0:00

Hey everybody, welcome podcast. Appreciate

0:02

y'all being here. Support people,

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support us.

0:13

Do so. We appreciate it. And

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as always, we take suggestions for

0:18

interesting guests. Today is a very

0:20

interesting guest. It is Michael Easter.

0:22

He is a professor at

0:25

UNLV. Am I getting that right? And an investigative

0:27

health journalist. Are you I would I had trouble

0:29

figuring out well, is he are you a

0:31

professor of journalism or science

0:33

or what is your professorship in? Well,

0:36

I actually I just barely left that

0:38

role last semester. But

0:40

I was a professor in the journalism department.

0:42

Yeah. So did media studies. And

0:45

you've got some science training to be able to do some

0:47

of this. I

0:50

went to a graduate program

0:52

that was focused on health and

0:54

science journalism. So yeah,

0:57

background is covering science, basically.

0:59

So what I've done most my career,

1:02

I didn't expect necessarily to talk about

1:04

this. But the last four years must

1:06

have been a very interesting ride for

1:08

you watching the craziness. I was complaining

1:10

to a friend of mine this morning

1:12

that there is so much nonsense now

1:14

in the public discourse. I cannot tell

1:17

what is real, what I can

1:20

trust, what is appropriate conclusion.

1:22

Are you as confused as I am?

1:26

Yeah, I think that if if a

1:28

person is not confused, and they're, they're

1:30

certain on something, that's a good indication.

1:32

They're totally wrong. Yeah, yeah. You know,

1:34

it's funny. It's funny, the guy named

1:37

Joseph Freiman, who did some

1:39

very good research on the vaccine, he said,

1:41

you know, we are in an epidemic of

1:44

irrational certitude. He goes,

1:46

look, science is all about rational

1:49

uncertainty. That's where we are schooled

1:51

in that posture, which is, you

1:53

know, just, just contemplate

1:56

anything, just look at the data,

1:58

accept the data. and

2:00

you're always wrong, assume you're wrong, and

2:02

then start from there. And this idea

2:05

that assuming you're right, or you're certain,

2:07

that is the opposite of

2:09

science, as I'm trained, you're

2:11

crazy me. And the

2:14

scientific method itself seems to have been

2:16

adulterated to the point where the notion

2:18

of theory has been people

2:21

are trying to redefine theory, which

2:23

I find just sort of semi-disgusting.

2:26

Yeah, it's definitely a tough time in

2:28

trying to teach students

2:30

that was not always the easiest.

2:34

And it's also a strange time, I think, to be

2:36

the age that the students I was teaching were 18,

2:39

19, 20 years old, and the age of social media

2:43

and constant online connection,

2:45

and getting all these different

2:47

messages from people who do feel

2:50

absolutely certain about all kinds of things, right? I

2:52

mean, it's definitely a strange time to be alive.

2:55

It's very odd, and I

2:57

guess the healthy thing is

3:00

just when I think I've got my head

3:02

around something, it's like, oh, I don't know.

3:04

So I guess that's healthy. But

3:07

I was talking to a friend of mine who's a

3:09

finance guy, and he was complaining about it, and I

3:11

thought, God, it's everywhere, it's just we

3:13

have not, well,

3:15

I guess we'll figure out with time why it is

3:18

so confusing and how to make sense of it. But

3:20

the scarcity of brain is what we're here to talk about. And

3:23

I appreciate that

3:25

you have sort of an evolutionary biological frame

3:28

on this, so tell us about the book.

3:31

Yeah, so the book basically looks at the

3:33

question, why can't humans ever

3:35

get enough, right? We're just these sort

3:37

of super consumers, and with

3:39

the evolutionary lens, I mean, I really argue

3:42

that if you think about what

3:44

humans needed to survive in the past, we

3:47

needed food, we needed possession

3:49

slash tools, we needed

3:52

status, we needed information.

3:55

So for all of time, though, all those things

3:58

were scarce and hard to find. We

4:00

never had enough of them and so we are

4:02

effectively evolved to crave them, evolved to overdo

4:05

them when we got the opportunity. And

4:08

now all of those things, we have an abundance of

4:10

them and we don't necessarily

4:12

have a governor telling us

4:14

where the upper limit is. So you

4:17

really see us keep kind of consuming and

4:19

consuming and consuming. And it's like, well,

4:21

yeah, everyone knows everything is fine in moderation,

4:23

but like that's never going to work because

4:26

evolution didn't wire us to moderate well, right?

4:29

Well, and we've got this other

4:31

system operating too, which is the

4:34

sort of mimesis comparison

4:36

envy system. And

4:41

I've seen lots of data that suggests that

4:43

humans are quite happy until they see somebody

4:45

else with more. And

4:48

you can point to the Cappuccine monkey experiments

4:50

with the cucumbers and the

4:52

grapes and people go, no, that's not really

4:54

what happened. No, that's not, you can't see

4:56

anything here, nothing here. I thought that was always

4:58

a pretty good experiment. I think when the

5:00

day is that we'll decide that was a

5:02

pretty good one because it's so obvious and

5:04

so dramatic and you don't

5:07

have to screw with it very much. But what

5:09

do you say to that system? And what do we do with that

5:11

one? Oh, I mean,

5:13

we're absolutely social creatures

5:15

and we're unbelievably good at

5:17

picking up social cues and

5:20

especially noticing when someone

5:22

has more status than us

5:24

somehow, right? That's what I was going to

5:26

ask you. Is this thing that we saw

5:28

in the monkeys? So let me just turn

5:30

over the cards. So this one experiment where

5:32

they're reinforcing monkeys with cucumbers for certain behaviors

5:35

and the monkeys are in side by side caves, cages. I hope

5:37

I'm not misrepresented in this experiment, but this is how I understood

5:39

it. And all of a sudden

5:41

the experiment is introduced a grape to

5:44

one of the monkeys for reinforcement and

5:46

the other monkey starts throwing the cucumber

5:48

back at the investigator.

5:50

They'll literally forego a reinforcer

5:53

that literally deprive themselves

5:56

if it means somebody else has substantially

5:58

more than them. Yeah,

6:00

and you've done experiments like

6:03

this with humans where

6:05

they'll serve people slightly

6:09

different amounts of food. And

6:11

the person who gets more food, the person who got less

6:13

food goes, what the

6:15

hell? You got more food than

6:17

me. We just pick up these,

6:19

there's all these little subtle cues. So

6:22

one of the interesting papers I

6:24

came across while reporting this book is

6:26

that people

6:28

who are in the 1% income

6:31

bracket, so I think you have to make at

6:33

least $600,000 a year. When

6:37

they get polled, you would think that these people

6:39

are on cloud nine. So super happy. Well, you

6:41

wouldn't because you know, but you

6:44

think they'd be great. But the reality is

6:46

that they're just as dissatisfied

6:49

with life and they often think

6:51

that they are poor, they feel stretched, they feel like they

6:53

don't have enough and it's like, okay, well, why the hell

6:55

is that? You make more than 600 grand a year. And

6:58

it's because they live among other 1%ers. So

7:01

they're not getting the context of, oh,

7:04

I'm living among all these people who

7:06

have these tiny houses that have, you

7:08

know, 1999 Toyota Corollas, their

7:11

neighbor gets a new Range Rover and they go, oh

7:14

my God, my two year old Range Rover. I

7:16

don't have enough. We're not making enough. We

7:18

can't afford a brand new Range Rover. That

7:21

guy got another car even a half year

7:23

ago and now he's got a new one.

