[Music] if you can change your focus you can change your future and Oprah lit oh and she goes I love that and so when the cameras came on Oprah's got this big smile and she's got the book and she's like endorsing me find something that you is play on others at work right if it says do not push I push if it says do not pull this thing when you're in Europe and in the bathroom I wonder what this is for I learned that it's because
you're dying and they will send staff up and this happened to me on my honeymoon you can't change others they have to want to change but that said I think some things are contagious like curiosity and enthusiasm passion is
contagious Life Is A Verb not a noun the only way you can learn is by making a mistake what we're trying to do is sort of be a beacon for the M the most curious and weird in a good way and high agency optimistic I think we are the the
luckiest podcast that's on the air because our listeners are super interesting super switched on people anybody can make the simple complex it's much more effective if you can make the complex simple wow J you're so
insightful no no no no that's Ed William who is so insightful I'm quite a good show horse but a show Horse Without workhorses does not show very well well hello everyone it's jimo shasy with another an amazing accomplishment if I do say so
myself the 200th episode of infinite Loops if I was a betting man wait a minute I am a betting man I would have bet against me on this one and really the only reason that I'm actually doing this 200 podcast is because of the guys
who are going to be shooting questions at me today we have Ed William the earthw inevitable researcher who makes me look smart you guys it's him it's not me so wow jimm you're so insightful no no no that's Ed Willam who is so
insightful and our good friend Liberty who is also the head of infinite media who I will slip up and call by his actual Christian name throughout this uh what are we doing here what is this wait a minute what what's the uh
deranged B like where am I am I'm what I'm the president of the United States I'm the president of the unit how the [ __ ] did that happen anyway this is this is gonna be a real challenge for me because literally the shoe is on the
other foot my hosts today are Michael AKA Liberty and Ed William guys welcome good to beet it's it's it's a major Milestone right 200 like most podcasts don't make it past maybe 15 so right there are there's over 200 hours
of conversation of you that's multiple audiobooks of material it's going to be so easy to train an AI on your voice gem but today what we want to do is flip the script we're the captain now it it reminds me of the scene in Blade Runner
when they do the void caps test right they they interview people try to figure out if they're replicants we want to know if we're talking to the real gy or if this is the simulation the AI if today is the real gym I'm pretty sure that episode 300 is going to be the AI we have oh yeah for sure maybe before then 350 um we we we have a bunch of questions for you and then later we have questions from the listeners that we got
off Twitter um but to begin I'm going to add it up over to Ed and let's let's see if we're talking to AI Jem today and as we said before we started recording in you're going to try to you're going to really try to get me on this one I hope like oh for sure I will be cancelled by my own teammates this is the frost Nixon of 2024 when a when a president does something uh it's not criminal really really Richard yeah yeah okay then so yeah so let's go
so we started I look back at the our previous episodes to s prep for this and the very first episode was with rank capital and super Mugu in November the 25th 2019 so four years ago since since then we've had a pandemic uh president what else have we had we've had covid you uh started a company you've sold a company so it's been a big four years looking back to the very first episodes so November 2019 if we'd said to you them what would
the podcast look like in four years time what you reckon you'd say you know this is going to sound contrived but I would probably say it would look exactly like it looks right now uh because essentially as you guys know my son
Patrick is the real podcast King and he was really hitting it with uh on all cylinders with inv best like the best and a and a guy who worked for me at osam Jamie catherwood came into my office and he's like Jim you should have
a podcast I looked at I went Jimmie do you not understand something like no [ __ ] way why would I do that I like I don't want to have to like prepare and get guests and do all that kind of stuff he goes I'll do it all and I'm like wait a minute you'll do everything and he goes yep I will do everything and I will get the guests I will uh do the research for you all you got to do is show up literally all you got to do is show up and I was very
suspicious uh and so I said okay we'll do a couple we had done a podcast uh for the company called what works on Wall Street where we would talk about various investment factors Etc um but then I decided okay well if we're going to do it let's at least have some fun and make the first one two of the more uh entertaining uh parody accounts on uh Twitter and then of course uh I did the interview in person so that was another change all podcasts
were done in person then um and it was hysterical because rant literally got drunk we he he was he was on vacation we were at a club at Manhattan and and uh jokingly when they came in they ask him what he wanted he said you got me white
claw and they're like uh no and I knew that rap was a a fan of te tequila so I said to uh the weight person listen bring him like a flight of the various Tequilas and they did and and and he literally as The Show Goes On
gets drunker and drunker and drunker we should bring that back yeah let's I know I know you're absolutely yeah exactly I know this I we fa we just started we've already failed I should have sent big bottles of tequila all you guys
anyway at the same time Dan McBerry who was super mugatu had been an a parody fun account but then he doxed himself prior like a week prior to the episode and and I called him up and we're in OSB as investors in his anchorless
Bangladesh but um and I'm like Dan what the [ __ ] you've just totally ruined my uh my uh game here anyway we had a lot of fun I I really enjoyed it because back to your question Ed I I thought well maybe there is room for a podcast that like really literally almost literally breaks all the rules let's just make it completely conversational uh let's uh you are I know Michael you've probably Seen My Dinner with Andre Ed you're too young
but there was this great movie My Dinner with Andre with Wallace Shawn who interestingly enough was the son of the legendary uh New Yorker editor uh and anyway it's just two guys talking and you you when you start the
movie you're kind of like is this gonna like go anywhere and then it just ends up you're fly on the wall listening to this incredible conversation that's kind of what I was aiming for with the PO and when you mentioned that you wouldn't be
surprised by The Format like I listen back to the first few episodes to refresh my memory and the first one is like very very different right Tequilas and jokes and everybody in the same room in it you mention that you don't like
doing remote podcasts so this is I guess something that change but like you know mentioned in the first episode you you say the phrase fiercely anti-authoritarian like there's already the seed of many of the the the best of
right but by episode number two with Jim chos like the format is almost fully formed like the only thing missing I think is the the emperor of the world question at the end like you in episode number two you say we are very symp go
like it it it feels like it could be a recent episode so that's my next question right is was the format something that like you sat down and you thought of it and maybe it is Dinner with Andre or some inspiration right
with with Vini from The Princess Bride or um is this just did it happened organically because that's your personality right you just went with like what feels natural and then from episode number two basically it's been the modern format yeah um I intentionally when I decided we were going to continue to do it I I'm like okay complex adaptive systems all emergence comes from below not above uh I didn't I wanted it to kind of look the
anti- um you know I I hate those lists that the listicles that all all of the grifters P you know what 10 things does every millionaire do every morning right and and I didn't and there was a bunch of interest in podcasts at the time and
so there were endless list they're like no you can't do this you've got to do it this way you've got to follow this script you've got to and I'm like [ __ ] this I'm not going to do in fact I actually C much to Jamie caw's
consternation I kind of went the other way on everything on those lists and so and so yeah I I thought uh it it emerged pretty quickly as you say Michael in the second episode the way I wanted it to being and you know I had no
idea uh I was going to do and the other thing I wanted to do was just make sure and said intentionally I will never monetize this podcast and uh which for a lover of free market seems like a contradiction uh but um that that wasn't
the intention the intention was look I I think my purpose in life is to be useful and I wanted to have really interest people specifically to oh I I try to look for as you guys both know I try to look for really really interesting people who maybe haven't been on a 100 podcasts already um and raised them about the radar so to speak um so yeah it uh it kind of just came directly out almost fully formed I didn't really
think honestly other than other than my Dinner with Andre I really didn't think about it too much do you think if if if you had decided early on to monetize it your approach we'd be sitting here doing a very different podcast today if at all maybe maybe that would have meant You' got B of it Ah that's a great question I probably by the way that's another one we should just edit that out that's a great question Ed it's it's one it's one of those
verbal ticks that like if you do a lot of these time to think wow that's a great question how the [ __ ] am I going to come up with an answer and but now we have to keep it because you did all this stuff with it yeah
exactly um so how would it differ if it was monetized well as you guys know I am very empirically oriented and I would have AB tested the hell out of it and I would have uh probably stop doing it to be honest because one of the things I've been
experimenting with is uh taking transcripts so for example I've done a bunch of shows with Alex Dano who I think is a brilliant guy and and he's funny and we love to talk to each other and in the back of my mind when we did I think the third or fourth one I'm like we should do a book we should literally see whether out of our kind of chaotic one of the things with me and Alex was we literally never ever covered the points that I told him to
prepare for in fact in fact one I was rushed and I had a business thing going on and so I didn't have any time to prepare for Alex's podcast and so literally I took the questions that I had generated or that Jamie had
generated for the previous guest and asked them to Alex uh so anyway I've been experimenting with playing around chat GPT um and it's pretty cool I said I think six or five uh full transcripts from the podcasts in and then you ask it
questions like what why is Jim such an idiot like or what could Jim do better what could Alex do better really cool um and actually in that capacity I I probably will make a couple of changes but like the pure mertile AB test F tun it get it to be you know just what everybody loved that was not my goal the The Tam I'm looking for here is really small to be honest I I'm I'm looking for people who are uh just sort of really really
interested in the honestly the same things I'm interested in and uh if I can be useful and have really cool guests on and and serve that much more smaller audience I'm absolutely fine with that yeah I think I can't can't speak
for others but to me what makes the podcast special as a as a listener is how authentic it is to you and your interest and it's differentiated because you're not taking the same playlist that everybody else is right if everybody's
optimizing for oh growth hacking and monetization and they look at who's doing it and they're all trying to sound like Joe Rogan or whatever they all kind of like have the same format and the same template and get the same guests over time and some of them can be really good at that formula but it's that's differentiated while what you do is like I don't know any other podcast with the same types of guests and the breadth of topics and all
that so that to me that I think you organically stumble into a very very interesting format and one thing that I wonder about is like I understand how all these project these creative projects are always there's a honeymoon phase at the beginning right it's new it's exciting it's like plenty of motivation I'm curious how 200 episodes in like what have what us doing all of this taught you about like your perseverance and iteration and like
sticking to it and like has it ever felt challenging or is it like still purely pure joy and just fun uh have you ever felt like stopping the podcast right that because these things have so has there ever been the kind of down cycle where you're like H why am I doing this or I'm curious have you ever had any doubts about it actually no uh because um as you say in many respects this is a very indulgent and selfish thing I'm doing
honestly I I I'm I'm having people on who I want to talk to and the assumption is I there's got to be a a reasonable siiz audience that are going to be interested in those same topics and and those people uh persistence I very lucky
I'm a very persistent person and you know iteration that is how you succeed at things in life not just business not just podcasts you you you can't you can't ever think that it anything is really fully cooked right you've always
