prime ministerial run. Is that is that on the cards? >> I think Yeah, I think now I believe the system in the UK now is seven prime ministers in 10 years. I think we now take a ticket like at a like at a um Delhi and you just if it comes up. >> So you're up at some point soon that you're saying >> you wouldn't want to be you wouldn't want to be prime minister because it'd be a big commitment. That always used to be the case. Now it's what is it 6 months? >> I'll be gone for 6 months. It's going to be a shop shop sign that you turn around like you know back in five prime minister. >> All right. Given that we're talking about the UK. >> Yeah. >> Let's play a game of guess the Victorian slang word. So I'm going to say different words from Victorian era Britain and you're going to try and guess what they mean. Okay. >> Okay. Yeah. Lovely. >> All right. First one. Tickety boo. H it just means good. >> Something that is in perfect order or a satisfactory condition. That's that's kind of ticky. >> Ticky boo. Everything ticky boo. >> Muffin waloper. >> Sure didn't know, right? >> A muffin waloper. >> Uh fat. >> I think it's a I think it's a it's a sort of um rather stout gentleman who enjoys muffins. >> Yeah. >> An idol person who sits >> We can't just kick on. You got to tell us what a muffin waffler is. >> That's what I'm saying. I'm I'm literally describing it to you. I thought you moved on to the next thing. >> No, it's an idol person who sits at home eating cakes and gossiping instead of cooking. Muffin walloper. So, you should be cooking, but instead you're sitting at home eating cakes and gossiping. Next one. Church bell. A church bell would be my would be my guess there. >> Okay. church. Is it would it be an ugly person like you've been hit by the church bell? Like a quasimoto reference. >> Oh, that's clever. But no, >> I think it's this sounds I think it's a young virgin. >> Church bell. >> A may young male virgin. Yes. >> Harry's just going to answer young virgin for all >> when does the young virgins come on? >> Pilington has that great bit which was when he's watching University Challenge because he can never guess the answer. Um, he just says egg each time because statistically at some point he's going to be right. He has a better chance of just >> gentlemen. Gentlemen, I think we've we've there's a method to the madness, >> right? >> Church bell. I'm thinking a young sort of sub like >> to the left of the organ master. There's the man who rings the church bell. A young 14-year-old. >> Oh, okay. That's actually way too clever. A woman who talks so much her voice is reminiscent of the ringing of a church bell. >> H. >> Okay, next one. Butter upon bacon. Uh, it's uh, is it like a hat on a hat? It's too too much of a good thing. >> Yes. >> She's doing too much. >> Yeah. >> Butter on bacon. >> It's butter on bacon. Yeah. >> Uh, maficking. >> Maficking. You know what maficking is? >> It sounds northern. Sounds northern. I'm going to I'm going to go with >> You're really good at this. >> Some some level of incest. >> Uh, it could result in in it could result in incest. A term for getting wildly rowdy out in the streets. Oh, I mean that's >> mafficking in Newcastle. Maficking on the big market in >> I love the jump from it sounds northern to some level of >> incest. Could be incest. Uh afternoonified. >> Afternoonified. >> You're slacking off. You're no longer taking things seriously. >> Yeah. Exhausted. >> Someone or something that is highly fashionable. >> Afternoonify. I have to assume that that's because you you only dress up in the afternoon, right? You're afternoonify, >> right? >> You wouldn't dress that way in the morning. Just walking off. >> Uh, chuckaboo. Chuck-a-oo. A dear friend. Dear friend, chuckaboo. Uh, giggle mug. Someone who's always smiling. Uh, half rats. Bit drunk. >> Half rats. >> That makes sense. Half rats. >> Not rats. Just half rats. >> Uh, evening wheezes. This should be brought back. Evening wheezes should be brought back. Means fake news. >> It's evening wheezes. Uh, and apparently it's champagne weather means it's pouring or raining. Coffee sisters mean besties. >> There we go. Some Victorian slang for you. >> Well, it is interesting like language like to talk about this cuz that's the same language. That's the English language that we still use and those words have gone. You never notice when something disappears cuz it disappears kind of becomes forgotten. But the idea that it's the best example of anarchy, the political system of anarchy is the English language. There's no central system for it. No one sits down and goes that's a word that's not a word. we're changing the meaning of that. It just organically sort of emergent from the group. It's kind of perfect. And I think a lot of solutions are like that. You can't you can't do it from top down. It just has to sort of let it happen. >> What do you I mean, you spend your entire time playing with the English language. What have you come to think about sort of how it's developed recently? >> How it's developed? >> I don't I don't I don't like new words. I mean, this is slightly tangential to the question, but if I if I was on a date, for example, and someone was using lots of new vernacular and new words, I would say, "It's been a great night." You know, that's what I'd say. I I think um simple words are the best words. Best What's the What's the phrase? Um big things are best said in small words. >> Yeah. Maybe like a a mark of intelligence. Like if you can get across a complex idea to a 5-year-old, great. And if if you need incredibly complex language, you're some kind of hustster. you're selling some [ __ ] >> You've got an issue with like elite speak, 21st century elite speak. And that would be if a lady wants to bag Harry Dry, she can't use too much modern slang. >> I think >> so. So, if she came out and started talking ticky boo, that that' really get you going. >> Unfortunately, I've watched Peep Show, so for any fans of that show, they know that word's a bit of a dear bit of a turnoff. But >> I I think I read once that the French started a revolution with three words, which are quite big words, but what was it? egalit egalitar liberty fraternity you know and I I don't think you need much more than that you don't need much more than that to sell soap if the French are starting a revolution with with just three words >> what's the best example of um compression it's like the most simplest >> oh jeez um the best the best example of compression well there's like a two-word joke dwarf shortage and I had a three-word joke which was stationary store moves he had the sixword story. >> Oh, yeah. For sale. >> Children's shoes never worn. >> Oh, Jesus. >> Yeah. Brilliant. >> Brilliant. >> How do you think about words, Jimmy, in comedy? Do you think some words are just funny or do do you obsess about word choice when you're writing a joke? >> Yeah, I I really do. I really think it's it's kind of the phrasing. It's more the rhythm of it, but sometimes it's the um the phrasing like having the right word for the thing and and conjuring up an image is very important in people's heads. So, you've got the kind of concept that you you kind of I know this thing's funny. How do I get that across to someone else? So, it's about that language, the the the purpose of language of like conveying like getting space in their head, getting into their head and making them kind of making them draw the cartoon. >> Didn't you have stepdads? >> [ __ ] >> Yeah, that's good. Yeah, stepdad. I don't like the term stepdad. I prefer to say [ __ ] Yeah, it's nice. Just take a moment to sort of step back from it and go, "Yeah, that's >> it was right there. It was right there the whole time." I had a thing the other day that I just thought, how's no one got to this before? Was talking about that Donald Trump came up. I said, "Yeah, they tried to assassinate him and and they very nearly did kill him because no one could warn him because no one wanted to sound stupid. No one wanted to shout, "Donald duck." >> Very good. >> That's good. He was right there, but you go, "How did no one >> the palm of everyone's hands? >> How did no one see that?" >> Yeah. >> Sometime sometimes it feels like the joke's there. You're just like getting getting rid of everything else. >> I've learned from over a thousand podcast episodes, the easier that you make your health routine, the more consistent you'll be. It's like golf, right? You want to keep it simple and not mix a bunch of pills. You want the eye of the tiger, not the DUI of the tiger. That's why I'm such a huge fan of AG1. One scoop contains 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food source ingredients in a single daily drink. And that's why been taking it every single morning for nearly 5 years now. 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Or you have JFK's don't ask what uh your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And you'll see this ABBA pattern and it still works. Even when you know it, even when you know it's coming, it still works. There's one in advertising like everyone will know it just beans means heightens but just changing all of the last letters to be a zed was just the most genius thing. >> But that's that's another example when you do things in threes. So again another one you ever heard the uh Winston Churchill speech during World War II where he talks about this is when he comes in and he refers to I have nothing to give but blood, sweat and tears. What's interesting is he didn't say that. He said I have nothing to give but blood, sweat, toil. But because we like thines, it just it disappears. And you constantly see this whenever anybody actually makes a four-way statement. >> Although you look at the unit, you go, "He didn't toil much, did he?" >> Big big thumb. >> Big old boy. What have you got? Do you bring something from home? >> Yeah, I've got some stuff from home. >> We meant to bring stuff. >> Yes. >> I'm so sorry. >> No, I'm joking. Anything. Okay. What do you got? >> So, we've Do you Do you recognize what this is? >> You're going to have to lift it. Put it on the table for the class. What do you want here? So, this is Yeah. just uh Yeah, that looks perfect. That's lovely. Thank you. >> Do you recognize what this is? >> Yes, it's I would say it's the woods. >> Some woods. >> The woods. >> Yeah. Britain. >> So, this is Charles Darwin's thinking path that he built around his house. So, whenever Darwin was stuck on a problem, he would go on a walk around his thinking path and he would collect he'd have stones uh like racked up that he would knock off to kind of figure out how many rounds that he's done. His kids would sometimes [ __ ] with him and like put the stones back on whilst he was walking around. So Darwin used to use this thinking path regularly. >> Okay. He had 10 kids as well. So there's a lot of a lot of kids to do. We know what this is. >> Does it say Yousef Yousef kidnap Chase Arthur Em Lim. Oh, it's Christopher Nolan's uh uh Inception. >> Correct. This is So Christopher Nolan was working on Inception for 10 years. Um and one of the uh things he did was actually draw the plot down. You see the fivepart dream plot that he visualized here. Do you know what this is? >> Yes, but I'm not going to say it. Do you guys know what it is? >> Um, it looks like my uh my diary when I was in school almost, you know. It's I don't know. >> No idea. >> Is that JK Rowling? When JK Rowling was stuck on Harry Potter, she uh turned it into a spreadsheet. This is the fifth Harry Potter. Like the entire storytelling sequence into a spreadsheet. >> Is that And how did that work out? Was it was it all right? >> Cool. This >> I think. Does that say at the top? >> Yeah, it says I think and then it has a little diagram. >> See, therefore I am. >> Back. No, back to Mr. Charles Darwin earlier. This is when he opened his red notebook and drew out kind of his first thoughts around what evolution is or like the family trees or how it all interconnects. >> Okay. And then anybody know what this pub is? >> Jimmy, this looks like one of your >> Yeah, I know. This looks like >> the Eagle and Child. >> It's not the pub in Oxford, is it? Yes, it is. >> Is it the pub in Oxford where correct where all the great myths of the 20th century were written >> pretty much. So >> So it's Lord of the Rings. Um CS Lewis. >> Yes. >> It's where J.R. Tolken and CS Lewis used to meet up, have a fight. Tolken would give CS Lewis his draft of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. CS Lewis would give Tolken his draft of of Narnia or whatever he was working on. They would both read it out loud and then roast one another over a pint. Hey, do you want to know an interesting here's an t tangential fact there. So I only find this out recently. So Finnegan's Wake is a book that I've read around a lot. I haven't read Finnegan's Wake, but I read about it a lot. It's kind of the great work work of literature. It's uh well James Joyce obviously. So I didn't realize that Finnegan's Wake is Star Wars. So uh Joseph Campbell, you've heard of Joseph Campbell, The Hero Thousand Faces, The Hero's Journey, all of those kind of great books that informed Star Wars. Basically, Star Wars is a sort of dumb down version of those books. >> Well, before Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero's Journey, his thesis was on the myths within James Joyce's Finan's Wake. >> Okay. >> So, he basically wrote that first and then he he thought, "Oh, this is really good. This thesis, I'm going to make this into a book about the heroes that are in all stories." And so, it's kind of James Joyce and then it's uh Joseph Campbell and then it's George Lucas. James Joyce is actually the root of this. >> Yes, it's a distilled version of these things. >> That's brilliant. I had Alex Pekkas on the show and he did a breakdown of the Odyssey, but because he can read the original Greek, >> he's able to get much uh more a rich explanation of what's going on because sometimes words have multiple different meanings and he's digging into that. It was so good, so fantastic. And you see even in that there's turns there's a descent and I'm asking him at each point okay so using you know Campbell's idea which was what like 2,000 3 2 and a half thousand years later or something like that uh at what point on the clock face are we here as he goes around and sure enough even back then even the first book ever written the first thing ever written down before that it was all >> verbal story writing >> Gilgamesh wasn't it >> is the Gilgamesh is a bit older >> maybe slightly not to contradict you on your own podcast but you I mean, feel free just to go back to that. Isn't it interesting? Just hold this up for a second. Um, >> the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where CS Lewis and Tolken would meet up to roast each other about their fiction. Meanwhile, you two nerds at [ __ ] Lifetime >> over a smoothie, over a honey berry smoothie. English have lost their way. >> My point of bringing these is I'm working on a a chapter called um it's around a thinking uh we've discussed it before. Essentially the premise is don't think with your head, think with your uh feet, your hands or your mouth. So a few different premises on that. >> There's a few I didn't include that. So Dickens would when he was struggling with insomnia and writer's block would do what his friends described as violent walking. He would walk 20 to 30 miles. Um Travis Kalanick when he was creating Uber, he had a um a racing track built in the office and he would do walking meetings and be constantly walking around 60 miles a week. >> Yeah. Hey, can't get a car. >> There we go. Um, and then, uh, going back to thinking with your mouth, uh, if you go to the bottom of, uh, M Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in the paper he published about 25 pages. He credits nobody, but he says thank you to one person, which is Michael Besso, who was his friend that he would walk around and talk with, but one day as he's talking it out loud, his friend, he comes up with this idea. It's why Harry's like, I call him my Besso as a result because you having those people to talk to. But I wanted to kind of maybe explain like why do I think this is going on. >> I think you might be the Einstein. He might be jewelry's out. Don't take that. >> I'll take I'll be your best. I'll be the best. So um I would to visualize something that's under discussed. >> Okay. Right. >> Would you spin that a little more for me? this idea here um which is kind of human step count throughout like your great great great n times 100 just goes like this and then suddenly you have kind of the agricultural revolution here and it just completely plummets like and then you kind of go down to 10,000 