7:25

So it's like you're constantly picking up these

7:27

cues that tell you kind

7:30

of where you fall. And so it doesn't,

7:32

this is one of those things where it's like, well, income

7:35

is only going to make you happy to a certain extent, right?

7:38

What you have your basic needs met, income

7:40

will improve your life and make you happier.

7:42

But at a certain threshold, then you

7:44

just start to go, well, that

7:46

person's car is nicer than the mine. Well, like you're

7:48

going to start doing that. And

7:51

in my lived experience, I found that for sure

7:53

is of course, of course

7:56

to you and to me, but that for sure is true. But

7:58

there is another. uh,

8:00

layer of motivators that I come

8:02

across often in folks like that,

8:05

which is childhood deprivation. If

8:08

you've come from a, some childhood deprivation,

8:10

then it's, it's, it's, it's never ending.

8:12

It can never be filled. That's

8:16

really interesting. Yeah. Did

8:18

you come across any of that or? I

8:20

didn't look too much into the child deprivation stuff,

8:22

but I mean, I was really interested in the

8:25

idea of, um, status or

8:27

influence over others being something that we really

8:29

evolved to, um, hyper focus

8:31

on. And this makes

8:34

sense for survival. Cause if you think of in the

8:36

past, you know, the, the person

8:38

who had more status and more influence, they got

8:40

out of the crappy menial labor that would have

8:42

burned extra calories. They probably got a greater share

8:45

of the food. Uh, they

8:47

probably got more mates. They probably had all

8:50

these things that would have given them, uh,

8:52

helped them pass on their genes. Right. And

8:54

so I think that a, um, pursuit

8:57

of status is kind of woven into us, whether,

8:59

whether we like it or not. And people will

9:01

think like, Oh no, I'm above that. Well, it's

9:03

like everyone's playing some sort of status game. It

9:06

just, you, you might care to be the, the

9:08

person who's running the nonprofit, even though it's this,

9:11

you know, nice, whatever position,

9:13

you know, you think it's, yeah. Is

9:17

there, is there something, I got a

9:19

bunch of questions here. Is there something

9:21

under the status as we, in other

9:24

words, this status provides

9:26

something that is sort of

9:28

satiated by the status, like security or, or

9:31

there, there are other operational systems underneath. I'm

9:33

wondering, you know what I mean? Cause we

9:35

have status, you have more security and more

9:37

access to mates. There's all these other systems

9:40

that are sort of actualized

9:43

or activated once you have status, I

9:45

guess. Yeah. I think it's, I think

9:47

it's all those things that it's giving you, but also there's, there's

9:51

some great research that finds it

9:54

also contributes to health outcomes. So

9:56

generally people who are higher status

9:59

have much. much better health outcomes. And so

10:01

you might think, you know, in the US, we'll go,

10:03

well, they probably have more money, right?

10:06

So they can afford better medical care. But

10:09

the problem is is that that same

10:11

thing, it holds in countries that have

10:13

universal medical care, where everyone's getting the

10:15

same stuff, the higher status people, they

10:18

tend to live longer, they have better disease

10:20

outcomes, they have all these things. And that's

10:22

simply because status

10:25

is a huge stressor. And

10:27

so the lower status you are, generally, the

10:29

more stress you will have and that tends

10:31

to creep up on people. And

10:34

and is that all immune

10:36

function? Do you think? Who knows? I said

10:39

neuro and immune both, which is kind of

10:41

similar systems. Did

10:44

you I'm trying to remember I come across him so

10:46

much these days. And I was I

10:48

was an early I discovered him early.

10:50

I try to remember if you if you mentioned, Renee

10:53

Girard and mimetic passions in your

10:55

book, I did not know. It's

10:58

a similar to get it's another corollary of the same stuff.

11:01

His his his he he is actually

11:03

a literary critic, but he has the

11:06

psychological theory that everything is

11:08

about sort of when

11:10

somebody else wants or gets something one person

11:13

that motivates you to want to get that

11:15

thing. And it's similar to

11:17

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Were there surprises in the course of writing this? Yeah.

12:41

Oh man. A lot. I'd

12:46

have to- I mean, the whole book

12:48

started because I just

12:52

sort of- you make this observation- because I live

12:54

in Las Vegas. I make an observation, it's like

12:56

man, people

12:59

just can't ever seem to get enough, right?

13:01

And the thing that made me really see

13:03

it is the slot machines.