got to be looking for okay how can I make this better or am I doing something right now that if I removed it would make it better um so kind of via negativ and uh so no I mean like I honestly Michael I would be doing this just on my own you know B ba basically what seeing and that's why it's so much fun for me I I would be doing this if I wasn't pressing publish and I can confirm right because our private calls are pretty
much podcasts right they're pretty much the same as when you're on a podcast so you're always like this yeah well and and actually what one example of that that Jim is the the the episode that it's coming out well when
this gets released it would have been released about three weeks ago with with guy spear the the first 40 minutes of your conversation guy thought it was being recorded well sorry guy thought it was it was being recorded and Guy thought it
was going to be released and then Jim says about 40 minutes in okay shall we get going and guy says Oh I thought this was all off this for the podcast and Jim was I know but gu was okay well let's let's release it and I think actually
when you listen to the episode You don't notice any difference between the the before and after the way Jim has approached approach it has been exactly the same which s speaks to what you're talking about and guy is a very
fascinating person he's super smart a really well-known value investor and like if you at you know uh Michael you probably don't because you haven't seen the transcript but we talked very very little about investing Andor the
investing process um and we we we talk about things like psychedelics and uh you know points of view and why you do this this particular way and he's got a super interesting backstory about how he really changed everything up after his
lunch with Warren Buffett uh he was one of the early purchasers again a value investor cost a lot less when when guy bought his lunch than it costs uh these days um and and I was kind of like well [ __ ] it let's it because guy was great well as you know Ed because you did all the heavy lifting um he's like I give you permission to use everything I've already said I'm like okay I guess we'll do it that way so so so so yeah that and
that's a great example of we you know we had a a wonderful conversation that he didn't that I didn't think was going to be for publication uh but then his his little prompt yeah I give you permission to do
the whole thing I'm like oh we should do that then I mean linked into the sort of the way that's it's a you know it's something you'd be doing even if it wasn't recorded and not wanting it to be advertised or monetized what's your personal sort of
metric as to what what is a success plan episode what is it when you when you walk away from an episode and you're like oh that was that was a really good one what is it what are the signals what what are the things that excite you about it uh well I'll I'll use George Max uh example one of his maxims is that you can tell whether somebody a friend or a colleague is going to be good for you by how do how do you feel after you
leave a conversation or an exchange with that person do you feel like you want to jump on a treadmill and you're filled with energy or do you feel like a [ __ ] I gotta lie on the couch that was so draining and so one of the immediate
things that I know right away is by that how I feel after I've done the podcast if like and my wife my longsuffering wife you know it like like if I'm really charged up I'll go and say I just have the most fascinating conversation you
know with Mr or Ms XYZ and she's like okay okay stop because I don't need to squake and then you know if if I'm feeling like yeah I guess that was okay it's probably not going to be one of the more popular ones because that's the other thing I find really interesting um so for ex a really good example is uh Brian mar mar wesu who wrote the book the religion with no name and it's about uh this I mean I love this I love PE he is a great example of
the type of guest that I love right so he he he got a degree I think from Brown in in uh ancient languages so he spoke ancient green he spoke uh or could read Sanskrit um and then went on to be a lawyer at you'll you'll this will
resonate with you he was incredibly bored by being a law a lawyer and his love was Antiquity and try to figure things out and so he left the law and uh did this huge research project which basically his thesis was you know the
the uh ancient uh Greek Cults uh uh uh the earliest part of Greek history were very very popular and his guess was that they were using psychedelics and so like literally that was the theme of his book and we had this incredibly just a wonderful conversation and and then afterwards I'm like yeah this is going to get like two maybe three listeners because you know we're talking about a very teric book and a very esoteric subject it turned out to
be like a super popular um podcast so um I'm I'm not always right obviously uh something that I find said like super exciting others apparently don't but as you also know I I literally and Ed you can swear to this I have no idea how many listeners uh any particular podcast I never ask you and if you remember why I don't want I'm I I'm a very competitive person still and like if I got that data and Le let's take Brian um if if I
learned that that episode didn't get any listeners I probably even unconsciously would have stopped asking people like him on the podcast and I didn't want that to happen so I literally have no idea about our
metrics I have no idea about like when we hit a million downloads the first I learned about it was on Twitter when I think Batel published hey a million downloads I'm like wow last to know amazing that's incredible but but I really didn't want
I really didn't want to sway my own behavior and that's why I still don't uh look at any of the metrics or uh numbers because that isn't why I'm doing this I listen relisten to that episode with Brian to prepare for this and I'm
going to plug it I'm going to Second what you said and encorage readers to listeners I'm used to readers and I listeners to go check it out this episode 57 and one of the highlights in it for me was something that I find very
very important it's how things can have the same name but be different things right and so in finance you could say oh the S&P did that this year and 50 years ago 50 years ago was totally different companies right so same name different thing and the the episode he mentions how like in the Bible or ancient documents they mention like oh they drank wine but modern wine and this wine could have been totally different right
it could have been mushrooms and all kind of things that that that lead to a very different experience so this was eye opening and something to remember when you're thinking about something it's not because the new Star Wars film
has the Star Wars name that it's going to be as good as the old one right anyway that that that's in the side and I can't I can also totally relate to your juristic for good conversation right like every time I talk to David
SRA I feel like I've had five cups of espresso I want to be better I want to do work harder on my project right some people just fire you up that way and and listening to the podcast you can feel it as a listener the fly on thewall effect that you talked about it really works and I think um it that's what the best episodes really have it's like they just fire you up to do better in your own life yeah uh and David I love David he
uh uh Patrick's Colossus uh is the one that is the company David's podcast is attached to um and he's been here at the house several times and the guy is is literally he is the what what you see is absolutely David as a matter of fact I
joked when he was here like the first thing I have a library and first thing David does is come ignore me entirely this is the first time he's visiting me at this house and spends like 15 minutes looking at all the books and he starts
pulling them out and saying this one's good this one's good I'm like like you are a maniac uh but and that's why that's why he's so successful right I mean like it it be authentic be dis distinctive uh follow what you really love in a way
that you know maybe other people are just not gon to be able to match that right and and those kind of three things David brings to every one of his episodes the guy he he's I I love him yeah it's the Nel thing about like find
something that to you is play in others as work right if you like you can fake passion for a little bit but over years and years you can't right and it's the really the people who like think about that 247 that that get the farest ahead um going getting back to questions uh because this could F this could easily be a Five Hour episode we're going to try it we're going to try it very hard uh one question I had for you is do you ever
get nervous before recording an episode because you don't look like you would but you never know what's going on inside other people I don't know if you have so much experience with public speaking or like I'm curious what's your your relationship with like being recorded like this speaking in public so um I very rarely get nervous um but I think that that is because of repetition repetition repetition I basically uh I
owe a big part of my career to the Legacy Media I know that that's that's kind of ironic yeah given the fact uh but but uh like I uh for a long time in the late 90s I was the co-host of squawkbox when it was still a good
show uh and had Mark Haynes and it was a three-hour format and the co-host basically was there for the full three hours um and so I just got very used to being on TV um and speeches same thing I think I've literally given thousands of
speeches and to uh audiences from anywhere from you know a dozen to over 15,000 and uh the the the thing that I do notice uh actually my wife played out I didn't notice it so let's give her the credit um I get I think a little excited and maybe you could equate that with nervous right before especially on like live speeches um I have found that if I don't have nervous energy and with me it's me uh popping my leg up and down um if I
don't have that I'm much worse and so what I found is and it and it hits like literally five minutes before I go on and it's it's not nervous like my mouth doesn't get dry and like that but I just kind of like I get this nervous
energy and then if that's there the speech is us or the podcast is usually good if that's not there I bomb and that's the other thing like as you know and I I always like to illustrate it with Jerry Seinfeld's wonderful joke uh fear of
public speaking is the number one fear in North America and and then Jerry was like that means that if you're at a funeral you would rather be in the Box than doing the [Laughter] eulogy so it beats out fear of death and so um the I think that's why so many people um have get nervous and and whatnot uh now to be completely transparent the first time I was on CNBC I was scared shitless I was like 34 years old uh and mark ha I'd watched for years
and years and years I knew he would ask tough questions Etc and uh so I Ron Howard the director is a friend of mine and I was at his house and I'm like like Ron like I've never been on live TV what do you have any kids and he gave me two great uh uh notes he was like number one when you're sitting on the set there are going to be monitors on either side of you that show what the camera is seeing so in other words they're going to show you or your
host and he goes do not look at them and I'm like what and he did this right what I what what I'm doing is uh for listeners instead of Watchers I'm doing the looking to the side and he goes and that makes you look
Shifty and so that was like really good uh advice and then he said you are only talking to your conversant forget the cameras forget that anyone else is why because one of the things that worked you up is like millions of people are going to see this
and it's live oh my God what if I [ __ ] up what if I say something wrong what uh you know and so your brain goes through those things if on the other hand I'm just chatting with Mark it's like you and me Michael or you and me Ed talking it it it does a really great job of just reducing any kind of nerves that you might have um at all yeah do you know if your first appearence is on YouTube have you have you ever rewatched
it your first time on TV oh on uh yeah I I have we lost it we moved recently and uh we had my wife again thank God is very organized whereas I am a chaotic attractor and so one of the things that she used to do was uh uh videotape uh all of my appearances and before the move I did find one which was actually free CNBC it was for my first book in best like the best and I was doing this this dates me of course but back
then there was a ton of local like basic cable broadcast and and so I got on one watch that it was horrible did you have a brown TW jacket no no I didn't I mean we've come a long way guys we've come a very long
way basic cable if you remember Wayne's World uh they got it that made it look very glamorous it was not glamorous but then I also watched the first time I was on um uh CNBC and yeah I think I've gotten better um the the funniest one I think
was when I was on Oprah Winfrey from my book how to retire rich and literally I'm so first off one ah Head trip that was I don't watch a lot of TV so I got invited on Oprah without ever having seen an Oprah Winfrey Show and so I had extra time when I was in Chicago uh to film the uh live episode and uh I thought you know what I should probably maybe watch like her show and see what it's like and so I watched the show and I'm like oh I've made
terrible oh [ __ ] so but then I go and it's like the Green Room Colin to is in the green room and I get an opportunity to have a conversation with him that's another thing that I'm very lucky to be blessed with I will approach
anyone and ask them questions and all that sort so I immediately we we shake hands I'm talking to him I I had great admiration for him at that time he SED that a little bit with his whole uh speech at the UN about weapons of mass
