Pivot

I watched Industry. Have you watched Industry? No, that's you and I live that. We live that, yeah. You know, that show really hit on a lot of very, very true things for those of us who sort of grew up in investment banking and sales and trading. That show hasn't gotten a lot of attention. I think it was amazing.

Orwell was not just an advocate for free speech, even though he was that, but he was an advocate for truth in speech. He's someone who argues that you should be able to say that two plus two equals four.

The Guardian called it a complex novel of ideas, slightly hidden inside a satirical dystopian tech thriller.

The mental health of humanity continued to be strip-mined.

I think this one could be Larry Page or Sergey Brin. I think this, now, obviously, I don't wanna get sued by the richest people in the world.

We thought 15 years ago that you were actually incredible and you had a brilliant mind and you were working on some of the big problems. And now you seem to have gone crazy from power toxicity somehow.

I am interested by how somebody ends up calling some cave rescue people in Thailand, paedophiles. I am very interested in how that happens, which is a real thing. I'm sure listeners to this know that.

He saw value here at 20 billion for sure and actually changed his mind because he got so much pushback from Wall Street and others.

And then he actually physically fell, right? When he was going to make the pitch and hurt himself.

He said his instincts were to buy it and he always loves going against naysayers.

I just interviewed Tim Ryback about his book, "Takeover," which is the six months, you know, it was touch and go for Hitler there and he was going to make it.

the New York Times, who wrote the book, CAST, which is, it removes racism from the discussions about why certain groups are pushed down by others. And she made this amazing connection between the CAST system in India, the Nazis in Germany, and the American South that I thought was just brilliant.

Because she removed race, wow, this is amazing.

So I actually a couple of years ago I gifted a friend of mine who was struggling personally with your book I was aware of happiness and it had a meaningful impact on him so I appreciate your work.

Book of Mormon is the funniest show on Broadway, you have to see it. It's been there a long time, but it's hilarious and actually a lot of Mormons go, which is interesting.

this book is getting a lot of attention it's basically you know sort of diagnosing that like you know the anxious kids that are having all these mental health issues that like the really big thing is phones and you know phone mobile phones they're new they're you know clearly a thing that's like that has has has totally transformed children's lives i get it but i think that there was a fascinating review of the book by a scientist in the journal nature who basically was like hang on a minute there's correlation here but there isn't necessarily causation and the reality is that there are lots of other factors that are going on out there and i'm sure these are addressed in the book i mean you know school shootings i mean how how how much it feel for kids to you know be hiding under their desks and so on um you know the climate collapse there are lots of reasons for kids to be anxious so um i you know to me the the the the the thing that makes me feel uneasy about the thesis of this book is that you know we you know we you know we you know we want to think that this one thing is the thing that's that's causing all of our problems but in fact it's so multifaceted so multivaran and it's just hard to know like what's actually causing something and in fact the solution might be more more global i think parents are are also addicted themselves and so they're feeling like maybe it's making and it makes them feel bad social media definitely makes you feel worse when you're on your phone in a doom scroll you feel worse you can see it right because many of us who aren't addicted to anything i've never been a smoked don't take drugs don't drink but phone for sure i know when it makes me feel bad one of the reasons i put twitter away in the shelf right because it just started really made me feel bad so i think that's where they feel like if i feel bad they definitely have to feel bad kind of thing you know i had a i had a great psychoanalyst that i suffered many years and he had this thing that he would always say he'd say lidia 95% of what people tell you is about themselves and so is the other 5% um it's very hard for us it's very hard for us not to assume that what we think and feel is what other people think why don't you just leave there at that moment like that okay i know i know listen that is you know it's gotten me very far uh i left not long after but i agree with you i think the step now he puts all this stuff out there that's what a lot of the fans say look he's out there people are argued but a lot of social media social scientists are like this is bullshit like they really are going at it because they think he he's not making the case and he's made he's sort of like a silver bullet kind of thing and they're not discounting phones and everything else what they're saying is it's not the it's it's a multifaceted reason and if we simplify it it's gonna be a problem um that's i think that's really what the message is

he coined the term disruptive innovation and that was the notion that one it wasn't macro that companies actually could make decisions that were the driving factors in creating innovation or and or that disruption was a function of how poor the incumbents were

and that is the innovators dilemma which everyone says but most people understand what it means and that is companies have such a vested interest in protecting their legacy assets that they're somewhat love to innovate and then a small company comes in and even at the fringes says you know I'm not going to go after all of e-commerce I'm not going after Sears or Walmart I'm just going to go after books and the incumbents ignore them we're not going to go after movies we're not going to go after original scripted TV shows we're just going to ship people cute little CDs in the mail and everybody ignores them because they're tiny and they're not a threat oh we're Luxautica we're not worried about that cute little company that sends five pairs of glasses to your home for that ridiculously cheap price of 99 bucks and they start biting at your ankle and then you wake up and there's such incredible value proposition they're so nimble they're so hungry they're so unafraid they have so few legacy assets that inhibit or hamstring their decisions you wake up and you no longer have a little poodle at your ankle a great white shark has you halfway up you know and it's your torso is halfway in this great white shark

Oh, there's a book called Boom.

We thought we would put together a guide for people who really want to get involved. Not just in the 2024 election, but hopefully and hopefully we have many elections beyond that. And you know, since we started positive America way back in 2017 now is a lot of people who were afraid when Trump got elected and they've asked us over the many years how to get involved. What's the best way to be effective in politics?

And so we decided to finally put our thoughts down into a book. It's a quick read. It's funny and hopefully it's useful to a lot of people who were wondering how best to help between now and November.

It's coming out June 26.

It's also the co-founder of quick and median host of pods of america and also a bunch of other pods that are terrific and all of which are endorsed by louis swisher anyway that's the show.

do you remember in high school, did you read Upton Sinclair as The Jungle?

If people weren't liable for ensuring that there were guards around meat grinders, we'd still have people falling into meat grinders.

The first book I bought besides some spiritual contemplations on grief was the book 4,000 Weeks.

He was a productivity writer, I think for The Guardian or one of the UK newspapers and he was the one saying, task box, box things up, do this, the Pomodoro method. He did all that and then at some point he said, shit, we only have 4,000 weeks if we're lucky and the more productive you are, the more bullshit you have to do and this productivity thing is such and this is where I loved his work. The productivity piece is such armor around protecting vulnerability and the fact that our time is finite and we really have best case scenario, 4,000 weeks.

without the robin d'angelo jargon that's with the White Fragility book

Feeding my gambling habit, another book thing, a book related thing.

Still on that bestseller list.

You're on Rich Roll.

And by the way, I want to adopt that guy as my brother. That guy has such a chill vibe about him.

Someone comes up and they look around and they for dramatic pause. And then they have me sign your book. And they think it's the funniest thing ever.

The Big Short. Michael Burry is in the news, obviously.

But a lot of people are still stuck with, you know, Paul Oleg's book, Population Bomb. It's like, ah, that was a long time ago.

There's a book for everything and they're in audio and they're on digital. And if you cool with shipping things to your house and leaving them on your porch for three days, they still make them physically. There was a great book literally called How To Be An Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi by the book.