and now we're currently the average is around about 5,000. What's interesting 18,000 for men was the like average step count for hunter gatherers. We estimate about 15,000 for women. Interestingly, they said, "How do you get that data?" One way you can look at it is with um what's the um the current people that reject technology that forgot >> Amish. Amish. So, the Amish, they look at the number of steps the Amish do, but they to kind of >> surely Amish life is slightly different to 300 300,000 BC. They look at a few different things in terms of like walking distances, but that's one of the the gauges that >> you think it might be the same amount of steps in a lifetime, but they're getting them in early cuz they die at 35. net. They're all they're all net down to the same number of steps overall. >> Yeah, you've got a certain amount of steps in you and that's it. Yeah, that's Roger Federer's got this canister theory which was cuz he had a couple of years out basically his like he got interviewed I think it was more than 2019 and he was like I still got stuff in the canister cuz he didn't play no he didn't play in 18 I don't think and it was this idea that a tennis player just has a canister which they can either burn it out like Nick Curios and just actually he didn't play much but like more like in the D >> and then the canister you're at the end of the game >> well I I like that idea of like in relationship thinking about reservoir of goodwill so you build up a reservoir of goodwill early in a relationship and the kind of honeymoon period and then you can spend it later on. So like how many how many fights could a friendship survive? Could a relationship survive? And it's all about how much you've stacked up. So you're stacking up those good memories, those good times and then you've got that reserve that you kind of eat into in the relationship. It's quite a nice way to think about it cuz you kind of go through hard times with someone and you go actually it's all right cuz we've done a lot of stuff in the past. >> Whereas if it's someone you've just met, you go [ __ ] this noise. >> Yes. Yeah. It's like paying into a bank account. >> Yeah. >> If you haven't deposited much in, you can't withdraw much before it goes into the bank. I don't think people think about friendships in that way where you go kind of friendships are they're incredibly important. I sort of think every argument between a couple is one person saying to another person, you are not enough people. The best relationship advice is invest in your friends. Your partner will be fine. Go out and talk to your friends and then come home and listen. >> But people don't have that. They think one person's going to be their everything. >> I think one of the problems talking about friendships like that is it makes it sound quite transactional and it gives people a little bit of an ick. >> 100%. Yeah, I mean you there's supposed to be something loyalty is not just if this person can add to my life. Alex had this line where he imagined that one of his friends asked him. He he'd broken down his car. He got a flat tire in his car. He was five blocks away. Will you come and help me? And Alex would just ring a roadside assistant to go and see him. And he was like, well, that means that I can do what I want to do. My friend gets a better quality of service. But what it forgets is that he's not just saying, "Can you fix my tire?" It's, "Will you give me your time and your support?" Alex sort of remains staunch. She's like the most like utilitarian when it comes to >> think about this recently a lot because so much education is now done by YouTube, right? So, if you learn how to shave, and we've all got differing abilities here, um, but you learn how to shave, you do it with a YouTube tutorial now, but you miss the intimacy of going to a father or, you know, an old friend and going, "How do I actually do this thing?" And I don't know what's lost there. But like, you would think that the aim is to shave, but it isn't. It's like a little communal moment. >> It's not. Sean has this wonderful idea and I tried you we was talking uh last time around what we call like hyper meta which is this idea that the ancient Greeks or Romans rather than scroll the news feed every day or read a new book or listen to a new audio book they would have principles that they want to take seriously so they go back and review the way more versus forgetting everything. And one of mine would be from Sean which is that idea he talks about just delete the scoreboard. So like a lot of people go into the start of a relationship kind of game theory 101 where it's like I'm at zero, Christopher is at zero and wait Chris Chris will do something tick t you understand why this the scoreboard is there to measure an imbalance in injustice and >> delete the score just give give you taken advantage by a few sociopaths you'll >> I don't think you're even going to get taken advantage of I don't think you need to be a sociopath to take advantage of somebody inside of a relationship >> like let's say you get into a relationship with somebody and like an intimate relationship. This is maybe going to be your new wife for the rest of time and she keeps on turning up late. She keeps on disrespecting you and you're like, "No, just give, give, give, give, give." >> But within reason completely >> looks like when I say decisions rather than experiments and somebody's like, "Well, I'm going to shoot up a load of heroin and I'm going to punch a police officer to the face within reason." And I'm talking about people that air one way. So if you air naturally towards the I'm going to wait for this person, then I'm going to mirror and then I'm going to mirror. >> I I think I'm with you. I think it's the you can't win an argument with your wife. >> Everybody loses. >> Yeah. Because if you win, you lose. Everyone's in a bad mood. So that thing of like going and relationships are transactional, right? There is a there's there's like codes of conduct that you you expect within it. And that's that's kind of that's okay. But then I think if you just get if you enjoy the act of giving, then just just give give. And I do think you end up way you end up the other person ends up giving way more because you just push it so far. And listen, if you're 50 up, then yeah, walk away. But until you get to 50 nil, just keep giving. It's a way better way to live. >> I think it is more Yeah, it's more enjoyable. >> But there is also there is also no 50 nil. Like I there is no 50 nil. >> Exactly. That's a good, >> you know, as soon as Yeah, I I I agree with you. I think once you decide I think you have to make a decision in life and then once you've once you've made a decision, then you got to make that decision, right? And I think people kind of sort of waste a lot of time in this space of like I can't decide. I can't decide. And that's when maybe the school board's pinging off, pinging off. But once you've decided then you're the same like you're the same person. >> Yeah. The I I saw Alex Hormosi. He's up on the wall there. Um on we met for the first time this weekend. I was in Las Vegas and I kind of know him like we've spoken on Zoom and I I know a lot of his work but I met him for the first time and it was that that kind of thing that he has this this sort of theory on like that that thing about his his new theory is about optionality and the idea that people are are getting all the options they can. They want they want optionality on everything. So they they get five degrees and they train and they're ready for everything. They're ready for options, but until you cash in those options, it's meaningless. >> I think it's kind of a genius idea of like at some stage you go with what you've got now or you don't go at all. Do what you can with what you've got where you are. >> Or you just it's like otherwise you're like 40 and waiting for something to happen. >> So So George kind of decided at one point in our in our um interactions that we were friends. I don't know when it happened, but at one point George just decided that we were friends. And then he started he started just I mean I would say you're I would say if I was to describe George I would talk about your generosity and it feels kind of weird to to speak highly of you because I've I've been abusing you all week but you're I think you're an incredibly generous guy and I think that like you know I don't think there's any expectation of of anything which comes with that. you just kind of like I touched down in Austin, Airbnb sorted, you know, I touched down like it's just I think it's a lovely way to live and I do think there is a point where as Chris is like yeah if someone if you it's a feeling as soon as the feeling goes. >> So that's my that's my point on the not needing to turn it into the metric. Why is it that we like to hang around with some people and we don't like to hang around with others. >> It's that there is some form and this would be Alex's argument and I'm if you're on one end and Alex is on the other I'm somewhere in the middle. Alex's point would be you are tracking a scoreboard whether you're doing it mentally or not. And the scoreboard is the vibe of how you feel around somebody. We have friends that we've stopped hanging out with because we're like, I just don't feel like this vibe is the scales don't feel like they're balanced regardless of whether or not you're keeping count. And I do think that that's true. My my rough rule of thumb is that awful line of like you're the average of the five people you hang around with. Incorrect. Do you think in essence >> average of the five podcasts you listen to? >> Yes. >> Then what ends up happening is you have this you're always trying to [ __ ] upwards if you follow that approach anyway. Which means that by definition that why why should those people hang out with you? I think a better rule of thumb is forget how much money they have, forget what they've achieved. I >> surround yourself with who you feel the most alive with. So I don't care if if someone's a poet that's broke and if I hang out with them and we feel I feel alive. It's way more interesting than some billionaire where you feel dead behind the eyes after hanging out is probably the best metric. >> So I still think that you are the average you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with is fine. It's just what is the metric that you're optimizing for because some people might want to be in a room with people that have got the highest net worth or the most well-known and the highest status whatever. It can just be and ultimately what it comes back to is if you ask enough why questions, I just want to feel good. I want to feel good around these people. I don't know. It's a it's a weird thing on what a friendship's for. And I don't think friendships really pay out until the bad days, right? So, you can have a really bad day before you know what a friend is. Because on good days, it's fine. Everything's fine. You hang out with anyone. It doesn't matter. They're giving, they're taking. It doesn't matter. when you have a bad day, like if you get cancelceled, which I have been a number of times, like it's a filter. It's such a great filter. It's like a gift being canceled because you at the end of it, you end up with fewer friends but much better ones. And it's the foul weather friends. It's the guys that call on the bad day. That's what really matters. And and that's what you ultimately I think somewhere at a deeper level, we're solving for that. We're solving for, well, if things get bad, who could I actually >> this person stay with me in the trenches? >> Yeah. What's the when it comes to like cancellation or public criticism, what's the idea that's kind of non-obvious that you only appreciate apart from that once you've gone through it that most people would understand? >> Uh I think it's the the impermanence of it is is interesting and the the idea that you go is anyone going to care about this in a month or a year or you and if no one's going to care in a year why do you care now? >> Jose's got this line. He says the dogs bark and the caravan moves on >> and I quite like it. Mourinho of course just quoted my first ever Jose Mourinho quote. >> It's good though, isn't it? It's like it's it is it's that thing where you go it's it's a real sort of test. It's character versus reputation because your reputation is being destroyed and your character is who you know you are. >> What was the what was the loveliest text or call you had like who was there for you? >> Uh there was a few. There was uh James Cordon would really stand out. So when I got it there was the tax thing actually and and he was in Broadway. He was busy winning a a Tony for his performance in One Man, Two Governors and he called me every night in his interval of his show and he just called me and then he called me and I said, "No, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine." And then he called me the next night cuz he knew it wasn't. And then he called me the next cuz he knew I wasn't and he just kept on calling. >> That's amazing. >> Yeah. It's a lovely thing when you sort of it just and all it teaches you is like I can't do that for him, but I could do that for someone else. >> Yeah. And and when it comes along, that thing of like being the person that calls when something awkward happens or when something terrible happens, phoning and saying, "I don't know what to say, but I thought I'd call." Cuz no one remembers what you say. >> I think they remember you with that. >> Somewhere along the way, low energy just gets accepted as a part of getting older. 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And right now, you can get that $99 price with an additional 20% off by going to the link in the description below by heading to timeline.com/modernwisdom using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com/modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. Iron is just a lovely thing when people do stuff for you which there can be zero ulterior motive. There literally can be I'm trying to think of a good >> I'll give you I can give you one from my life. So this was the moment that I became like properly properly good friends with Yousef. So um for the people that within the last 600 episodes of the show, he only appears once a year, but he was most of the episodes for the first 400 with Johnny. And um he had hurt his back. He has a like bulging disc. He'd hurt his back in the gym doing flips or deadlifting or whatever he was doing at the time. And I was on my way to drive to one of our club nights and his house was like kind of out of the way but not a million miles off. So I was like, I I'll I'll come over and I'll bring you something cuz I know what it's like. Debilitating back pain. He's sort of laid up and he's like, "No, no, you don't need to come and see me." Anyway, I managed to get into his house and brought him a loaf of sorene, some ivy leaf, some neuropen, and like went and got a hot water bottle for him. like he couldn't move, but he just the classic male denial of medical problems or whatever. And he's 25, right? He's made of rubber and magic. He'll bounce back. He'll be fine. But he was just miserable. And it felt like it sucked. And that was a palpable moment when our friendship changed from that. Even though we were really good friends before, I could just tell that there was something that happened at that moment when I decided to go around with some malt loaf and pain relievers and a hot water bottle and was like, "All right, man. you got to go and be in a nightclub with a thousand 18y olds. Like I'll I hope you're all right. And then he me he sent me this text afterwards like being teary and being like man that was just how wonderful. Like what a lovely thing to do. You are right. Like especially in a world where everybody is looking out for the transaction where uh effort can be so low effort, right? Like just sending a text. I think the bar has been lowered for what constitutes becoming a very good friend. Like you got me for my birthday one time. You got me a newspaper from the day that I was born and a printed off graph of the first episode and the biggest episode with the play count in between it and I was never I couldn't even take it was left in Mike Thirsten's apartment in Dubai for like two years cuz I couldn't fly back with it because it was so big. Um but like stuff like that, you know, it's just it's it's really >> being Yeah. being better at just aggressively going give and figure out the next life. >> Aggressive friendship >> and figure out the next life. But isn't this a BDSM friendship? >> You're often very good on this kind of stuff, right? You pointed out this. I thought about this a lot, right? There's a lot of books