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and if you're not aligned on the inside you're not going to do very well with the markets and many other things I've had this similar conversation privately with many very very successful people and the majority of them have the same
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tale they wrote it out I don't want to have a narrow Focus if you could tell me that I could have 10 times more money and speak one language less I don't want to do it the endless pursuit of yet more money when you've got more more than you
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can spend is asinine don't get obsessed for the reason that you got the opportunity you get more of what you focus on you know what they're studying in the Masters of Finance in the University of Zurich they're studying Brownie and motion I'll tell you once
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the math gets any higher than algebra it's pretty certain you're going to lose your [Music] money well hello everyone it's Jim o shanesy with a another infinite Loops I am actually doing this introduction after having an amazing wide ranging
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conversation with guy spear uh the famous value investor who is the author of the education of a value investor my transformative quest for wealth wisdom and Enlightenment uh he's an amazing man uh we launched right into our conversation
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which you're about to hear we spend very little time talking about the nuts and bolts of investing but we do spend an inordinate amount of time talking about maybe the more important aspects of whether you can be a success at investing or not and that is the inner
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aspects of how we all deal with and interact with life so please enjoy my conversation with guy spear so nice to meet I feel kind of like extremely honored that you're interested in talking to me I don't think I'm that great and oh I think you're
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amazing well um you have a uh I'm Blown Away by the incredible um uh interactions that you have on Twitter I mean you have just an amazing amazing Network and amazing conversations and it's a real privilege to kind of um well to just watch them in
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a certain way is already just great actually I'm curious I so New York City where are you now I am in Greenwich Connecticut right now I I have an apartment in Union Square uh and spend about 40% of my time there and about 60% out here in Greenwich so you know help
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me out the place me I'm the kind of person I'm sure I'm not the only one that you know who the only place I could imagine living in Manhattan is the Upper West Side period now I'm not extreme Upper West Side because the upper west
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Siders for whom below 72nd Street is no man's land but I'm kind of like I can go down to 66th Street below 66th Street doesn't work for me proximity to Lincoln Center is good all the almost all of the restaurants that I like are on the east
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side I lived once for three months on the east side while my apartment on the west side was being renovated I nearly died a thousand deaths I couldn't stand it you know and and and then you say oh I'm in Union Square and I think how does he do
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it well well the love the I was on the board of Lincoln Center because I was the chairman of uh the Chamber Of Music Society of Lin Center so I was up there all the time uh love the upper west side but the reason we chose downtown is sort of
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twofold the more important reason is my wife is a quite an accomplished Street photographer oh wow actually has a book published by aperture Melissa oan um and the the environment down there is really really Target Rich for a street photographer uh because as you know NYU
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is scattered among uh the streets down there and the second was more of the fact that you know we we live in Greenwich 60% of the time we we thought let's have a more authentically City likee experience um and absolutely and so
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that's why we ended up down there and love a lot yeah we love a lot of the restaurants down there too got a lot of friends many who live in gry park so it's an easy walk from our apartment uh I used to be a big fan of the gry tavern and there was one yeah
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and there's a restaurant down on Bon street that was called ilbo which I just loved love ilbo love it yeah is it still there I think it's gone now no I think I I was a big fan of that so it's not like I wasn't downtown and I totally get that
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and actually it's a wonderful yin and yang I mean I don't really know grenage but I want to imagine that there's lots of green and it's very bucolic and it's lovely and so you have you've got and what the train rides an hour between the two you know I mean not not not even on
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an Express train it's a 45 minute Express the quality of life that one can get in the New York City area is really quite extraordinary when you set yourself up in that kind of way I have to say and um and what what happened to
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me I think it's as effective actually as what you've got so um we were in the Upper West Side didn't want to move away from there but had a weekend place in Tuxedo Park which was the total weirdness and actually my wife didn't take to it and I was just trying to live
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a dream and so the the social setup there is with all those Mansions is really really weird but we we owned a house there not one of the larger Mansions but a very very nice quote Cottage and uh so we'd go up there on weekends but then when when I figured
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out that well we I I I did not understand what I would have needed to do to have our children be placed in the kinds of schools that we'd be happy for them to go to so the so so I'd not played the right game and the school
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that we wanted was called the hesel school and anyway and when I realized what I needed to do we actually would have moved perhaps to Park Slope something like that in Brooklyn but what happened to me is I just said uh if I'm not going to be in Manhattan I might as
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well not be in the United States and um and and thought and and said to myself look we had young children our oldest was four years old I believe and I said to myself you know if I could move to Perfection where would it be and uh like
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omav and I mean it's in my book so um uh and Zurich wasn't the only choice but I was had my heart set on Zurich and my wife was okay with it but now our eldest daughter is at Barnard and our son's got applications he's almost only applying
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to institutions within New York City because he wants to be close to his girlfriend and um uh and and so we've been spending I mean I've spent more time in New York City this year probably than many other years I might you know I I'm not yet anywhere close to having to
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pay taxes but if I up the time I'll become a US taxpayer again which will be funny so yeah and you don't want to become a US taxpayer with a New York City residents you know uh uh yeah that's right it's true um but I you know a penny drop for
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me so you know that here there's no capital gains tax I do so so so you get envious uh but it's not as good as I thought it was and I don't why it took me so long to figure it out so what you do have is you have a wealth tax and the
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problem with the wealth tax is it's levied no matter what happens on the level of wealth of that year and so it you are not able to time when you pay your taxes and if you think about it if you plan on holding an investment for more than 10 years and and you could
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well the wealth tax call it 1% it's less than 1% but after a 10-year period uh with the compounding of the 1% that's kind of pretty brutal actually so you know so it's not as good as I thought it was here in Switzerland but so anyway I
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still love it here uh it's I love Switzerland a beautiful beautiful country um I had a funny experience when I was in Switzerland I was lamenting the fact that our driver of course spoke perfect English and and as we were driving through various parts he
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switched to Italian then German then French and I and I lamented my God you know I I wish I I wish I knew how to speak at least one other language and he laughed and he goes you can get on a plane in the US fly for 6 hours and
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still be speaking English he said here I can't drive for 40 minutes and still be speaking the same language correct yeah you know but I just wanted to you know so if you actually the truth of the matter is all over the United States you
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can speak Spanish and pretty much half the population will understand you and uh I don't believe I don't agree that in the United States you should have these multi you know language of business in the United States is English the anyway
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I don't want to get in I we can get into if you like but look if you live in Switzerland you're going to pick up languages far more easy easily somebody who grew up in the US shouldn't feel bad for the fact that it's I noticed we're
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spending a lot of time in London right now and I I notice how my um my facility at German which is not my mother tongue gradually declines if I spend a lot of time in London because I'm just not using it and I'm kind of going into a monolingual mode I would tell you even
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within Switzerland there are distinctions so if you live in B your French is likely to be a lot better because there's a lot of French heard in Bound the capital here in Zurich there's you have a lot of languages in comparison to somewhere in the United
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States but you hear far less French you have you hear quite a bit more Italian here in um in Zurich and one of the most incredible cities for languages interestingly enough is basil because Basil's right there right next to
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Germany right next to France and there there are families check this out there are families who are French speaking whose German is a second language but who live in Basel and they're registered and they're sort of citizens of Basel even though Basel is a German speaking
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town so that's an incredibly multilingual place so you even have subtle variations within within Switzerland if you like and but don't feel bad because it's it's it's it's the nature of the place you know I age go ahead you'd be you you'd be
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multilingual if you came to Switzerland you give yourself two years you'll suddenly start picking up German you just would you know it's just there is is your so your wife is Melissa oesi correct oh so you know um I I I uh I would um I'm a terrible
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photographer uh but I wish I was a good photographer I'm really good at buying camera equipment I can do that really well you know I somebody ins I I was insulted when I appropriately insulted when I read an article which called uh
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Leica cameras just jewelry for men you know and I was like that's quite exactly what it is but but it's you because I'm the kind of guy who lusts after you know the Q3 you know and and you know and it's you know the sensible voice in my mind says you're
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not going to take better photographs you get that damn camera and my daughter um my eldest daughter give her any lousy camera and she get she captures things that you know I it's just so frust it's just sucks so anyway yeah I agree I agree and I I particularly I
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particularly am impressed I mean I was a huge fan of H cier Bron at the time but but particularly street photography is something that is just so wonderful but but it's a real skill a real skill so anyway to totally and she uh you know just watching her progress
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uh from when she started to now it like but it was 10 years she had 10 years of practice so it's one hell of a thing to practice that you know because because you know wa it's uh it's especially good to be in New York though because nobody cares
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nobody cares about uh if you're taking somebody's picture um it's kind of it's kind of expected really isn't it like you're really is yeah and other places we travel a lot and we we've noted in other places weirdly Paris people don't
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really like to have their photo taken in Paris my wife tells me at least that's interesting because because you have you know the I there's a yin and the Yang between Paris and New York for me so um so the way I used to describe you know I lived in Paris after
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undergraduate I lived in Paris for like a year and a half and fell in up with the city and actually felt felt well understood made the smart move that my future was far better if I went and applied to business school in the US and
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I was thinking of applying to something called the a national administra which had a sort of a a non-french program but I used to compare New York to Paris and I'd say Paris New York Paris is like a very very beautiful uh young lady who's
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gorgeous on the outside very nice to look at but when you try and scratch between the Surface you may find that there's not much there she just doesn't have and then New York City is like a sort of like a grumpy old man where you
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may it may not look so nice but boys there's so much beneath the surface and if you want to enter into a conversation but it comes out for me both New York and and Paris are kind of like Street theater type places but in New York in New York the life of the street is
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walking the sidewalk you're not going to see it and and in in Paris you got to sit down somewhere to watch it Go by you know exactly exactly I love that comparison it's quite true too I I love I Paris is I love Paris it's a beautiful city but I definitely agree um I'm I'm
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I'm kind of always happy when I get back to New York and that's when I knew when I needed to leave New York was when I was no longer happy to come back to New York uh I didn't feel a sense of excitement I felt a sense of tiredness and it might
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be because we were parents with young children but I no longer felt like um New York was a city of endless possibilities for me and there's this this lovely one of the great quotes about New York is that um if you if if you go to New York you better be
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prepared to get lucky you know and uh I used to have a book of New York quotes another one was once you crossed the bridge into Manhattan you've crossed the last Bridge you need to cross you know oh I like that one that's good but it
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just it's you know the the yeah and that's when I knew I had to leave basically but boy were we happy so we were in there in August to put our daughter into she wanted us to be there as she started at at Barnard and um and we just I mean we were we have a we stay