destruction but I still think I mean he's a very accomplished incredible guy um and I I so I walk up introduced myself and my first question is why don't you run for president I said you know like this country really it would be great if we had a black president and you seem to be the natural why aren't you doing that and he got this huge smile on his face and laughed and he goes basically because my wife would kill me oh well
then he then he paused he goes actually my wife would divorce me then kill me that's why I don't do it so I disra so that loosened things up right and I'm like okay H generally speaking what works on Wall Street very technical book as you
guys both know and uh so back then it was a live show and the uh area the hallway from The Green Room to the set was literally black blacked out because light they didn't want light getting onto the set again for a live show and
most of Oprah's uh producers are women and so I'm standing there and I'm surrounded literally I think seven women and they're all talking to me at once like you're gonna be great you're gonna be really good you're gonna be really great and then I get get this tug on my sleep and and I look over I can't see who is doing it and there's a young woman there and she's like I Jim just one last tip and I'm like okay what and she goes
try not to say anything too technical uh when you're chatting with Oprah and I'm like uh could you give me an example of what you would consider Technical and she goes yeah don't don't like use terms like the Dow Jones Industrial Average
I'm like oh very technical I'm like I am B Finance but you can't imagine Finance right right and so I'm like okay holy [ __ ] Oprah of course he never read the book she like again like me Oprah had the staff doing all the research and
like I I I'm thinking okay what am I gonna say what about what am I gonna say and so I go out there it's during a commercial break which was great because I sit down meet Oprah how are you nice to meet you blah blah and so she looks at me she's holding the book and she's like and she looks at me she goes so what's this about and the book is how to retire rich and I'm like well the title is rather self-explanatory no I didn't just she
was like what's the main message you want people to take away from this book and that's when I came up with the T with what we titled a a piece that I wrote if you can change your focus you can change your future and Oprah lit up and she goes I love that and so when the cameras came on Oprah got this big smile and she's got the book and she's like endorsing me she loves you my next guest just told me one of the most wonderful things in the
world and so uh but you never know right like I I have probably every [ __ ] that you can do on a live set or a live stage I have done uh with uh with learnings from it like if anyone listening or watching wants a tip if you're about to give a speech to 10,000 people and you need to use the washroom turn your mic off that's a good idea it's like in the Naked Gun what what I another one I learned thank God it wasn't me was the guy who went on
before me don't get drunk before you're giving a speech to like 5,000 people and literally this guy and I think later it it we learned it was nerves and he maybe overdid it a little uh and and I'm like yeah so no drinking shut off the mic
before going to take a pee thank God it was just number one right H but anyway so weing the tequila though yeah sadly by the way rap was the only one who had any the tequila because he was literally on vacation he didn't have
to do any work or anything else and and so the rest of us remained uh water or tea people it's funny this this a bit of a tangent but what you were saying about um not looking side to side not looking Shifty on the camera obviously that's um like the trademark example of that is Nixon against Kennedy when when they had their first televised interview and then I realized actually the guy who gave you that advice was Ron Howard he I think
directed he directed frost nion didn't he so yeah quite funny little um secularity that a question I had I was look I was looking back through the through the episodes and two ones which stood out to me were Brian rl's first episode because I think around then you picked up the concept of human OS it'd be something you'd been talking about through viously in an abstract sense but I think you got the term humano from Brian and then also
will sto's episode about status because again it's something you've been talking about before but I feel like speaking to Brian and speaking to will gave you sort of a framework for how to articulate those Concepts and I thought you you
refer to that quite not now and I was wondering whether there's any other episodes that sort of stand out to you when you look back as ones that are either have changed the way you think about the world or have hope you are
articulate something you were thinking previously or just stand out as particularly memorable so first off I steal broadly um and I think that's kind of funny with all of these lawsuits currently being uh brought against uh uh
model training uh artificial intelligence companies um and uh so when I when Brian used human OS I was like oh I [ __ ] love that and in a subsequent conversation he was funny he goes you know I've been using human OS uh for
decades and he goes now everybody Associates it with [Laughter] you like Brian I can point you to all of the original disclosures that I stole you from that stole that from you and he go and he started laughing at because he's an amazing guy uh he's like no steal away I love it and I guess the episodes that stand out for me well uh a classic one David Rooney so um I didn't know David at all and so uh we wanted to experiment as you
guys both know but many of our listeners and viewers might not know uh I I'm a big believer in crawl walk run meaning you I want to try to figure something out let's just try you got to do something right you so crawl and I was
back this is back when the board Apes were so big with nfts and I'm like this just doesn't make any sense to me at all and so I started doing research on nfts non-fungible tokens and so I thought you know what [ __ ] it let's just do one and
see what what happens um and so I started talking to people who knew a lot about nfts and and the one thing I took away from most of conversations was this concept that an nft can't be just a JPEG it's got to be something that unlocks something else right so um we decided okay we'll sell this uh this nft um and it will unlock an appearance on infinite Loops uh you could either co-host or you could be the guest um and
it was wild Batel another one of our colleagues who was doing your job then Ed was just like kind of wa watching the auction of the nft and all of a sudden it just exploded upwards um and it ended up going for I can't remember what what
the barity rate was back then but for the E ethereum equivalent of 40,000 us and so I was like wow that's incredible but the guy who bought it was a very successful immigrant um in Silicon Valley and one of his things was
you know paying it forward and and so when we contacted to him he's like my objective is to take somebody who I think is below the radar who really should be above the radar um and the guy I want you to have on is David Rooney
and I'm like okay fine and so we we did some research on him interesting guy and and then throughout the podcast I became more like again if you're watching you'll see me opening my mouth like uh draw dropping down on the floor
like how the [ __ ] did this guy manage to do what he did and um so at the end of the podcast after I shut the uh recording off I I looked at D and I was still at osam at the time we sold it and I knew that I was going to be forming osv uh but um David didn't know that and so I I'm like hey David would you let me make a movie about you like the look at his face was like so I'm sorry aren't you like a Quant asset manager and now you want to make a
movie and and I'm like yeah yeah and so I explained to him what was happening and he's like yeah I don't think so and anything and you guys also know that another part of my persistence is to continually reframe something and tell the person was like just just just stop bugging me okay you can make a [ __ ] movie about me uh but so so that one Springs to mind as I kind of went into that uh podcast knowing and being impressed by uh
David's accomplishments which are innumerable and you know because you're writing the book about him um and but the podcast Itself by the end of it like I had no plan to say to David will you let me make a movie about you and so
that was a major impact for me at least and then you bring up Brian romelli that was another one where like I had I learned of Brian on Twitter and he's just a really fascinating guy and at that time he was talking about the
intelligence amplifier and the memory keeper and all these things and literally by the end of the episode after we shut the mics off again I'm like will you let me invest in your company I will invest in your company I
I want I want I want a intelligence amplifier I will buy it you can name the price tell me and now we're actually hiring Brian as a consultant um uh for the AI part of our various uh verticals um so yeah very very very impactful and then finally
probably um the other one that affected me in a not great way was the more recent one that we did on benol the bentol crisis and like I I honestly I thought I knew I thought I knew how bad that was and everything else and then as I was having the discussion about it with the author I'm like oh my God like this this is this is horrible um so yeah and and those are what are just spraying in mind right now again what one of my signature moves is
to not prepare for anything and so as I told you guys what what we started recording I have no idea what you're gonna ask me uh I did no I did zero preparation so let's have fun but those are those are the ones that spring immediately to mind this is a perfect segue but before I I want want to mention that uh the fental episode is uh episode 189 with Ben westof and I recommend it and he wrote a book about it he went undercover in China posing as
a buyer of Fentanyl and the precursors and he got tours of like the the the fenel factories and everything is he's a great investigative journalist and so I I recommend the episode in this work and but speaking of preparation right I want to talk about a very important behind the scenes contributor and now we have to pretend that Ed is not on the call right so it's just between you in iy I I'd love it if you could talk about your
experience like working with head and and his contributions and everything because I think most listeners um benefit a lot from his work but they may not know all about it so I think it's it's good to put a spotlight on him totally uh Ed is a an amazing researcher he uh does some of the most thorough uh uh research backgrounders for me before I have a guest on and they're so good that we published them at the substack um and he's got I've gotten
feedback and Ed's gotten it directly like some people will email me saying that is the best distillation of My Views and my work that I've ever seen and so uh I'm really not getting listeners and viewers when when I say when it makes when when you think oh God Jim is so [ __ ] smart no actually Ed is so [ __ ] smart and really really good at at uh distilling big bodies of work okay so we're not talking about like Ed finds
everything and and I will I've had innumerable times when I'll make a reference of the guests will go how did you find that like I don't even remember writing that and and so I think that literally this we would not be doing a 200e or a 200 year a 200 episode yeah did I just let the cat out of the bag about all my longevity uh that I I have is finally working Jim I have a flight book to Switzerland for a particular Clinic visit right after this
no kidding kidding kidding kidding um and Batel before him and Jamie uh the the people don't really get it's like I joke you know you're either a show horse or a Workhorse and and being the diva that I am I'm quite a good show horse uh but a show Horse Without workhorses does not show very well does not place when or show uh without people doing the Deep work so I mean uh Ed as you know uh you are have been invaluable uh to making me sound smart
which I very much appreciate well thank you going red I'm going to blend in with my uh with my orange orange uh wall behind behind me thinking about the the future rather than than the past what would be your dream three guests we didn't tell you g to ask this three guests have to be living other than that no limits other than David deut is a given he's in the bag you can't you can't select it you took you took you took my first one out
of the harder I I wanted to do a quick call out to to the people listening if anyone can get us David T then we that I I I can't express the uh not to speak for Jim but Jim's gratitude in ours as well he's been a a target of ours for a while so yeah it'd be great to be have on the Pod but anyway Jim for guests yeah okay so H do I get to count him as one so I have to give two more because that was going to be my first that was
going to be my that was going to be my first answer um okay and they have to be living that reallys they have to be alive yeah because but maybe do a dead one after as well because that would be fun yeah well what we would do is we would train up an AI on all of their published work and then we would Create a Sim of them and we would have them on I actually want to do that let's see I think that I would love to have somebody like Elon
Musk I would love to have him on because I would have I think maybe I'm deluding myself here but I would have I think a very different conversation with him than most of the pieces of his that I have seen I think he's I have no dog in
the Elon Musk H uh hunt right does he do crazy ass [ __ ] all the time I mean like and is he intentionally being a light Rod I kind of think he is I kind of think that a lot of what he's doing is very very calculated like telling Bob