13:06

People play in slot machines in Las Vegas

13:08

because these things are all over town. They

13:10

are in every nook and cranny of life

13:12

and people play them around the clock. You

13:14

know, you're at the grocery store getting your

13:16

groceries and you check out the little mini

13:18

casino at the Kroger. There's people

13:20

playing there at 6 a.m. Letting

13:22

their groceries spoil. So crazy. And

13:25

so being a journalist

13:27

with that background, I got interested

13:30

in like, how does

13:32

the slot machine work? Because everyone knows the

13:34

house always wins, right? What is it about

13:36

this thing that makes people make this irrational

13:38

decision, not just once, but over

13:40

and over and over. So average slot machine

13:42

player plays 900 games an hour. Okay,

13:45

so 900 times in a row. And

13:49

this leads me to this place that's on

13:51

the edge of town here and it's this

13:53

fully working brand new

13:56

cutting-edge casino, except

13:58

it's used entirely for human behavior. research. So

14:01

it's funded by gaming companies and

14:03

social funded by big tech companies and

14:05

it's it's there that I learned how a

14:08

slot machine works right a slot machine designer

14:10

explains how a slot machine works and basically

14:12

to get someone to play not

14:15

only a slot machine but all kinds of

14:17

different things there's this three-part system I talked

14:19

about in the book called the scarcity loop

14:21

and it's got these three parts so it's

14:23

got opportunity unpredictable rewards and quick repeatability you

14:26

got an opportunity to get something of value right so

14:28

with slot machines it's money unpredictable

14:31

rewards you know you'll get the thing eventually but you don't

14:33

know when and you don't know how good it's gonna be

14:36

so a slot machine it's like you play a game you

14:38

could lose you could win a couple bucks you could win

14:40

$100,000 life-changing amount of money for

14:43

people and then quick repeatability is

14:45

you can repeat the behavior immediately so

14:47

again back to the 900 games an hour

14:49

slot stat with slot machines but

14:53

what becomes important to understand is like

14:55

this system really got dialed

14:58

in and perfected in the 80s and

15:00

slot machines and when it

15:02

did slot machines went from really hardly

15:05

being on casino floors to overtaking 85% of

15:08

casino floors in Las Vegas they

15:10

now make more money

15:12

than books movies and music

15:15

combined slot machines do and

15:17

the system the scarcity loop

15:19

is now just being put in all sorts

15:21

of other things to

15:24

get people to spend more

15:26

time and attention than maybe they plan

15:28

to so for example slot sorry social

15:30

media dating apps it's

15:33

being put in personal finance apps rise

15:36

of gambling relies on this I mean sports

15:39

gambling particular so it's

15:41

just kind of everywhere that was a that was kind

15:43

of one of those things where once you once

15:45

you see this thing you just go whoa this

15:47

explains a lot about human behavior what

15:50

are the three again it's opportunity unpredictable

15:53

rewards and wishes we know

15:55

that's very powerful very powerful

15:57

and then quit Schenarian conditioning

16:00

stuff. Exactly. And then quick

16:03

repeatability. Now what does

16:05

that mean? You can immediately

16:07

repeat the behavior fast. They

16:10

probably have that down to a specific

16:12

exact timing that what's optimal or something,

16:14

right? Yes. And

16:17

then I've always wondered why all the nutty

16:20

media on slot machines these days, you

16:22

know, Buffalo's coming at you or wheel

16:24

of fortune or what it's just so

16:26

nutty to me. What

16:28

is that all about? Do you know? So

16:31

the themes that they

16:33

pick, it's all just to try

16:36

and get different personality types. So

16:38

good example is that wheel

16:41

of fortune is one of the kind

16:43

of elegant slot machines because you

16:46

could have never gambled, but you walk up to that

16:48

and you go, I need to

16:50

get that wheel up there with the money on it

16:52

to spin it down and

16:55

you play, right? But for example, they

16:58

have, um, there's, they just started

17:00

unrolling NFL slot machines. And the point

17:02

is to get more, um, men

17:04

to play, right? So people are like, you

17:07

might not know what the hell is going on with

17:09

slot machines, but when you see your Dallas Cowboys slot

17:11

machine, you go, I'm going to play that. And then

17:14

hopefully you enjoy it and

17:16

too much. The video poker, nobody

17:18

ever makes money on ever. That's

17:22

an odd one for me. Uh, was

17:24

that Bo Bernhard's lab? Is that who

17:26

was, uh, from UNLV? Yeah.

17:28

So he's, um, he's

17:30

part, he runs some gambling

17:33

council that is overseas that lab.

17:35

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the conceit

17:37

is we're studying gambling

17:40

addictions and excess so we can help

17:42

address that. So the people that really

17:44

get harmed by this stuff have

17:46

some support or some, some solution to

17:49

this. He told me once I

17:51

went in and he used to have a lab where

17:53

he wired people up at UNLV. And,

17:56

uh, he said that he had, there

17:58

was, there were different. types

18:00

of gamblers. He said there was

18:03

dissociative, the slot machines particularly had a

18:05

group you called dissociative gamblers, where they

18:08

would just dissociate and there was way

18:10

of sort of regulating emotions. And

18:13

he had two cases that dissociated so

18:15

severely, they had to come to the

18:17

casino in diapers. Yeah.

18:20

And then, and then

18:22

the other, the sort of more

18:24

social gambling, you know, whatever the

18:26

tables are and whatnot. He

18:28

said there were, there were

18:31

sort of sociopathic gambling, like you want to, you just,

18:33

you just want to try to manipulate your way into

18:35

something all the time. There was

18:37

people that got high off winning, which is,

18:39

I think the average person sort of looks

18:42

at that and goes, Oh, that's what they

18:44

seem to be doing. But he said, no,

18:46

most of them were addicted to losing that.

18:49

And I've talked to a number of these people. And what they

18:51

will say is they don't feel alive

18:54

unless their back is against the wall, unless

18:56

they're in trouble less there. So it's really

18:58

kind of, it's sort of deading addiction as

19:01

much as the gambling addiction. It's very, very

19:03

odd stuff. That's

19:05

interesting. Yeah. And then often alcohol, whatnot kind

19:07

of figures into the whole thing. Yeah, I

19:10

have heard a lot will report

19:12

being annoyed when they win. Because

19:15

if you win enough money, it takes

19:17

you out of the zone of gambling because the

19:19

machine shuts down and the house has to come

19:21

have you fill out some tax papers. Oh my

19:23

God. I

19:26

just won $5,000. This is the

19:28

worst. Imagine that right? Yeah.

19:30

Oh my God. That's so crazy. Well,

19:33

and I had another guy say that I'm

19:36

not going to give specifics, but he

19:38

was saying essentially that he noticed that

19:40

when people, high rollers win a

19:42

million dollars at the casino, when they get to

19:44

the point where they win a million dollars within

19:46

a year, they lose everything. Yeah.

19:49

Which is another crazy. So, you

19:52

know, it just looks nutty, right? If you sit

19:54

back and think about it, and you're not one

19:56

of these people that is, is, succumbs to this,

19:58

but, but it has, has such a

20:00

profound deep biological basis to it. It

20:03

makes, I hope everyone understands it, makes

20:05

sense. Again,

20:08

you had an evolutionary lens

20:10

in looking at this stuff. Was

20:13

there pushback, or are you aware

20:15

that evolutionary biology and particularly evolutionary

20:17

psychology has been out

20:20

of favor, to say the least, for the last 10

20:22

years? Yeah, I'm aware that

20:24

there's some pushback. I mean, I think that

20:27

it does explain a lot of our

20:29

behaviors, especially when it comes to lifestyle

20:32

choices. So for example, food.

20:35

It's like, why do we have a craving for super calorie

20:37

dense food? Probably

20:39

would help us survive. Yeah, of course. Why the

20:41

hell don't we like exercising? Why

20:43

does exercise suck so much? Probably

20:47

wasn't ever a good idea to move any

20:49

more than you had to to survive. Good

20:52

stat that I love to pull up on that

20:54

one is 2% of people take

20:56

the stairs when there's also an escalator available.

21:00

I mean, that just shows me

21:02

how wired we are to do

21:05

the next easiest, most comfortable thing.

21:08

And that served us for all the time. But

21:11

it doesn't today. And I was trained. I

21:14

had a good biological science training.