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at the Phillips club which is is sort of like a it's a less expensive version of having your own apartment there and um we were really happy there and something I do tell people actually and I do do think it's true I think that my
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personality fully formed in Manhattan so it wasn't it was incomplete until I got to Manhattan and in a way I was able to leave because I know that there's I'm I'm there's a part of me that will always be a New Yorker if you like and
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it may be the core of my identity and uh I I relate to people through my identity as New York often so what I'm doing with you right now in a way is I'm relating to you as a as a fellow New Yorker yeah no it feels that way as well I used to say I I grew up in the midwest
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in Minneapolis St Paul and I moved here when I was 31 uh because I'd always wanted to live in New York ever since I was a little kid um and when I would have uh siblings or other relatives visiting me I would say you either feed on New York's energy
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or it feeds on you and What proportion of your time did you feed off its energy and what proportion of your time was it the other way around like 9010 90% I fed off its energy still do uh 10% just like sometimes when I'm there for long
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periods of time at my apartment I'm just like okay got to go back get some Green Walk Among the trees right right it's and you know it's interesting so I know that many of my friends don't believe it about me but I believe that
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I'm an introvert and um and the reason why I believe that is that I like libraries I like places where it's quiet I like restaurants where there's not a loud noise around where I can have conversations I love these Jeffersonian meals where I can hear the conversation
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I get very tired in noisy environments and it may be that that and what happens in New York when you live there is that the noise declines I mean you still have the noise in the street but you spend far less time in the street because you're either in the office the
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apartment something so you're kind of like that's a transition but but I I remember that the first six months I was in New York it really graded on me and um I started to get really good and then I you but I I'm not sure if I could have
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ever been as much a New Yorker as perhaps you are there's another thing I used to say about New York which I really do believe or it was true for me so uh I used to say that New York is like um is like being a uh a user or abuser of cocaine so the
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the so so there was a certain period of my life in my early 30s where I I I hung with a crowd that were regular users of that stuff and and I I used to joke with friends I'd say oh I'm exploring the dark underbelly of New York nightlife
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and by the way Jim there were whole slew of friends that I had during that period that i' only see in around this kind of like dark underbelly of New York light life and the minute I pulled out of that world uh you know I don't even know if
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they exist anymore there was like they were all people who kind of existed I mean I and some of these are people are like huge personalities but but the the the analogy is that these people and and you know uh they they were a friend of
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mine who used to hang with them and and we were kind of like dry we weren't interested in doing that we just enjoyed the night clubs and the colorful life and all of that she she used to call them vampires they disappear off to the
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bathroom to and uh she it was like these they they would they would all say um I know this is unhealthy but it is a normal enormous amount of fun uh I plan to stop but just not yet you know and I used to say that that that was my relationship to New York it's enormous
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amount of fun I know it's not good for me I plan to leave but just not yet not yet that's like and and and and you know and then after 16 years eventually I was like okay we're doing this you know yeah um the funny thing about the go ahead no
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sorry sorry put all of our stuff we we we got a container and we put everything into the Container including our cars all our belongings were in a container and they went all the way from New York to Zurich including including a Honda
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Odyssey the mother the mamam mobile that we had at the time for our three children which couldn't be serviced properly here because we're like it's a Honda I mean doesn't Honda get sold everywhere it turned out that this Honda had special wheels that special tires
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non-replaceable something that were only manufactured for the United States so we had this kind of like odlot model that we I don't know I don't remember how we got rid of it eventually it was kind of a total nightmare but yeah uh on the
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cocaine thing when I was uh growing up cocaine was the absolute drug of choice in the uh 70s so I'm 63 so when I was a teenager in the 70s all of my friends used cocaine I did not and all of them were very perplexed by this were like Jim you have the ideal cocaine
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personality why don't you use it and I said that is exactly why because I know that if I ever tried it I would love it and bad things would happen so I I need to tell you my my story so this crowd of people um so so I'm running with them
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and exploring the dark underbelly of New York nightlife and uh one of these people invites me onto he's charted the yacht in the Caribbean and so now we're on this yacht in the Caribbean and there's enormous consumption of uh cocaine and and I'm saying no i' I just
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don't want to do it and then we get to St Barts this French island and we get on to the island and and I and because because I I just I just need proper coffee you know and that was before good Starbucks coffee and before right Sant
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amb brose and Via cadrona on the on the Upper East Side and so I'm like I have like four espressos on the in a row on the beach and one of these guys turns to me he says dude you're no different to us except your drug of choice is
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caffeine and choices I was like yeah this thing is legal and it's been cons I was like yeah I'm doing this one thank you very much but um so that's but but but then eventually just to get to close that Loop So eventually in New York City
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I decided I was going to try cocaine and I wasn't going to do it around those people because that was dangerous but I decided and I had a friend this is a classic New York story I have a he's a dear friend still and I call him and say
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you know I think I want to try this can you tell me about it and he grew up in a household where his father was a psychiatrist of the 60s Beat Generation his parents had done all the drugs and um uh this friend of mine he he was a kind of son who would like walk in on
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his parents on the living we say you know you really people have you have to stop doing all these drugs I'm sick of it anyway so he I say I say to him Peter do you think I should try it and he says well it's a delightful drug guy I don't
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see if there's anything wrong with it so I end up doing a mini bump with with a friend that I trusted a one-third of a line and um uh the the rush and the high that it gave me was extraordinary it made me feel like there's a day that I had skiing where I was super fit super
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healthy 18 years old skiing and waist high powder and I was able to ski really well and it was just a glorious glorious day and it it it made me think of that day and I thought my God here I am in my living room and I'm having this
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experience of incredible but so here's here's to your point of the extraordinary danger the next day I'm on Madison Avenue I know I was on Madison around 64th or 65th Street probably walking to then my favorite coffee shop via quadron and my brain conjures up an
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image of a um a silver platter with piles of white powder and that because what happened to me immediately after I tried it is I actually got nauseous after I got the rush on the high I got nauseous because I hate taking drugs I don't take
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anything for a headache I kind of like don't like looking my own blood that's when I realized how freaking scary it is because that one short experience with that drug my brain was already trying to find ways to get me to do it again and
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that's when I knew that uh wow that is just unbelievably scary and uh and very but I scared my parents I scared my parents when I told them and my friend will never forgive me because my parents like you did what you tried cocaine I said
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well my friend said it's a delightful drug and they're like who is this guy so anyway yeah I love it have you read Michael pollin's um yes yes how to change your mind I've been spending a lot of time around a lot of time I I I had a I had a guy who's a risk manager
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at a major bank here in Switzerland come into my office and try to convince me that I need to do psychedelics so I did I I read the book I grew up think I'm buying all of the propaganda I never touched a psychedelic ever because remember Nixon made his
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whole War on Drugs because he was in political trouble um and that was that and then I read somebody pointed me to Michael band's book and I read it and I was flabbergasted so I I did try uh Sol asy it twice okay and and it was amazing uh
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but the interesting thing was I had no desire after the first experience with cybin I had zero desire oh I want to go do more cybin so I found in my very limited experimentation with these drugs now also they were the purest pharmaceutical
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type uh because of the person who uh assisted uh with it but I and and he had told me listen these uh psychedelics most of them uh he was careful to like no that and all Don't Go Near that stuff uh because that's that's trouble uh but anyway he he was very uh much these are
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really not addicting substances yeah a and uh at least in my personal experience which is very limited two times uh I had no desire no desire to you know I need more mushrooms I need more solos I know a lot of the guys out in California micro do I have a lot of friends who
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micro do pych knowledge I've never tried that yeah uh because I like I listen I I'm very lucky in that I I love Bach and so when I'm working when I'm reading I just have Bak on all day long yeah and uh I I don't want want to be compromised
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in any way in terms of an external drug uh but I was interested so the um uh I've not done that although I've had people and I've read the Michael pollen stuff um the conversations I've had I mean one I remember at the Ted conference a couple of years ago with a
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friend who's a coach and and and I've done plenty of psychotherapy and I'm a huge fan of psychotherapy and and she just said she looked at me she said you don't understand cuz I gave her a very skeptical view she said one trip one
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trip she said changed her life and she said she said that was the only trip she needed and uh and in her case what she experienced was she said look I experienced death and she said I know that you think that you know what death experience is you don't know what it's
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like to do under s cburn and having had that experience uh I'm a different person I don't need to do it again you know it that that that was my experience as well I did not go into the first experience thinking that I would uh you
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know experience death uh but I I would I would phrase it a little bit differently one of the first things that I came out when I that I said when I came out of the soloc cybin what I look at the shaman and said I'm not afraid to die
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anymore apparently that was the first thing I said I don't really recall saying it yeah uh but the second thing I'll share was like I'm I'm a huge music fan and uh uh so I was uh I was uh in a Bhutan like location and I was hearing all you know
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they have all the Buddhist monasteries uh like right next to each other if you've never been to Bhutan I highly recommend it it's an amazing country and the bhese people are amazing anyway so I was hearing all that type of chanting but then I heard
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the purest most beautic beautiful singing I'd ever heard in my life I literally started to cry and I just sat transfixed and what seemed like 20 minutes and I I'm I said to myself in the trip oh my God this is the cherim and seraphim I'm not a
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religious person yeah when I came out of the thing uh and was discussing the experience with the shaman he saidwell what was your favorite part and I said you must you must give me a copy of that sing it was Angelic that you had that
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you played when I was in the trip and he looked at me and he goes I didn't play any vocals wow wow yeah I would highly recommend it I'm I'm a big supporter because of here in the US um I support a group called maps that basically was the driving
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force to get um major universities like Johns Hopkins uh to do tests with uh MDMA and soloc cybin for vets with severe post-traumatic stress syndrome and the the reports are amazing yeah and so um where I got to so you I did 10
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years of yion therapy and some point um I I I did maybe five or six sessions of EMDR which is supposed to help with trauma where it's kind of Left Right stimulation and what I learned about EMDR is that the protocol that you use is extremely important so preparation
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and accompaniment through an EMDR session where I've gotten to and I'm curious to see how you push me or how you come back at me is that I'm really happy that the research is being done on uh protocols around psychedelics and um what has been
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explained to me by somebody who's in my office the other day who's used one of these is that the accompaniment and the preparation and setting the intention for what you're going to do when you're in this um altered state is really really important and so I kind of say to
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myself if I'm going to do it ever I want to do it with clear intention and with protocol and with shamans as you put them and I've just come out and said but you know it's interesting so I I think that I'm an aware person I think that I
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reflect I we use therapy therapists coaches all of those kinds of things I almost feel like I'm not that experimental with my own life and I would happily undergo it as a protocol if somebody came to me and said you need to do this because you're exhibiting