Iger to go [ __ ] himself yeah and so he fascinates me because he's just he's such a complex person that that I'm not endorsing him and I'm not damning him here I'm just saying you know when everyone was going on Twitter's dead we're GNA go to Blue Sky or we're gonna go to you know what whatever Discord and this is awful and then you just watch him like literally do things like Community notes and allowing a lot more free
speech than the old regime allowed uh but that's like I think that's a side project for him if you if you looked at if you took the controversial lightning rod away and you said what would you think of somebody who started not one but two transformational companies what would you say about a guy who manages to launch and land rockets in a very very predictable way what would you say about somebody who had an electric car company that has
a zero marketing budget and dominates I think still I could be wrong about this so fact check me I don't know if one of the big automakers is out selling Tesla with their electric uh things no and the model Y is currently the bestselling vehicle in the world well there you go I did see I didn't know that right and so they have very few models all of their sales are basically two models while Toyota has maybe like 25 models so it's
not quite Apples to Apples but still very successful so so what would you say about somebody who did that and it wasn't this divisive character that Elon I think plays I think that's the other I mean uh he knows what he's doing like
yeah like maybe one of the first questions I would ask him is so why did you write this role for yourself why did you decide this was the way you were going to break through because he's obviously a brilliant dude and uh like I
don't know how you can't have admiration for somebody who is pushing Society forward into space into uh non- gas uh based vehicles Etc so he I would love um and I'll never get obviously because like who the [ __ ] are you mate like no get out of here um and then I think I would love to have on I'm trying to think of somebody who I think Super highly of but they're incredibly controversial even a question on that why why controversial what what
what's that element of it just because you think that would make for a more interesting conversation or yeah um I I mean honestly like for example I love Kevin Kelly great example is it yeah I've read all I've read all of his books
and I think he's brilliant and I think that he's a a great thinker Etc but you know we had the opportunity to have him on the podcast and by the time it got to us he'd already there'd already been like Michael you did a great podcast
with it thank you and so I kind of pulled the invite because um it was not because I I don't admire him greatly I do as I say I own all of his books I think he's a great thinker but like okay he's not terribly controversial at least not to me and uh there were so many other people talking to him uh on this book and I'm kind of like I'm not going to be able to do anything interesting here because you know especially after
you godamn it Michael you asked him some really it's on my phone now uh but but why controversial because I'm you know there's the the GIF I use a lot do not push button and it's the guy from Family Guy and it's just him pushing the button
but like I'm like that in real life it again like if if it says do not push I push if it says do not pull this thing when you're in Europe and in the bathroom I wonder what this is for I learned that it's because you're dying
and they will send staff up and this happened to me on my honeymoon in a German speaking country and they kept because I kep pulling the thing in the shower and my wife finally came into the bathroom and she goes are you doing something in here and I'm like no you know the Germans with efficiency U your husband might be dying in in bathroom let us go in um so and I just think that that makes it more fun right and I'm very interested in the
tals and you've got to get you've got to get very used to neuroatypical people um and I think that uh there's a lot of Fascination there and that's why kind of controversial I'm going to try to to reframe that true one of our common
Heroes right so Cloud Shannon's information Theory says that like true information is basically surprising I think you're looking for some of that in your guest if it's someone you love but you agree with them on everything and
everybody else agrees with them on everything it can be a very nice conversation a nice loudfest but there's less information at 100% true um and the idea that I have is that's boring right like I If if everybody loves you nobody loves you let's be really honest here um you've got to you're not going to be distinctive uh at all if you're just simply parting the the maxims or truisms of your tribe and um Claude Shannon Hero Of Mine
um for all the reasons you mentioned and and that unlock what is information information is novel and so I think it was Shannon it might have been somebody else who said there is zero information in a political stump speech right and there can be tons
of information in a new Po and so you know that's kind of one of my missions right in I to trying to be useful is to highlight those things and uh and find the new information because that's that's what's interesting that's
what's exciting um it's it's like I I I can't imagine just consuming or reading or watching or whatever viewpoints that I just already agree with like might make you feel good I guess but I I just think it's a waste of t so
it's kind of like yeah now I end up because I say sympatico all the time I think it's really funny that people are like key in on that um but I end up having people on who I found fascinating and often agree with at at at the end of
our conversation but again that's also part of the unscripted nature of the show um I will I had in the early days I had one guest uh who show remain name was um who was like really freaked out that I not send him the set of questions ahead of time and he you know he was an old-hand podcast and and everything else and and that's the old media model right so when when I used to do CNBC squadbox all the time I got several days before
here are the questions here are the what what here's what's we're going to ask you all of that and that leaves very little room for surprise it's just like one big public relations circle jerk in my opinion and and so uh back to frost Nixon right like the the reason I think Ron's movie works so well by the way little known fact because uh I you know I had the privilege of seeing it in its rough cut Ron often has friends over to
watch his movies in a rough cut and criticize uh them the soundtrack that he had but could not come close to affording for the film was like the greatest rock and roll from that era and like the first thing we're at his house
and he's got a movie theater there and and like the first thing everyone said was dude the movie was great but that soundtrack you're gonna make a fortune on that he started laughing he goes none of those songs are G to be able to
afford uh but but why did that work right why was that fascinating in the real Frost Mixon and then in in his movie it worked because he got Nixon Nixon kind of the master politician who you know was gonna have an answer for everything Frost was able
to tease out of him all those things that Nixon absolutely did not want to say and so I I you know that's interesting there there's your drama there's your holy [ __ ] did he really just and I actually watched when I was
nerd alert I watched the actual uh Bross Nixon interviews uh when the the real ones um and thought I love that movie that's one of actually one of my favorite movies AB Bron but very quickly my my favorite bit in that film is when Frost is come I think it's the second interview which doesn't go so well for Frost and then right at the beginning they're doing all the pleasantries then Nixon just leans to him and says something like did you
have sex with your wife last night or something like that he as him a really inappropriate question and then straight away they're into it and it's such a cool thing you can see he's just like it's his little way of just unsettling him before the interview uh it's it's clever and and you know I like I've studied all that kind of stuff and like there are a lot of ways you can do [ __ ] like that and yeah it it does not
surprise me that Richard Nixon did them all like I I I I I personally think this is probably a minority opinion but a lot of people say that Trump was the crav president that United States ever had does not hold a candle to Richard Nixon
that guy was batshit crazy and if you read like he was also often quite intoxicated and you know like holy [ __ ] the not not a terribly sane person uh but I mean look look he he got he opened China he he reestablished
and it's that's another thing by the way like so many people make the mistake of like again musk Nixon Churchill you know take your pick these guys were not normal people and and and it's kind of like well uh I you know the the Nixon what a disgrace what a horrible person but you also still have to say you know he did open China as only uh Republican could do at that particular time Churchill I mean like he he had depression that was so
bad he called it his black dog and he did some pretty uncool things but he also saved BR to through the power of words right and and like so these people are not normal people and don't don't judge what somebody is saying or doing
by by what their personality type happens to be right that's like one of the biggest mistakes I think people make which is why OD hominum arguments are basically the easiest for people to make and you see it all the time in social
media you can tell almost instantly in one of my experiments I would like say something about a slightly controversial person and then you just see the tribes like yeah he's great and blah blah blah and you know it's like don't be an NPC
don't don't just simply like I I passionately believe that if you can infer all of my opinions about anything from one of my opinions then I'm an NPC right I'm I'm I'm I'm in an echo chamber I don't think for myself I you
know and so many people like just go through life taking the shrink wrapped human OS that they were given when they were born and I'm like I'm fine with this this is great yeah okay so I'm gonna go to which church am I going to which of these Gods am I going to believe in Thor okay go Thor you know and there's just so much more richness and a richer tapestry to life if you're willing to just be open-minded about you know be pretty
hard to figure out something nice to say about Hitler okay but but you get yeah there's controversial and then there's evil all the examples that you gave and the idea of being able to stay in the Nuance zone right seeing the good and the bad and not rejecting all of one or the other right made me think about the not maybe the perfect but a good dead guest I would have been really fun to have on the show Steve Jobs right now that he's
dad he's St Steve Jobs and everybody loves him but when he was alive he was quite controversial and the guy like he wasn't afraid of saying when something was he thought was [ __ ] or someone's an idiot or like he had strong opinions
right so that that would that I think that would have been a great episode in the same vein as as what you were talking about with Elon Musk right some of these people they have very very spiky personalities they're not the
average person and that's why they can do amazing things on one side and sometimes what their life is like falling apart on the other side they're not balanced at all yeah and jobs would be perfect like I I love to go and F it
out original things that were written about people at the time and if you do that like jobs was incredibly controversial and there was no sort of deification of Steve Jobs other than by Steve Jobs himself when he was alive now as he got
sick and after turning Apple around and the iPhone and the iPod all that kind of stuff he he was definitely refreshing his reputation but if you read the uh biography about him he was not a good person I mean at least by my liks he he he treated his children like [ __ ] he treated his uh uh wives or girlfriends horribly um he treated his staff horribly um and he was a sharp character like you know the the the one guy I was
reading about I can't remember the name of the company but Apple was going to buy him and everything had been signed all the legal work had been done and jobs calls him to his office and I can't remember the price of me was 250 million
at the thought but jobs looks at him and he goes yeah we're not paying you 250 million and the guy's like but we but but but but and job's like no you decide before you walk out of this office whether you're gonna accept I think it
was 175 million and like okay wow uh interesting um but you know honestly Warren Buffett another favorite one of mine I admire Warren Buffett but not for the reasons that all the buffet heads and the people who do their pilgrimage to Omaha every year they're buying his carefully meticulously crafted Persona of the old nice Midwestern aular waren that guy is a gangster man he has ice water in his veins and yeah he does these great deals
because of his reputation he I call it the buffet premium he did like for example Solomon Brothers was rocked by a a treasury training Scandal um and literally only Warren Buffett could have saved him yeah and so he exacted a huge
child of Flesh and save them but it's it's that feel it's that you know OG aspect of Bubba that I love and it's not the folks see ukulele Le playing Seas candy stopping you know Cherry Coke that's so to me so obviously a Persona
and I'm just kind of shocked that people don't understand that can't see through that as well as um four years of infinite Loops it's obviously been four years in your life quite a lot has happened you've saw oam you've launched osv you've had and then another thing that's happened is you've had how how many grandchildren have you had in the last four years I have five grandchildren and in the last four years three of them three I