21:16

And biology is evolution.

21:19

It just is. That's what you

21:22

study if you're a biologist. If

21:25

you have a question, you ask what

21:27

evolutionary advantage does this confer? Or what

21:29

evolutionary direction is this going? Or what

21:32

reproductive potential did this create?

21:35

That's it. And psychology

21:37

is deeply

21:40

biological. It's very biological. So

21:42

therefore, it also, by

21:44

just simple logical

21:47

progression, is under the influence

21:49

of evolutionary forces. It just is. Now, it's

21:51

not all. It's not 100%. The

21:55

way we say it in the addiction world is

21:58

in most psychiatric stuff. It's about 60% as

22:01

accounted for on the basis of biology alone. So,

22:04

and sometimes it's a necessary, but not

22:06

sufficient component of the, of the, uh,

22:09

behavior or the condition. And

22:11

so when you went and set out to write the book,

22:13

did you have a, something in mind, was there a purpose

22:15

to the book as you saw it and how did that

22:17

change as you wrote it, or is that always the case

22:19

when you write a book? Yeah,

22:22

I think it was just this. Okay. Why

22:25

are we such super consumers? Um, we

22:28

seem to be affected, almost feel like

22:30

we're always in scarcity and trying to get more,

22:33

and then the question is, all right, well, what do we

22:35

seem to crave the most and why, and,

22:38

um, how do we even

22:40

start to unpack how

22:42

to find enough? Because I think really the, you

22:44

know, the, the difference today is that we have

22:46

an abundance of all the stuff that we're

22:48

just sort of built

22:50

to overdo and we can overdo it, you know,

22:53

I mean, another example would

22:55

be possessions and shopping, like

22:58

the Everett home has more than 10,000 items in

23:00

it now, 10,000 to 40,000 items. And,

23:04

you know, even just 15 years

23:07

ago, if you wanted to buy

23:09

something, you had to go down to the store

23:11

and get it. Right. This is

23:13

barriers to entry. Right.

23:16

But now it's, um, you

23:19

can just have things delivered to your house

23:21

immediately. And so I think we're kind of

23:23

entering into this world where we can get

23:25

all this stuff that we crave, we can

23:27

get more of it faster and it's often

23:29

stronger as well. Yeah. What

23:31

do you, I, you know, Adam Carolla and I talk

23:33

about this all the time and he sort of calls

23:36

it, he's watching his kids grow up in this environment.

23:38

They're like 18 now. And he says,

23:40

they're growing up with zero gravity. It's like,

23:42

it's like they're in a zero gravity environment. Everything just

23:44

appears. And the thing that,

23:46

and the thing he sees that seems to be

23:49

the most, uh, empty. Is

23:52

any understanding of economics? I mean,

23:54

you're not only not pulling out

23:56

orders and dollars, you're not pulling

23:58

out a credit card, you just push.

24:00

a button and food appears or something

24:02

appears and that

24:04

has to have an impact on our

24:06

our you know homo economicus. Yeah

24:11

I mean I think that you start

24:13

to see what's interesting is a

24:15

lot of the sort of behaviors

24:18

like even shopping it falls into the scarcity

24:20

loop in a way right you

24:22

got you got an opportunity to get this item that

24:24

you think is going to enhance your life so

24:27

you go on the internet you're like you know what I need I need

24:31

a rice cooker so

24:33

you go on the internet and then what happens

24:36

it's like this search right you

24:38

go on amazon you got you

24:40

got a hundred different choices you can

24:42

choose from so you're looking

24:44

at the reviews right it's like oh well this

24:46

one review says this well this has this feature

24:48

well this one has this feature I'm gonna go

24:50

on wirecutter.com and see what they say yeah it's

24:52

like kind of this searching and

24:55

then you make a decision and you

24:57

go oh great and then it's on the way

24:59

and then the next day

25:01

it's like what else do I need

25:03

right right so there's this psychologist Donald

25:05

Black who studied

25:08

compulsive shoppers and that's

25:10

exactly what they talked about there like I go out in

25:13

stores and I'm like I don't know what I'm gonna find

25:15

it's like such an exciting search you

25:17

know I could find something that's a bargain I might

25:19

save some money I might find something that like no

25:21

one else has could be amazing and

25:23

then I find it and it's just like oh god that was

25:25

so great and then I gotta do it

25:27

again did you Schopenhauer

25:29

talked about that you know hundreds of years

25:32

ago he said I go from desire

25:34

to satisfaction back to desire again

25:37

so Caitlin

25:48

Bristow host of Ostevine podcast where I

25:51

get real well maybe a little too

25:53

real sometimes with my friends and celeb

25:55

guests from bachelor franchise and beyond I'm

25:58

talking guests like Jonathan Van30 Nah,

26:00

nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah,

26:02

nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah,

26:05

nah, nah, nah, Nikki Glaser, Wells Adams,

26:07

Elise Myers. Like, in

26:09

this, like, business jacket, like, I would

26:12

love some tacos. Heidi

26:14

D'Amelio, Big Brother's Taylor Hale. I have to

26:16

bring it up because it happened and we're

26:18

gonna get through it. What'd I do? And

26:21

so many more. So come hang out with

26:23

us, hear ridiculous confessions, and get a little

26:25

vulnerable because you know what? We're

26:27

all just floating on this weird little planet together. Follow,

26:30

rate, and review Off the Vine podcast

26:32

wherever you listen to your podcasts. But

26:45

I no wonder if you came across a guy

26:47

named Panskeep. Panskeep, this is

26:49

a very famous motivational system out

26:51

of the porn addiction literature.

26:54

And it's called Panskeep's Seeking

26:56

System. It turns out that

26:59

a large part

27:01

of particularly porn

27:03

addiction and sex addiction is

27:05

the seeking component, looking for the

27:08

perfect whatever. And

27:10

it's kind of shopping is what that is. It's

27:12

sort of the same mechanism. I'm

27:14

wondering if you saw any difference between men and women

27:16

or did that come up in the literature at all? There

27:21

was a little bit. I think that women

27:23

did slightly more shopping. It is

27:26

also different items.

27:28

I didn't touch on that in the book. I remember kind

27:30

of coming across some research as I was doing the reporting.

27:33

But when I'm in that stage, three years ago, you go, okay,

27:35

if I'm not using it, then I got to. Yeah,

27:38

yeah, yeah, I get it. It kind of floats out.

27:40

But it makes, again, if we just build an evolutionary

27:42

sort of story, a narrative about it,

27:44

it would be, oh, women were hunt

27:47

the gatherers, so to speak, and they were

27:50

hunting for things in the woods or barriers

27:52

or whatever it might be. And

27:55

so culling through small areas

27:57

and continuing to seek. be

28:00

something highly reinforced, something you'd want them

28:02

to be doing. Yeah.