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ABCD you know but I'm still don't want to just go and experiment with it even with a professional who knows what they're doing but you you seem to have done it and you're better for it and maybe I'd be better off if if I'd done
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it you know I I I uh I feel much better off for having done it um but I completely concur with your assessment that set and setting is vitally important to doing psychedelics so well I am in favor of all of the re search and believe that it
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should be legal it should be legal only in a supervised setting um I'm I'm ambivalent you know the US likes to professionalize everything so uh there are some proposals that you know it has to be an MD or psychiatrist or at at the very least a
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psychologist um I I I'm more open to shamans because uh the the uh diligence that they use studying these compounds is at least if you're going to a good one uh are is is quite extensive but I I I do not believe that we are in a place where
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we should just legalize them and let every and let anyone take them anywhere because they're very powerful compounds and the setting of the attention is very important yeah I I don't you know so uh yes I'm a Libertarian at heart but I I
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really don't understand why we as a society have such problems with things that are potentially dangerous that don't count as medicine so you know we make a clear we say clearly you know basically you get licensed as a doctor because because you once you're licensed
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as a doctor you actually have the right to quote assault Somebody by sticking a knife in them or sticking a syringe in them or doing all sorts of things to them so kind of like we restrict the right to do that we don't give Barbers
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the right to chop legs off and and I don't see with all sorts of substances all the way from uh you know all of all of the recreational drugs and and I we can have a debate over who is licensed to hand them out whether it's a psychiatrist whether it's a um a doctor
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whether it's a shaman but just to have some licensing procedure uh that and and you know that's the way I I just sorry I'm going to go into guns difficult to talk about guns in the United States but I learned so much here in Switzerland so in
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Switzerland um you have to be in order you can you very high gun ownership in Switzerland but you have to be a member of a fine or an association and uh if something happens uh the investigation some accident the investigation will look into the uh Gun Club that you're a
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member of and so so the gun club has an enormous responsibility and they're not just going to let anybody have a gun and I don't what I don't understand and I know I'm waiting into such a toxic subject in the United States is that um
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you know the actual whichever Amendment it is says you know the right to be arms as a member of a militia exactly Second Amendment and so why why can't you why is it so hard to say you know that means in today's language Gun Club and you
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know we're going to every gun club needs to be registered can make its own rules and procedures but if we start noticing that certain gun clubs have got a lot of accidents around them because we'll be able to trace every every person who
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discharges a firearm to a particular Gun Club then you know it's a way of it's a way of regulating it anyway no no actually that's that's a brilliant suggestion because you're absolutely right the it's a toxic conversation in the US and it has it has gotten down to just
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idealogues shouting at one another yeah there is no actual conversation about how we could even incrementally like this improve the situation that is brilliant to me because you're right it it is in accordance with the wording of the Second Amendment yeah and what
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you're saying you're saying we're not we know we know that you guys who oppose uh any restriction on guns we know that you guys aren't the problem we know that you guys aren't going to do you're not we love the fact that you have guns we want
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to stop the people who shouldn't have guns by the way you want to stop them too so so you know then you're not going to let them into your clubs and by the way somebody says Ah but you're restricting my right we say to them okay form a gun club or here's a gun club you
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can join and you know and so sooner or later which Gun Club you get into will be the one and yeah you can form your own gun club as well but you know you're you're under evaluation anyway it's it's just a i i one of the things that
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happens I just tell you I've learned so much living in Switzerland and I just put it into your mind I don't unfortunately think it will ever change is that we grew up I grew up in the UK in the United States this idea of
38:15
learning to debate learning to be quick wited and so so when you see two politicians on television you'll have either side and they'll debate each other and all of that jazz and what happens in I can switch on late night television in Switzerland and
38:31
watch two politicians talking and check this Jim they're competing with each other to see who can better stake out the middle ground so so the competition is no no viewers you think this guy staked out the middle ground well let me show you
38:49
how I stake out the middle ground even better and how I take into account both sides of this debate and that you both sides of this debate need to trust me not my opponent to cover that middle ground and it's fascinating it's just the way everybody thinks and suddenly uh
39:07
I devoutly to be wished I tell you thank you for listening to me maybe it's the because I'm kind of doing a Psychotherapy session here in American politics and and and and British politics what you know so uh there is such incredible sort of lacks of knowledge in
39:25
so I studied some politics at University and we St did comparative politics and we also studied European political systems but um this idea that uh the UK uh with its you know Westminster mother of all all parliaments has the last and
39:42
best answer to what it is to be a democracy it kind of looks ridiculous from the from the perspective of Switzerland really really does look ridiculous I've now been a Swiss citizen for a couple of years I voted now I the only country I've ever voted in in
39:56
Switzerland I've uh voted in I don't know five or six different referenda on the most diverse of topics and I've had to really study and understand what my position is on a particular issue I'll just tell you one thing which is
40:09
hilarious is that one of the votes we had to do was to whether to reduce the voting age from 18 to 16 and under the influence of my daughter who just turned 16 I believe I um very enthusiastically voted yes and then in conversations with
40:25
various friends afterwards I regretted it and they they came along they just said look um you know and no represent representation comes with responsibility you get the right to vote sure but but but you know is she going to be put in
40:40
prison if she commits a crime does she require to pay taxes the taxes the big one you know if you want to pay taxes as 16-year-old sure you get the right to vote but if you're not paying taxes then don't don't vote but um you know and you
40:53
look at the sorry I don't know why I'm doing politics you look at the the brexit vote in the UK and you think how stupid was that vote and here that wouldn't happen and I just wish and and I'll just stop with this because I'm on a bit of a diet tribe and I'm Meandering
41:06
a little bit but Switzerland the mindset in Switzerland is um we figured out a way to solve our problems and you know we we we kind of like we're doing our best to do that but our desire to teach the rest of the world anything about the way we run our country stops at our
41:25
borders if you want to come and live in our country you need to learn our rules but we you know so the minute you the minute a Swiss person goes beyond the borders of Switzerland there's no propitiation there's no preaching there's no cultural
41:39
export and you know the UK and the United States do it by breathing you know and and there's this element of well when the rest of the world wakes up they'll be like us and it's very difficult for the United States to realize that actually no they don't want
41:53
to be like the us because because you think why not it's such an amazing amazing place and uh I I I actually love that about the us but I do wish that Switzerland was able to project its values or I wish that I could somehow
42:06
get the rest of the world to come and study Switzerland because there's so much to learn in the rest of the world you know from the way Switzerland does stuff I agree entirely uh you know oldest democracy in the world Switzerland I think I don't know if
42:22
there's any older democracies um and very sensible I love that idea of debate that actually tries to get to an answer as opposed to um destroy your opponent yes right the challenge that I see with the United States is that we truly are so we are we
42:45
are with so many cultures pushed together and because essentially We're a nation of immigrants which I think is a very good thing uh because it demon demonstrates agency right like who there there's a fun book it's not a good book
43:02
let me hasten to say that it's a fun book though it's called The hypomanic Edge why America is different than other countries and his thesis in the book is well look at who makes up America for the most part these are people who woke
43:20
up decided you know what I'm going to leave my family the country that I've known all of my life all of the social uh conditioning that I've ever had and I'm going to get on a ship and I'm going to go to an uncertain future right and and so he's like of
43:36
course they're Risk Takers isn't it awesome is it just amazing is it really really is yeah and I tell you a story about me in this case so um I am wandering around Oxford University a pretty mediocre student in economics
43:56
and uh for one reason or another I see an adverts go to Harvard summer school and I go to Harvard summer school and for the first couple of weeks I stayed we have some family in Cambridge Mass and then I then I move into one of the
44:09
dorms spent eight weeks there I didn't do the I did one course normally you would do two courses I did one course and I didn't do it for credit and I spent most of my time hanging out on The Lawns talking to various people and uh but I didn't really do any work I came
44:26
back to Oxford for my final year and I flipped into being a uh sort of like 4.0 whatever you call it GPA student I and you also graduated first in in your class all of that jazz I was blown away uh thank you for reading up on me um but
44:47
it happened something something happened something was Unleashed in me in the United States that four weeks did something to me and I was forever changed and I'm forever grateful forever grateful for whatever the hell it was and there's a the only reason why I can
45:04
happily live in Europe uh live in Switzerland Old Europe is because whatever that did I carry with me forever you know and it it it dramatically and remarkably transformed my prospects and yeah the degree result was nice but but I became you know I I I I don't know I'd
45:25
have to I would have to do like three or four Psychotherapy sessions together Jim to figure it out but but something changed in me something profound and incredible and the United States is the last great hope of mankind and it's the
45:37
capital of my world uh most of the capital that I run as in the United States and um you know I fear I would fear terribly for the future if um if the United States wasn't basically healthy you know and I think that you know will the center hold I I don't know
45:55
who's quote that is from but but there's this it's Yates I think but but there's this fear in the United States often especially people who are prosperous that this thing this most incredible experiment of mankind last great hope of
46:11
mankind is another quote from somewhere that it's going to tear itself apart and I've kind of like made a choice that I don't want to live in a world of woring that Chicken Little the sky is falling on my head the whole time and I can't
46:23
rule out the risk that it is going to fall part but I'm actually confident that it won't and it is a miraculous place and what I say to my friends is if you know they're kind of worried about what's going on right now and I say if the United States can get through the
46:39
Civil War you know the Civil War then then this is nothing this is nothing I mean literally you know so to totally agree I would never short the United States of America uh because unlike other countries we had the great Good Fortune of being founded during the Age of
47:03
Reason and Enlightenment and that put and we had a remarkable set of Founders and I always say to people I think more about the United States as a country that was formed around ideat as opposed to geography and I think that that's one of
47:25
the things things that you felt when when when it changed your you as a person because one of the things that I love about the United States is the fact that for example all of our Military Officers swear their allegiance not to
47:44
some political figure but to the Constitution of the United States of America of course and I I I just uh I find that exhilarating raing and and I I I love history and so there are times where United States Armed Force officers May in fact refuse
48:09
a direct order even from the president of the United States because they say it is unconstitutional and they will not carry it out now yeah is is that officer at placing him or herself at Great risk yes indeed they are because they will be
48:28
charged there will be a trial there have been trials and some have been found not guilty many have been found guilty but this idea that there is no human maximum leader there is no human polit Bureau but rather Your Allegiance my allegiance as an American is to the
48:52
Constitution of the United States of America it's an amazing absolutely love it really is you know and what's fascinating is that you know to to if I think of the UK and the United States two countries divided by a Common Language common language I love that
49:08
book it's great I don't who's I don't know whose it is but um I I don't either I I don't either but I've used it many times and and two two what two amazing um cultures uh and and and commonality in so many different ways and then if
49:26
you you pull away the layers there's this profound distinction because at the end of the day if you pull away the layers from anybody you you have certainly you have anti-monarchists in the UK and um but you get a fundamental trust in that
49:40
institution of the royal family and you will get people who argue vehemently for the idea that when you get to the very core to have a human to whom or a human a line of humans to whom you pledge allegiance is more stable and better for the for
49:59
the um propagation of values and institutions through time than the Constitution and they would they I I have British friends who would be deeply mistrustful they would come to you and they'd say how can you pledge allegiance to this inanimate object that cannot
50:15
change with the times you know and and it's interesting because I used to be an anti-monarchist and now I'm I'm spending quite a bit of time in the UK my parents are in the UK we actually have a home in the UK and um I've kind of made my peace
50:30
with the royal family and I've made my peace with with the institution of the royal family and uh and I'm I used to be the guy who used to just rip it out you know and put something else in its place I actually realized that for that country it would
50:46