know so you talked you talked quite a lot across it infinitely said on Twitter and with your conversations with other people about sort of your style as parents and the things you tried to teach your kids and H how you try to
teach them and I wondered whether there is a different approach to grandchildren how it differs having grandchild and whether you the way you interact with them and the way you try to teach them is different from the way you try to
teach your children there's the great joke that my mom used to love uh that was why do grandparents and grandchildren have such great relationships and the answer is because they have a common enemy and and so um I I don't view it as my remit
to to train or teach my grandchildren I think that's my son and daughter's jobs and their spouses um so um it's actually lovely for me because I you know I I just I get this wonderful thing where I just get to
enjoy and um I guess if I'm having any input on them it's just the conversations that I get to have with the especially with the older ones um I I love talking to all of my grandchildren uh that can talk I have two that can't uh but uh my oldest um actually is turning 10 um and Pi's Patrick's son and uh I just had have the best time with him because we now are at this stage where like we can talk about things we're mutually
interested in so for example I love techno music and um he loves he's he's an aspiring DJ so our our our little thing is just shooting techno songs back and forth to each other um uh and uh talking about them and whatnot but I think one of the things I was lucky to learn early in life was we all think that we are going to be able to mold and shape and craft our children to our desires and that simply is not true um we don't come out with a blank
slate when we come out of the wound it's not that our personalities are fully formed they're not but we have a tremendous amount of Tendencies I guess you could call them already and each one's kind of unique um and you know
once a child uh gets past puberty they're far more influenced by their peer group than they are by their parents and and so when my wife and I chatted about it it was like we decided we should have pretty simple objectives and weighted upon what we
want to do is raise great adults and and so when you think about that it's like oh okay that that sounds good well it's very limiting right if you want to raise a great adult you can't say my house my rules you can't say because I said so you can't say because I'm big and you're little I'm smart and you're dumb you have to not say any of those things but also like you have to encourage them to find things on their own like my kids would
always kind of I I'm lucky to have a pretty good memory for anything I read and so my kids try to use me as Google uh for their homework assignments and they would be like hey Dad uh what was the Treaty of versai and who's this tan Guy and um I would simply say look it up in there and we had a huge Library when in the family room of our old house they weren't happy about it then but it's like yeah you ask Patrick Kate or L like
what was one of the things that they most admired about the way they were brought up it was that it was like no I'm not going to tell you go do it on your own because that's how you get that's how you stoke curiosity that's
how you um you know you guys both though you guys are both inveterate Rabbit Hole divers when when you're when you're looking up who Tad was um by the way he was the French representative at the Congress of Vienna that ended the
Napoleonic Wars and was a very witty guy but so you're looking up tand and then all of the other stuff that you that's included under T because hey here's a guy who was an aristocrat kept his head during the reign of terror I mean which
is which is nice which is nice then became very important to Napoleon as a French uh Aristocrat from the alal regime uh and then got picked to okay Napoleon lost I gotta go fix this so a fascinating dude but the the idea that
you know treat them with respect treat them like they have agency treat them like they what what they think and do matters and and so um I I guess I treat my grandchildren the same way so I guess I'm I I'm doing exactly the same thing but in a in a very diminished capacity looking back over 200 episode one thing we we looked at is recurring guests uh number one I think I think do you know who's the most recurring guest Alex Dano
yeah Alex Dano with seven seven appearances and then the next one below that is is me four and now this is five so Alex will have to come back to defend his title catching up and there's Rory suland Tom Morgan come friend TR fan comeing friend Rob and then many others with two two avances like Derek cers and many others and one of the the joke that Ed and I had before the before the recording this is almost every every time at at the end
of a podcast you mention oh you have to come back we need to do part two because there's so much more we have to talk about and it it it's it's such an nice part of the conversational format that this is an interview with a beginning and an end it's a conversation and it's ongoing and if you you have a good rapport with someone and you have interest in coming like you can you can keep going out for as as with Alex right
seven times that that's many many hours of of nonoverlapping conversation uh I think this is another rare thing right you don't see that uh very often with other podcasts um but my question for you because this wasn't really a
question I'm curious what would you want the listeners to the podcast to take from it right to take away like I I can have a bunch of guesses cuz there are some some recurring themes right like open-mindedness and curiosity and agency
and all that type of stuff but like if if you put it in your own words right what's the ideal listener like activation from listening to a lot of INF Loops so I think that they're already there that's the that's the problem with that question I I think that we are blessed to have an audience that is really switched on they're very teamed in and um it becomes this this virtuous flywheel right where you know I I get emails or texts from people all
the time like hey I listen of that you should really have X on or you should really talk to to why so you know your network is your filter and so we've got I I just think our audience is amazing and so it you know if it was somebody
knew or wasn't like naturally drawn to it I would hope that what they take away is the world is a fantastic place and is there is there bad in the world of course there's bad in the world but right now we're safer than we've
ever been less people are in poverty than have ever in all of human history does does that mean that we have to give up our efforts and not keep working at it of course not but I look for things to root for not against and I I I would hope that my enthusiasm around things get other people like going yeah yeah that's a great idea yeah we should do that yeah and and you know just realize that don't confine yourself into this tiny
little box you know we all have a variety of skills and efficiencies right lean into your lean into your skills and and explore and understand that there are a lot of really great things right now happening that I just feel like ridiculously blessed to be alive during this and and if if we can get just one listener who was kind of me about something to get really fired up about it like that's exciting to me and you know the David roony is again
back to his example like if we can get just a couple of young men in Oakland where David grew up to watch that movie and say you know what if he can do that I can do it too right like Hollywood is just completely [ __ ] the bed and I don't know what kind of mind virus they have but they don't make anything that is is inspirational anymore they don't make for the most part I'm making blanket statements which I hate uh for the most
part though the inspirational kind of wow yeah I can do that too um has gone away and you know infinite films we're gonna and infinite books we're going to try to redress that situation there the it's very easy to talk about all the things that are wrong in the world it's very hard to to have context around it and understand like every time I get into a hot shower I say thank you to the universe I'm not a religious person but like do you realize
how we are the cosmic lottery winners everyone here right now no matter what conditions you find yourself in like you are the result of millions of years of success and and you're living at a time where like the world was a really dangerous hostile place for most of human history and the fact that we have clean drinking water and have hot showers does everyone I mean that's always the thing yeah but they don't have that in x no you're right they
don't but they will hopefully but the only way they will is if you don't just sit and complain complain complain and you know have this dire view I I passionately believe that thoughts come things and I passionately believe that what you constantly think about and what you constantly do is what you become and you know it's just like I I've gotten into a situation where like I don't want to be around people who are just like this sucks this is
awful this is you know horrible because like they're going to infect me and and and so I I hope that you know in in a way people who are tuning in are are getting getting pumped up getting uh excited about all of these amazing
Innovations discoveries and and the trajectory we're on I I honestly believe we are entering the exponential age and like the fact that we are alive during this is just so exciting to me absolutely and you can't change others
they have to want to change but that said I think some things are contagious like curiosity and enthusiasm passion is contagious and on the other side like pessimism and when everybody's sad about everything that's contagious too right and you have to decide if you're contributing to one or the other and one is going to encourage people to act and do something to change things while the other will you know do the the opposite
um but this is also perfect segue like you're clearly a history buff right the tyan references alone right um but I've noticed that there are like there's a lot of history references in inops but there are fewer history interview
conversations or episodes is it because it's kind of harder to do or I'm curious if itop is going to go in a more history Direction at some point or I'm just curious how you think about that I hadn't thought about that in some of our
other um vertical I'm very interested in developing history uh like a either a podcast or a YouTube channel or whatnot I'd love to take will and Ariel Durant's history of civilization all 12 or however many books there are I've read them all um and and use that as kind of a base for an exploration and a tale of History um but I don't it's it I I don't think of infinite Loops in that context I think of it infinite Loops as what's going on
now that's really really interesting that's really really different and then I think that knowing a lot about history gives you a grounding and a context and a prank that uh allows you to um perhaps understand what's going on now a little
bit better you can learn a tremendous amount about human OS by just knowing history and and literature of course and and uh other things like that but I think you get all those references because it kind of Sparks oh you know
what that's just like the time you know fill in the blank um and you know the the hostility to new inventions right there's a great website pessimist dorg uh in which they document the contemporaneous reactions that the
public Andor the media have to new Innovations and they atte it them like it goes all the way back to well Socrates writing was a mistake man writing was a mistake um and and and you know it just goes up all the way and now we see the
AI Wars right and I and it it puzzles me it puzzles me how people's axiomatic and automatic response is no that's bad that's horrible um and maybe it's just because I have no desire to control any other human being and I think a lot of people especially who you know buy ink by the gallon uh they want uh to tell other people what to do um I I don't want to tell other people what to do and um I I I want to present things that I think
are really cool and hopefully uh other people will find they're really cool too but um the the history references are more contextual uh from from what we can learn about the way we tend to behave as a species of domesticated primates I'm stealing that from Robert Anon Wilson by the way the thing that drives me mad is this this bug in the human OS that is we think we know everything that there is to know many people do and we quite
simply don't and you can document it endlessly you could just go like if if we had a time machine and we went back 500 years and we found the 12 most brilliant people on the planet 99% of everything they believe was wrong just
flat out wrong and it that that's like you know history we Society humans we are about becoming we we are not about being we are about becoming we're we're forever changing and hopefully growing and learning and all of that so yeah
that's what uh that's why I would I personally would definitely love to watch um uh a history specific uh YouTube channel or listen to a history specific uh hardcore history is a fun one yeah but I don't I don't I don't put
those two together in terms of the the rasal the EA of uh infinite Loops verse history that makes sense we've got a quite a few listener questions which we were going to ask you but just before before we get to those Michael and I
were having a bit of fun before the cour trying to work outs you've mentioned in several different podcasts a few of your sort of the G honestly productivity habits but they're they're very different productivity habits to what it's not sort of yeah they're very different from from the ones you read on Twitter so the ones we got were sitting in silence for 20 minutes every morning flipping a coin to randomly decide your actions and which wased