about being a good parent, but there's no books about being a good kid, >> right? Which is kind of interesting like and there's and really it should be a book about being a family, but there's interesting. There's loads of books. There's, you know, kind of the game and stuff about pickup culture and uh finding women and getting women. Great. But there's very little about friendship. And actually that seems to be the thing that I think friendship is upstream of having a relationship. I think it's not gay to practice on your friends, >> but that thing of like building friendships and building kind of and that's kind of what's missing from, you know, rough and tumble play has been replaced by video games. And it's it it doesn't work in the same way. Like there's something about like that male friendship thing and building that up over years, having your boys, having your guys that you're with that's really incredibly valuable and we don't do enough of it. >> Robin Dunbar's got this insight. He was the guy that came up with 150 number. I interviewed him once. He's brilliant. >> He's fantastic. And uh he says that you have your close group of friends, which is five, have a slot, five very close friends, >> but a relationship takes up two. >> Relationship takes up two of the slot of five. And that would also mean that if you lose the relationship and you want to keep that same level of connection, you can't just replace your chick with a new friend. You probably need to replace them with two. >> Yeah. Well, it's also that thing of like men tend not to do very well post divorce because they outsource their social life to their other half. >> Correct. >> So then it's >> the wife and the friends. >> Yeah. They're entirely isolated afterwards, which is a Yeah. terrible way to be. >> Mhm. >> Robert Dumbar, we hit. Go on. You were going to say something there. I've lost my train of thought now, but I think, you know, I always think of um I think this a lot what we're discussing as well. I wonder if the American audience appreciates it as much as the British one >> because they're so giving, dude. They're so Americans don't understand just how pro-social they are. Like you can be on the side of the lake. I This happened. This happened uh uh the other week when we went to uh the Jasper Mike's house. Um and I was on the side of the lake and a boat just went by. We're like, "Do you want to come wake surfing?" Like they didn't know me. Like yeah, sure. Went wake surfing. like that just you would need in order to get to that level of friendliness that would be a three-year project in the UK >> in order to warrant being invited onto this thing that was part I don't know maybe it's because everyone's a it might be an Austin thing because everyone's kind of a social transplant from somewhere else or it might be an America thing because everyone's a cultural transplant you know sort of >> historically from somewhere else but I don't know >> I noticed there's three types of interactions I'd have with strangers so uh interaction one would the stranger would just not look at me. Um, interaction two would be we'd mirror one another's energy. So, or you give a nod and then you'd have somebody who actually says something. And I realized a lot of the time I'd just like mirror. So, some I I'd kind of head down. Somebody says hello, I'll say hello back. Somebody gives me a nod, I'll give them a knock back. And if they have their head down, I'll have my head down versus oh, you can just you can just do things. >> You can be the leader. It's you're using the uh proportionate force of like being in a fight. So, well, if he's got a knife, I can use a knife. But you just always use a gun. >> Yeah. Yeah. I do wonder if uh we try to coin this >> welcome to Texas trying to coin this coin this term which is a British syndrome and America syndrome is another thing, but British syndrome. I was out for dinner uh the other night with a friend of mine and he's had this employee that he's kind of complained about for the last 6 weeks like issues he's trying to get him to do. When he finally like sits down to dinner, he goes, "I've realized he's not low agency, he's just British." Uh, that's true. >> Well, you had that you had a great razor for that on uh I think it was you. Yeah, it was like British versus America. So, you go the the British disease is cynicism and the American disease is [ __ ] >> Yeah. Which is Well, I mean, it's great. There's a great comic, Jeff Green. No, Jeff Green. Great observational comic. He said, "I prefer America to Britain. I'd rather be told to have a nice day but by someone that doesn't mean it than told to [ __ ] off by someone that does." >> Jeff Green. Great great comic. So, so I have a rule of thumb for which is whenever I criticize Britain, I'm going to criticize America as a return or or compliment Britain. >> Yeah. Sounds like you're keeping score. >> I was thinking, >> do we have we ever had like an Elizabeth Holmes, a Sam Bagman Friedman uh uh that's just we're just not playing at that level. I think that's the reason why >> the level of brazeness that you need >> to pull that off. But I don't think any British person, except maybe Gary Stevenson, has enough self-belief to be able to drive that home. >> You need to have banks to rob them. >> Yeah, it's a good point. Um, just trying to think of it like a great huge >> a great >> gap in the market. We should do it. >> I feel like Andrew is kind of hovering over that area, but that's the British hustster. >> Who? >> Andrew. Prince Andrew. >> Oh, the OG Andrew. >> Right. Okay. Mount Batton. >> Yeah. >> I I got in a lift in I I was in Austin last year and I started I got I got in lifts. They call them elevators or do we call them elevators? >> One of us calls them elevators. >> We call it a lift. They call them >> They call them elevators. Getting in these these elevators or lifts and I would say um people started asking me what number I was on the elevator. Six. I'd say, you know, punch in six. And I thought I'll come back to England and I'll I'll try this out. >> So, two Marine Road. Probably shouldn't have said that. Um into the elevator I go. if they go and say, "Hey, what what what number uh what number would you like?" And I say, "Number." I say, "Yeah, it some people say number, some people it's it's headphones on, and it's a it's a starkly different experience." Um, having said that, I also learned about the California lunch. Well, I've never been to California, but apparently if you go to California, everyone says they want to have lunch with you. >> Oh, yeah. >> But they don't actually want to have lunch with you. >> Right. Yeah. that I remember a friend of mine saying to me, you know, was in Hollywood and they said, "Be careful." You could die of encouragement. >> Just it's just everything's very positive. >> Jimmy, how do you is how do you I feel like there's two different ways into like creating stuff, >> right? >> And I feel like there's the volume method which is like I'm just going to write a lot of jokes and some of them are going to be good. And that's sort of Prince when he was recording music would just make a lot of he'd record a song a day, you know. And then there's like the Leonard Cohen approach. If I'm gonna spend five years on Allelujah, I'm going to write 80 verses. And I wonder in comedy, are you more like I'm just going to write right and some jokes are going to stick or I'm going to I'm going to work on one joke for a good for a good couple of days. >> No, I I find I don't find working on them really helps. It's like they come out pretty much fully formed and then I just it's it's iteration. is just trying new things and the audience tell you what's going to work. So the audience feedback, the audience is a genius. They tell you what is and what isn't funny and what is and what isn't acceptable and you just go back to them time and time again. So at the end of the show, I still got it on me from last night. You got new jokes and then you just try the new things and >> that's like how you're writing your book, George, almost. >> Yeah. Do you set yourself a number of jokes to to write? Is it like that or >> Not really. I mean there's always like there's always new stuff to try. There's always like I've got a file that's huge of like, okay, the print off. Okay, I'll try 10 tonight and and then the next 10 and then you sort of maybe you tweak them a little bit, but it's not a full kind of rewrite. You might tweak it a little bit if you go, I didn't really got that at all. That wasn't clear enough. But it's very rare that you tell some a joke and it doesn't work and you can rescue it with a rewrite. It tends to be just the idea is just not there. And some and if they're immediate, then that's and you're looking for the AAA's. You're looking for the ones that are going to work every single time no matter how you deliver them. You're looking for that kind of quality. So the idea of like polishing something is kind of a different some sometimes it's like you change the wording a little bit and it it perfects it. >> Yeah. I remember Jason Freed said this about writing. He said if I write if I write it down and it just doesn't it's not feeling right. He said I'm not I'm not going to come back to it. I'm not going to rewrite it. I'm just going to leave it start again the next day and it's like a different route in which is funny cuz I have a very different I I I don't particularly work like that. Do you ever hear the um Bob Dylan Leonard Cohen story when they met up? They met up for lunch and they uh he talked about um >> Allelujah 80 verses four years or whatever. >> No, it was like he it was Bob Dylan went I think he said he said how long did it take you to write um uh all along the watch hour and Bob Dylan said 20 minutes and he said how long did it take you to write Hallelujah and he said 12 years because he was embarrassed that it had been 20 but it was like it's a long time. >> Yeah. >> So what's your process? you you sit and well I I like writing. I think that you can't really write, you can only rewrite. So I I guess I'm not writing jokes, you know. >> But is that but that thing of like you can't write, you can only rewrite. Like I think the idea of doing you do masses of stuff. I think the reason most people don't succeed in the arts is because they get into it because they like really good stuff. They've got great taste, but then they don't stick around long enough to be able to produce good stuff. If I It's like you start bad and then you get you get good over time. If I was going to give one piece of advice to anyone trying to learn to write, I would say honestly I would I would forget quantity and I would think about trying to genuinely write one good sentence or maybe even two and then maybe just a good paragraph. And I feel like the real problem is people can go their whole careers without actually writing anything good. And what you really need to do is you need to understand what it's like to write just one thing really good. Cuz a great book is just like it's a lot of great sentences which then form paragraphs and whatnot. And I I remember who was it? Um um Hunter S. Thompson like he rewrote The Great Gatsby just just to know what it felt like to write a good book. And I do think there's something in there. >> Like he rewrote >> by by hand. Yeah. Just to get the feeling of extraordinary. >> I have a collection of uh you've seen it the folder of what I like about what I like and I turned it into an app as well where it's like starts, intros, middles, ends, quotes, reference setups. What was the um Orwell's five rules that you you keep banging on about? >> Well, I only bang on about them when I read your job. Um I can't remember them. I think number one actually number one I I love it's never put never actually can we get on the internet can we look it up? >> First one is I think the first one is just basically never put something in print which you've seen in print is the idea. So essentially just avoid cliche at all times. And I think if you want to if you want to um quickly improve any essay you I would just you could drop it into claude or you could just look at yourself and say have I have I seen this sentence been written down before? Well, I I pulled you up because you said you said yesterday I was editing your writing and you said um what did you say about church? >> Something like during his darkest days. >> During his darkest days, it's a really great example of this. It's just been said if you go to Google search and you put it in quotation marks during his darkest days will have been said millions and millions of times. And it's it's the debris of of someone else's thinking. That's what a cliche is. And you really want to just write original sentences. If you read East of Eden by Steinbeck, it's the last sort of big book I read. And you drop his sentences into Google, no one said sentences like that, like the whole book. And I looked at the chapter you had and you drop a couple of things into Google search, direct quotes, and it's just been said before. It's a very good proxy for like average writing, which your book's definitely not, but >> talking nervous maybe. Um, what's the uh drop it on the this one of the best ones you give me, the drop it on your fur idea. >> Okay. So um this is really about going from abstract to to concrete writing. So essentially anything abstract I'm trying to think of an example is yeah so I let's say someone's writing a trying to come up with an app for for fitness and they said I got an app the idea is to regain your fitness. You can't you can't really visualize regaining your fitness and what you want to do is you want to take that and sort of convert it into objects physical objects which you can drop on your foot. So Chris, let's let's see how we go. Um, regain fitness. Drill into that. Like what drill into regain? What what do we mean? What could we mean by regain fitness? Give me an object, >> a start give me a starting point and and an end point for regaining fitness. >> Uh, not loving your body to loving your body. >> You could drop a body on your foot. So that would be closer. What you could also drop on your foot would be a couch. >> Oh, this is Yeah, >> a couch couch to 5K. You know where this is going. >> It's huge. That's the Nike thing, right? That Yeah. Because it it it makes it real, >> you know, if you can and and people think in um uh analogies really. They they kind you know, it's like that. >> If you can't see it, it's not there yet is is a really good writing advice. So, if you can't visualize it, you know, it's it's it's it's not there yet. >> That's a great kind of I mean that kind of ad copy as well where you've kind of got that thing where it just feels like that was always going to be a hit, but it but it wasn't. Of course, they could have just called it the app. So, Couch to 5K was done by a guy in a guy in New York. I forgot his name, but he was living with his mom at the time. Like, it was it was sort of this crazy breakout application which had no right to be. And I think then it got bought by the BBC and it's the most downloaded fitness app of all time. And that's like the the the I think ideas are but I I feel like even ideas are somewhat underrated. Like you really just need the conviction to to to do them and those two things together. There was a Nike advert or an Nike or an ad. I think Nike uh during the Boston Marathon and it said um runners welcome walkers tolerated and it went it was great but it was the the uh difference here was the taste of the direction it was going in. was so effective and catchy that all of the people who walked during the marathon, which is probably most people, most people are going to walk at some point. Uh, and I got into a lift, [ __ ] me, in LA at the start of the year, and there was a woman wearing hoarders at mid-50s, something like that, nicely dressed, like fit women like off to the gym or do whatever. And both of them were talking about how much they dislike Nike >> because and both of them referenced that campaign. One of them was wearing hokers, the other was wearing rads or something and they said, "Oh yeah, that that campaign was just runners welcome. Walkers tolerated." They don't they're so they're so out of touch now in any case. And they had this everyone has a degree of um distaste for the top dog. I can't wait for that to that that fall to happen. And especially if you play the out of touch I don't care about the everyman game like there's two things that are cohesing together there to like really move in the same direction. They've gotten so big they've forgotten their roots, right? It's it's a cliche. You're playing into a trope that makes it very easy for somebody to attack you. So yeah, um I think they put their >> There's there's a few of those, aren't there? Kind of examples in marketing where people have absolutely shout the bed like done really badly. Was uh was it Ratner the jeweler in in the UK was a guy called who gave a speech where he said, "Oh, we just sell [ __ ] tat." And it just shut down. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. just in a single in a single uh tweet. Keep going. >> It was like it wasn't a tweet even. It was like pre that. It was like an after dinner speech where it's just [ __ ] [ __ ] that we sell. >> Yeah. But it you know like it's funny cuz let's say you have Ron Seal the um the fence painter and they say what do they say? >> Does exactly what it says on the >> and that's that's different to just tat but like that's cuz the language of fence painters that's that's how they talk. Whereas jewelers you know they probably don't want that don't want the word tat to be used as they look at their Rolex. Doesn't this all just come down to your favorite word of position? >> Hey, position. >> Here it is. Uh, the most famous UK example of a jewelry store saying their own product is bad is Gerald Ratner, CEO of Ratner's Group, who in 1991 described his company's products as total crap. This caused a 500 million pound loss in value and forced a rebranding to Signit Group. Another recent instance is complaints regarding the website Scarlet Jewels, which distinct from genuine Scarlet Jewelry, has received poor reviews. Yeah. Well, uh, his infamous speech stated that some of his earrings were cheaper than a prawn sandwich, but probably wouldn't last as long. >> It's pretty good, right? >> You've got one job, mate. That's why, you know, >> Wow. Sell your tat. That's gone. That's gone very badly. >> Sell your tat. >> It's interesting that thing of like industries that are like businesses, industries that disappear overnight. Like 19 I love the fact 1901 biggest industry in the world was uh whaling. >> Whaling. Yeah. >> Whale oil to light. >> Whailing catching whales. What's whaling? catching whales. >> Ah, selling the >> they needed the oil in order to put the lamps, right, to and then the light bulb comes. >> I think whaling was the biggest industry in 1901 and it had fully disappeared by 1903. >> Wow. >> Yeah. Like this whole towns in Canada just like shut down. >> Well, fax machines are kind of like that. Fax machines go from everywhere to now just the running the NHS and the trades. >> Horses in New York in Manhattan. >> Horses in New York. Yeah. And it's always the technology that's the because they they brought in so many laws to get rid of horses in New York because the horse manure problem. You know the reason there's steps up to brownstones in New York is because the horseshit was that high. And there's the whole thing of like smelling salts people cuz the whole place smelt horrific. It was just horseshit and if the horses died they had to chop them up, wait for them to atrify, chop them up in the street and then cart them off using other horses who then died on the way. So the whole thing was just it was a an absolute mess. And they kept on bringing in new laws, new laws, new laws to try and get, you know, a tax on horses and other tax on horses. And then Henry Ford comes along, invents a motor car, and people go, "Yeah, yeah, we don't need horses." >> What do What do you think's that now? What do you think 5 years, 50 years, 100 years will be like, "Oh, it's gone." >> Well, I think it's it's a very interesting question because obviously the AI thing, we can see the jobs it's going to take, but we can't see the jobs it will create. >> But I I I wonder with that whether I think talk shows would be quite obvious point. I I is there still >> to Jimmy's heart. Careful. >> No, no. I mean that I think you're I think you're like the from old media to to new media. I think the the idea that something like you know I love Saturday Night Live, but I can't see it being around in 10 years. >> Like the am I remember going to see a recording uh last year and just thought, "Wow, this is incredible." The amount of people to put this show on to make this happen. It was like it was incu. And then you just go, well, I can't imagine this being it can't compete with people just doing funny sketches on their phone because the the size of the screen seems to be inversely proportionate to the amount of money you can make. >> It's like the movie business might not last. I just think what's funny though is all the sketches on the phone I can never I can't really recall one. Whereas I think of Carrot in the Box like eight out of 10 Cats um Sean Lock and I I I I you know it's it's I I think TV weirdly sticks like I I can't remember anything. Well, there's a great essay by um or who's the guy that wrote abundance with um >> Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson? >> Derek Thompson has a great podcast and he did this episode called he wrote this essay called Everything is Television and his argument was everything is television. Television won't disappear because uh Tik Tok is television. You don't don't think of it in that way because it's streaming. YouTube is the biggest TV channel in the world. Uh it's of course it is. It's it's television. Um Facebook is tele Facebook isn't social media. People think it's like, but that would be for us to know each other and be sending videos to our family and sharing them with friends. That's kind of the that's the idea. But the the reality is people watching videos that other people have made that they don't know. That's television. >> It's a bit of a shame because Gavin and Stacy Christmas special was sort of in my opinion probably actually the World Cup right now, but the last time like the UK >> came together for the why Christmas TV is such a big deal in the UK. I'm not sure what it's like in the States, but Christmas TV is a big deal. Not because it's better than the TV the rest of the year, but because people sit down as a family and want the big watch the big fat quiz and watching it together. It's just nicer to do things in a communal way. Like people used to gather around a fire and then around the radio and then around the TV and it was all great. And then we went off to our bedrooms with our phones. So a more a more communal time of year generally >> where you're back >> in your old childhood bedroom or your old childhood house or whatever or you're with the family's coming over to you and it's a meaningful slightly slower paced sedate moment there. >> So I think yeah if you could own anything I mean that has to be why Harry Potter just keeps on getting run back over and over again right it's the thing that you watched when you were a kid. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. Most people treat recovery like it's optional, but unlike politicians, data doesn't lie. How you recover is literally going to determine how good your next day is going to be. And Whoop tracks all of it. Sleep, strain, heart rate, recovery. It's like Dog the Bounty Hunter, but instead of criminals, it's tracking down your bad habits. All of this data gets pulled into a dashboard that actually tells you what to do with the information. And now the brand new Whoop 5.0, 7% smaller. 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I'm always wary of tiny interventions that purport to have large and long-lasting effects, but I don't see anything immediately fishy about this study, and the mechanism is plausible. I bet most 9/11 truthers have never spoken to a skeptic who both took them seriously and who knew a lot about 9/11. And I think this is an underrated and positive aspect of AI. People are worried about the hallucinations and AI psychosis and rightfully so. But keep in mind that many people do not know basic uncontroversial truths about their world. 37% of Americans, a plurality, believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. 40% don't understand how a control group works. 26% think that the sun goes around the earth. For these people, talking to a chatbot is likely to leave them with a more accurate view of reality. >> I think that's an interesting point because >> conspiracy theories for me are a symptom of a much larger problem, which is we've lost lost sort of trust in institutions. Like I think that's they kind of they bubble up when you have no no faith in institutions because you desperately want to believe in something. you desperately want to kind of trust someone, but you don't trust the government anymore and you don't trust the medical profession and you don't trust um academics anymore. So you kind of you you're desperately searching. So these kind of more and more kind of incredible theories come to the four. I mean not to say that people do conspire to do things. That's a different thing. I mean like conspiracy theories in their traditional form like an unfortifiable sort of theory. >> You for this let's say for example the coronairus pandemic happened like it never happened and it happens in 2026 which we're in. Right. >> I I wonder what the AI bots would be saying about the Corona virus. >> Oh, that's fascinating because people would be arguing online with other people based on what their bot had told them to derive from the fact >> as well as you would have the Fable model for example wouldn't reply because it'd be around biology that you can't ask any basic questions to Fable right now around biology because it might be thinking you're printing a 3D virus. So everyone would be asking Kimmy and >> oh yeah you'd be getting you'd be getting like >> the Chinese models which would be interesting the cause and effect the full circle. >> How long how long do you think I mean I'm not who's to say AI didn't create co who's to say that it wasn't I mean it was it seems to be now people are saying it was created in a lab. Do you think this technology arrived when we think it arrived or do you think it's been around for 10 years? >> I think it's arrived when we when when it arrived. >> Yeah. Yeah. because the transformer technology that you need. >> Here's my you >> my favorite my favorite you want to hear my favorite conspiracy theory at the moment. >> Okay. So there's a two terrifying scenarios. One is there's a Manhattan project currently underway in America and they're working on a AGI. It's the NE it's the it's the big thing. It's the doomsday weapon is the AGI and they're working on it and it's called Solstice and it's somewhere in America. We don't know where but that's being worked on. Right. Second terrifying scenario. They're not. Jimmy, when do you when do you think of all your ideas? M I got the days free. But that is that's a it's a it's an interesting kind of weird thought, right? Which would you rather? >> Well, I'd rather they were working on it. I think that uh it's uh it's kind of happening, right? They're they're putting ever more powerful computers together and people are worried about the wrong thing. I think people are worried about losing their jobs. But I think if you point AGI at um the environment, it might be able to solve the problem of net zero. It might get to that much quicker. And if you point it at physics, who knows? I mean, the great, you know, physics is real power in a way that nothing else is. Everything, every other science is stamp collecting. Physics really changes the world. And there's been no, you know, Eric Weinstein and PE is always saying there's nothing's happened for 50 years. >> String theory has just kind of gone a different way. But if there if there was a a unifying theory of physics, I mean, if that could happen, that'd be extraordinary. And whoever had that would have some power. But if you saw it, um, so Cord released Fable and then they put they had the issues with the government, then Fables come back and then you had this kind of [ __ ] tease, shall we say, where they would say you've got access to it until the 5th of July and then CHBTs released their new model. So Cord have now gone, oh, you now got access to it to 12th of July and they've moved it again. And what you're actually seeing is because there's so much competition right now, it's so hard for any of them to run away or create any form of monopoly. So I think the odds of it being a Manhattan project, it feels way more like there's going to be 15 at once. I get the sense that the COVID thing I I certainly don't think the AI would have had that much to do with it. Had Annie Jacobson on the show who wrote Nuclear War, a countdown scenario. And that's a fun episode. >> Yeah. Well, her new one is is about uh boweapons. It's it's about and she said >> the Russians during the 80s when we are not working on enhancing weapons to make them bioweapons to make them uh more transmittable. They had programmed into the virus. They'd programmed euphoria in. That's how penicious this plague was. It was called a super plague. And they'd programmed euphoria in as one of the side effects because if people felt euphoric, they would go out and dance, >> right? >> And then they would become their own super spreaders. So they had even put a behavioral modifier into this super plague. And apparently this thing that this existed but never got out, was never used, but probably sits in some bank, some frozen like virus bank somewhere. >> Here's a hot tech, right? So in the in the late ' 80s, there was a thing called mad cow disease. Do you remember this? >> They thought everyone was going to go crazy that had >> BS40 or whatever it was called. >> Yeah. >> Maybe it happened. The guy that hosts the apprentice is president now. >> Maybe we all went crazy. >> Everyone has got mad cow disease. Maybe we all went crazy and just no one noticed because we all went crazy. >> I I tell you what, the amount of phones I've seen in sauners, it wouldn't it wouldn't shock me. >> You've got you. >> That's the real >> I don't have my phone on me. >> Describe your phone. >> I I could I could sell my phone. It's a Quinn F22 Pro. It's It's um It has applications, but it's too useless to to get addicted to. >> Great. Purposefully dumbed yourself. No, genuinely like it's um actually I don't really like talking about cuz I got it cuz I I hate these people who get their new phones and it's all stupid phones and they're like they they they make it their thing. So I feel kind of self-conscious talking about on the show. But my younger brother Jack had this phone and he got the nonpro version which is a bit of a mistake cuz it's actually just too useless to text on. But I got the Pro Quinn F22 Pro and and I but but I love I love Jack cuz I was on holiday with him and and he didn't mention it once and I was like Jack what's this what's this phone? And I feel like the way to get people onto these phones is to not ram it down people's throats. >> True. Sometimes you got to let them know because Harry came out for Austin for my birthday. Say goodbye to him. I don't hear anything for a few days. I'm like, "What's happened to him?" And then he finally gets back in touch via WhatsApp on his desktop. And he's like, "What did you do to your phone again? You threw it in the river. >> I threw it in I threw it. I threw it into the I didn't I didn't throw it into the river cuz that would have been >> okay >> disrespectful to the fishes. I threw it into the bin by the river. >> Okay. >> Um and then I switched out. I I I really I if I come come across a lot of money, I think it's what I would like try and change in the world. I just I do feel it really depressing like you you walk into a sauna in Austin and it's an epidemic of people with AirPods in. >> I'll take you to a sauna in Austin where there's there's people >> men with something else in. >> There is someone in a sauna right now listening to this airport >> going why are they shaming me? >> Look genuinely look look at your life if you were doing that. I feel like you might feel like you got it all worked out. If if you have that one step, you are doing it. You haven't got nothing worked out. >> Wait that for a second. Uh how do you feel about people that wear AirPods during massages? >> Sorry, Chris. How do I feel about people wearing AirPods? Full stop. You're done, >> right? But okay, let's >> during massage, you're also done. It doesn't change the question. >> I listen to audio books during a massage. Yes. >> All the time. No, no, no, no. This is You're being very diplomatic about >> even during the happy ending. That's he speeds it up. >> That's why I get to Napoleon. >> Oh yeah. My my younger brother works in politics and his his his idea is to understand what real people think and he he does a bloody good job at that. But I said to him, Will, what do real people think? And I'm in a taxi with him and he's got his damn AirPods in trying to listen to what real people think. I said, Will, there's a taxi