be extremely damaging it would it would actually be the end of the country actually and so and and and but you see that is a Nuance to opinion right and and so I totally understand where you're coming from I I I have a classic Americans attitude toward any monarchy
51:04
of any kind I have a lot of British friends um uh and what's interesting is more the the majority of them are pro monarchy which when we first had the conversation around it kind of shocked me honestly yeah even the people who
51:21
don't benefit exactly exactly and so I I just thought I I gave it a long uh think and I'm sort of like I get after listening to them they made points very similar to the point you just made yeah and and and they would say look continuity and for forever yes there
51:45
were different uh the ruling families yes yes but the monarchy itself has been around a long time we signed the Magna carter to give us you know sort of Rights over the over the all powerful absolute monarch we have evolved the
52:02
monarchy uh in significant ways and and the argument that that I find most compelling even though again not a big fan of monarchies including not for yourself the Brits can have it but not for you the Brits can exactly the Brits can have it I love it but the idea of
52:21
the separation of the ceremoni aspects of uh a country uh that Europe separates prime minister from president in many many countries that makes some sense to me yeah it makes some sense to me that that was always a bit of a up in my
52:41
opinion where we ended up with our president who is a political creature also being the head of state yeah and you could you could take I don't understand Israeli politics particularly well but the head of state is is there is a head of state who's the
52:57
president and paralyzed with the but yeah you don't have a prime minister role in in the US what I would tell you just a fun take on the British royal family that you know um maybe maybe if you and I were business school case writers would write a case on this I
53:13
think that Harvard Business School needs to write a case on the royal family and I would tell you that I think there's an enormous amount that one can learn from observing and understanding how the royal family of the United Kingdom and
53:27
probably other royal families run themselves and there's huge lessons for business so you know I I joke to my friends you know you put me on the coins of the realm and there'd be no stopping me you know you know and there's something else you know these are the
53:43
royal family and they call it the business they call it the firm I think the Insiders um realize that they need to they need to set themselves up I mean I mean Warren Buffett talks about buying a business any any fool can run cuz
53:56
sooner or later one will well the royal family has been thinking about that for many more Generations far longer time than Moren Buffett has at Burkshire Hathaway so there's there's real lessons to learn there and um and so I just
54:09
think that the the royal family is extraordinarily good at branding themselves and royal families Through Time have been good at branding themselves and there's lessons for Branding luxury goods but there's also lessons for uh personal marketing
54:26
and uh and if you and I think that I started to feel better about a lot of the pump and Circumstance around the the royal family when I realize that what they're doing is actually widening their mot they're you know they're they're
54:37
increasing the value their business for future Generations so they're doing all sorts of things like when they're handing out medals and prizes and knighthoods and all sorts of things I mean you know in any business they're just handing out recognition you know
54:49
and and they they're doing something really smart theyve realized that they they don't have to give the damn guy a castle they can just call him M you know and so and they can hand out a royal coat of arms or something and so there
55:00
are many things that you can actually do yourself in your business and in your life and so just emulate them actually and emulate them not because the individual holding the office is so smart but they've learned things over so many generations so that I think that
55:14
that's kind of a interesting and fun take you know I I love the idea I I think that is a great take what I find interesting um again as I chat with my British friends um is one of the downsides of the monarchy is that it still perpetuates even in an
55:36
in a ostensibly Democratic or meritocracy that like a Tony Blair tried to bring back to the UK um and and Margaret Thatcher obviously um what the designer of uh the interior designer who did our home is PR which is Beautiful by the way thank you as I'm
56:00
loving the W paneling oh thank you thank you uh as is her husband and we were chatting about uh whether they would ever return to London uh he's a creative director so they lived all around the world because he would get a slot at a big agency you know Singapore
56:20
Dubai uh then New York right and and I asked her you know would you ever would you ever go back to London and and uh do interior design there and she looked at me and she started laughing and I went Melanie what why why are you laughing
56:37
and she goes Jim you don't understand my ACT she's from northern England she said my accent would preclude me from doing any work for and she jokes Posh is like you and I and I and I had a really hard time believing that and she goes oh no
56:54
no no one of the things that we love and by the way before she moved to America she confided because she and her husband had become very good friends of my wife and and and me anyway they confided in us one time before uh and they came to
57:11
America they were dreading it because they thought they hated Americans and and then she goes I realized after living here that I'd never properly like understood America in any way I was basing it all off things that were you know not
57:29
interactive media you know American Tourist Etc and she said and one of the things that I have come to absolutely adore about this country is you really are in many respects a meritocracy you don't care where I come from you don't
57:46
care what my accent is she goes that that there's that's another great quote right uh an Englishman or woman only has to open their mouth for another English one man or woman to instantly hate them and judge them and place them exactly so
58:05
so I'll I'll share with you so you know my my story with the UK is that we immigrated to the UK when I was 11 years old and uh my um my father's originally Israeli My Mother originally South African and so I feel like I have the experience now of having been well I
58:23
didn't most of that time was spent out more a higher proportion was spent outside the UK than in the UK but I as well as my family have been going up a learning curve about what it means what what living in the UK means and what the
58:38
class system means and I've I've had some learnings very recently that I want to share with you and maybe even uh we can share with your friend directly or indirectly so I had the perception and I could again this feels like a Psychotherapy session Jim I could I had
58:52
the perception that um there are these inner circles in these kind of the class system and once you get into the Inner Circle uh the champagne flows and everything's beautiful and delicate and you know you kind of wafted into these
59:10
roles that Outsiders are excluded from and you get all the nice invitations to the right parties and you get the right friends all of those things and now I realize that actually the more rarified the circles you find yourself in the more hyper competitive it is and the
59:31
competition social competition and other kinds of competition are enormous and the rules are subtle and one of the things that those uh groups do and I think that this is true this is a um uh this is a human trait is that because
59:48
you want to reduce the competition because you know if I get into the right R rarified circles I'm going to be competing competing with an invitation to Buckingham Palace because I'll be able to Brand myself and there I was with the queen or whatever the king now
1:00:01
and um I want to reduce the competition so how do I do that I try to convince people who are not as close to the Inner Circle as I am that they shouldn't even compete and they shouldn't even try and so what you get is a phenomenon of uh
1:00:16
this friend of yours saying I wouldn't even be able to open my mouth and they would have judged me and that that's kind of what they want her to think and I'll give you a more extreme example of it and so you know I I went to Oxford University but I was not the traditional
1:00:31
kind of person at the time that would go to Oxford so there I am sitting in a taxi in London and he's got a cottony accent and he's asked I don't know remember why conversation struck up and it turns out that I've I'm at Oxford or
1:00:46
I've gone to Oxford and I because I've been to the US I perky say well you know you got a son maybe he should go to Oxford and he gives this sort of like chip on the shoulder told her you know I'm not from that kind of I wouldn't go to my son's not going to and and uh
1:01:00
that's exactly what they want you to think and um and he thinks that it's excluded to him but actually you can compete with your Northern accent you can compete with your cocky accent and being a taxi driver they those circles are not actually closed they're actually
1:01:20
open and it's hyper competitive in the inside and there's the the so they're not they they they they want you to believe it because they want to reduce the competition but you can get in if you want to and I I kind of so I've been
1:01:33
going up an extreme learning curve there and I now have a very very different perception of it and the class system is not walls it's just people competing for stuff that is scarce and if they can convince you through any means whether
1:01:50
it's your accent whether it's where you're from in the country or anything else that you're not going to be a competitor with them then they're happier you know and so I'm and I I still haven't worked through all of this so I'm not making it as clear as I
1:02:03
perhaps ought to but but I don't see anymore the class system as which it is there I don't see it anymore as being this kind of wall of rejection and I have experienced enormous amounts of rejection in the UK circumstances where it was very
1:02:21
painful for me and and I now realized that you and what I thought was a closed wall was actually permeable but I hadn't learned the rules you know and I'm now busy I don't know if any member of my family will stay in the UK but I'm busy
1:02:37
trying to teach those rules to as many people as I can in in my family in my circle and I would just tell you that so so it's not so black and white and if you go to New York City is a great example so there were we were applying with for our daughter to the hesel
1:02:53
school and um you know and we thought we're a great family my wife's Mexican I'm from I've got this background my my daughter speaks at that point Spanish and English we're great candidates for this school in retrospect I need to be
1:03:07
making donations to the right places and showing up to the right cocktail parties and they really didn't care you know how interesting we were because that was just like your entry ticket to even being considered was to be doing those
1:03:19
things so yeah I didn't know the rules you so is it that different from the UK that that that is so interesting to me because I talk about understanding the game rules of different segments of society of different segments of investing there there are game rules and
1:03:39
if you you you do yourself a major disservice if you don't a understand that and then B try to learn what those rules are so that you can play the game more effectively I actually I love that idea yeah and realize this realize this um you know in in many cases the rules
1:04:00
are clearly laid out and it's the nature I mean I think New York City is very unusual I think if you go out to the western part of the United States newer States you know it's the nature of the United States and open society that you
1:04:12
make the rules available for the people who want to read them it's not very fair it's not very nice for the rules to be Unwritten because how the hell is an outsider supposed to learn those rules uh but uh so that it's they won't even tell you there are rules
1:04:26
so they're not written down and and they won't even tell you the only way you learn them is by osmosis by a friend often it's a friend who takes looks kindly on me and says you know what I can see you're interested in this stuff
1:04:40
let me tell you how to actually play the game you know and that is kind of like that knowledge is golden you know so so so when you were at Oxford though I I must assume you're a very bright person did did you learn them explicitly or
1:04:57
implicitly so at the time that I was at Oxford uh I first of all I spent a lot of time not understanding many many roles so there was a kind of a civil war going on at Oxford because colleges like my college half of the college was from
1:05:12
these uh fancy public schools and half of the college was from non-fancy public well from from from uh the uh State sector and I was kind of like in this weird group group that I'd gone to an independent school which was not the state sector and was not so I was kind
1:05:29
of in the middle of that didn't neither fish nor foul didn't fit into either of the two groups so this this experience with this Taxi Driver London cabbie was so hard for me because he was he was my accent changed at Oxford by the way this
1:05:43
all started around accent uh imperceptibly and um uh this taxi driver is considering to me me to be as if I'm one of those Oxford toughs and I'm trying to tell him no I'm not I'm not one of those Oxford TOS I'm Different you know and and and I'm like
1:06:02
underclass like you type of deal and um he's not having any of that by the way and the fact of the matter is I have learned some of the rules because obviously I've been there and they've come off by osmosis but there's so many
1:06:14
rules that I haven't learned and so it's complicated and not so now just to give you the sense you I was confronted with so many people who' been to e and at the time uh Eaton was um a significant proportion of the students at the school
1:06:31
now when you've been to Eaton you show up at University like Oxford and um you know you got friends across all the colleges you're hanging out with each other you introducing each other it's a whole different experience I go to Oxford I don't know anybody and you know
1:06:45
you've got this kind of like semi unionized group of people who are all taking care of each other sharing with each other which club to be a part of so um so now uh uh I so so now second generation one generation on my son is a
1:07:02
student at Eaton and um uh and now I have the experience of my son would have a very so so um very very hard from a school like Eaton to go to university like Oxford because they kind of actively discriminate against students from those kinds of schools they're
1:07:21
trying to reduce that phenomenon and so and I and I want to say but but my son is not like those guys that he's not from this British class system he's a you know he's an outsider he's an immigrant you shouldn't discriminate against him all of those good things so
1:07:35
so you see how this the I'm and I'm at this stage of learning I'm 40 years into the British experience if you like or or I'm trying to understand the British experience I'm at a much greater level of subtlety than I was 20 or 30 years
1:07:51
ago and maybe in another 20 or 30 years it'll be even more subtle you know so uh I find that absolutely fascinating because uh you know the the same is true uh more or less of the IV institutions which have been much in the
1:08:10
news um in the United States whereby um you know I got into Yale because my father was a analum no you're a genius Jim that's what I like to try to tell myself but however the reality of the situation was that I got into Yale because I was
1:08:35
uh I was a legacy and literally I don't be hard on yourself you don't know that they made a great choice anyway I didn't but I didn't go to Yale that's the difference so I was I was a bit of a radical back then and I made it my my uh goal to try to get into
1:08:56
a Unity where my family where my dad hadn't been or my mom my grandfather had was very successful and had done a lot for the University of Notre Dame um and and so I remember a a time when I was a senior in high school and we had Father
1:09:15
Ted hurg who was then President of Notre Dame at our house for dinner and I went in and we shook hands one ful man and he goes so you're starting at Notre Dame next year right Jim and I went no Father Ted I'm I'm not and he looked at me like