buying 20 CDs thanking the universe every time you take a hot shower and then um this was a bit more perhaps uh more commonly discussed is is journaling every day I mean are there any of those I mean it' just be great to hear chat a
bit more about what specifically you get out of some of those and why you do them because they're all a bit a bit unconventional and a few of the listeners actually mention them in their questions anyway sure um so I tried to
meditate in the traditional sense uh transal meditation Etc uh many times and I failed horribly at it um and uh you know another GI I often use on Twitter is the too many thoughts with the smoke coming out of the guy's head and so I came across this idea that you don't have to do anything just if if you really want to clear your mind and uh let it kind of reset try sitting just for 20 it by the way it doesn't have to be in the morning
it can be anytime throughout the day for example yesterday I did it at 11 o'clock at night because I was busy doing other things um and so I'm always willing to give anything a go and so when I read about that I'm like huh and of course the famous Pascal quote that um uh the average man uh can't or won't sit uh for 15 minutes in a room alone um and I'm like yeah I'm gonna try that and so the first time I did it I just felt like an
idiot like okay I don't have anything normally I would be reading something or chatting with somebody or whatnot but like I didn't have to do anything so it uh it appealed to my laziness um and you have a pen and paper with you you let yourself write stuff down okay okay so you see so you you allow yourself to write in the in that quiet 20 minutes I I not in it following oh okay oh okay but not during not during uh because I and that's all trial
and error stuff uh what what I found when I did in first first was uh I had a what I thought was a really great idea and I started writing it out and then it just was like it all it kind of collapsed so I realized uh no let's do
the 20 minutes to then um write it down um but about two weeks in you you for me at least I got this kind of amazing sense of clarity and it's one of reasons why I love sensory deprivation tanks uh I don't know if you've ever been in one
but they used to call them Lily tanks over the guy who invented them uh like they are amazing if you spent an hour in the sensory deprivation Bank where literally as the name implies you it uh deprives you of all your sensory data
it's Pitch Black it's saltwater so you're lying in it and you feel kind of like you're lying on the the air um and you literally like can start hallucinating 20 25 minutes in but when you come out you're like so incredibly
clearheaded that uh that it that it is astounding um so I I highly recommend trying that and by the way do it walk uh crawl walk run for try try it for 10 minutes first don't do 20 and then see if you can do 10 and if you cons
consistently do 10 Pump It Up a minute at a time five minutes A Time whatever um it's really really effective I don't know why I'm I I hate not having evidence for things I do um so there there are some good scientific studies
especially around sensory deprivation tanks uh but it it it definitely is very very helpful um journaling like listen I I owee my life to I have written my life into existence and um I I cannot overstate how important it is at least in my case and equals one right um but it's it's something that a lot of people who who've done pretty well in the world did right and then I was thinking about it during one of those Quiet Moments here
in myice office and like I was sitting in a chair looking at my bookcase and I was that's where I and there were all my books and like I really did literally write my life into existence um but uh so so that's why I'm so positive on people doing that it can change so many things and it it just there's no downside to it we had a few questions about how what what that actually looks like in practice what your journey looks like journaling looks
like in practice do you sit down at the same time every day with a pen and paper and answer some prompts or do you just always have a pen of paper with you and write as you go I you've shown us sort of your Journal before and there I because I journal in the morning and I sort of sometimes find it I sometimes find it's a bit formula I sometimes I struggle to access the second layer but you shown us some of yours in there some
crazy so something from True Detective like crazy swirly diagrams and sort of little Snickers of scripts and quotes and yeah is is that just something that's come over time or or is that something that you think that's just how your brain works I think it's how my brain works I do not do it at a at an assigned time that's one area where I am somewhat different than the common advice you get like create the Habit um and you know
Aristotle he had a great line about habits meading to exellence um but I think that with me because I am as I me mentioned earlier kind of a chaotic attractor the idea that I had to do even if it was my own order to myself uh that
I had to do something at 10 o'clock or nine o'clock first thing in the morning I must do this I will rebel against my own rules like [ __ ] that no I'm not no it's nine o'clock and look boom I'm not gonna [ __ ] run anything andaran all
the way down indeed even even my own authority but so I but the H habit I developed was to just do it and so um it uh it's not always a pen and paper I prefer pen and paper but like if I'm going somewhere or I'm not at a location
which is convenient for pen and paper I will make voice notes in my phone and then then transcribe them and often write them out uh in the in the notebook um and you know then that kind of lead that branches right so it leads
to I had this idea when you often see on social media people saying my gut is never wrong my gut is always right and I like look at these people and I'm like H your gut is probably wrong more often than it's right but then I'm like well I probably should try to keep myself honest too and so every time I have an intuition I now record it and that happens to be on my phone because I always have this with me for the most part and like if I have
an intuition about something I had a theory right and the theory was our memories are very very helpful to us they always want us to be right and so what happens with the intuitions that were you were wrong they get memory
holdes and uh we we literally forget them um whereas the times that we have an intuition and we're right oh the brain is like oh good for you you were right again well when you actually keep a list of all your intuitions you can
create a base rate how often are my intuitions correct and mine right now are running around 60 odd percent 65% so it's better than a coin flip uh but it's it's hard sometimes because when you get the when when you and you
got to also force yourself to revisit the list like when you get one Rong and you're like I was really really wrong about that one but but something yeah but it's exactly it's something that you can learn from right can improve your
reality tunnel and your mental models with better information and the reason you have people saying that their gut is always right right is because they have not optimized for paying attention to themselves right and and they don't understand the this idea that our memories get overwritten to make them consistent with what we believe now we memory whole areas where we're uh Incorrect and and not right so uh yeah I I almost always write
something uh every day but again like if I I I was on vacation with my family uh in the Caribbean um most of those days I didn't write in a journal I was happy to make notes on on the phone uh but I it was just like yeah
no that's I'm not like in that mode of mind right now so I I I am not I'm not and this is hysterical given the fact that my way of investing was rules space empirically designed algorithmic security selection but maybe that was maybe that
was my little bastard as Jed McKenna would say that's the the real you trying to break out in here was like dude you are so not rule-based that the only way you're going to succeed as an investor is to be a rules-based investor I always
like to try to go up one level to see the patterns in the system right and what I'm hearing in the lot of your habits is it reminds me of the the midwit curve meme where most of the people are like in the middle right it's
like oh you want to meditate like first get this app and then follow this guided course and then get your TM man over there and then you go you go to the Zen the know monk Temple get some classes and and you're on the side and be like
just sit quietly for 20 minutes yeah I I I I'm the idiot down here saying hey just your ass in a chair dumy Journal make pick a time every day same time have some prompts and figure out and you can read I'm sure there are
books about journaling that you can read right to guide you through everything and all of the best ways to journal and you're like yeah right when you feel like it however you want it can be voicemail I don't care just do it right
and I think that Simplicity is very very powerful and most people are the worst enemies because they get lost in the weeds and and like I suffer from this sometime right I'll get really into photography right and instead of walking
around taking photos I'll read up about all the gears and the lances and the equipment and I'll get lost in all the details instead of just doing the thing that's actually gonna make me better at it right so I think that's the pattern Jed McKenna has a great quote about that and it's like if you are drowning are you g to try to enroll in a swimming class where you read about how to learn out of swim no you are going to be in the moment and
say please don't die please don't die how do I keep my head up water right and it's like um I I that's a really great insight and and you know that's kind of that first order versus second order third order type of thinking right it's often a mistake to complicate things unnecessarily and like listen anybody can make the simple complex it's much more effective if you can make the complex simple and and look this let me hasten to add
this works for me it doesn't mean it's going to work for everyone else what you have to do is you got to find something that feels right for you yeah and and then think about your objectives and you know do what's do your thing right um and and I'm I'm just advising figure out a way to do that Qui a time to to do the uh journaling to like write letters to your kids to do all that kind of stuff I don't care how you do it uh just figure
out a way that's right for you and that you can stick with yeah I think a rcking message on EV Loops is also that agency like you should take control of your life because if you don't there are plenty of people who will be happy to tell you what to think and what to do and so happens it generally benefits them right but it the the the whole world is trying to tell you how what to think and what to do and so if you
don't that void is going to be filled by someone else um I I I want us to get to listener questions uh because I as I said we could do this for five hours but we got a bunch of great ones uh the first one I'll take the first one and
and then and then Ed can uh go with a second but first one is by a friend of and Loops a friend of the osv Paul Millard um he asked what would you advise parents not to worry about um and that a lot of people worry about what
other the things that people tend to worry about that you would say like that's not stuff you should worry about wow I mean like honestly almost everything that obsesses parents about their children like your children are not you they are
so many people think that their children's actions are are either good or bad Reflections on them um and the that's the wrong way around as far as I'm cancern no they're a different human than you and they are going to what what
you should be care about is how do you help them become the best them that they can be and don't don't worry about how you know oh my son is is uh not making the starting team on you know whatever your sport oh you know I really want my kid to win that uh academic honor or you know that particular thing Alan watt says that worry is an endlessly peeled onion and like there's just if you want you can figure out a million things to
worry about but like and and I often see also a reaction so for example I'm kind of an I was born in 1960 so under the big definition of a boomer I'm a boomer but I don't like I'm tail end because I don't have much in common with the
classic Boomers who were born between 1946 and 1956 to 1958 um but listen we had much better teen years than the poor kids today like nobody knew what we were doing we we we did a lot of drugs and we drank a lot and we
had and we did all of these things and and then I saw when I when our kids were starting to get into that age group and we'd be at parties with other people in our age group um and they've got like Spy software on their kids bones and
like I just was repulsed by that and and and I was like the hypocrisy of that like wait a minute I like you're spying on your kid and you and and they convince themselves oh my my son would never do drugs my son would
never drink alcohol my son would never have premarital sex and I'm like hello you're just talking about the best parts of My Teenage life you and and and and you are just assuming that your how how do you manage that cognitive distance so I guess it the the don't worry don't worry about like whether your child achieves that next Milestone that everyone else is focusing on right like oh uh you know in terms of Education or
in terms of passions or in terms of any of those types of things just like realize that honestly the biggest way that you influenced who your child is was when you conceived them genetically and we all come out different that's the beauty of it the
beauty is that you know we all are little bits of pla spiritual and genetic DNA and everyone is unique in that sense and so trying to trying to make somebody something that they're not is a recipe for failure and um