28:05

Yeah. And I think one

28:07

thing that's interesting too is like, you know,

28:09

there's kind of this cultural idea that,

28:11

you know, humans in the past, is

28:15

everything was just peace and love and sharing.

28:17

Oh, my God. Oh, no. That's

28:20

right. No. Did you, did you, you know,

28:22

we already brought up monkeys once. Did you

28:25

get into the primate literature on this? Did

28:27

you use that also as sort of a

28:30

hint at what directions humans went? I

28:33

didn't get into a ton of the

28:35

primate literature, but I looked at a

28:37

lot of different, old anthropological literature

28:39

of tribes from, you know, around

28:41

the world. And there's, there's all

28:43

these tribes, for example, in

28:45

California, where they just made

28:48

so much shit.

28:50

It was like, oh, why

28:52

would it, why would a person just only have one spoon

28:54

when they could have, you know, 50 of

28:57

these spoons that we make. And there was

28:59

the potlatch, which

29:01

was a festival

29:03

that a tribe in the Northwest.

29:06

Yeah, would you wear like, you know, this,

29:08

the king would kind of, or the leader

29:10

would get up and he'd do this

29:12

big show of this status, right? And he'd have

29:14

like these gifts and this stuff. And then people

29:17

would be seated based on their social rank.

29:19

And everything they got was based on their

29:22

rank. So it's like, you got this big

29:24

community feast, but it's like, Hey, you, yeah,

29:27

you're not that rich. You're gonna, you got the

29:29

rule. We're sorry. You good. You're in

29:31

the middle class. So you're gonna get, you know,

29:34

you're getting some decent cut of beef and a

29:36

couple potatoes. You're good. But that's high class. You

29:38

know what, we got all the great stuff.

29:40

And it's like just totally just

29:42

a part of the culture, you know,

29:44

and they gave more than just food

29:46

right at the potlatch. Wasn't, wasn't it

29:48

about the giving generally that people got

29:50

status for and, and did others give

29:52

to the up, up the stream

29:55

status people to try to get some status?

29:57

Yeah, I think it's just this big exchange

29:59

of. goods and gifts and just,

30:02

yeah. It reminds me of sort

30:04

of really what just sort of implicit

30:06

in aristocratic societies, right? Yeah.

30:08

And so that's just sort of what that is. It's

30:10

just a more sort of primitive

30:12

version of it. Yeah. And

30:14

even, I mean, even Buffalo

30:16

jumps of the planes where

30:19

tries would get

30:22

Buffalo running and then they would funnel them off a

30:24

cliff. So they could never

30:26

use all of that. Right. Ever. Right. It

30:28

was just like, you would just have this

30:30

massive kill. It was like Black Friday. Right.

30:33

Um, and you couldn't render that fast enough. I mean, it's hot

30:36

outside, you know, it's going to spoil. We're going to get as

30:38

much as we can, but like, Oh, sorry

30:41

about, you know, a hundred, 200 of you guys. Yeah. We're

30:43

not going to use it all, but this is what it

30:45

is. You know, we had to get, we had to get so

30:47

crazy. Um,

30:49

and, and then there was, you

30:51

know, uh, again, this Russo notion

30:53

of the gentle native there. There

30:55

were, uh, societies

30:58

like that when there was excess

31:00

abundance, right. And so they

31:02

would find that in like, you know,

31:05

tropical areas where there was lots of

31:07

fruit everywhere and you know, food was

31:09

abundant. But as soon as you get

31:11

some scarcity going, now

31:13

you get the scarcity of brain engaged and

31:15

eventually you get violence. Yeah. Yeah,

31:18

absolutely. I mean, that's, you know, everything is,

31:21

everything is fine. And in most societies until,

31:23

um, resources are potentially scarce. I mean, think

31:26

about, think about us in the pandemic, how

31:29

often are you seeing fights in the toilet paper

31:31

aisles on a normal day, but,

31:33

but mid March 2020, that was a, that

31:37

was a pretty normal occurrence. Yeah.

31:39

Um, what's, what's funny as I

31:41

talked to this one, she's

31:44

at a university in Michigan. Her name

31:46

is Stephanie Preston. She's great. Um, studies,

31:49

hoarding behaviors. And

31:51

she talked about, um, she does

31:53

research on squirrels

31:55

and this, he also does some human

31:58

research. So she talks to me. So

32:00

she talks about how squirrels when

32:03

there's a good summer and there's a lot of nuts

32:06

The squirrels are you know collecting all their nuts for

32:08

the winter and it's just hey, how are you? Yeah,

32:11

good to see ya. Yeah nuts are great this year,

32:13

you know, everyone's nice and happy But

32:15

when it's a bad summer, there's not enough nuts It's

32:19

like the squirrel pocalypse, right? It's

32:21

like everyone's fighting. She's like what they do

32:23

is She's like a technique they often do

32:25

is they'll go get as many nuts as

32:27

they can They'll put them

32:29

in their house, you know, they're little they're

32:31

squirrel nest and then they'll stand outside the

32:33

door Just flexing just ready to

32:35

go. They're ready to fight she

32:38

goes and then she goes jumps immediately into

32:41

you know when humans had the

32:45

The pandemic it was a

32:47

lot like a bad summer for for nuts for

32:49

us. So what do people do they go? They're

32:52

like, you know, everyone's fighting over

32:54

these resources They think they need

32:56

and then what do we do after that? We put

32:58

them on our house and then we go buy a bunch

33:01

of guns So you had a record number of guns fails

33:03

all these first time Gun buyers and

33:05

we went people went in their house with their guns

33:07

and they're like, I'm ready to go No one's getting

33:09

this toilet paper, right? It's just

33:11

like the exact same behavior Does

33:14

she or you have any prescriptions for what

33:16

we should do about our scarcity brain? Oh

33:20

Man, it's that but I mean I think that so when I think

33:22

about Kind of framing

33:24

some of the some of the ideas

33:27

through the scarcity loop that I talked about I think

33:29

that I'm I Think

33:31

that speed is a huge thing that

33:33

has changed today that allows us to

33:37

over consume a lot of

33:39

different things So if you

33:41

can simply just slow down a behavior The

33:43

probability that you'll do it Drops

33:46

right by slow down. Do you mean just stop

33:49

and think about it or you have to wait

33:51

10 minutes or something? Is there any do we

33:53

know what that window is? Yeah any

33:55

way that you can? Any

33:57

way you can enter time? Yeah a

34:02

great, a great stack from back

34:04

to slot machines is that when

34:07

casino companies took the arms off of slot

34:09

machines, which takes some amount of, you know,

34:11

a little bit of time to pull and

34:14

swap them out for spin buttons where

34:16

you just hit, hit, hit, uh,

34:19

gambling rates more than doubled. So they went from

34:21

the 400 games an hour to

34:23

900. And

34:26

same with infinite scroll. Right.