1:09:31
he was literally shocked and and he goes well why not and I said Father Ted because you are asking me that question and he got this huge smile on his face and he said good for you so I ended up getting accepted to the univ now um University of California
1:09:56
so you didn't so so they're trying to get you to go to Yale you're like nah no trame nah you kind it you wanted you were a Maverick you independent minded and good for you very very good for you I I wouldn't trade my experience with
1:10:13
with anything right because like uh you know sensitivity to initial conditions when I was a a little boy I fell in love with New York for example I was 8 was my first time in New York City 1968 New York City in 1968 was not a very safe place uh for for most people
1:10:33
who don't know New York's full history it it had fallen on very bad times you remember the Ford to New York dropped dead when they were going broke anyway I I we were going to live in Ireland for a summer and we had a one night stop over in New York City 1968
1:10:53
I'm eight I without asking permission without telling anyone in my family put on my little white uh windbreaker and went on a long explore of New York for several hours well I got back to the hotel and of course the lobby is filled
1:11:11
with police my mother is weeping on the couch because she thinks some horrible thing has happened to me and now this is I treat this like a memory of mine obviously it's not a memory of mine my mom told me this story so often that I
1:11:27
think of it as a memory of mine she said Jim you saw me got this huge smile on your face ran over hugged me and go and said Mommy I am going to live here someday how old are you at the time eight eight eight wow so I I I was apparently gone for hours it was in mid
1:11:52
we were staying at the wall so it was Midtown uh apparently I was gone for several hours and without permission in 1968 uh and I understand of course now why my parents were slightly worked up but literally my love of New York never
1:12:11
stopped and I ended up uh moving here when I was when I was 31 oh took you that long in your 20s my God it it it did and uh I was very close to mother who uh unfortunately had uh a lupus which at the time was a uh a disease that we didn't know too much
1:12:35
about um and she had some really rough times uh in the early 70s unfortunately my eldest sister died of lus when I was a kid as well sorar that thank you um anyway uh I uh I I didn't want to leave the Twin Cities when my mom was still alive um and that's beautiful yeah uh I
1:13:02
was very lucky she was a lovely lovely woman and yeah uh so I don't know why we got on to universities oh we were talking about Oxford and then we went from Yale skipped over notra Dame and went to I guess it's UCLA is uh well it would have
1:13:21
been Cal Berkeley but I ended up uh at starting at the University of California San Diego much nicer climate La Hoya is far more beautiful but then I I I did an in campus transfer uh sorry down to San Diego after two years decided I was probably
1:13:43
much more of an East Coast guy so I had gotten grades good enough that I transferred to the school of Foreign Service at Georgetown uh um and uh loved it there but met and fell in love with my wife of 42 years as a matter of fact today for
1:14:01
those listening or watching today is December 14th uh I asked my wife to marry me 42 years ago on this day congratulations thank you now we have three children five wonderful grandchildren wow and uh so the only reason I managed to meet my lovely wife was because uh we
1:14:24
she had been at Georgetown I love these little connections and I was at a part I was at a party of a friend and uh he was saying well how do you like Georgetown I said I love it I love school P service I finally have a fit there I think it's
1:14:38
great he goes well you should go talk to Missy Walker over there because she was at Georgetown and and I did and uh she the first question she asked me because Georgetown is they tease it a bit for being very preppy um and uh so the first question
1:14:57
she asked me was does it bother you when everyone says what does your daddy [Laughter] do and I immediately was smitten and so started dating her fell in love um and so I finished at the University of Minnesota a state school wellow you know
1:15:19
and uh so um two things first of all you need to know J I I have not been married 42 years but they say congratulations Melissa congratulations they say the first 42 years are the hardest it's plain sailing from here finally you you know I I we my wife and
1:15:44
I celebrated 20 years just uh you know congratulations yeah would you like to see the scars you want to see the scars I I think we'll leave the scars off although it toughens you up and makes you uh usually better at at
1:16:03
many go ahead yeah sorry nobody's gonna write a book saying how to survive your first 10 years of difficult marriage you know after you thought it was going to be a breeze think of how many books there are on how to get married what flowers to pick what readings what
1:16:19
nothing for after that you know so few because just like wouldn't but it's like this like great big gaping hole because that's actually what you need I would tell you my wife and I um we were just lucky and New York City actually because
1:16:33
it's got incredible the world's best probably concentration of psychotherapists marital therapists You Name It We really started learning about how to be married to each other in New York City and if it wasn't for some of those therapists we would not be married but I
1:16:48
have a a whole bunch of thoughts there where I wanted to go so we can dive down that route of you want to but um there's a phrase when you talk about skipping over Yale skipping over um uh uh notra Dame UCSD but then um uh University of
1:17:07
Minnesota state school is this beautiful I don't know if you read any um uh oh why why am I blanking on him um Joseph Campbell I love Joseph Campbell yeah who doesn't of course you do yeah so and this is what I tell so many people it's
1:17:24
I this is kind of like from his talks at the uh place in California he used to give lectures at this kind of in yeah and it's a beautiful beautiful book and somewhere in one of those talks he says you enter the forest in the darkest place where there is no
1:17:44
path and you know the reason why there is no path is that if you saw a path it wouldn't be yours and we all have to beat our own path path if we want to live and so what what what you say when you ended your life or you ended your
1:17:57
University education at Minnesota in Minnesota what I hear is you've beaten your own path and you started beating your own path at an early age and there's something so I have a question I guess because because I have this the when you when I've taken decisions that
1:18:17
is like oh wow I'm taking this decision it's a big move I wonder if it's the right move and then I feel like the universe responds to me sometimes and uh and sometimes the way I describe is God Smiles at me and it's like and and I get indications from the universe that I've
1:18:37
made a good decision and is something very exciting because you realize that you're s like following your destiny and I'm just wondering if you've experienced that all my life yeah um and for those who are listening and not watching you
1:18:53
you would have seen me nodding in agreement as guy was talking about that uh I also passionately believe in writing out your life uh scripting your life if you will my grandfather uh taught me a thing he called premeditating and it's actually quite
1:19:12
simple but it's profoundly useful what what you do when you premeditate something is that you you you you have you want to do something uh you want to achieve something or or be a certain type of person so you can write it out
1:19:29
so I want to become uh an author right um and and then what you do is you go down several different paths here's what happens if this if I get this if I get this goal and then what happens good if I get the goal but here's the important
1:19:49
one what happens bad if I get this goal and then you do it for the other side I don't get the goal what's good what's bad and it's a bit of a decision tree but it's the thinking about which is very unnatural right it's very unnatural
1:20:08
to think about I achieve what I think I want that there that there could be anything bad happening out of that and and that's the part of the exercise that's so powerful to me right because um the it gives you Clarity number one it it helps you understand whether you
1:20:30
really want that thing or not right and and it's just it's it's a very powerful mechanism to better understanding your own desires why do you have that desire you know all of that and it gives you much greater Clarity if for example after
1:20:50
premeditating uh the the decision is taken yes I'm going to go for this I'm going to try to get this done you you you are doing so with a far greater awareness at least I have from doing this all my adult life yeah um of okay but there are some some things that it
1:21:10
makes you cognizant of things you might want to watch out for y that you might not have thought about other otherwise right like in our profession um like I I I loved trying to figure out the stock market from a very very early
1:21:30
age um and you know for for me I would listen to my dad argue with my uncle about the prospects of ibf for example just take a name um and and I was was very curious to me that the entire conversation was around whoever the CEO was uh it was all
1:21:54
very uh anthropomorphic if you will um and and like I immediately kind of thought well would it be better to like look at just the numbers wouldn't it would wouldn't that be uh probably a better calibrated way of approaching whether you want to invest in that
1:22:13
particular stock or not um and and so that's what led to you know what works on Wall Street and the end of various books because I was really just consumed by the idea of the market to me it's kind of like the Olympics of business
1:22:30
that's the way I saw it and and and what I loved about it was I I have many many like you I have many many interests and what better occupation could I have to indulge those many many interests right um and and yet uh I I I like you definitely have felt that
1:22:57
way all all of my adult life I want that's a really interesting I I think I might even start asking that question on this podcast uh because lot ins there the question would be did you at any point in a big decision feel like the universe was
1:23:18
aligned with you on that and and and if so how did you know was it synchronicities was it Serendipity was it a feeling was it some objective standard that's very interesting to me so I I I I have like I'm gonna try it's interesting I didn't realize you it's
1:23:37
obvious actually you know so one of the experiences sitting at this famous launch with rren Buffett not far from where you have an apartment or far closer to you than me in Smith and wsky is the realization that I would not want to be living Warren Buffett's life
1:23:54
because this is a guy who genuinely um enjoys uh researching and analyzing and investing and understanding companies and businesses and but if he gets a book about I don't know uh behavioral psychology or the history of Rome or you
1:24:15
know he'll send it to his friend Charlie God bless him uh before he even decides to read it because he's not all that interested did and he's so so he has a very very narrow focus and I realized for me that's not a plus it's just not a
1:24:30
plus I don't want to have a narrow Focus I don't want to I you know if you could tell me that I could have 10 times more money and speak one language less I don't want to do it I like the fact that I can experience what the world feels like in different languages for example
1:24:44
but um but I want to go back so so one thing is fascinating this so as you were talking about writing stuff down and write script rting I think is what you called it uh what came up for me was um it's not Keith farazi I don't think but
1:24:59
it's this concept of fear mapping is again one of the kind of like planning tools and another thing that came up for me is a book whose author I don't remember called write it down make it happen and then I want to tell you a story about this because it's kind of
1:25:14
like in maybe it's even been transformational for me uh we arrive in Zurich 2009 any move is difficult and I'm saying to myself wow this is really hard maybe it's not going to stick maybe we'll end up in New York within a year back in New York and um so
1:25:31
there's some things I really want have gotten done with my family with my young family before we potentially leave and I kind of wrote some things down like go skiing in Davos uh visit the technorama in ventor uh visit the kst house the art
1:25:46
museum just various things go for a walk by the lake and I just put it away in a drawer and forgot about it and about a year later I came across this list and what astounded me was how many of the things on the list had been accomplished
1:26:04
and I have no doubt even though I can't explain it that the simple Act of writing down something that you would like to make happen and never looking at it again even forgetting that you even wrote it down um makes a difference and
1:26:19
so now I have a kind of like I that I have a document now that I update every now and then maybe every six months and something I started doing was because so many of the things got done I started keeping a list of successes because they
1:26:33
because it's like and the list just keeps growing longer and longer and it's a kind of like a business plan for life but but now I want to come so so it's kind of like just I want to come to something that I think any if you plan on being what I didn't do with your sort
1:26:49
of like uh scripting and looking not just at well what happens if I don't get it which is super important uh what happens if I do get it and do I really want it and what am I going to do with it is if you're investing and you plan on being
1:27:05
successful and you get successful you're going to end up with more money than you know what to do with and uh you know and time is going to become the constricting factor and I don't think that my peer group the people I talked to regular
1:27:22
basis are in a sense the right peer group for me because the the um endless pursuit of yet more money when you've got more than you can spend is asinine it's just the only reason why it Mak sense for Warren Buffett is that he he stopped he paused he looked around knew
1:27:43
he had more money than he could spend you know a bit like the musicians on the deck of the Titanic in that famous movie they looked around they're like oh my God we're going down what should we do well we'll play music you know so Warren
1:27:55
went back to playing his music and so happens that his music makes him even more wealthy but but I'm not sure that uh you know spending the rest of my life just thinking about making money is a good use of my time so and I'm stuck I I could not
1:28:14
agree with that more fully I think we are incredibly sympatico because uh I I I have so we sold OSI Asset Management to Franklin Templeton I started another company not to make money but to pursue things that I obviously it needs to make money because I'm a good
1:28:39
capitalist but but that wasn't the primary motivation the primary motivation was I have all these other interests that I can finally indulge so it's very indulgent of me to be really Frank that that I've decided okay well let's do it through a company and so we
1:28:56
did oasy Ventures but Osan Ventures gives fellowships it um it does movies it does books it does all the things that I am passionate about and love I want to come back to your your list though uh because I there is something
1:29:16
magical happening when you write out what you want to accomplish and I don't have any and and uh listeners viewers if if there's some good scientific research around this I would love to see it but I have found personally and hearing your
1:29:34
story guy I've had this similar conversation privately uh with with many very very successful people and the majority of them have the same tale they wrote it out I found I found a a I I'm a journal keeper so I have journals going
1:29:55
back to when I was 18 years old which is very helpful because there's nothing like being called a liar in your own handwriting to make you understand that memory is very fungible and that uh our our minds might think they're doing us a
1:30:10