so watch your children listen to your children think when they're when they're asking you a question they're asking you that for a reason they really want to know and they they they don't necessarily want a lecture they don't necessarily want to well you're never going to do that Jimmy because that would be bad um have a conversation you know life is a verb not a noun that and what you say about Freedom reminds me of a map that I saw where
it's like the area where a child could a child could roam around their house like in the 20s and then you see a big area on the map and then in the 50s and it's smaller and in the 80s and it's smaller and at the time I saw it because I grew
up in the 80s it was supposed to mean like oh see how the 80s are so restrictive right and the area is so small and I bet compare to today's kids the 80s was wow like freefor all right and it's it's it's kind of sad to see it
rashed always in the same direction and not swing back the other way could not agree more I I think that uh free range anything is generally a better outcome um and you know this this sense of and look this is I I have this is a bias of mine as you well know I I I do not want to try to control my own children like I obviously don't want them to you know go to jail or or what whatever but like there I don't understand this urge that so many people
have to want to control and manipulate other people I'm just like I that's so anantha to me and and maybe one of the reasons why was like I grew up in the 70s right and man you want a free-for-all like we we could be gone
the entire day as long as we got home for dinner like our parents were like when what were you oh we're just hanging out we were doing a lot more than just hanging out but they were like oh okay good you know and and so it also exposes
you to like how do you learn you learn by making mistakes that's like you don't learn by doing everything right you know I you you you learn by oh I really [ __ ] that up well Doug Adams has a great quote which is wisdom comes from exper well I'm gonna blow it because I'm thinking of a different one uh but uh getting better at do at doing things comes from making mistakes and and uh becoming wise but you got to remember that the the
person who's incredibly wise got there by fuing things up all the thought and and you know that's another one of my little soap boxes that I'm on a lot like the only way you can learn is by making a mistake I was gonna say that that that that's a very good Segway into the next question which is from another friend of the sh George Mack who asked what has Jim changed his mind about in the last 12 to 24 months or another way phrasing what have you
been wrong about and uh he said bonus points if it's something that you from 12 to 24 months ago would be very surprised about that's a really interesting question I think what would I be really surprised about from 24 months ago okay
something I've changed my mind about is that and this would have really surprised me uh 24 months ago I I think that we have at least least in the United States but pretty much globally the worst class of politicians in
history and in the 24 months ago you asked me about that I would say you know what I'm just not I'm just gonna avoid that third rail I am not going to because all it leads to are the troit who are going to scream at you they're brain dead already let's say this so that everyone hears it Bo sides have these people right it's like I used to do an experiment where it would be like you know you really have to stop watching mainstream cable
television news because it's horrible and then 90% of the people I would say that too would say you know you're absolutely right Fox is awful but CNN is okay like no it's not it's just the other tribe and they're doing the same [ __ ] as the people over here you know just different PE same church and and so 24 months ago I was like I'm never touching it I'm never gonna talk about politics I'm never G to talk about all that kind of
stuff and and now I've changed my mind to the point where I'm not GNA make it my thing but there there are things that 24 months ago I would not have touch for example um the this idea of invest America I think is the name of it where the idea is that you give each child born in the country like $5,000 as an investment in a um in a uh Brad gersner thing I think yeah Brad gersner thing um and I 24 months ago I would have said yeah this is cool now
I'm going to like I'm going to give money to that group I'm going to hopefully have them on the podcast I'm going to amplify things that I think are really good ideas even if they touch that third rail of politics uh because things have just
gotten so out of hand and like at least in this country my God it's it's like a Rogues gallery on both side of the aisle and I I just think our country all countries but I happen to live in the United States we deserve better we we we
have all of these grifters and when you look at our history and you compare the the the founders for example with the the people we have today it's you it you should weep and I used to kind of think I couldn't do anything about that and was very stoic and like I don't want to have to deal with all of the trites but I changed my mind about that and so you'll see more and and it's not going to be in any kind of traditional sense right I I
vote in every election I'm registered independent I voted for both Republicans and Democrats um but I'll in the coming uh 12 to 24 months you'll see a lot more content right here infinite Loops where I'm highlighting amplifying ideas that I think are really interesting that other people might think are the worst thing in the world this is a perfect Segway into a different question that we got uh from matu no last names but it's real
manm on Twitter he says uh it feels like for a lot of young people the American dream of holding at home and having kids is Out Of Reach what would usage those who have that perspective what advice would you give them I want to be careful
because I was going to do I was going to be kind of an [ __ ] in my response because like again context do you know when I bought my first house do you know what my interest rate was on the mortgage that I had to take from the
seller because the banks was higher so you brought the 60 so let's say you were 20 that's 80 that the peak uh like probably like 15% or something 15.75% wow and I thought that I was getting the greatest bargain in the
world because the banks were offering mortgage is on 16.5% interest okay so have some context understand that were prices cheaper back then yes they were so fair fair enough here um them to lament the fact that real estate has gotten so
expensive in their area but first off it's not everywhere right think about options the the thing about the United States and Canada and um I would assume uh Bristol's going to be a lot cheaper and than London right yeah it is I mean it's it's relative to the UK this is expensive but still much cheaper than London much cheaper so so so you you okay if your aspiration is to live in London you might not be able to afford a
nice home but then open your mind and say well what where else might I want to live yeah and in your case Bristol um in in Canada you don't have to live in Toronto you can live in a variety of other places where the real estate is a lot cheaper um in America like anywhere in what we on the East Coast jokingly call fly Overland is considerably uh more uh obtainable than elsewhere and and and I would also just caution be careful if that's the way
you're saying things to yourself oh I'll never be able to afford a house I'll never be able to afford the American dream because you know what your brain takes you quite seriously and the brain is like it's the whole thinker prover thing right your your thinker could think anything it wants but the minute it decides on something the prover takes over and if what you've decided on is that you could never afford a new home
and you could never this guess what you never will because your trer will say yep here's the evidence here you never going to be able to do it and so I I guess I would say try to be a bit more optimistic and and and secondly
understand that there are alternatives they're tradeoffs right like yeah I get it I I'm really super lucky to be able to live where I live and um that's great but like if I couldn't afford to live here I'd probably go you know up the
line there's a lot of really qu little towns in Connecticut that don't cost anything what the houses here on the gold Co cost right so be open to Alternatives be open to um uh uh things that you that might not be perfect for you but can still get you pretty much where you want to be um and listen don't like I I think I would never short the United States of America um it's the country continually reinvents itself and you know who knows maybe um
maybe one of the outcomes of the work from anywhere movement are going to be that a lot of those empty Office Buildings are going to be taken down down and more affordable uh Condominiums are going to go up in their place I mean I think that's a reasonable thing to think about um so so don't don't lock in on a never don't lock in on a I will never be able to because you won't be if you get locked in on it I see line from
Henry Ford I think says whether you think you can or you can't you're right you're right yeah I also think it's very common to see people look at the past and forget about survivorship bias so they look at those people where it
worked for them right but people in the past had plenty of problems too and maybe there were different problems than the one you're looking at maybe housing wasn't it but you know there were so many more recessions and deep
depressions and never like maybe finding a job was a problem at all back then or or whatever right it's it's always dangerous to compare yourself with cherry-picked examples but anyway that that's my view to totally agree and just
on that I mean when you look like somebody was saying last night uh on Twitter um you know oh it's the most violent time in America's history there's going to be a civil war no are you crazy it's not again lack of context
lack of context more bobbs were set off in the America in the 1970s than at any other decade in America's history by by disgruntled groups terrorists Etc 1920s huge Anarchist movement they blew up the St the statue of George
Washington right in front of the stock exchange right and then if you really want to like freak yourself out go and look at photographs and read uh Diaries from the time of like early American history we are not talking a ciwalk here
folks this was like not an easy country and we but that's the whole thing in continual Improvement and does that mean we we have no problems of course not we're always gonna have problems we just want to have better
problems on a on a different note Alberto uh like apologies if I'm not pronouncing his name right asaria asks when are you releasing an updated version of what works Wall Street that book change [Laughter] lives um it's funny because like I would
love to do a kind of a crowdsourced version of what works on Wall Street and I would love it to not be a book I would love it to live online and have manipulatable data and become an active thing that people could test Hy hypotheses out on um and I think it's a very worthy project and but as you both intimately know we've got some really really cool projects that are higher on the list to do than than what works and the thing I
would say about that is you know for for many of the factors we look at there we are covering more than 50 years the most Market environments except a Great Depression um are covered in that uh some of the factors we have uh we do cover the Great Depression um so unless you're gonna say but what about Japan or what about Russia you know that's the other thing yeah okay if there is a if there is a revolution in America and we become a
Communist dictatorship then all of that historical knowledge is boy right so because you don't need a book to know that yeah you don't need a book to know that right I will I I I will have hopefully escaped uh but if I haven't escaped I will be shot against the wall anyway so like um my point is directionally the current version of what works on Wall Street is still going to give you pretty good advice um directionally those things still happen
over many Market Cycles the challenge there is that even people who are reading what works on Wall Street tend to be hyperbolic Discounters right they they they tend to really shorten their time Horizon and and then they take the
data from there that's covered like 50 plus years of Market activity with a variety of Market uh environments and then say but it didn't work for these three months right and and like again three months all almost entirely noise
almost entirely noise as you go out on the time Horizon less noise more signal when you get to about a seven-year holding period you're getting a lot more signal than you are noise and then when you get to like 20 year holding period it's virtually all signal and so I would love to do that project anyone is listening if if you could come to us at OSB and say hey I can do this I love the idea of the open sourcing what you got to do for us is
get us the data sets Etc hey then then then we'll do it so uh that's another thing that's great about osv sure you want to do it get in touch with us and if your bonafides are good and your proof of work is good we'll we'll do it with
you the call is out next one is from John Dedrick he asks how would the world full of abundance look to you in 10 years like if things go really well right and we we get to something you could call a world of abundance what's
the vision what's the the dream so I I I I I use the the uh abundance mindset a little bit differently than a lot of people um what I mean by abundance is that um it's it's a much more narrow interpretation in other words um I the way I look at it is we have entered an era where we can successfully play and win at win-win games and evolution has so designed us to be scarcity mindset right and with good reason for for most of human