driver like why why don't you ask the taxi driver what real people think? I think it's bonkers. >> Was he getting a massage at the same time? You need to stop wearing AirPods during massages. >> Why? I I just it is the perfect >> Wait, is he massaging you? >> That's true. It's >> Why has he got this level of It's It's a client service worker dispute here. >> This guy is not even paying attention. Listen to this gibberish as he go. >> I I just It is the perfect time to be with your thoughts, to do some good thinking without feeling like you're wasting time, you're falling behind, being in the dark playground, being in a reverse version of it. >> We talked about that earlier. I think boredom is unappreciated serenity and allowing yourself to be bored. Like like planning it is quite a good idea. Like train travel, it's quite good to be on a train, be bored. Be in an airport, be bored. >> I'm bored enough. I'm bored enough. I do I do enough time alone in my own thoughts when I'm up for a massage. I I want to I want to have Napoleon speed less 40 hours. >> I didn't realize Napoleon even recorded an audio book. This is tremendous. >> Yeah. I I slightly disagree to place to play Devil's Advocate. Um, how do you know you're not in the mass hysteria of TV is going to give you square eyes? Uh, like calculate should be banned. >> Lite syndrome. >> Yeah, lite syndrome. How do you know when you're uh going against smoking versus being a lite? >> I don't know when I'm going against smoking. >> Cuz like how do you know you're pushing back against something >> I'll tell you. I will tell you why. I will tell you why. Because my my what I'm doing is I'm doing nothing. So you can't it's not like I'm it's not like I'm smoking cigarettes here. My my idea of where I'm trying to move the needle is just less less less less less. So if you're smoking, you're doing something. If you're if you're going skiing, you're doing something. What's what's a different example? If you're if you're say if if you're saying like having energy drinks, that's you you you what's what did Talib say? Subtract. So if you're subtracting, you can't go you can't go wrong if you're subtracting. That's the >> I think there's I think there's something to this. I think the that whole anxious generation Jonathan height thing of like it's not good for kids and there's this kind of you know they think it's social media is as harmful as cigarettes for kids but I think I think what we need to do then is give kids cigarettes. >> Yes. >> You know that the idea of and this kind of a joke on the language but you go actually it's the the point that he makes in that book is not just ban social media. It's ban social media and let kids play outside >> because they can't have infinite freedom online and then no freedom in the real world. And really it's the freedom in the real world that we haven't quite everyone's kind of on this idea of like oh yeah we'll take away the phones from the kids but actually what else do they get to do? >> It's interesting that what the average person spends 6 hours a day on screens we haven't gained 6 hours we days aren't now 30 hours long so of the time that we had previously that's had to get squeezed from somewhere. >> Yeah. >> Which means that you've lost time doing other things. >> But certain smart people are getting massages while listening to stuff. So there's certain there's outliers out there that have gained the system. They're geniuses. outing me publicly for my my audio but during massage. You've got a worse phone addiction than me, my friend. >> Oh, yeah. I think Harry can test. >> Yeah, I wor I don't disagree. I've got a I've got I'm horrendous with my phone. I'm saying that the massage is not the place to have your AirPods. >> It is weird now that the technology it was kind of the thing of like I've got the new the new phone, the new thing 10 years ago. Now the most opulent thing you could do is say, "Oh, we went to a cabin and there was no Wi-Fi and we just put away our things." It's the most opulent thing in the world. >> Meditation retreat with no screens. >> Yeah. What are the What are the the the wealthy well doing now? What are the billionaires doing now? They're trying to live without that social media, without those screens. >> How was the retreat? >> Uh it was intense. Yeah. To do seven days. I mean, it'll be the longest time since I was probably a child. There would have even been a TV in the room, right? Uh one of the guys, there was an AI uh interface that could help you with your practice. And >> what? That sounds like absolutely defeating the purpose. >> Well, look, I I didn't use it. I didn't use it was if if none of the facilitators were available and you were coming up against some blocks in your practice. There was a chatbot that had was on a was on a laptop and had been sort of imbued with >> all of the principles of the thing. But the interesting thing this was Teemo who was one of >> they have they have they have [ __ ] up so hard there. >> I didn't go into that I didn't go into that room. I didn't use that. >> However, he thought am I able to find out the England score by messaging the the the meditation chatbot? So he's trying to go. Every time that I sit down to meditate, I keep being distracted by wondering what the England score was. Would it be possible for me to find out so that I can get back to my practice, please? Um, but no, fascinating. Northern California, it was Janna practice, JHA. Um, it was also OpenAI's global reset week. So, a lot of the engineers were off from work. They have two global reset weeks which is basically enforced holiday for your as a way to try and sort of frontr run people not getting burnt out by saying hey you've got you you can't come in to work essentially. So I go and there's all of the guy bunch of guys from OpenAI but there's also all of their main competitors from Anthropic and a bunch of other guys that are in there from Google as well. So there was kind of like low-key silent meditation retreat turf wars going on between people at the forefront of AI development. That was kind of interesting and yeah like you you kind of learn the particular school of meditation I was doing which was Janna you're learning to allow conductivity through your emotions and that is to allow them to move freely without any uh constriction. So you're uh noticing and releasing mental tension. It's like primarily what you're doing but that drops down into emotional tension. What you realize when you come back into the world is how much of your life is spent constricting emotional tension because there's times when emotions come up. Well, it's it's not appropriate for it. You might feel a little overwhelmed as you're walking through the airport, which everybody did as we went reintegrated back into society. Well, that's not the time for you to talk about how I'm feel so scared and awkward and this is too much for me. It's like no, you you swallow down the overwhelming wildfires in Europe and the fat guy presenting the football on the on the screens and you just sort of move past it. Also, it's very difficult to hear what your soul is whispering to you when the world's shouting at the same time. So, you start to hear far more fleeting thoughts that come up. A lot of the thoughts that you wouldn't have been able to pay attention to if you were regularly even talking to people, let alone being on screens. So that was kind of interesting. >> What was your soul whispering to you, Chris? >> My soul whispering to me probably [ __ ] spend more time in silence, I think. Like it was quite meta. Um, vegetarian, which meant that almost everybody's digestion was ruined for the first three or four days. Lots of beans, lots of tofu. Trying to do group meditation with 40 people in a room while there's farting going on is relatively interesting. Um, some guy I have no idea how but entered the retreat single and left the retreat with a girlfriend. So that is the level of gay. >> That boy's got gay, >> mate. That's the level of gay. None of us could pull it aside. >> How did the guy >> I don't know. Did you honestly just >> He should be a guest on the show. >> I think just straight up frame. >> Oh yeah. Not like you. Your tiny little forearms. >> That's true. Um anyway, he was it was it was really good. Uh enjoyed it. Very intense. The most interesting thing is then coming back and like having your your old patterns uh come into conflict with your sort of new system, new worldview. And it takes a a good bit of time. You have to like titrate your I couldn't use my phone. I just simply could it was I know it felt very icky, very sterile after just staring at like trees. The only thing I was looking at was trees. >> Yeah. A few points by saying this. It's the most Chris Williamson thing ever that I've been trying to get this man to take a holiday for been on he's not been on what I call proper holiday for five years and then he goes and does a John a 7-day silent meditation retreat but even goblins is his own holiday um I think an interesting question I have around the phone stuff >> question >> question there's a great guy on Twitter called Chris Leakin and his whole idea is that the phone itself might be Chesterton's fence >> what Chesterton's fence is >> yes >> so it's this uh idea a of if you see a fence, don't take it. Don't take it down until you understand why it's there. And he helps a lot of people with a phone addiction and then we'll often discover 2 days later they got a vaping problem or they got a porn problem. And actually the phone was never the problem. The phone was the solution. And if you actually get a little bit deeper, the phone addiction goes away. And I do wonder how much of the uh the phone addiction is actually a solution to a much greater problem. I think it might be that the we've we spoke about this um Mark Fischer talked about this before he died about the the idea that we've um uh privatized uh mental health problems. We we sort of think it's a personal failing for people to be depressed or anxious and actually I think it's a societal problem. We're not organizing our society correctly for people to um flourish. I think it's like the phones are kind of a symptom of a much larger problem within our society that we're quite sort of isolated. We're kind of looking for something to do. We're not in groups. We're not with other people. >> We'll go back to the thinking of your hands, mouth, feet. Uh feet step count massively down. Hands. Uh uh you almost you're using your hands on your phone, but you're no not using your hands like how most humans used to throughout history. You wasn't tell what go >> uh when Winston Churchill was going through uh >> the black dog. >> The black dog. >> Yeah. >> He would put up 200 bricks a day. Apparently was actually a terrible brick the brick layers had to go in afterwards and do it. But Churchill just to keep his mind at bay, he would do something with his hands every single day. So when you lose the lack of feet, hands and mouth, I do think that can be not necessarily a full explain of mental health problems, but it definitely contributes. >> Well, it's interesting that thing of like the how much is a hardware problem, how much is a software problem. Like how much of like if you meet someone that's if you got a friend really going through a tough time, it's like well are they sleeping 8 hours? Are they eating well? Are they exercising? Are they walking in nature? Are they seeing their friends? Like if you cover that that sort of simple stuff, but it's very difficult to regulate that stuff when you're feeling terrible. It's like you get into a spiral. The most absurd one was when it was a study that came out. It's like a meta analysis of all the causes of um depression or the biggest treatments that have an impact on it. >> And the big headline was exercise SSRIs. And that was the huge thing that made like global news. But if you actually go into the meta analysis, exercise is like number five on the list. You know, SSSRI are further down. Number one on the list. It's just an absolute sleeper that nobody talks about. Dance therapy. >> Dance therapy outperformed exercise. And it's interesting one of you have a lot of the benefits of exercise, but you're with people >> and you're out of your own head with music. >> Well, also you haven't got you haven't got headphones on when you're dancing, whereas if you're exercising, you have headphones. It it makes me think when did we get evolved enough to be depressed? >> Yeah. I guess that there there's kind of it's slightly we were busy busy fighting saber-tooth tigers for a while. Like too busy. I think it's that thing where we have a but if you really want to know how privileged you are, how far into the future are you planning? Because I think poor people have no future. And I I mean that literally like people if if you're living handtomouth and you're thinking about the next meal, you're not even thinking about what you're doing tomorrow. You're just trying to get through the day and then really wealthy people think on like, "Oh, I wonder my grandkids. I need to make sure they're okay." >> It's like it's a different time frame. But I think that thing about having having too much time we my dad I got three brothers and my my dad would he was a radio presenter back in the day and he'd he'd um work a night shift in radio and then he'd work a day shift teaching radio and he just didn't like he slept in the car for a couple of years. He just didn't have enough time to to get down. You know when you've got kids to feed it's >> Yeah. >> That is a hell of a double shift. Radio by night and teaching radio by day. >> Yeah. My dad's great. He was a he was an electrician. He really wanted to, this is kind of a story, a little story about like the power of teacher because he was kind of he wasn't the smartest cookie in the shed and when he was from he was from Hull and he was he was a >> disadvantage right there. He was in a um his his his great grandpa had built whole prison. Um, and he's in this little classroom and he's he's listened to Nol Edund's last ever radio show because his his big dream was to be a radio star and um, and he had this teacher, I can't can't remember the teacher's name, but like he thought he was going to be told off wearing a cap to cover the, you know, the big old headphones he used to use. And says, "What? Dry? What are you doing dry?" And he says, "Noman's last ever radio show. I'm listening to it." And teacher goes, "Carry on dry." And he went on to he won a Sony award. He was his career was very up and down but you know and it's just an example of like I don't know I love it when teachers just just acknowledge actually what's important in in in kids um you know upbringing. >> Yeah. It's lovely. It's lovely. Is your father still with us? Is he still still looking around? >> He's still looking around. Think in radio. I don't think you'd mind me saying this now. You get fired a lot. It's show business. Like you you're in one you're in one show, you're out the next. So um we play Articulate. As a fact you all know Articulate. um the the the the game where you have to describe individuals and my dad will just he infuriates us because he'll constantly just say interviewed him and we'll go come on dad and he goes Jonah I think he was trying to describe Joan Armor trading once and he said and he and he he he sh he he shouts at my mother sand drop the pilot interviewed him in a way and mom's just like but I I don't know it's kind of a great thing now because radio is about I always think like old school show bits uh like being an actor or being a presenter you're waiting for someone to bring you flowers you're wait you're waiting for someone to come along and give you permission to do the thing that you really want to do. And now with new media, it feels like that permission is already is kind you give it to yourself. You go, "Well, no one's stopping me. I could just start a podcast and interview people and do whatever." I mean, it's what you did in a bedroom in Middlesbrough and >> and it's just kind of, you know, you kind you give yourself permission as long as you keep doing the thing kind of it happens. >> Substack has done the same thing for writing that YouTube did for video and that Apple podcast and Spotify did for audio. >> It's the same thing. Yeah, Substack is uh I used to have this joke that if aliens looked at human reading and writing data, it's it's going up, but then as soon as you zoomed in, it's just subtitles and text messages. >> Everything else is like collapsing. >> Yeah, they do they do talk about people being kind of um post-literate now. Like not they're not people aren't reading books. Well, I had this realization this week um what we're talking about earlier around the whailing going out from 1901 and then sorry being the number one and going out. Have you used whisper flow much yet? I've been told to >> it's but from a transcription perspective I because I realized I write so much that that muscle and it's so you'll know better than anyone Harry it's quite a it's an arduous task or uh there's only so much writing you can do per day until you're exhausted and as a result of writing so much I'd struggle to reply to text messages >> because it'd be using the same it's like I've trained my triceps all day and now someone's asking me to do dips and legit for [ __ ] sake >> and with whisper flow I'm now suddenly getting so much out there and I was like Oh, people are going to stop writing. This is going to become a bigger and bigger trend. People will be right. >> You think speech to text >> and reading as well? I think both of those two things unfortunately be short. >> So, Americans are more likely to place a gambling bet than read a single book. Fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind. In 2022, only 38% read a novel or short story. study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time use survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fall from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023. Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book with 57% of Americans placing a bet last year but only less than half reporting reading a book of any kind. And this included audio books. They included audio books in that. I wonder is there I I've got a okay my theory at the moment here's my here's my big theory friction is very good in life right all the best things involve friction so if you look at a Tik Tok it's it's very low friction right but then you look at a a YouTube video for 5 minutes is a bit more friction uh TV show that's half an hour okay it's it's a bit of an effort a movie lot of friction you read a book I mean come on this is arduous but you get so much more out of the thing the more friction It's like the the Tik Tok video you can't remember. And no one ever says, "Oh man, you got to see my favorite Tik Tok video from 2025. It's awesome." >> Like it's just it's nothing. It's gone. And the things that involve friction seem to seem to be better. But in all areas of life, like the exercise, sports, arts, anything, more friction is better. I also feel like it's just a little bit about the story you tell yourself. So if I was when I personally watched a lot of Tik Toks on Instagram and whatnot, I would just tell myself that I was a bit of a loser and I walked around thinking that. And then when I when I read a full book, you know, I'm like, bloody hell, like I I can do things here. And I think you really trans transmit it into the day. >> You put me on to Stoner. That was a wonderful book. >> It is a wonderful book. Um, what's it about? >> Uh, it's about a it's about a guy called William Stoner who lives on a farm with his parents. And he says he says to his dad, "Dad, I want to go to university and learn about farming." And his dad doesn't say many words to him. So his dad said, "Okay, whatever." pops off to I can't remember which university, Mississippi maybe. And he um and um he he he starts his farming course and after about a semester he flips into English and he starts learning about books for the first time. There's a professor and then the war starts and the professor sort of gets >> there's there's that amazing sequence as well where he doesn't understand. He's like he's reading Shakespeare and he doesn't understand what it means and he goes to his professor and goes, "I don't know what this means, >> but he's like >> interested in it in a way that no one else is. He's like so excited by it. Like, I've got to know what this means. I don't know what it means." >> It's like that's kind of the pivotal bit. It's the thing I I'm I'm amazed you read it. The thing I took from it is he he marries essentially marries the wrong woman. >> And I think it's it's it's a I I do think it's a book. It's so about so many things, but one thing is about picking the person you marry to be honest because this this one woman he marries really in a sort of sort of there's no there's no grand moment where she where she screws up his life. It's just sort of it's a thousand cuts. It's a thousand paper cuts and and his life kind of just sort of becomes conservative. >> She abused by her father. >> She was abused by >> Well, no, but that's like it's never explicitly said, but it's kind of implied. There's kind of a weird >> her father commits suicide randomly on on one sort of Tuesday because there was a bank run. The real advert is like the opening uh couple pages of the book where it starts with his death >> and he works at this university and nobody really noticed >> and it's such a flip of a book because most books you have the giant hero you have the Joseph Campbell whereas this is a man who lived such a mundane life that that's actually interesting that you see yourself or you see your potential worst self in them. One of my favorite songs ever like low agency in the song. Have you ever heard Pearl Jam? Um, it's called Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town. Long, long song title, and it's just the point of view of this 80-year-old woman who's never left her hometown, wishes she did, and the guy who was her teenage sweetheart comes into the shop that she's in, and she recognizes him, and he no longer recognizes her. There's this beautiful line of I changed by not changing at all. small town predicts my fate and every time I listen to that song it it's actually way more inspirational than the hero's journey and stoner is another >> so how how stoner ends is the bit I'll always remember from it is he's on his deathbed and before I tell you the the four sentence question which I I like stuck with me the author of the book has a really different interpretation to everyone who read the book it's also kind of weird the author of the book's like actually no he lived a pretty good life and he taught and he really loved English but book book ends and and William Stoner is is he's got his wife behind him and his is kid who's sort of become an alcoholic and he says um he just starts saying this question over and over again. He says, "What did you expect? What did what did you expect? What did you expect?" And I think what he's kind of referring to is like like if you actually if you fast forwarded your life, William, when you were 20, this was always going to happen. You were going to die in like a little small old room with your wife who doesn't love you sitting by you. And and and he wrote one book which he wasn't particularly proud of. And he had a lovely affair which actually kind of sounds bad but actually wasn't bad because his his marriage was so screwed up. And he just says, "What did you expect?" And it was kind of thinking like, "Yeah, like God, like if you don't change, you know, that that's how I'll die. What did you expect, Harry?" >> But he did. I mean, for me, I think he changed massively cuz it was a guy that was toiling the land for the first 16 years. He was like working the land really hard and then he made it to a university and he spent the rest of his life reading books and teaching other people about his passion for books. It it's beautiful. Uh he achieved so much, but it's like you compared to what? Well, compared to the life his parents expected, which was just physical toil and putting food on the table and he like that was all factored in. And then it's like what did he accomplish beyond that? Well, no, that's enough. It's enough. And it's it kind of goes to that Morgan Howell line of he talks about like happiness being uh your current um experience, >> reality minus expectation. >> Yeah. Which is like what did you expect? Well, maybe you expected too much. >> Yeah. Well, that's the thing because he's uh outstripped his parents' expectations of him, but underperformed on his own expectations of himself, maybe. >> Not in the bedroom. Uh he he found a lovely young young woman who was um well, not young, she was actually quite old, relatively speaking. And I think maybe >> What is it about young women today? >> What is it about young women? >> That'll be clipped. >> That's a question. 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Right now, you can get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's rpstrength.com/modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. What's your favorite joke you've ever raced? >> The last one that worked. I mean, it's it'll literally be the last. I try I try not to get attached to them. So, it's that thing where you go, "Well, I like the thing that worked the other night that worked for the first time." You go, "Great, that's that'll do." >> So, you rip them up, rip them up, rip them up. >> Yeah. It's like the new thing, the new thing, the new thing. And then you're kind of putting a show together and that's kind of an exciting phase, but just whatever the latest thing is. It's interesting the the good and the bad of any industry cuz the good thing for you I guess that you get to constantly come up with new material but it's also like if you're a null galler who has a two-year stretch and does those songs like the leverage of that exists forever. A lot of musicians kind of like they they uh they don't want to end up in Las Vegas being a covers band of themselves, you know? So, it's that thing where you go be careful what you wish for. Like I've constantly got to come up with new stuff, but that's also the fun bit is coming up with the new stuff. >> Well, we was debating this once of if you could imagine >> uh impact and then doing it over time. You've done an incredible job of like doing it over multiple decades, but a lot of musicians, they'll have that one album and then they can't repeat it ever again. Whereas some people like Christopher Nolan's probably in my my opinion one of the best who's managed to keep going. >> Kanye by the way Kanye like is the best like college drop. He is >> recent stuff's a little bit >> it's recent stuff. College Dropout late registration 808s and heartbreak Jesus my beautiful daughters fantasy life of Pablo are just completely different album. >> Yeah. >> But they're completely different albums. Like he >> it's that's very rare. >> It's very interesting. I think it's a very very interesting that thing of like genius. People often talk about genius but they they don't what they're talking about is like um hyper accelerated rationality not genius. I think genius is a different thing. I think >> that's a big word. Jimmy can you >> well once he has that kind of level of he's got a level of genius where you go he does all the crazy stuff that he does. That's part of it. That's it's like it's almost like there's a there's a mental health thing going on. It's a cross to bear to exact beautiful line of genius and insanity are nextdoor neighbors and they sometimes borrow one another's sugar and it's it's one of the thoughts I've had around LLMs that you an LLM can write good and this may change but right now it can write good but it can't write great and I think there's a little bit of a horseshoe theory with great writing great writing is kind like next door neighbors to terrible writing you got to take risks when you have something that's trained on the averages it doesn't take risks like some of my worst ever pieces are quietly linked my best ever writing. >> Yeah. I I I think that thing of like the average will be free in the world of AI. Average will be free and the very good will be very expensive. The excellent will be very I I think there's a sort of weird texture to when you believe in something you you no one can see your belief in it, especially if it's words written down on a page. But I think you can feel when someone really believes in something. And I think the problem with artificial writing or AI writing is like you don't actually believe it. you got it kind of from the from from the robot. And I think there's just a weird I you can tell when you read something and you just know that the person really really really believes about believes it. I think of a I think of an advert um I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he he basically has this idea, I'm going to suspend a car above um above the chap who made the car to prove how good the suspension is of of I think it was a Volvo. And they say we can't get that past legal. So he says, "Oh, it's going to be me then." So anyway, the writer of the ad suspends him spends this big car with wires just above above himself. And it's one of the most famous ads of all time. And it's like that only got across the line because he just really believed in it. And I I think your conviction in an idea is more important than the idea in in so many cases. It's often the way with comedy, especially with like edgy jokes. Intent is much more important than content. And people intuitit the intent. They just know. I think a Norm McDonald like you give his material to someone else and he's going to bomb. But because Norm had this weird like belief in a bad joke, it would become a good joke. >> Yeah. What what could you say that no one else could say? That's his whole career. It's like he only he could do that. Just just a a properly nonfgeible human. One of the reasons that AI uses very strange tropes. I told George about George about this the other week. Most writing the AI is trained on, the corpus of writing that it's trained on is not good books because most writing is not good. But it's not distinguished between the hundred greatest novels of all time and the millions and millions and millions of pages of anime fanfiction >> that it's been trained on. And there's >> So is there no waiting given? Is it doesn't give waiting to >> No, no, I don't think so. Do asking. >> And even if it did, it would have to be so overly weighted, right? some 14-year-old's seventh sequel to the Twilight series or something that they're just putting out on their their like like Tumblr account that should not it it would require so it would basically not exist but it has been traded on it anyway. What they did was they looked at a bunch of short stories that won a bunch of awards recently. There was some very obscure analogies that were used talking about his stomach swallowing a shout which sounds like kind of evocative but in the uh flow of the story felt a little bit clunky and it was a bit harsh and it didn't seem to be quite necessary so much. And they use this AI to trace where on the internet that piece of writing has been seen before. or you know you were talking about analogy being quite tright or it this sentence sounds like I've heard it before. It sounds like something you could have and they go and they actually find it and they found so many of the source material pieces were random anime fanfiction websites. So that is all writing of all time right lots of it is good most of it's not >> and the total world that has AIS have been trained on includes this like just endless drosss. But it's going to end up also I think Talab sort of ends up being trained on itself a lot of the time now. >> Correct. >> And it it's there's nowhere to go. You know, >> I think there's going to be a big um sort of premium on books pre202 >> because you know that they've not been written by AI. >> Yeah. Because you know that there's kind of no help given as well. There's no editing. There's no they they did that in the oldfashioned way. >> It's like losing weight before a Zenic. >> Yeah. There's there's an extra kind of flex on it. Yeah. >> Yeah. The uh it was interesting you were talking about how coping mechanisms. After gastric band surgery, people uh sometimes commit suicide and gastric band surgery is quite traumatic. Sometimes the surgeons make really silly errors like leave utensils inside of people and sew them back up or bits of gauze and but the big reason that people commit suicide after gastric band surgery is that the reason they were overeating was probably because of an underlying emotional issue. >> Yeah. That's how they they were using the food as as medicine. >> Bingo. And they still have the underlying issue, but they're no longer able to use the food. >> Yeah. So crazy. And the same thing with the phone, right? What is the phone using? the chest and spats very >> yeah being there to distract you from what so you shouldn't get a gastric band >> fitted I guess I wonder what surely can you chat GPT Jared gastric band surgery what's been the impact of GLPs on gastric band surgery >> has that's the whailing industry literally yes very good >> that's gone very good >> that's gone >> yeah when you're so quick is it algorithmic or is it like is it like a sort of algorithm in your brain