favor by overwriting memories to make the memory consistent with what we believe now and anyway I found this uh list of a four page long list that I wrote out when I was 28 years old and there were like 98 things on it that I wanted to accomplish and guy I'd
1:30:30
completely forgotten about it and 95% of them I had accomplished wow and and one of them was really weird because I was such a music fan I I had written now remember I'm 28 years old a punk kid and and I'd written I want to be the chair
1:30:51
or the lead of a major Arts organization yeah and and then I had the the uh privilege of being the chamber orchestra of L and Center so I I I I urge every I work a lot with younger people and I urge all of them oh God write it down and write it down with
1:31:12
your own hand that's another part that that I find very very important and it's strange because I mean I I believe that I'm a you know I have a scientific mindset I'm you know I'm an empirical guy I believe so uh you know what I want
1:31:29
to do is Trace I don't want to say when I say God smiling at me I'm using language I'm trying I'm using God in a poetic sense not in an empirical sense yeah and and I what is the mechanism what is the mechanism by which that happens because it just feels you
1:31:48
know it's like it's a it's it's a mystery it's a fascinating mystery you know very fascinating and it has been something that con has consumed my attention for years I would love to be able to figure out because as you know I'm very empirically oriented as well
1:32:06
yeah and uh you know I sometimes hesitate because this stuff can sound very woo um and it's really not and I would love to figure that part out and you know it's funny so interesting so I'm I'm actually I so so if you come to the
1:32:26
medical profession science-based medicine there's there's many things that are on the fringes of medicine that don't make it into uh the kind of um the cannon of medicine because you cannot prove it to a sufficient degree of certainty and the people around it so so
1:32:47
you get all sorts of people there and but many of those things are affective Ive you know whether it's getting a massage or whatever the hell it is the person who feels better because they went to the chiropractor and there's something
1:33:00
there and and I guess there's a there's a uh you know so I I was talking to a group of math student yesterday at the University of Zurich and I it was hilarious because I put on a slide that said here's all the mathematics I don't
1:33:15
understand and I kind of like one of the things that I wanted to do is I wanted to shock them into realizing um how little mathematics they actually need to be successful in finance and I kind of like more or less convinced them that I could add and subtract and maybe
1:33:30
multiply a few things but uh you know I didn't understand need to understand what a fuer transform is for example but then I took them into this transformational experience for me which was I'm in San Francisco and I call up
1:33:47
this Swiss friend for some reason who's a great friend in New York City and uh her name name is Diana Vice and um help my marriage amazing woman and um she says oh you going to hang out with friends there's Tony Robbins unlimit Unleash the Power Within seminar you
1:34:05
should go you should go and do it it will change your life and you know somehow I'm like I'm not going to do that I'm gonna go hang out with my friends while I'm going to do some seminar but somehow the words will change your life you know when the
1:34:18
student is ready the teacher appears and so those words resonate and the next thing I know I find myself this crazy Anthony Robin seminar at some you know sort of conference hotel somewhere in somewhere near to the airport uh in
1:34:31
southern San Francisco and I'm jumping up and down and doing all this crazy stuff but why am I saying this I guess I'm saying it because there's this kind of like outside of the cannon of what is sensible behavior for humans there's
1:34:45
people like Anthony Robbins and others talking about the quote technology of success or you know you have you have that um The Da Vinci Code for example and but but there's something there that's my point and I know that it's not scientifically provable so you know
1:35:03
exactly and and I think that uh again we we are we are very similar in in our outlooks because uh there is something there and I I uh have a young friend named George Mack and one of the things he says is what he he has these razors that he
1:35:25
publishes and and one of them is how to increase your luck and and one of the things that when I listen to you say uh that you went to the Tony Robbins his way of increasing your luck is among a variety of options choose the one where there is going to
1:35:44
be many more opportunities to get lucky as he puts it and he's not using it in the sexual sense obviously um and so when you heard change your life you chose that option right because you were like okay I'm gonna go see what's on offer
1:36:02
and that is sorry I I forgive me I that is just I I'm blown away that's a because that is a distinction that I had never thought of and so if you take that and look I might have learned something amazing with a group of friends I was going to hang out with but I was but the
1:36:20
probability of something thing happen out of that Anon Anthony Robin seminar was far greater you know and that margin and and I tell you another a different another example of that I'm blown away so you know a member of my family is he
1:36:36
doesn't think that he's he's all down feeling all down on his luck and and low in mood but he's sent off 30 applications and uh hasn't received a positive response for many of them and you know and his kind of face was was kind of shocked I said I said I asked
1:36:51
him how many of you sent off he said about 30 he said proud I said said 30 is that it you know he's like I said why don't you do 300 why did you do 3,000 and I told him you've already done the work you've already written the cover
1:37:04
letter you've already put your resume together you've already thought about it so now just take that and you know the extra work to take it from 30 to he was like you know his he he he he didn't figure it you know and I it's interesting because he should have just
1:37:20
run and do it and I think have to say it eight more times until he finally goes and do it but that's a simple way of doing that you know so totally agree when I wrote my first book invest like the best I decided when I was out on a walk that if I wanted to start o shanos
1:37:35
Capital Management which was the first company I found it when I was 28 uh I would have to have you know I would have to have credentials I would have to have uh some imperator that hey this this guy really is worth listening to and so I
1:37:51
thought what better way to do that than write a book and so I I went home and uh told my lovely wife that this is what I was going to do and and she smiled and she said you do know Jim that to write a book you're gonna need a publisher I
1:38:08
went well of course of course I I I'm going to and she goes well like how are you going to accomplish that I said I'm going to go to the bookstore I'm sure there's a book with all of the addresses of every publisher and that's exactly what I did guy I sent
1:38:25
300 query letters to every publisher and all but two came back negative but two came back positive and that's all you need that's all you need that's all you need yeah and uh and in your case what I was telling this family member was that
1:38:44
the response rate on pretty much anything you send out is never going to be more than 3% and might be 1% and in your case it was it was even less than 1% and you know the person who responds because you have to have it arrive on
1:38:59
the person's desk on a day when they're feeling lonely and unhappy and maybe they've had a fight with their wife and somehow something in what you've sent them makes them feel good and so they feel like they want to get in touch with
1:39:11
you and the first job I got in finance the summer job in London was at a it was then a an Austrian bank called credit out credit Institute I'd sent off I hadn't done the 300 I didn't know that yet I'd done about 40 and um the I I got two back and the guy who offered me a
1:39:31
job after he' invited me for an interview I realize now very very professional very lovely Guy taught me an awful lot but he was actually a closet gay and he wanted to take me out and on the very very last night of my internship he offered that if I wanted
1:39:48
to I could go back to his place and uh I didn't swing that way so it wasn't an option but I realize now you know years later that the reason why I got that opportunity was that the guy kind of liked the look of me you know and you
1:40:02
know what I'm totally fine with that I mean he was you know he was there wasn't any I mean he would have liked that as an extra possibility but given the choice between two interns one who's you know who he liked the look of the one
1:40:16
and not the other then he picked me and I'm grateful for that you know so you never know what comes into that opportunity you know and uh but as long as you take it you know so totally totally agree yeah it's like the wonderfully DST uh the I it's also told
1:40:34
as a Buddhist story but I always heard it is the DS farmer and and basically it's uh I it's a Shaggy Dog so I won't do the full story but U he's a he's a farmer and he only has his son to help him with the farm and one day the the
1:40:50
only horse they have which they use for multiple purposes runs away and everyone in the village comes to him to give their condolences oh we're so sorry for you what a loss such a tragedy and his response is we'll see and the next day
1:41:07
the horse returns with a wild horse that he befriended when he was off on his great wander and everyone in the village rushes to say you're so lucky you've got this new horse you now have two instead of one this response we'll see and then
1:41:24
it carries all the way to his son breaking a leg when he was trying to tame the Wild Horse everyone thinks this is tragic and the next day the Chinese Army comes through and takes every able-bodied young male into the army to face almost a certain death the point is
1:41:45
we'll see so yeah I I love the idea that don't get obsessed for the reason that you got the opportunity that like in your case right because somebody was found you quite attractive and and uh picked you I was a good I'm proud to say
1:42:03
I was a good-look boy at the time you know well you're still a goodlook guy but the point is lovely you got the opportunity take the opportunity don't don't worry you know Alan Watts who I like says that worry is an endlessly peeled onion and and we can sometimes
1:42:22
think well you know I didn't get it's just like I always look for things to root for as opposed to against yeah just it's our natural human OS to say oh I'm against that I'm against that you know it's the old the old joke uh in the song
1:42:39
I can't remember who it was but I think it was Gro marks uh what whatever you're for I'mma get it well you get more of what you focus on is is something I learned from Anthony Robbins whatever you focus on there you got so be really pay attention
1:42:54
to what you focus on and that's kind of one of um his Technologies of success I made a note here that I now I just cannot remember but it was really valuable at the time um but talking about writing things down uh there's a protocol that I learned listening to
1:43:10
huberman's podcast he's an amazing guy it's like taken me a while to but there's a protocol for dealing with trauma involved with writing where you have to write in a very specific way I don't know if you've you you the way you're nodding makes me tell me that you
1:43:26
know more about it than I do maybe you want to tell me what I'm talking about trying to talk about no I I I I certainly would not conclude that I know more about you I do know about the the the procedure though uh with dealing with traa it can be very
1:43:42
helpful uh to go ahead yeah no sorry I I don't know why I'm trying to finish your sentences when you actually know more than me I'll just let you finish your sentence how's that no first off there is where you are in error sir I do not
1:43:57
know more than you I but so so this this protocol is one so the the important thing is who thought who thought that a Writing Practice can be more than just keeping a diary or taking notes and it turns out that in order to get the benefits and
1:44:17
huberman's very empirically based and so there are demonstrable benefits in terms of heart rate reduction disease reduction measurable diseases if one sits down and takes traumatic events and processes them using so so it's a it's a certain way of writing about uh the
1:44:36
traumatic event the detail you'll have to find out from him and uh again it just blows blows blows me away that this comes out of a specific kind of writing that I've never done you know and by the way I do that sooner that I do uh than I
1:44:51
do you more likely to see me doing that than see me doing psychedelic drugs you know noninvasive you know yeah I well I think that there is a i i supect that there is a multimodel approach um to so for example um I'm very intrigued by Mind Body issues um
1:45:17
and uh Dr John Sarno who uh was a uh doctor at nyu's Rehabilitation Unit uh here in Manhattan has written several books about it and I'm absolutely fascinated by them and I think that uh and by the way they they plague especially uh Western capitalist
1:45:41
democracies um where the the moment one hears that something potentially is psychogenic at least in heart uh particularly in America uh what do you mean you're telling me it's all in my mind uh that's that's absurd you know I
1:46:00
I have I've got the MRI to prove that my back is bad etc etc and anyway um I I experienced some of these bind body issues uh in my late 30s and solved them after seeing every by the way I first went to the orthopods and and they were
1:46:21
no good so then I went for the chiropractor I was open to anything right because I had a frozen neck and I couldn't move my neck further than this and nothing helped I was put in traction by the orthopedic guys I I went to the chiropractor that didn't help I got
1:46:37
acupuncture that didn't help and so one of our family traditions was every weekend we would take our kids to a bookstore and and the rule was you you could spend as long as you wanted for the children and you could select as many books as you wanted but you had to
1:46:57
commit to reading them if you were going to buy them and so my kids were at a stage where they were kind of agonizing over which particular volume they wanted to buy and so I wandered off into the medical section and there was this tiny
1:47:13
tiny section uh about psychogenic uh and you know placebo effect if you will yeah um and and and I found uh Dr sarno's book and so I read it and I actually did a podcast on it with a an MD who's furthering his work and a therapist who
1:47:31
specializes in mindbody disorders um anyway so I found the book I'm like oh well you know what nothing else worked I'm G to try this so I read the book and literally guy I was so offended that I threw the book physically across the road and said what
1:47:50
a pile of horeshit and my wife picked up the book and started reading the back and some of the introductory material and she goes you might want to read this again and so I did and I read it seven times in fact by the seventh time I saw myself on
1:48:09
every page of that book and here's the important part next morning after that seventh reading I woke up and all of my neck movement had been restored and I'm like okay I got to see if I can figure this out because uh how how great would it be because one of
1:48:33
sarno's key cisos is if you do not believe that this talk therapy or this uh he would call it educational uh informational uh Theory works you it won't you won't get better and so he excluded from his group anyone who went put to the question do you
1:48:57
think that just attending Dr sardo's lectures and learning about why mindbody problems exist could help you and anyone who answered no uh was excluded they because he found that it you they they couldn't be cured because they
1:49:16
didn't believe it anyway I I start being kind of quantitatively oriented I started trying to look for I wonder if there is a group of modalities that where you could cure somebody who has one of these Mind Body disorders even if they don't leave that
1:49:34
such a uh uh therapy could be producted so I'm still on that one I just want to give you the Skeptics view um because it's fun to do and uh so this the a skep IC view would be as follows um so the problem that we have regularly is that
1:49:57