history things resarch were scarce and often you had to fight over them and the pie was one size and you couldn't just bake more pies we are now in a world where we can bake a lot more pies and so what does that world look
like to me it looks like a world where there is some kind of safety net particularly in the most technologically advanced societies where platform like uh Ai and others will in many respects transform what people are doing but in
my version for the vastly better all of the cut and paste and drudge work that humans are doing right now hopefully will be gone that will be aut made Away by AI agents who do all the stuff that come on we frankly don't want to do anyway uh and where we are able to uh follow our Muse more than at any other time in history and by that I mean like in a world of scarcity it makes sense to be an apprentice to learn a craft to learn a
trade to to take that very methodical very linear way of figuring out how you're going to support yourself and your family in a world of abundance hopefully you are going to have your optionality is going to increase dramatically and what do I mean by that well I mean that um you now it's never been easier to uh get a lot of things done just as an individual I mean they even have a term for it solo preneur um and I listen I think teams of
diverse uh cognitively diverse let's be very clear uh people end up doing better but maybe when 10 years from now when we've got the machines linked into the human Colossus maybe that will also emerge as another way in which we have a much
bigger lever to do the things that we want so another aspect of that world of abundance to me would be a lot of people who might have out of necessity might have done a much more traditional nine to-5 work for the man
you know stay in the corporation the big Corporation don't do that anymore because they don't have to anymore uh we hopefully in that world of abundance they can pursue you you know things that they're good at passionate about um and with enough of a platform uh where they can make a actual living at it and so and I guess the other aspect of it would be I would love to see a world that um things like uh you know I mentioned safety net there I am
not at all uh Ed about the fact that a lot of people who through no fault of their own are going to have a hard time in that new world we got to figure out a way to take care of them and um so I think that there should be some sort of basic social safety net for people be it Universal basic income or something along those lines I I and great example like I probably wouldn't have said that if we done this 12 months ago because I I just know
there's a there's a group of people who I respect by the way um who are violently against the idea of universal basic income and by the way there are some examples of test runs of it where it didn't work out very well uh but I'm kind of a this is a big change this change from scarcity to abundance so people are going to get lost and we should try everything to make sure that that is minimized as as much as we possibly can um so I'm
willing to experiment even if the even if the uh current evidence suggests that in that in one particular form or another it hasn't worked well okay let's try other ones uh but yeah the the the abundance that I foresee is going to basically just give regular people much more optionality than they ever had in the past awesome I mean I actually so sorry but you guys are excellent examples of this both of you guys right like Ed you're a trained
lawyer um but you you left the law because you had an option and and Michael you you uh worked uh at then became an independent investor but like you guys are my life I have to is due to the the availability of the internet and abundant information and choices and connection to people because I've never worked at anything that I trained for formally right it's all just aut train the law as well by the way yeah and it was boring and I
left it as soon as I could before even doing the bar exam right but that's the thing if I had B been born like 20 years earlier none of those choices would have been available exactly and when we talk about abundance we have to remember how
relative it is right like today we live in the world of abundance compared to almost anytime in human ministry right correct the farther back you go the the more we're in abundance so it has to be abundance compared to today that what
we're looking at but we should also it's like WiFi and planes right we should also appreciate what we have today and remember how lucky we are to live in a world of like antibiotics and like the the king of friends couldn't like watch a movie on TV right or or listen to Spotify or that is such a good point it's like and it should be underlined right like compared to the king of France of uh let's let's use Lou the 16th right uh
very ended up getting his head jumped off which was a one of the downsides annoying ups and downs but but like um uh to to make it more actual real at at uh relatable the uh the book America One Summer um that looks at at the 1920s uh by Bill Bryson like I was reading that book and I was like I can't believe this it actually made me do a big thing on like my grandfather was born in 1885 right no planes no cars no antibiotics you got a SLI you
died right and at like Spotify the average human today at least in North America and most parts of ADV of Europe lives a life that a Aristocrat of just a couple hundred years ago could only dream of right like this idea that we can listen to any music we want for what for this low fee it's incredible how much would someone have paid if you could magically make it work right like all the dependency and everything for like an iPhone 100 years
ago right Millions how much would some some King have paid for some antibiotics because like half of their children were dying before five right like the example I had to give is Gustaf merer wrote a song cycle called I I don't have good
German so I'll say it English but it's like uh songs for dead children because at the time like half of your kids just died right it it was so common and it it was just as devast then as it would be today but but it was the reality of
people and we we take for granted like the the beautiful life that we have today where we don't have to deal with all that stuff yeah the the cognitive shift between I don't know when it started but for at least people fortunate fortunate enough to live in places like where where we live like death is something you don't think about is basically deferred until a certain probably hit a certain age and then maybe you start thinking about it more
but it's not whereas it it it's hard to imagine what it would have been like to live in a in a world where death was omnipresent it's something that you would have been aware of for the moment you were born from the moment you died that that because it would have been surrounded and the difference that would make with your worldview is really hard for us to to visualize I think I was incredibly lucky when I was 22 years older and on my
honeymoon I met a guy named Percy Cowen in Switzerland and he was ancient then so he was Bor he was born born in the late 1800s so he was well past 90 at this Resort I was at but my wife and I ended up having drinks with him and another
couple who was equally old and the stories oh my God it was incredible Percy was a I would love to like we should write a book about Percy because he had an amazingly colorful life he was a pilot in World War I uh he
got shot down three times and yeah yeah and and and escaped uh the containment every time he said they the Germans weren't quite as nasty back then as as they were in World War II uh but like I asked him specifically and this of course is 1982 so I had no idea that we're gonna have a pandemic uh but I asked him specifically about the uh Spanish Flu quite un unkind to Spain because it wasn't from Spain this marketing really really is but he's like
I'm like how did you deal with that and he goes what do you mean and I went how did you emotionally deal with it he was like Jim that world like live every day like it was your last one because it might have been he goes I had so many friends who died and like we were like well that sucks let's move on and that I really in fact I have a journal from that period where I wrote about like that just hit smacked me in the face
like the the idea I was listening to a person a human being who was alive when people thought like that yeah and and it was just so incredible to me because I honestly said to my wife I'm like I don't think I don't think we could we'd make it back in that world yeah you know because it was just like yeah people die moving on y um okay probably got to put one more listener Q&A this is a quick one Jack uh so Jack Connor says favorite poem with
bonus points for a little bit of recitation let us go then you and I when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherized upon the table uh favorite poem is the Love Song of J alred poof rock that is the opening
stza by TS Elliott that's Beau oh it's it it's incredible I I craz memorized lots of poems when I was young and and um it actually came in very handy with the wooing the the girls they they they really did they really did like it
uh and so uh you know had we but worlded enough in time this coin this lady were no crime we could sit and think which way to walk and pass our long Love's day thou by the Indian ganzi side should rubies find that's Tu coin mistress by Andrew Marbell I'm about to swim oh yeah and you say that to a woman and and then like the rest of it continues to go on and you know he's talking about how uh he would adore her for centuries and he
would love her and Tra every aspect of her but then he goes in for the kill but thy Eternal Beauty shall not uh but thy Eternal Beauty shall fade and in Eternal lines to time M all of this will die and like so let's so then he then he goes
for closing the deal so now let us uh tear our Pleasures with rough strike bring the iron gates of Life thus though we cannot make our sons stand stand still yet we can make him run so that's Andrew barell to his coin
mistress like you want to watch a here's how what I would do if if I could and I would just adore you forever but you know in a eternal time but at my back I always hear times Wing charot hurrying near and Yonder all before us lie deserts and vast eternity it's like we're all gonna die you know and your quain honor turned to dust and into ashes all my lust like so you're gonna be the grade and by the way quain is Victoria or Elizabethan slang
for a woman's sexual organ um so they were they were a little more spicy than you think they were little more R so so so no I can't do that because we're all gonna die and my lust is going to turn to dust so baby let's do it you get all
the bonus points here Jim that that's more than a little and all the context wow it's quite a tongue twister too uh but I think I think we're reaching the end of episode and how can we end an infinite Loops episode so Ed and I
brainstorm a little bit and so think think big big we're going to make you emperor of the world right but on the interview I did with you I already asked you that question your own question and so there's a little twist today we're going to make you evil emperor of the world and so we want you to make Humanity as miserable and unmotivated as possible with two ideas that you would incept in them and I'm sure you understand that this is the old
inversion game right that Charlie Mong lik so much so do the opposite but what would evil emperor Jim incept the world with uh oh good lord I it's it's like I I am so that is so ananthula to me it's like it's hard to even go there okay so if I'm incepting evil emperor Jim I want everyone to wake up with the idea that they are not safe their neighbors want to kill them everyone in society wishes them ill and that's what I want them to
understand and live their life according to those beliefs that's going to get to a very very awful World pretty quickly I'm getting chills down my spine we need to photoshop the emperor Hood over you to and CP out of context not could be the episode trailer Jim saying that and then the second thing I would incept is that nothing ever changes the the there is no hope abandon hope all ye who enter here I want you to think every morning that
not only is all all of your neighbors and your family and everyone else hate you and out to get you but every morning too you are waking up and you are walking into the gates of ell wow that's dark good job the ground hug day from
hell all right guys what did we eat up we eat up two and a half hours that's awesome yeah yeah I think very quickly just but since this is the 200th episode it would be sort of remiss to us not just to very quickly mention our listeners um so
obviously they're the reason we're here as well as your interest and um Julie Frederickson who we had on a few a few weeks ago said she's trying to serve as sort of the way she thinks about herself is as a weirdo Lighthouse and I think
that that was such a good little description and I think that in a way describes what we're trying to do sort of be a beacon for the most and you mentioned it earlier that makes s curious and and weird in a good way and
agency and curious High agency optimistic hungry all these things so that's what we've been trying to do and I think that's definitely what we've done so yeah just to all the people who've been listening many of whom have been listening for four years now just just thank you and onto the next onto the next 200 episodes people will not believe that this is not planed but if you actually know me and the way I operate you know that this was not
planned I was just saying my wife was asking me about our listeners and I said you know I think we are the luckiest podcast that's on the air because our listeners are super interesting super switched on people and you know we get a lot of ideas from them and they're like maybe you should have this person on so thank you for bearing with all of our nonsense uh hopefully it's been at least a little bit worth it perfect all right guys thank you