which insert topic you know where to go or is intuitive. What's the Say you're Say you're roasting cuz I don't You don't even know. >> No, I I don't even think of it as being quick. It's often that thing of like I'll I'll feel like I'm sitting on it for 10 seconds before I say it. And the worst person for this is Lee Mac. Do you know Lee Mac? >> Yeah. Lee Mac. They often have to put a thing into the edit and add a pause before he says the line >> because he's just like plows through it. >> He's like It's so quick. It's It's Yeah, it's amazing. I had a question. Uh, I had a question. It's actually it's it's about position. Do you know who the biggest comedian on YouTube is? And I'll give you a I won't give you a clue. He's actually four times bigger than every single other comedian. >> Well, it ain't me. >> Is it Is it Matt Rfe? >> No. >> Right. I'm trying to think about >> 40 million 40 million subscribers. You'll all know him. >> Are they first? >> I don't understand the question. >> No. >> No. I I'd go Ran Atinson. I'd say bang on. No way. Mr. Bean. >> Yeah. Much bigger. Yeah. >> And I feel like there's so I teach I teach advertising and they're like within Mr. Bean is the the silent comic of say 21st century. And I think um he has he has the best position. This is like the Charlie Chaplan of his day. >> So if you want if you want to get stuck in the mind, you want to get an idea stuck in the mind. >> What is positioning? Like what do you mean? >> A position I would say is the space you own in the customer's mind. >> Like real estate. So, say you've picture like um picture like 100 filing cabinets or hundreds of thousands of filing cabinets in your head and they've all got labels written on them. So, if we were playing this with chocolate bars, like chocolate bar for when you're hungry, bestselling chocolate bar in the world would be >> Snickers. Snickers chocolate bar in the world. >> Yeah. For a break would be Kit Kat. >> Yeah. Sure. >> And then you go you take this to comedy. Um a good example would be like >> English familyfriendly comedian. Bring the whole family. K McIntyre. They own that space. And then you've got like don't take the whole family. Don't sit in the front row, especially if you're English, >> right? Yeah. >> Um I was thinking Frankie Bole. Or you've got read by Guardian readers. Um almost too clever for punchlines. >> Go on. >> Stuart Lee. >> That kind of what? Bang on. It's like it's the real estate you own. And >> I I I think it's so sorry for to take Mr. Beast. He is the the only like most famous silent comedian and >> oh sorry Mr. Bean Mr. Bean very different people >> um >> you know the Rowan Atinson story about Italy >> no when Rowan was first doing um uh Mr. Bean he uh he's a big car enthusiast and he likes to take a holiday so he basically carved out Italy on the sales of Mr. been and said don't sell it in Italy and they crazy we can sell it to TV channels all over Italy went no no I don't want to sell it to Italy and they went why not and he went so I'll go on holiday >> so for the first 10 for the first 10 years of Mr. Bean it wasn't available in Italy >> that's greatness >> and then and then after like 10 years there was some offer or something or whatever and they translated it and they put it on in Italy and it's the biggest show in Italy ruined his holidays >> yeah it's ruined his holidays really ruined his holiday >> must have been fascinating I I wonder how many Americans know what Mr. He did a movie right Mr. to being known. >> I think people do know. I think kids know and it's a it's that silent comedy thing. It like shines through. >> That must be great for an international audience. >> Exactly. I think I think that is the point in war. It's why Charlie Chaplan was so universal cuz you didn't he didn't speak. >> He and then I think movies started movies then had sound again and Chaplan was at this kind of crossover period of like I can now talk but if I talk I've kind of ruined what I've done for all these years. So I can't remember the film. I think it's called the the summing of and it ends and the only words Charlie Chap asked is are gibberish and that's kind of how like his final silent movie ends and it's just this perfect end to it to to a film. Um >> how would you fix uh like how do you go about fixing your positioning? What do you make? >> Well I I So there's there there's two things here. There's like a position is the space you own in the in the customer's mind. So Jimmy's got a pretty like you know you go to a Jimmy car gig, you're gonna get roasted. There's going to be stag dues and now it's a little bit deeper but you you know what you get. there's like a situation which you would you would attend a a gig for. Um I suppose then there's something called positioning which is how you organize the customer's mind. So I think Stuart Lee is a funny example of this like when Stuart Lee I think he retired from comedy in 1999 and he had a good career he was a very good career he won an award at Hackne Prize or something like this and then he starts riding on TV shows like radio 4 and whatnot and he returns to comedy in 2001 and then I I I I saw Stuart Lee um live like four years ago and it was really good and Stuart Lee's kind of repositioned to the competition in very implicitly well actually not so implicitly his set design was was one um DVDs from like modern English comics and he did lots of impressions of Russell Howard and I think basically Lee's repositioning is like is like very much us versus them. So there's three ways to get a space in the mind. You can be first, you can be only or you can be against and and Stuart Lee is very much against like he kind of pops like Michael McIntyre, Peter Kay, Russell Howard, James Cordon in this little box. uh you picture that being the mind and then and then that's mainstream or that's like laugh a minute and then there's Stuart Lee who and he and he isn't punch line he's like you know almost too clever for the punch line. >> Who else does like against like who who else has positioned himself or what else has positioned himself against? >> So I think I think Trump's a pretty obvious example of that. But also even like Coca-Cola launched in 1886 liquid death >> liquid death I would yeah liquid death Pepsi versus Coke. It's interesting because you almost create uh you almost create the you know the D Foster Wallace line of the fish can't see the water. With like liquid death you almost didn't even think about plastic water bottles cuz everything was plastic and then you suddenly create oh no here's the water and here's the lap. Like you're creating something against that people even realize you could be against. >> Yeah. I I think what do I think? Um I think be against is you probably see it more and more these days as the world gets slightly more polarized. I don't know. >> I don't know. I I mean, I don't love it in comedy because I think it's kind of the narcissism of small differences. We're all doing the same job, >> all trying to make people laugh, and it seems that there's there's a there's a lovely camaraderie in that that's that you're kind of missing out on because you're kind of punching against. I mean, does jealousy come a lot in in comedy? >> I don't think it should, but I think it does occasionally. I think there's that thing where for me, comedy has never been about that because it's not like being an actor where you go, look, there's one guy is going to be Bond, right? There's one actor that's going to be announced as the new James Bond and none of the others are going to be. And that's that must be heartbreaking for them. >> You can do the stand on Monday. It doesn't mean that the other guy can't do the stand on Thursday. >> Like you can play the theater. You you can pack out the O2 for five nights, but the venue's still there. Someone else can play it the next night. And it's it's also that thing of like the more people that go and see live comedy and enjoy the experience, it's like it's kind of like the early days of rock and roll. You go, "Yeah, the more people that go, the more people that want to go. if they have a great experience and they want to grow more >> grow the pie. >> Yeah. You want to grow the pie and you want people and the idea that that you go well there's different people that you like more or less but everyone's kind of doing the same. It's the same intention >> certainly when it comes to content online. I think that the uh against for balance is actually skewed in against. I think there are more people producing critiques via content about for content than there is for content. Like which would be relatively r I mean you know in some industries there's probably more people writing about football than there are people playing football but there's far more people paying attention to the playing of the football than the critique of the football. >> It spreads so much more uh fast like being critical of something is incredibly mimetic. Being for something is actually quite anti-imetic. So, James, Element, James, what was the company that was slandering Element? Do you remember it? Um, that James is doing the lawsuit against. >> [ __ ] not Tides. Yeah. Uh, the AI health checking app. Yeah. Like waves or something. >> It was slandering them with a load of fake information that got millions of views. It was completely like the guys butchered all of the studies, all the claims that he was making. >> But then the apology gets like a few thousand views. Yeah. And it's like the the disparity between that. We was looking at somebody where there was this essay write up and you can see this a lot with people that become these professional critics where they'll have a piece that attacks a Chris or attacks somebody and it goes super viral and then you click on it and you scroll back and you go, "Oh, they've been doing this critique thing for a while and you go you see when the moment they once did it, everything spiked." But if you go back further, it was just in the void. was always optimistic or or or slightly created content that wasn't working and then this thing started to work. It's quite sad. >> Everybody against something is once a hopeless romantic for a person that was for something. >> Yeah. >> It's like in politics I'm really frustrated with political political opinions just constantly being against things. I think in UK politics right now like what are you actually for I think is a really it's an unanswered question. Like you look at all the parties and they just love to sort of disagree with each other and they don't love to actually stand on a you know a table and have their own opinion. >> But 2012 was the year where most people voted not for the opposition as opposed to for their own party. That was the year in America where most votes were protest votes. I am not voting for the person I don't like as opposed to I am the person that I do like. >> Yeah. I I've been creating bots before bots were controversial. And one of the bots I wanted to create on Twitter is whenever you have like a cynic or somebody where it's just quote tweeting having a go applying everything is just this doss thing that then reco them of you sensed that you should be following a different path a more ambitious one you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you >> and that's some like it's the perfect cynical line for the same >> oh man >> that's heavy Yeah. I don't It feels to me like there's a kind of bank account that you're supposed to pay into or withdraw from. And if you find that you're critiquing more than creating, you're kind of in negative equity. You're sort of withdrawing from the system more than you're putting things into it. had this conversation with uh Eric Weinstein about how like a expertson mentality where a lot of people believe oh the only way that you're allowed to talk on this topic is if you're somebody that has all of the requisite qualifications and this sort of esteemed history behind you but the reason the enforcement mechanism of that is people on the internet that are going to call you out for see he doesn't actually fully understand what he means by DNA recominate you're like all right man well that that just means that nobody can ever get to play with ideas publicly and everyone begins to be on tent hooks and they're worried about maybe I'm going to say something that's going to get me rumbled like I I don't know I it doesn't create the what is it the the Oxford manner the ability to play gracefully with ideas. we've very much lost the Oxford manner, the ability to say, "Ah, like I I see I see what you were trying to get at there, and you look, I you made some some errors of this side, but I think it's it's interesting. Even if you're wrong about what you talked about, it's it's cool that you're trying to apply something from your industry to one that is new or is novel to you." So yeah, >> I think that's your podcast though, Chris, like why it works is because it genuinely seems to fill that space of like it's okay to not have things completely worked out and we're going to work that out together. Like that's what I think a lot of your conversations are. >> I think that's a good summary. Yeah. How to understand yourself in the world around you has kind of always been the summary. And also to have there's a person in front of me or a bunch of people in front of me like how do I make them look as good as possible? I'm going to try and draw out of them the best version of them as opposed to the opposite. There's far more people on the internet that are good at doing critique takedowns and breakdowns than I am. But I'm pretty good at going, okay, what where's some, as my dad would say, a streak of piss in a pile of [ __ ] sometimes or, you know, like silver lining on a >> How do you do that? Like how do you Silver lining is maybe a nicer expression. Yeah. I think I think like I think if we're workshopping writing today, I think maybe >> Yeah. Yeah. Dad, you didn't win that one. Um I know just look I I I understand I think I tend to try and give people the benefit of the doubt as best I can. I tend to try and yes and their ideas as opposed to no but their ideas. Stress test them in a way as you were talking about intent versus content. Like >> hang what what do you mean by that? I'm not saying it because I'm trying to trip you up. are trying to be I'm trying to get you to strengthen your own argument by drawing out an area. It feels a little bit sometimes you're having a really good conversation. It feels like running your hand across the top of a membrane and everything's kind of smooth and then you feel a little divot in something and you're like, "Huh, the flow of what was being said there just felt a little bit off." Oh, that's because there's a you you made a you said a word that I didn't understand or there was a premise that I didn't feel was fully fleshed out or you made this claim and I didn't really understand how it linked back to what we were talking about before. And that's the moment where it kind of breaches the threshold of me just sitting and nod nodding along and listening and then we go oh can I just what do you mean by that? >> Can I ask you it's quite a hard question but we had Orwell's five rules of writing and what would your five rules of communication be? >> That's good. Um, speak precisely whenever possible, which is not using more or fewer words than are needed. It's never bad to ask the question why as in sort of what do you mean by that? Why? What do you mean? Like those little moments I think allow people to dig deeper. >> Um, I like it when you say you say like it's very quite infrequent, but you go say more. >> Yeah. Come on. >> Say more. Like just to give someone and you know that they've got more. >> Yeah. Just give them a little a little nickel. I think being >> it's permission. They're being polite in the podcast and going I don't want to say too much here. I feel like I'm I'm monologuing and you go no >> and you that permission is great. >> Um so that's guesting. Uh what else would I say? Using silence is probably one of the best tools. So just shutting the [ __ ] up and giving the room space to breathe and Okay. Well, actually Oh, there we it was just a half step off from the next insight that you wanted to give out there and you're not making somebody rush. You're not, you know, sort of driving them through it. Ah, those will be some those will be some. I think that talking is the best example that the 10,000 hour rule is a load of nonsense cuz everybody has done 10,000 hours yet it doesn't seem to >> not everybody is a world class conversationalist. But again, very very um precise practice. I mean, me and you had this idea a long time ago. One of our prescriptions was if you want to get better at communication, have a fake