we don't take the full sample size and so uh and so you know the fascinating the hilarious thing is so a friend of mine was posting about how um you know XYZ person took the vaccine and they died or this happened or that happened
1:50:13
and and I just asked him the question have you sampled all the people who didn't take the vaccine you know because a lot of them died as well and he suddenly realized he was missing half the sample so you cannot exclude the possibility that this thing was going to
1:50:28
heal in of of itself whatever it was and it just so happened that it healed at the time that you started believing that the book because if you had not believe you know something like that you know I don't know if it's the case but you want
1:50:40
to be able to exclude that and it may be possible that it's very very hard to exclude that but I'll give you another example of that from a lovely book that that I recently read by a British journalist called Christina Patterson outside the sky blue short story um she
1:50:57
grew up with a sister who turned out to be uh schizophrenic ended up just just a very brilliant and genius uh sister to have who taught herself Russian and was writing a history at a young age of the Romanov family and uh and then ends up
1:51:15
schizophrenic and it's a very very difficult life for her and her sister and very painful to see her sister go through that and somewhere she became convinced that she could not allow herself to succeed because she felt so guilty that her life was so easy in
1:51:30
comparison to her sister who had such a difficult life and ended up dying because of the wrong medication or something until so this so This the the the writer Christina Patterson I'm just telling part of the book is suffering
1:51:45
all sorts of career setbacks and is suffering from physical um uh disabilities like at one point she couldn't walk because she had such extraordinary pain in her knees long story short uh I believe two or three years of yian psychotherapy cures cures
1:52:02
her of everything and now she's an extremely successful journalist she doesn't have any aches and pains she couldn't get married she couldn't find the right partner in life to get married to and she suffered from things like cancer and awful things and um and now
1:52:15
she's happily married and and she' tried everything including God you know and and that didn't she she joined a kind of like a version this Southern Baptist type thing uh sort of like Happy clappy church for a while but what worked was
1:52:30
you know something something that was just in the mind and the right kind of accessing it in the right way and dealing with this sort of subtle self self-sabotage that was going on which is kind of really really scary actually and
1:52:43
I asked myself that's an extreme example or a very powerful example you know so here's a fun question I'm this is so arrogant I'm gonna ask it so Jim do you think there's any error of your life where you might be self-sabotaging or where you might be getting in your own
1:53:02
way oh almost certainly um I think we are compl as I've gotten older and learned more and more one of the things that I really have come to understand from when I was younger is the fragility of all humans myself included and the and and to to become more
1:53:26
empathetic because of that I was not a naturally empathetic person um and uh as as I went through life and as I had experiences and read and and experienced different things I became acutely aware of uh and of these things affecting me as well right I'm
1:53:48
I'm I'm I'm running human OS just like everyone else and so uh why should I be excluded so I absolutely um probably I you know I try to think probabilistically so I won't say 100% but I'll say I have confidence a 95% degree of confidence that absolutely
1:54:11
because I'm a human being yeah of course I I have things where I self-sabotage myself I think that's part of the process being a human by the way as I think of her and it came up for me because of your your neck issue and and
1:54:26
the healing the way it happened and now I want to read that book and see maybe there's something I get healed from just from the reading the book because believe well believe me I'm going to believe from chapter one I want to believe and um but there's this this
1:54:39
interesting resistance it's one of the many amazing things about the United States and it's not just New York although it's concentrated in New York is the well it's the South movement but it's also the therapy movement and the
1:54:52
the openness to those kinds of ideas and I used to love visiting the self-help section of the local barns of noble when it was still open and in the UK is just less of that I mean this this Christina I one of the questions I ask myself is
1:55:07
maybe if she'd have gotten to that yion therapist 20 years earlier how much greater would that have been and she's a you know it just doesn't get done as much in the in the UK um you know they kind of think that you know if you if you're visiting with a therapist uh
1:55:23
there must be something wrong with you and you know sooner or later you'll get fixed and then you don't have to go anymore type of deal you know whereas I'm like you know more therapy the better man you know I love this because this is therapy in a way as well you
1:55:36
know mutually entertaining therapy but uh so so for anybody listening in actual therapy is is kind of like uh you don't get to talk to jimos chesy but you get to be super self-indulgent because you could just you just you don't actually
1:55:52
have to show interest in the other person you just talk about yourself you know that's why you I think yeah yeah I I I think uh broadly that uh Americans are more open to that than Brits you know you had the tall poppy syndrome
1:56:12
over there in with the Brits and the stiff upper lip um and I guess we had the pure inheritance here in the US but uh I I agree with you completely on openness to and of course love Carl Yung have read most of his stuff it's tough oh yeah I
1:56:34
feel I have not read enough of it and uh I really ought to and another guy that I haven't read any of and and I'm really curious and so my my rule is that I want to read if if you're a German language author I'm in a German language
1:56:49
environment I I'm I'm doing I'm doing a university course in German I my German's fine I want to read it in the original but it's but that's it is hard way harder for me to read it in the original than to read it in English but I refused to do it so I haven't yet read
1:57:01
it another guy that I'm curious if you've read any of is Frederick nicher which um absolutely so so so I'm kind of envious of nicher based on what I've read about him because because they they say that his writing style is incredible and uh
1:57:19
that was not genius in a way that maybe John F nyman was and that's about it and maybe um they say so Isaac Newton was a big genius but um but and it's kind of like every time his philosophies get described it's kind of like not doing
1:57:37
them Justice because it's kind of like reading reading his reading his books is kind of like it's not really about what you it's an experience to read book totally I'm impressed yeah and and and of course the problem with him is he needed to be rehabilitated after the
1:57:56
Nazis decided that they would Embrace some of the ideas of the Uber bench uh or the obman um and and and they completely um if you read what he has to say it is not what what the Nazi party was was trying to sell at all so they I mean look
1:58:19
yeah a guy that's smart uh isn't tends not to be racist you know they're way too knowledgeable for that and he's been Mis misdescribed in a certain way you completely agree and and and and that's a key Insight a a guy that's smart listen I think a lot of the things that
1:58:41
people are working themselves up over like racism and sexism and and whatnot the the the most intelligent people that I've ever had the pleasure of being able to chat with interact with like you your Insight is bang on like it doesn't make
1:59:00
any sense to them to be racist or sexist or yeah any any of those isms yeah they're so far beyond that you know you know Jim you had me at your bang on I just I was like oh my God he thinks I'm right I'm not gonna listen I tell you something I was on a
1:59:22
conference call with uh three lawyers or two accountants and two lawyers and this one team of lawyers uh just whenever I noticed that I thought my God I like those guys and I realized that every time I talked they nodded and I realized
1:59:40
it didn't matter what I said they were nodding you know it's incredible so you you just you know what Jim you are bang on you're just hang [Laughter] on does that work have you uh read any of the works of neural linguistic programming oh so so you know um I don't
2:00:03
remember the names but but a a very significant part of Anthony robbin's sort of like Spiel is NLP and yeah you know and and so I I do his seminars and I'm exposed to it a little bit and so you know I learned that I don't say oh
2:00:17
my god I've got a terrible cold I hate this I'm feel so bad I needed to convert that to I can't wait till I get better when I get better it's going to feel so much better and it's going to happen so all of those good things yeah it's like
2:00:29
this it's yeah framing framing is very very important I I I like to give the example of when they invented um uh Insurance what we now call life insurance it was originally sold as death insurance guy how many sales do you think they made when they called it
2:00:50
death Insurance very very few all the people who hated their spouses I imagine yes you know I'm GNA take a segue or a right turn or whatever you call it I'm going to take a jump because I realize that there's somewhere that I want to go
2:01:07
with you that we haven't yet been and you've brought it up a couple of times is so you were you were chairman of the chamber music uh Ensemble of New York and I'm just curious is it is it just Bak that you like is it just instrumental uh do you listen to vocal
2:01:24
music do you like uh you know I'm just curious where your what what resonates with you in the musical world because you clearly love music and uh I want to know where it goes so I have very diverse musical tastes um I uh love uh specifically I I I love uh Mozart I love
2:01:47
uh you know the Romantics I I so it's not just Baroque right that that I like uh you know telmon and and and Bach and Baldi Etc uh but I also like all sorts of like electronic music I love techn music for example um and and one of the
2:02:07
things that I did when you still had to buy CDs uh I would go to Tower Records again I did this not every time uh but I would make certain that maybe once or twice a year I would go into Tower and literally piix CDs at random to
2:02:29
see what I'm missing and that's how I discovered techno for example back when it was called European new beat yeah um and uh then rat for example I uh I like certain forms of rep some of the some of it gets a little heavy for me but like I
2:02:51
kind of think of them as The Poets of today in many respects and uh I discovered that also randomly by selecting that so I would say that yeah with the I love vocals um and uh I think maybe the only form of music that I'm don't like see in
2:03:13
with too deeply would be and and even then there's exceptions uh but would be kind of pop country I'm not which is very popular in America yeah and I and I love jazz I love jazz I think the reason yeah clearly very musical mind play any instruments sadly I do not and
2:03:40
um I I started the guitar lessons when I was a teenager and uh I sucked so I thought I could maybe better invest my time uh but yeah uh I have pretty Universal Music I had a a lovely conversation yesterday with a friend uh that I made at high school the only
2:04:08
perhaps one of a very small number of friends I've kept from high school and uh he's extremely musically gifted and was also very gifted at mathematics and and end up to being a natural scientist at uh Cambridge University in the UK and
2:04:24
then uh he's a computer programmer now very good computer programmer but his true love is music and he sent me I so many of my musical tastes developed through being with him in various different places and through sharing
2:04:39
being in the same boarding house as him at school I learned to play a little bit of guitar and I don't really play the piano but um he shared with me a playlist yesterday that um he create his playlist and I was reintroduced to all the music
2:04:55
he's listened to it was just so much fun but I want to go to to stay with classical for a second so uh does Opera I enjoy certain operas um and to be honest I've I've been to the Metropolitan I've been to the Opera in Vienna I've been Opera all
2:05:19
around the world and so I I definitely take them in it it doesn't resonate nearly as much the full Opera experience like when I'm sitting through an entire Opera uh it it it gets to a point where I'm like okay I'm good the reason why it came up for me is
2:05:42
I guess is that um and don't ask me exactly how this happened because so uh my father's a big Vagner fan and I was talking to this friend yesterday who and we were introduced to Vagner at school and to sit in a Vagner opera The Ring
2:06:00
cycle especially is kind of like Psychotherapy and you get enveloped by the music and uh you got these archetypes that are wandering around the stage and um I don't know it just seemed like a relevant thing to bring up to you to I was curious to see if that touched
2:06:16
you at all or if you if it gripped you and and I guess I'm trying to find find out if you're a Vagner fan or not really is what I'm asking yeah no I'm not a big Vagner fan I obviously um there are certain vogner pieces there are parts of
2:06:32
that Opera that I find quite extraordinary and Transcendent actually uh but yeah I'm not I'm not one that would like get very excited come on honey we're going to do the whole ring but oh I'm kind of bummed actually I'm a little crash for I thought I might
2:06:52
have found a fellow Vagner Vagner fan but um and uh you know my wife who professes not to like the Opera and I don't drag her there too often and I guess I do love the Opera suddenly we I'm playing and I don't necessarily have
2:07:09
to go I mean the music is beautiful and um I'm playing uh this Italian opera very and and she's kind of singing along and she's moving her hand and I realize that somehow this Opera's gotten under her skin which just made me so excited to discover
2:07:30
and anyway yeah I I what was fascinating for me this this friend Martin Seager is very musically gifted and has a far broader musical tastes and explores far more and you know Expos me he started talking about a guy called Shostakovich
2:07:50
who I've only listened to one piece and he was telling me about how he's he's kind of going he's kind of stuck I was telling him how I was stuck on Marlo Symphony Number one I had this plan to listen to two to nine but I kind of like can't get past two and two's supposed to
2:08:04
be the big one you there's this amazing story about um this guy who started the Institutional Investor who left it to just become an expert in conducting Mara Symphony Number Two so my friend Martin is telling me about some shot to
2:08:18
Symphony that he can't get off as well it's like number five he's not not to six or seven or eight yet because he's stuck on number five and I just it's an amazing the musical world is kind of a whole universe if you like even if you just stay in classical music
2:08:33
and um totally totally agree and I and I think that part of that comes from uh you know what I mentioned earlier kind of the The Music of the Spheres hearing the what I interpret it as the cherim and ser films right um I I think that music is well if you believe
2:08:54
Pythagoras music is math and uh it is it just transports one so magically um that maybe it's the mathematical underpinning but on the math thing when when you had mentioned earlier that you know you you didn't really need to know much math um I used
2:09:15
to say to people uh who would ask me about investing I would say well I I'll tell you once the math gets any higher than algebra it's pretty certain you're gonna lose your money yeah I that's that's a great one actually I you know so um one of the
2:09:37
things that I was sharing with the group yesterday was I kind of shared with them compound interest obviously one of the great ones to share I first of all I started and I this is a horrible thing that I'm about to say I probably
2:09:49
shouldn't say it but I realize that there's a whole part of humanity that doesn't really understand addition and subtraction even if they've been through high school or they don't understand the magnitudes of numbers they don't really
2:10:00
