¶ Music Taste and Personality Influence
What were you doing before we left the house?
Oh w I was listening to Nickelback on two X speed.
You're listening to Nickelback on two times speed. We just let that sit for a second. Mm-hmm. And you've been listening to Phil Collins on one point five times. Yeah.
Sometimes one point six.
Do you wanna explain yourself?
I I went through a phase that I'm still in, um, that I think YouTube is better to listen to music on than Spotify or Apple Music, because you can get live tracks way more. Like it's underrated. live tracks on YouTube, just hearing the crowd. Um and I've also stopped listening to hip hop as much. Okay. Because I s I don't know about you, I started becoming a bad person when I listen to hip hop too much. Did you not get did you never get the one?
Well if you just listen to people committing crimes in your head all day long. You do become you do become a bit of a terrible person. So um
¶ British vs. American Nonchalance
Well, this was what we found where we were was it when you were at Social Chain and we were talking about uh Serotonin George, Serotonin Chris listening to Anjuna Deep and then it was Cordisol George and Cord is all Chris listening to Kanye West. That was pre cancellation as well.
Yeah. I mean e even ca even Kanye wouldn't be full court as all it would be like it'd be like DMX.
Okay.
Or like very angry two pack. Okay, so Vinny Paz is great, Jedi Mindrix.
You've explained you've explained to me why. You think that YouTube is a good platform, but you haven't necessarily explained to me why you've been listening to
N so when I go to um the gym. I put tunes on on YouTube, usually live tracks. Um, but then I was listening to Nickelback Rockstar, which is a completely underrated song. And I was but if you listen to that at one X speed it's quite hard to work out to. But if you go and listen to If you go and if you listen to hip hop, it's um it's too
Then you want to go and commit a crime.
Nickleback at 1.8 X speed, Rockstar, customize it, you change the beats per minute, and great workout. But this is actually really sad. This is really sad this part, which was on if you look look look at Nickelbach Rockstar and you go in the comments, it's like um it's this.
Boy talking about how his dad used to listen to Nickelback Rockstar, and he's now just about to have surgery and he's unsure if he's gonna wake up and he's listening to Nickelback Rockstar. So I'm there like listening to it at one point X speed, reading the comment section.
Why are you in the comments?
Incredibly sad.
So your speed your speed listening to Nickelback reading sad comments. Okay. Well have you seen the there's a conspiracy theory that Nickelback's downfall in the mid two thousands was to try and demoralize America after nine eleven?
No, why why demoralize America?
That Nickelback was kind of on this surgeon, it was sort of uh American spirit, it was the equivalent for them in the new world after this horrible catastrophe that had occurred. And uh it's this huge long documentary. Like a forty minute, fifty minute breakdown of exactly why Nickelback was sort of taken down from the inside.
But Nickel I think Nickelback are one of the most underrated bands of all time. Because people thought they were one of the most overrated bands of all time. They're now one of the most underrated bands.
Yeah. Well this is like Creed, right? Creed Creed got to come back around.
Well, there's talk that um uh when there's like this great video that's breaking down why do people hate nickelback? And one of the theories is that they try a little bit too hard as well. Whereas some of these edgier bands during the era, which ironically everybody's forgot, mm, there was this interview with the lead singer of Nickelback and he's talking about how he would Study songs. Like figure out why songs work.
And then fibers the music. Yeah. And because he was trying so hard. Well, there's something about being nonchalant that's cool. There's always going to be something cool about being nonchalant. Yeah. Especially if you're British. But it's not a very American uh uh like personality trait mm to enjoy nonchalance in the same way as a brit does because the brit everybody enjoys nonchalance, but the Brit enjoys non nonchalance and I knew you said nonchalance
Yeah.
Just something very different.
us.
The Brit enjoys nonchalance in a different way, which is that it protects us from having to be called a keynote. Like you don't want to be called too keen about anything. And you inherently don't like anybody that does seem too keen or excitable.
Yeah, when w you took me to that uh gym opening the other evening, I was talking to um a lady there. And she was implying she was an introvert, and yet she was like one of the most extroverted people. Like American I don't think American introverts truly exist.
Altyazı M.K.
A Britain scale, yeah. If you la here's a question, right? If you had introversion, extroversion and you're massively grouping countries together, what do you think's the most extroverted country and most introverted country if you're grouping the populaces?
You're probably not far off with America and the UK. You're probably not far off.
Yeah. Who's more who's more introverted than us?
Japanese probably. Kikimori
Sixty years driven.
That didn't call. They did a national a n a national introversion post. Them? I mean who's more extra I guess it's s probably some South American places, you know, like some Latino
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Like Brazil. Yeah. Yeah. Um
But, you know, we really have gone from one end of the Overton window to the other when it comes to extrovert. But you're right, like an American extrovert an American introvert is a British extrovert.
Mm. An American extrovert is a British extrovert an after party of
Okay.
On every single substance that's ever existed, trying to talk about how he's gonna fix the interest rates of the Bank of England. Yeah.
Uh, we need to talk about your sneezing. I'm sorry. Okay.
Let's go for it.
Do you think that there might be an issue? Like a medical issue.
I am...
You sneezed fifteen times. I did. Yeah, I did. And they were l over a minute apart.
I didn't realize you heard me. I was upstairs thinking hello.