34:28

When infinite scroll happens, people, their screen

34:30

time goes way higher

34:32

because there's zero pause. What does

34:34

that mean? Infinite scroll. So

34:36

when you go on Twitter, you go on Facebook or

34:39

a lot of websites now, you can just continue scrolling

34:41

down the feed. The feed never ends. I

34:43

see. There's no bottom. They'll always throw

34:45

something in there. Right. Whereas in the

34:47

past, you might've had to click onto another

34:49

page to get things to reload those

34:52

sorts of things and that inserts pause. And

34:54

I'm guessing the longer you stare at something

34:56

or look at something or stop at something

34:59

determines what's coming down the stream for you.

35:02

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. Perfect.

35:06

And, and, uh, so, so

35:08

it's take a beat. It's

35:10

think about it. Yeah. You

35:12

know, back to the money and

35:14

satisfaction thing, you know, they used

35:16

to say that $75,000 was

35:19

that the income, uh, after which everyone

35:21

was supposedly okay. Or was it a net worth

35:23

of something like that? That number was going around.

35:26

I don't know if it's inflation or what,

35:28

but that number turned out to be not good

35:30

for the present moment. What is it? What are

35:32

the numbers now? Um,

35:34

I don't know what the numbers are. And

35:36

I would, I would also imagine it's, it's

35:39

culturally determined, right? Yeah. Yeah. So like

35:42

it depends. So let's say it's $75,

35:44

75,000. It's probably going to be different if you live in

35:48

Iceland or everything is super expensive

35:50

versus you live somewhere else

35:52

where things are super cheap. I mean,

35:55

I think it really just comes down to, can

35:57

you cover your basic needs? Do

35:59

you have a. enough to do the things

36:02

you want to do, but not to,

36:05

I mean, within reason, right? If

36:07

you if you really want to Rolex and your income is

36:09

60 grand, it's like, well, that may not be a good economic

36:13

decision. Yeah. And maybe stop and

36:15

think about why you were why you want that why you

36:17

feel you have to have that. It

36:22

is interesting stuff. I

36:25

don't have a great

36:27

prescription for it except to say that

36:32

I have noticed if people focus more

36:34

on what is what makes a life

36:36

good, what makes people nourish what and,

36:39

you know, the philosophers address this, you know,

36:41

an ancient ancient Greece, I mean, it's been

36:43

around forever, you know, philosophy really was founded

36:46

on the notion of how to lead a

36:48

good life, how do you lead

36:50

a good life, ultimately, and always,

36:53

there's some component of important

36:55

relationships in that construct. Did

36:58

you get into anything like that? Yeah,

37:00

well, I think, you know, when

37:03

you look at people who because what

37:05

we're talking about when, when

37:07

I talk about this scarcity loop, and sort

37:09

of this, I think, over consumption, we're talking

37:11

about bad habits. Right.

37:13

And I personally think that removing

37:17

a really bad habit is going to do

37:19

more for someone's life than adding as many

37:21

good habits as you can. Interesting. That's interesting.

37:24

Yeah. I mean, harder,

37:27

probably harder than adding a bunch of good ones. Harder.

37:30

Yeah, harder. And I do

37:32

think that the modern environment

37:35

provides us with more opportunity

37:37

to do more bad habits,

37:40

more often faster. Yeah.

37:42

Yeah. So it's kind of a strange

37:44

time, whether that's shopping, whether that's drugs

37:47

and alcohol, whether that's eating,

37:49

no matter what it is,

37:51

right. And your

37:54

other book, The Comfort Crisis, did that does that

37:56

dove tail into this as well? Yeah,

37:59

I think they're related. And in a sense

38:01

that the answer is that changing

38:05

behavior that is not good for you

38:07

is not going to be easy. There's

38:11

a lot of talk of like,

38:13

oh yeah, this is very easy diet to lose

38:15

weight. Oh, here's the easy exercise plan. Oh,

38:17

here's the easy way to get off drugs

38:20

and alcohol. It's like it doesn't really work that way.

38:22

Like it's anything that has improved your

38:24

life. You're usually going to have to go through short term

38:26

discomfort to get a long term benefit.

38:28

Now, I think that the things that we fall

38:30

into and oftentimes the world is set up in

38:32

a way to deliver short term

38:34

comfort at the expense of long term growth. It's

38:37

the escalator phenomenon, right? Yeah, like

38:39

you get to the top of that real

38:41

easy and there's zero effort. And that's great.

38:43

But like, you just miss

38:45

an opportunity to improve your health,

38:48

right? Even though it's going to be a little bit harder. So

38:56

Kelly, do you really think any of your

38:58

girls are going to surpass Matthew Stafford, Super

39:01

Bowl champ as an athlete? I mean, I would

39:03

have thought so. And then I watched him play basketball. So no harsh

39:05

Kelly B, I feel like I just tell them

39:07

what they can do better. You know, when you're talking in

39:09

these adorable little girls at night, I hope you're not

39:12

reminding them that they have a very limited future. But

39:14

but Hank, that's honesty. And that's me.

39:16

Okay, so you're harsh. I'm definitely the sweet

39:18

the fluff, if you will. And if you

39:21

listen to this podcast, the morning after with

39:23

you, Kelly Stafford and me Hank Winchester, hold

39:25

on, hold on fluff, like like marshmallow fluff,

39:27

you get it, girl, you know, sweet smooth,

39:29

you spread it on a sandwich delicious. Well,

39:31

then if you're that what the hell am

39:33

I you are tough, you are tough, old

39:35

rotten Wow,

39:38

Hank. Wow. Listen, I am just saying this

39:40

podcast has some real hard truths, you're gonna

39:42

have to deal with it. But overall, we're

39:44

pretty sweet and enjoyable too. So true. And

39:47

let's face it, everyone from the outside looking

39:49

in thinks I have my stuff together. But

39:51

I'm just like everyone else. I struggle with

39:53

parenting, I struggle with marriage, I struggle with

39:55

carpool, all of it, you're just carpooling in a

39:58

much nicer car than all of us. So

40:00

come have a splash with us. Listen

40:02

to the Morning After podcast with me,

40:05

Kelly Stafford and Hank Winchester available wherever

40:07

you get your podcasts. But

40:16

to kind of get back to your question, the sort

40:18

of bigger question of meaning, I do think that you

40:21

tend to see that people fall into the

40:23

worst habits in order to deal

40:26

with some other bigger question

40:28

they're dealing with. So for

40:30

example, I've been sober for nine years

40:33

and for me, I had

40:36

to figure out like one in order to get

40:38

sober, which is not easy, right? It's not

40:40

easy at all. I

40:43

had to just embrace the fact like,

40:45

oh, this is actually going to be

40:47

really hard. And by

40:49

the way, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So

40:51

I got to reach out for help, which, oh, that implies

40:54

I don't know everything. Oh my God. How

40:56

could that be? Right? That's hard too.