feel what is the difference between a thousand and a million and 10,000 but then there are the people who totally understand compounding but don't act on it and we're kind of like in the room I was s of saying you guys here all understand compounding but how many of
2:10:17
you actually going to act on it and I kind of put up a chart of you know my returns and I also put up a chart of what returns can look like and I said in a certain way my whole life has just been you know working on compounding taking this one thing and saying if I
2:10:30
can just get this one thing to work for me I can pretty much as far as Financial things are concerned I can I can let all the others uh you know and but how many of you guys are going to do it and I gave them examples of people that I know
2:10:42
who are extremely gifted mathematically but never made the connection between their mathematical insights into simple things like well and and acting on them in the real world and I wanted to tell them don't you guys be like that at the
2:10:58
same time interestingly enough so we want everybody we want if you want to get rich you want to um act on the insights that compounding gives you you don't want to act on the kinds of insights that black sches gave myON myON scholes and Bob Maron that's what's
2:11:15
going to kill you so you got to pick the right ones I guess so again uh we we could not be more sympatico um the uh the shenanigans uh that you can get up to with math especially when you're presenting it to people who don't have a
2:11:36
basic understanding of math so for example value at risk if you want to really trigger me start talking about how you can give the bar of an overall portfolio to a specific number or percentage and yet you'll recall that back during and of course portfolio
2:11:55
insurance at at all pre predated but the this whole concept of value at risk drove me to just the point of because not only did it mislead badly right when when you take somebody who doesn't know compounding is a great example as well
2:12:18
I if if you sit and and you have any level of Authority or credentials to be giving them advice on investing or finance and and you maintain that you can show them a single number that will will show them the worst case scenario for their portfolio to me that's
2:12:42
just like the the math doesn't actually work and then and then and then you're pointing at a single number and saying see you're good to go you're fine it's a shocking thing really because the mathematicians really ought to know better and it's funny because they're
2:13:00
not doing it I think the majority of people who doing it are not doing it deliberately and there you know Charlie Monga says that to a man with a hammer everything pretty much looks like a nail and this when you talk about Val at risk
2:13:13
the um the heroic assumption that is made very early on in the model and then is just Cast Away as if it's not relevant is that risk can be mer measured through volatility so the the these mathematicians they said oh okay so risk we need a measure of risk so now
2:13:35
we're going to just make the heroic assumption that a measure of the risk inside this security is a function of its past volatility that's it you know and I guess it's not as heroic as I'm trying trying to make it out to be that
2:13:49
you can make the case as to why that would be but but it's not a very good case because you're assuming that all of the investors see everything about that is relevant about the security whole bunch of things and obviously so so uh and
2:14:04
and then the mathematician will Dazzle the non- mathematicians with these models and with these numbers and they won't say look there's a heroic assumption in here but you know you know what my wife would do with you if you do that they she'd she'd turn it back on
2:14:18
you and she I'm going to do something that might be mean to you but you probably fast you've probably had too many interactions with your wife and other people she'd say oh that's so so if I'm my wife now that's really interesting you're getting all H hot
2:14:31
under the collar you know forget about these VAR people and all these other people what's going on with you that you're getting all hot under the collar why are you losing your composure there's obviously something that you're
2:14:43
not getting and some work that you need to do you know that's what my wife would say and you know and if and she'd probably be right yeah exactly no actually actually it was only recently where I got to this whenever whenever I'm getting hot under
2:15:00
the collar raising my voice getting impatient getting upset so it's it's this thing and I'm sure yes you know it's my wife's circumstance yes those are annoying yes there's something in the external world that is triggering this that is a part
2:15:15
of the issue that is part of the dance but you know I can't change that and so what I need to do is get really curious and try and work out on my piece of it so so Jim what is your piece in that why is that so upsetting to you well well Professor y I would have
2:15:38
to think about that one for a while that is a very very good vien accent my God you did that extraordinarily well I like that a lot you yeah and of course of course you know what that what's wrong with what I just did is I just did
2:15:56
a massive projection because because I I I tried to get you to own your piece it's like well why the hell who the hell am I to tell you to own your piece in it you know because I've got my own piece in it and uh of course if my you know my
2:16:09
wife would rebutt me all I can do with that is when my wife says I said yeah nod my head in a submissive fashion say yep I've got homework to do I call it homework you know but um I think that's a good thing to call it actually but no look to be fair to you
2:16:26
because it's more fun to be just more fun to be unfair but to be fair to you the reason why you're getting hot under the collar is it's like because it's duplicitous and you feel like these smart people who can figure out what a VAR is should know better than to
2:16:41
mislead people with these things and um and and in a way it's self-referential in that if you come with common sense that is outside of the logic of the reasoning of the VAR people and they're just going to say oh yeah this is just
2:16:58
another guy who does not understand my fancy mathematics and finance but you're safe and you're good to go and it's kind of like a shtick and in a certain way it's selling snake oil except it's wrapped in this sort of pseudo
2:17:13
scientific Finance Theory where to get into the club of Finance Theory you have to be a really freaking good mathematician and and that's Finance stuff you know what they're studying in the Masters of Finance in the University of Zurich you're ready for this gym I
2:17:26
know you know all about this you want to know what they're studying they're studying Brownian motion yeah so you need to be able to do the complex modeling not even is like hard maths of browni and motion and and you know there's a distinction in in in
2:17:41
in finance between and I don't I'm just going to say the words if you're a mathematician believe me I don't understand what it means but I know it's distinction between continuous Time Finance and discrete Time Finance and it's got important implications for the
2:17:57
mathematics so you know uh uh and we know that that's kind of irrelevant you know totally but the the person who invited me to this class she and her husband are great friends of mine and I've discovered it's a weird thing I love I it's one of the
2:18:16
LI things about living in a small city than New York City is that you can make friends with people like the professors at the University it's kind of like it's a smaller world it's easier to mix with them so but at the University my friends
2:18:28
I've got uh one good friend who's a physicist physics professor and I've got three good friends who maths professors what's going on there and anyway so I love mathematics purely as uh just as an I love pure maths actually and I love learning about pure maths and
2:18:47
I to tell you I don't know you are you into that stuff mm so so there's there's I'm I kind of like fear to give these out because well fear no um there's good and bad about them so there's two wonderful YouTube channels one is three
2:19:02
blue one brown is just incredible incredible the guy behind that explains all sorts of incredible mathematics in very simple and visual ways and the other one is number file which is extremely popular math Channel that it's
2:19:17
just so much fun to watch that stuff uh way better than watching Tik Tok and there hourong lectures two hour long videos 20 minute videos explaining oil's Unity explaining the rean hypothesis doing a visualization of the rean hypothesis I mean you can go on and on
2:19:33
and on the bad news about it is is that it gives you the illusion of understanding complex mathematics and higher pure mathematics when actually I don't understand any it's just kind of like very very esoteric enti entainment I'm am getting the hook from
2:19:50
one of my producers I have can you believe that we've been talking to each other for two and a half hours no because it's been so much fun but but I don't know if you noticed I've been messaging with my team because they're
2:20:01
like are you still on the on this call and I'm like yeah it's so good I don't want to leave and they're like we got things to talk to you about and actually I tell you that my wife needs to be picked up I can still make it I'm not problematic but I was texting I was
2:20:15
writing on the WhatsApp chat saying no no no leave me alone I'm having so much fun here as as am I so what I'm going to do is invite you for a second session because this was magical honestly um and uh people might be very disappointed
2:20:32
that we talked about Markin very very little but I would argue that we actually talked about them quite a bit you know uh I don't know what to expect so I I and um uh you know look it's it's it's in it's in so much of the right literature you know the right kind of
2:20:54
approach to the market is the inner Journey so we've been talking about the inner journey and if the inner journey and if you're not aligned on the inside you're not going to do very well with the markets and many other things so
2:21:04
we've been I would argue we've been talking about as you've sort of like put implicitly we're talking about the stuff that's really important exactly exactly but I would love to have you back and continue our conversation but before we before we go
2:21:19
we do have a question that we ask all of our guests and that is this we are going to set you up as the emperor of the world you can't kill anyone and you can't put anyone in a reeducation camp but we are going to hand you a magical
2:21:35
microphone and you can speak two things into it that will essentially incept the entire world's population to wake up whenever their next morning is and say honey I've just had these wonderful two ideas and I'm going to act on both of
2:21:54
them what two things are you going to incept in the world's population wow is and on standing standing on one foot with no time to prepare and I didn't realize this question was coming and uh I so uh you know playing for Time by talking and sort of thinking and um the
2:22:13
one that came to my mind uh as you were talking which is obviously you want to go to um you know the great religious traditions because there's an enormous amount of evolved wisdom there that's been evolved over many many generations
2:22:27
so so my first response is I'm not going to try and and I'm not going to try and freelance here I'm going to I'm going to go and consult with great sources and um you know the one that comes up is the Golden Rule you know when you wake up
2:22:40
the next morning treat your neighbor as yourself uh and and I would want to expand on that and you know I mean this is this comes from a moral philosopher whose name has gone out of my head I had to study him at University and but it's
2:22:55
it's this ovarian Lottery idea you know realize that I think it's RS the r yeah that's right thank you so much amazing guy and um you know sort of you know you need to be in the world in such a way that you might have been any other of the creatures of the world and and and
2:23:14
act in such a way that if you if you were any one of the other creatures of the world you'd be fine with the rules that you're establishing for the way you're acting which is kind of like the only moral Rule and I hope you don't mind me expanding on this my son you
2:23:28
know he's kind of he's sort of you know it's like well you know I'm smart and therefore it's um you know I own my intelligence type of deal and I kind of said well well do you do you really own your intelligence uh actually you know
2:23:41
what if you'd come back not born with this set of genes not born in this family not born you know in a certain way it's it gives you this perspective of well it's okay that I get taxed it's okay that I'm obligated to support people who are less fortunate
2:23:57
because I could have come back as those people I might be in their shoes so you know treat you know the Golden Rule treat treat your neighbor as yourself and I got to come up with another one you do and and and so obviously the the
2:24:11
other constraint that I have is that uh I'm talking to the whole planet so there there are a whole bunch of zero things which don't work so you know you can't tell the whole planet to to well if as it comes to investing the whole planet
2:24:22
is going to have a certain rate of return the power of compounding only works on a different scale because at some point you become too big if you have excess return so I I I can't uh go there um you know I I I'm I'm I'm for the whole planet for the whole planet it's
2:24:44
something around making so so treating your neighbor as yourself making sure that every single human including every single terrorist which I'm thinking a lot about right now thinks about that perspective they they get that perspectives changed
2:25:00
would you like to come back as if you're Isis would you like to come back as a ya yazidi woman you know and really think about that because you might be a yazidi woman is it really right to have the obligation to rape the people that you
2:25:11
conquer maybe you want to think about it differently and I I guess the other one that I've only come to recently is um you know realized that we're on this spaceship called Earth and it's just one spaceship and um you know uh uh if there
2:25:29
was an asteroid coming towards us we'd want to take it out and we should be less concerned about nuclear power and the occasion nuclear accident because that's not systemic when we do things that are systemic we need to be super fearful and super careful and super
2:25:44
scared and super conservative and you know the human species now on the planet is systemic and you know the the living on Mars is fun for Elon Musk but it's a pipe dream we're not going to get there in in in any span of time we want to think of the only possibility
2:26:02
for me is that we might get according to Ray carts file we might be able to um uh simulate ourselves onto computers that we'll be able to upload ourselves onto computers that are on Mars once something happens to planet Earth but
2:26:17
we're actually on one spaceship so how how do we need to think about that I guess I'm going there so I actually love that and uh the the thing I would add is that uh you know when you when when you speculate about the firy Paradox or uh
2:26:35
all all of uh the above Mars travel Etc who's to say that there aren't other Advanced civilizations you know Lighty years away from us but that their Journey went inward not outward yeah they stopped producing stuff for the rest of us to see because
2:26:55
they learn to miniaturize themselves and they're all living on the pin of an atom you know on the head of an atom like that exactly but you know what the great filter is this is a really scary thought yeah Nick yeah yeah I I I I I in my
2:27:11
optimistic phases hope that we have um uh we're on the right side of the great filter I I suspect we aren't it it's you know yeah and uh there are all these reasons obviously you can't you know this yeah the subject for the next podcast I it's so kind of
2:27:34
you to want to invite me back and gladly gladly you know um uh I would enjoy it I mean this has been so enjoyable this is like what I live for for me as well for me as well energizing for me I would um the only thing that would make it better
2:27:49
would be be to be sitting in your beautiful wood panel room and to be doing it in real life uh with either tea or coffee or chocolate Le let's let's make that a plan then let's next time you're in New York we'll do one live here and it's a date that