podcast with a friend where you put your phone down on record once a week for half an hour. Phone's out of the room. You don't need to publish it. You don't need to put it anywhere. Listen back to it. Listen to your verbal tick and the flow of your conversation and how you talk over each other or how you actually give them a little bit. Oh, I quite like the way that if you really really really want to do it, but the easiest way to do it is to actually have a project. Like somebody who thinks I want to become funnier will take so much longer to become funny than somebody who has to step on stage and have all of the pressure of an audience. Someone that goes, I really want to improve my yo, you're so good at writing. How do I improve my writing? You go, are you writing for anything? Are you publishing anything at the moment? No. Well, you don't have the pressure of developing your writing skill. Oh, you you have done really well with your communication. Are you are you part of a project that requires you to communicate with enough pressure and scrutiny that means that you need to hone the skill and if not I think this is like it's the hormosis thing of like going it's the optionality people want to get like the action perfection ratio is all wrong >> people want to get kind of brilliant at something before they even start and to have a perfect record and I love the idea of like just being messy just having a messy start trying something like you don't talk about jokes you just try them >> that's the problem though what we were talking about while you out of the room. Uh, the experts only idea that Eric Weinstein has an issue with, and I I think I agree with too, which is if you're not allowed to use the Oxford manner to play gracefully with ideas, you're always going to get sniped at, especially early on. Well, that's, you know, that's stupid. How could you? The early stages of anybody's work tend to be scrutinized not with the amount of discount that it should have. And I think it causes people to they get worried. They're like, [ __ ] Like what if I and isn't it ironic that a lot of the current uh expert class is built off some anti-expert at one point that went against it? >> How so? >> Well, if you go back through most of science um a lot of the Galileo >> going against the Catholic Church who were the expertise at the time was uh >> remarkably unpopular. >> Yeah. Conformity is a coffin and heresy is a cradle. >> Yeah. It's interesting. I think I've told you that story about Capernicus, right? About the fact that he had the same insight as Galileo 100 years earlier and sort of squeaked it out on his deathbed. He had this great work devolution and uh he was worried about a from the church. So had the same heliocentric like learning. It took a full century to do the next one. And you might say, well, you know, stupid Capernicus, he should have said it. He should have shouted it from the rooftops. But Galileo was forced to recant, kept under house house arrest for the rest of his life, like nearly killed it. His treatment justifies the silence of the guy that came 100 years before him. >> It's the first uh the first humiliation. You familiar with that? >> Three humiliations. So, Capernicus was the first. We're not the center of the universe. >> Darwin was the second. We're no different to the animals. >> And then, um Freud was the third. >> We're not even in control of our minds. And then the fourth is AI. We're no longer the smartest thing. Just kind of I mean it's not that humiliating. I can live with it. >> Well, when we when you've created it, I think there's a a degree of all of us feeling like we that's why people have >> We did it. >> We did it guys. >> We did it. >> Jimmy [ __ ] will be in the corpus that it's being trained on, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's interesting that thing of the um Yeah. that kind of next step if we get to it if there's a abundance in the future be amazing. >> We're already there. >> We're already here, right? >> It's already pretty bloody abundant. >> This is your indomitable optimism coming through. >> Um >> I'm a very optimistic long-term short-term there will be problems. >> Well, we I always use the example of my morning routine. >> So, my morning routine, which everyone's dying to know, it's going to get fed up. Morning routine. >> Sure. Sure. Um, I know you had your one with Mike Thirsten and got >> Oh, yeah. My four-year-old clip about a 4-year-old's morning routine. >> Um, my morning routine is I woke up this morning on a bed. I had a hot shower and I brushed my teeth. Okay, which sounds not that impressive, but uh it's Emperor Augustus, the Emperor of Rome, slept on a sack of straw. Um, Maryanne Twinette, who was the going to be the future queen of France at the time, as she was wandering around her palace of Versailles, they they used to throw their sewage out of windows cuz they didn't have toilets. It landed on her head. Um, it's even like the air conditioning, which I didn't think about, President Garfield, who was the president late 1800s when he got shot because his body was overheating. They had to get 500,000 cubes of ice to blow over him cuz they didn't have anything near air conditioning. I think King Louy's mouth rotted from the inside as well because he couldn't brush the teeth. So, even you look at the the David Foster Wallace thing, we're already in we're already in postabundance. It's just going to potentially keep accelerating more and more, but when people get there, they won't think about it. And we was having this argument the other day. You was trying to talk about how uh we should de accelerate or potentially pause things. And it's that Deutsch line of even the United Kingdom is a uh artificial concept. And you think about it like the hunter gatherers wouldn't have been able to live in the United Kingdom. It would have died on a cold winter night from uh uh from the cult from the cult. >> Mhm. So, we're already living on Mars. >> Yeah, mate. You're We're already living on Mars. It's >> But what I mean is when people talk about terraforming Mars, we've already terraformed the Earth. We're already living in unlivable places. That's the human thing to do. >> Wonder Bolton, man. Like, >> how do you feel about that, Harry? >> I I feel like me and George disagree on most things in life. >> Agree. We agree on the most important stuff, but we disagree on everything else. >> We were talking about death the other day. He was George is very proliving for a long time and I don't I'm not pro living for that long time. >> Yeah, we had this we had this debate while watching the England game or is this the the who's the guy Brian Johnson that wants to live forever >> kind of. Yeah, it was Jimmy. What's a good age? >> Well, I think what's that thing where you got you got problems to solve and you have um uh dilemas that you just have to live with and death is the big one, right? Death is in the in the the Muslims uh what do they call it? the certainty and I think you have to just make peace with it like it's going to happen at some stage. You don't get to choose when you just you don't get to uh choose how long your life is but the but the depth and quality you can have a big effect on uh and that's that's what where you should spend your time. I mean I think that thing about it's it's absolutely inevitable and the idea that these crazy whatever this guy trying to live forever >> George wants to live until the heat death of the universe. I want to keep going, baby. Well, there's the live forever or immortal, which is just ridiculous, right? Cuz at a certain point, you have the heat death of the universe. But living to 150 that much significantly different than living to 80? I did this uh uh research once with looking at if you have everybody ever to live today, the average age, and you had everybody ever to live ever, the average age when they died, the average age of that room would be 15. So, we're already way past. And I used the example, the example I thought of the other day was my dog, this beautiful little Bernadoodle called Barkley, parents do. It makes me sad that 10 years from now, he's probably going to die. >> If I can take a dog's life from 12 to 24, is that bad? Sounds like a terrific thing. So, what's the problem of going from 80 to 160 years old for a human? I agree forever is a completely different concept and that's a very vague of language. But is 150 or 200 necessarily a bad idea because we're already not dying at 15? >> We're all dining with the devil and it just depends how long your spoon is. So like I'm not saying 120 whatnot. But like where does this where where does this end? I also don't feel like it's our universe to roam for that long, you know? I feel like I feel like the old must make way for the new man. Like there should be a there should be a new George Max sat in that seat. I get I you got 10 more years of podcasting and I think bring in the new George Mack. Let's get some let's get some new insights like there should be a new gym. >> We should be taken out the back of the shed. >> Well, there is that thing where you go people are very scared of death. There's a there's a great Mark Twain said I I wasn't alive for 10 billion years before my birth and it didn't inconvenience me in the least. You >> kind of go yeah it's just you go back to the same thing. We're in this brief shaft of light between two oceans of darkness and you got 4,000 weeks. What are you going to do with it? you you know I think that thing about it is kind of a it does set the clock of going okay what am I gonna do >> and I think if you live if you're talking about 160 years I think there's a there's a manana to that of kind of going well you don't have to do anything now and actually the sense of urgency that you have I think it's quite it's kind of a rush of blood to the headund >> so so right now >> I I I don't even know where to start like I think I think um you live tound I mean 160 right you live 260 how that's how many wives you happen. Sorry. Just just just be let's just get down to this first place that you go to. >> But it's it's also it's also how many kids like you have your kids, they have their kids, and at some point there's like a deep heartbreak is going to it's a really deep heartbreak. >> Go back to the dog argument and talk about why going from 12 to 24 would be the worst thing for a dog. >> But you're not trying to extend a dog's life. You're trying to extend your own life. And I do feel like like like what about the lions out here? Are we still going to be killing the cows? You know, is there going to be enough meat to fill these new humans who are just now powering on to 500? Well, that's kind of interesting when you talk about like, you know, we're chatting about problems uh in the world and you talk about uh the environmental crisis that's going on now. Are you aware of like the uh the late '60s there was a a book written that was about how overpopulation everyone was going to starve and it was going to be kind of a MadMax scenario. >> Is that Malthusianism or I got that wrong? >> Yeah. Malthusian trap is when you have a growing population without resources that can support you. >> Yeah. So they they thought that we were going to run out of food and basically two bits of um technology happened at the same time. So they figured out how to kind of uh GM wheat and grain and they also found out how to do it with rice as well. And they they increased productivity by like 4x in that time and basically we can sustain a huge number of people cuz they worked out basically there's not enough land to support 4 billion people and now we're at 8 billion and we're fine. It's really interesting like how problems change. They also thought there was going to be a new ice age in the 70s. It's not that long ago the 70s and and now it's kind of all worried about the heat. >> It's weird how it kind of changes over time. Well, hopefully >> we're sort of one step ahead and we solve it. Isn't there a a Roman port that's like a 100 miles off the coast from where the the coast used to be? I'm pretty sure that because there was uh an ice age not that long ago and during the Roman Empire the entire climate was was significantly different that their ability to invade the UK was facilitated by the fact that here it is once a major coastal port and likely the landing area for the Roman invasion of AD43 is now about 2 miles inland because the onom channel sweeted up or silted up. Interesting. Anyway, Romans, mate, >> we gone to the Romans. This is what men are meant to do every two hours. Reference the Romans. >> I've been thinking about it the whole time that I've been here. Sure. >> Simple question. Who do you want to be the next prime minister of England? >> Assuming there's no like they can be. They want to be >> anyone in the world. You could you could you could ship them in at >> Alfred. That's good. Dominick Cummings. >> He had a go. He had a go. And he and I think the thing with DC >> ask who do I think could get elected? >> Okay. M I'm going to you got me talking right Mr. Cummings. Um I think he's really competent and and not that likable. And I feel like there's a real kind of like what you want in in a leader is really competent while also being kind of likable. >> Okay. What was Kia Star? >> Neva, man. >> I mean, he's gone now, but I don't think anyone's going to forget Keith Star in a hurry. Lee Kuanu Lee Quanu would be good >> Drew Bley a Lee Kwanu is really interesting because that that kind of Singapore example there's a guy called Roger B um who's a brilliant economist and a great writer um I know him a little bit and I think if you look at Roger B's kind of assessment of what Britain needs it's a really good checklist of what like he says there's no silver bullet there's no big solution that changes everything and he gives these eight examples from around the world of like where extraordinary things have happened and countries have turned themselves around. So from postwar Germany to postwar France to South Korea, North Korea, uh Singapore, all of these different examples of like how did those economic miracles happen? How did people get from a relatively poor circumstance to abundance and it's it's brilliant because it's like it's lots of little things done right. I think he'd be a great guy to have in charge. >> And can he talk? Does it matter if he can talk? >> He's he's uh very likable. and his thing is like it's not really about the uh he's a big fan of the um the Singaporean dude uh but he's not really about like uh charisma in the leader. It's more about okay these are the things that you need to do. These are the priorities that a country needs to have and you need to know what um what GDP is for. You need to know what what are you doing this for? Why do you need this to be? What's the what's the purpose of this nation? What's the point of it? And that's he's very good on that stuff. Who do you want, Harry? >> My So, we I talked about this yesterday. I genuinely the girl I'm dating I think would be a good pick. >> Um, >> keep her busy, right, >> bro? Bring your [ __ ] chick to work day. >> Be the first lady. >> I That's who I'd pick, right? Like right here, right now. I bet she's American, so I'm not sure how it would go down. >> Bring your chick to work day. This is This is what's happening. You're going to implant your lady at the top of the country. >> What is she doing currently? >> Uh, applied the >> applied theater. Yep. She's the one for the job. It's got to be, isn't it? Yeah. Fine. Sold. George. >> Yeah. >> I want Dominic Cummings. Are you in Collins? >> Okay. >> Who do you want? >> He's an old He's an old like Cummings is like that old Labrador, you know? He's beam around the track. Like I I think fresh energy. Jimmy. >> What? >> If I if I said I'd like Mr. Carr to lead us into the next century, what would you say? I I I'd say that we've we made a mistake in the early 80s and we shut down all of the asylums and now the crazy people are just wandering around. No, I think I think I I I I don't know if you're familiar with uh recent American history, but game show hosts have become politicians recently and not always with stellar results. >> Ta, give it go give it a >> You give it to the England manager. It seems to be working at the national team level currently as as we're recording this. >> That's not a bad shot. Or you could put Gareth Given that he's got the given that he's got the job free. All right, boys. >> Give it to the end of season. Give it. >> Let's bring this one home. I appreciate you all. Thank you for joining us. >> Thank you. It's really fun. >> Goodbye, my beauties. See you. >> Congratulations. You made it to the end of a podcast episode without dying. Now, here's another one. Go on, watch it.