40:58

I bet people have tough time with that one.

41:00

I'll call it God, Alex, especially. Yeah,

41:04

I know I did. So

41:06

I have to ask for help. I have to listen. I

41:08

have to start to assume that

41:11

I don't know that damn much and that these

41:13

other people do. That was

41:15

hard. But then I have to

41:17

start unpacking. Okay. Why?

41:20

Why did you have this behavior in the first place? And

41:24

I also have to find a way to kind of answer

41:27

that question and fill that void because

41:29

if nothing changes, nothing changes. So

41:32

for me, I think a lot of my drinking

41:35

was from the fact that like, I

41:38

am drawn to intense experiences

41:41

and I need

41:44

a certain amount of stimulation in my life. And at

41:46

the time I was working a, you

41:48

know, a really boring job socially.

41:52

Like if I drank, like, oh, things would go

41:54

better for me socially. I

41:57

would, if I drank, I knew that no matter

41:59

what would happen. It was going to be a more interesting night than

42:01

it would have been had I not drank. So

42:05

back to the evolutionary frame, I

42:08

have a theory about that very,

42:11

should we call it a motivational system? Which

42:15

is that when you

42:17

look at the disease of alcoholism,

42:20

the condition of alcoholism, if

42:22

this thing, alcohol has been around for a long

42:24

time and distilled spirits have been around a long

42:26

time too. Plenty of time

42:28

to wash this gene out of

42:31

the human genome given the destruction

42:33

that the alcohol does to the

42:35

people with this genetic mechanism.

42:38

And yet it stays just steady in

42:40

the human genome. It never

42:43

really goes anywhere. In fact,

42:45

I'm going to argue that it goes up in

42:48

certain situations. And I think

42:52

that activity

42:54

seeking, what would you call it? You

42:56

need stimulation. When

43:01

you were, I may ask a couple of questions. When

43:03

you were like in high school, did you play baseball

43:05

or sports? No.

43:07

No, did you? What were the

43:09

stimulation activities that you would sort of gravitate

43:11

towards when you were in your young years?

43:16

Raising hell with friends and snowboarding. Snowboarding.

43:18

There you go. So

43:21

people with this genetic

43:24

makeup make extraordinarily

43:26

good extreme athletes.

43:29

They also make great fighter pilots,

43:32

race car drivers, short

43:34

stops, quarterbacks.

43:37

Wherever things are extreme, you find them. And

43:44

what they will describe is that whatever

43:46

free floating anxiety they have that's also

43:48

part of this condition kind of goes

43:50

away. Right. That you have

43:53

that experience. And then how

43:55

was your how was your time perception

43:57

during these intense experiences? It

44:01

seems to, that's a good question. It's like

44:03

you're not paying attention to time. And I,

44:06

Like, like, let's say, let's say you're

44:08

cruising down a giant lip

44:11

and there's people coming at you from

44:13

three different directions, right? For

44:15

me, I wouldn't be able

44:18

to pay any attention to what else

44:20

was going on except just getting down

44:22

that lip. I'm guessing you were

44:24

able to take in all of it as

44:26

it, you know, as it happened. Yeah,

44:29

I think so. I think, I mean, I

44:31

think still even with, with, Oh, it

44:33

doesn't go away. This is

44:35

in you. This is a genetic thing. And

44:39

what many of them described to me is that time

44:41

slows down. And so if

44:43

you're a shortstop and you're watching

44:46

a guy run for first and your second

44:48

baseman is moving out of position and the

44:50

pitcher ducked to the, you

44:52

get all of it as a alcoholic

44:55

you, because time slows down. You

44:57

use, it's like one of those movie scenes where you

44:59

hear the boom, boom, boom, boom, and

45:01

they love that. And they're great at

45:04

it. So in

45:06

human history, guess

45:08

what? That had

45:10

some significant adaptive advantage probably

45:12

early on when you're fighting

45:14

animals and whatnot in extreme

45:17

situations. But what I

45:19

really see evidence of course,

45:21

when, when genes come up, it's

45:23

in relatively isolated populations, right? Nobody

45:26

dies off that doesn't have the adaptive gene and

45:28

you keep reproducing this gene in

45:30

this, in the same population. So

45:33

what I have seen is where you find

45:35

this gene most prominently is

45:38

in isolated populations who've

45:40

had genocidal generational

45:43

military assaults, like

45:47

Scotland or Northern England. And

45:50

I started when I, when I kind of came onto

45:52

this, I was

45:55

actually watching Braveheart and they portrayed it

45:57

quite vividly there. 10,000

46:01

Scotsman's go into battle three that survive

46:03

are clearly the alcoholics now they're not

46:05

actively drinking they do drink but they're

46:07

not drinking enough to impair their functioning

46:09

but when peacetime comes they are drinking

46:11

they are they're gonna use but in

46:13

battle they're they are the best they're

46:15

the one so I started experimenting and

46:17

when I would give

46:20

lectures every week or two to groups of addicts

46:22

and I always say you know what we have a

46:24

bunch of Huns came over the hill what would you

46:26

do and they all say I'd

46:29

grab something I'd go out and fight

46:31

and I think wow that is not

46:33

a normal impulse that's not a normie

46:35

impulse and I and I

46:37

guess in extreme situations evolutionarily particularly generation

46:39

after generation you're a little little more

46:42

likely to survive than me who's running

46:44

away getting a spear in the back

46:47

isn't that kind of interesting yeah I

46:49

could I can definitely see that tracking

46:52

and being someone who is drawn

46:55

to the sort of edges

46:59

would would be adaptive

47:02

I mean and it's funny because all

47:04

my best friends are similar like we've

47:06

just kind of joined into this little group like

47:08

a couple of them one of

47:11

them spent he's the

47:13

longest serving American in the US

47:16

Iraq and Afghanistan war there you go and he's

47:19

doing all this diplomacy stuff and then once he

47:21

gets home he's like I gotta

47:23

get back what am I gonna do yeah he wants

47:25

to go back but he goes he ends up going

47:27

hiking all he does is hike oh yeah yeah

47:30

and another one too is like you know he had a

47:32

he had a substance problem he went to Iraq and

47:34

so yeah it's

47:37

a there's definitely niche there it's like so

47:39

for me it's like okay that got

47:41

channeled into drinking because

47:43

that would let me explore those it's

47:46

not only that it's that the

47:48

the reinforcing effects of alcohol seem

47:50

to migrate genetically with this extreme

47:54

motivation for extremity yeah it's

47:57

it's it's part of and a

47:59

distinct mechanism Because the losing

48:01

control over alcohol is a

48:03

specific genetic mechanism. And

48:06

it's not linked to liking

48:09

extreme activities. Yeah, that makes sense.

48:11

It's like you have to have these two things

48:13

at once, is what you're saying. Exactly. And

48:16

they seem to go together and they seem

48:18

to be highly preserved in the human genome.

48:21

And I started thinking about that years ago.

48:23

I'm like, why is this still? This should

48:25

be gone. And actually, weirdly, what got me

48:28

thinking about it was people

48:30

started coming up with candidate

48:33

genetic, specific genetic loci. And

48:36

they've got some good ones now. And

48:38

immediately people started discussing, not planning,

48:40

but discussing, well, should we be aborting

48:42

kids with this gene? What would happen

48:44

then? I thought, oh my God, that

48:46

is, you are not only playing God,

48:49

there's something rich in this population that

48:51

you would take out of the human

48:53

genome. Yes, there's a liability. Everything

48:55

in genetics, it's not

48:57

all towards enlightenment. You know

48:59

what I mean? Things come along with genes

49:02

that have adaptive advantages. Like

49:05

scarcity, like a tendency to be

49:07

too focused

49:12

on gratifying that scarcity

49:14

feeling. Yeah. And before I let you

49:16

go, tell me about the comfort crisis. Why should people read

49:18

that? What's in there? Oh, so

49:20

it's about as the world has gotten more

49:22

and more comfortable how we've lost a lot

49:24

of the things that keep us

49:26

healthy, a lot of discomforts that can be

49:29

good for our health. So everything from physical

49:32

activity, we very much engineer that out of our

49:34

lives in a way. Everything from

49:36

hunger every now and then isn't going to be an

49:38

emergency. Could even be good for you. Boredom

49:42

isn't necessarily a bad thing. Time and

49:44

silence, temperatures, all these things, right?

49:46

We've kind of changed our environment in such a

49:49

way that they are much more comfortable than they

49:51

were in the past. And while

49:53

that's good, that's a result of progress. We

49:56

do lose things that keep us healthy

49:58

because oftentimes They're good

50:00

things in life aren't always easy right

50:02

and so to tell that story I

50:04

spent a month in the Arctic So

50:07

the book really traces this Sort

50:10

of expedition I had in the Arctic and as

50:12

I'm experiencing these sort of specific Discomforts that we've

50:14

woven out of our life that our ancestors would

50:16

have faced all the time I kind of then

50:18

peel off and dive into some of the science

50:20

and some of the other Trips around that I

50:22

took and reporting so and what are your what

50:25

are your sort of takeaways from that one? Yeah,

50:28

other than the frame that we we need to stress

50:30

ourselves and we need to develop grit and we need

50:32

to Revisit some of these

50:35

things Yeah, I think I mean, I

50:37

think the big takeaway is that we

50:39

need to stress ourselves in a lot of different ways

50:41

Yeah, you know, some people are great.

50:43

They'll go run their you know, they're marathon and that's

50:46

awesome but then there's some other thing that they just

50:48

they just can't touch, you know, and so I think

50:50

it's being willing to experiment

50:53

with a lot of different ways and of

50:57

Experiencing different forms of discomfort. I

50:59

think can be good for people. Are

51:01

you working on a book right now? Now

51:04

I'm taking a little bit of time off. Are

51:06

you contemplating something? I've

51:09

got a couple ideas in the back of my mind. I

51:12

spent a lot of time now I do a Substack

51:15

newsletter that's out three times a week. It's

51:17

at two percent It's called 2% after

51:20

that stair stat and it's

51:22

at p w o p c t.com and so that

51:24

takes up a lot of my thinking but what

51:26

I the reason I did that is because you know

51:29

a book is a Two

51:31

three-year project and you don't hear from

51:33

anyone Right and

51:35

you don't get immediate feedback and you can't talk about

51:37

things happening now And so the sub sack allows me

51:39

to sort of do that with people

51:42

who like my work So cool a lot of the

51:44

writers I talked to that are doing sub sacks Say

51:47

I can't write a book right now because the sub sack

51:49

is consuming me and I enjoy it and

51:51

I love it Yeah,

51:54

it's it can be. It can be a lot.

51:56

It depends on think I Just did this I

51:58

Just did a series I. The won't

52:00

get into the details about it, but it was

52:02

a lot there are. They have so much research,

52:04

so much reporting, so months rating of studies. I'm

52:06

like that there's no way I could also do

52:08

a book on Top On Said If I'm doing

52:10

like this four part series like their scientific, you

52:12

have to get. A. Little bit strategic

52:15

around it but it is rewarding at it

52:17

as fun to have. Sort.

52:19

Of immediate feedback in conversations with the people

52:21

reading your work where they go. What did

52:23

you? did you think about it this way

52:26

is no, No, I didn't But let's go

52:28

down that rabbit hole together and it's It's

52:30

fun. It's a block and what is that?

52:32

The address again for it is. It

52:35

is twopct.com to the same for

52:37

something to to be will be

52:39

cities yeah to run two percent

52:41

know how to present the real

52:44

depth. It

52:46

and. You

52:48

know there's there's. So

52:51

many other interesting, weird psychological things going

52:53

on these days is a mouse formation,

52:56

ideas and. You

52:58

know it's just crazy tribalism and he sings, you

53:00

get it and some of that stuff in the

53:02

subject. Yeah. Touch

53:04

on a little bit about about that

53:06

I'm getting and a lot to. Specify

53:09

just had. Technology is changing a cell

53:11

fast. Ah, specially young people and what

53:13

to do about that? I get into

53:16

a lot of physical activity staff and

53:18

how do you make that? How do

53:20

you make that more approachable? Because. Once

53:23

we engineered movement out of our lives,

53:25

we invented this weird ass thing that

53:28

we call exercise. The

53:30

Truth Swear week where we go into

53:32

this building. And. We run on

53:34

this belt and will assist perfectly. Dow and

53:37

staying a bunch of times of the just

53:39

suck the saw lot of the Joy movement

53:41

As like Hardaway, how do we rethink this

53:43

whole thing Because the way that we've we've

53:45

kind of. Bit not off now

53:48

is is this is strange and the grand

53:50

scheme of things. And is

53:52

their website Also you are people to go to Edition of

53:54

The Substance. on us have sex line

53:56

that's where you can find most my stuff so

53:58

i'd get the burqa scarce of the brain. Also

54:00

take a look at the comfort crisis and

54:03

sign up for this upsack. Michael Easters thank you much

54:05

for joining me. Yeah I enjoyed it.

54:07

Thanks for having me. See you next time. See

54:30

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