Shocked the house.
Yeah.
You shook the house with them. It was thunderous. Yeah.
Yeah, well it was a bit of a doom loop. Um because I would sneeze, blow my nose, and then whatever something was going up my nose when I was blowing the nose, and it would then create this. Economic doom loop like Gary Stevenson's uh in charge of the economy. It was um it was rough. Yeah, it was rough.
I don't think I've ever sneezed that much in my entire life. I think that's I think and also I think this is you struggling with not having a girlfriend in the house.
¶ Single Men's Evening Time-Wasting
Yeah, that's a nightmare. Yeah. I do we we've discussed this before that uh Dies over a certain age between the hours of 5 to 9 p.m. Like if the hours of five to five to nine p.m. was twenty four hours, I think the economy would go down by about thirty percent. Like we're just useless. Like nothing's happening. Um it's scrolling, it's checking stuff, it relaxing but stressing that you should be working or working whilst thinking that you should be relaxing.
This is a real domesticating influence of having a partner. Yeah. This is why you need one.
Yeah. Just purely for the nervous system.
It's it's so that you don't regress back to the mean of just doing bullshit that you really wish that you
How do you think you've wasted what's the biggest um like evening waste that you've had when you've been single or not been with your girlfriend?
🔇 Silence
It's gotta be fun. It's gotta be fun.
Yeah, but where like what's yeah, so zoom in, open your iPhone. Instagram.
Instagram typically.
What sort of stuff on Instagram?
Instagram on YouTube, but it's not YouTube on TV is really uh when I watch stuff on my TV, it's always very conscious because I it's such a fuck on. to try and change from one video to another. I'm mu I'm much more uh uh scrutinous way more discretion around what I'm gonna watch if I'm watching on TV because I can't be bothered to change what I'm watching.
It's so true. Nobody nobody uses YouTube Shorts or TikTok really on TikTok. Is anybody using it?
I don't know. I have to assume so. I have to assume so. Hmm. I've seen I saw a video of a guy who ran a five K underneath a table and in the background throughout the entire video. Took about thirty minutes. He just like spun round under a table like this for 30 minutes and in the background was someone was watching on a TV, was watching TikTok. Swiping through TikToks.
What do you mean somebody's running underneath a table? I'm so confused.
I mean he did it. His Sravis said that he did it. But in the background it's TikTok on a T V. The people have got to be doing it. People have to be doing it somewhere. Wow. But you're not a vertical video consumer.
No, no no no no no. I'm so confused.
Me running a five K under my therapist's table. Can't imagine that's his therapist. Anyway. There you go. That's what we should be doing. That's actually that's that's the greatest advert. That's the greatest advert for having a girlfriend I've ever seen. That's after 7 p.m. Yeah.
Yeah. Wow. If the C C P could see see this, they'd be delighted.
¶ AI, Hacking, and Data Privacy
If they knew what was going on. You see the uh the guy who accidentally hacked seven thousand DJI Roombas. This dude was trying to control his Roomba with his PlayStation controller. And ended up using Claude.
So in theory you could have used someone else's vacuum and navigated it around their home to see whatever you wanted to see.
Yeah.
Are launching uh deep cleaning at four twenty for everyone. Yes.
Software developer Sammy Asdoofle was building an app to hack his DJI Romo smart vacuum. He wanted to use his PlayStation controller to make it move. But in the process, he accidentally uncovered a major security flaw. With the help of an AI chatbot, Sammy discovered he could also access what he says were roughly seven thousand other vacuums, allowing him to get out of the way.
applications and even remotely control other people's vacuums. He could also see through other users' live camera feeds and hear through their vacuums microphones.
Wow.
Typically in place to help the vacuums navigate around a home and respond to voice commands.
Yeah, it feels like we're gonna be living through an era where this is gonna happen.
More and more.
We w can't hack paper and pen. You can't have you can't hack the mole skin notepad.
That's true. Although they have got a digital version of that now. Uh We were talking to a friend at dinner the other night and he said w everybody here has tried to get ChatGPT to do something illegal. It's I I w I kinda see if you can get me this for free, if you can hack the back end or do the extract whatever.
And one of our friends who works building data centers said he'd used some off label Chinese model that's run locally on his computer and didn't mean to get it to do something illegal, but it did. So he put in he wanted to try and see if they could screenshot all of this different data.
And it's thinking, I can't do that, thinking, I can't do that, thinking, Oh, there's an API that's open on the back end. I can just pull the entire website out and now he's got nine thousand pieces of data that it completely illegal to have. So We can't get to do something illegal when they want them to.
Or even just slight like I was ask I asked Claude the other day for what do people think are where's the ugly'cause you said the UK has the ugliest men in the world. So I got call I asked Claude, where do you think has the ugliest men? Or could you pull the data of what people think has the ugliest men? And it refused to do it.
It would give you the most good looking them.
I don't-I don't-I let- Ask actually Jared if you can. I I don't even think I don't maybe well then I guess if you if you asked it for the all them good looking in order.
and rank it all the way.
Just say now flip that list around.
Yeah. Or it might do the top fifty percent. Yeah. But you can then work it out from there. I look, the only w I didn't I don't mean to bad mouth our country, especially given that both of us are from it. I just saw the Unite the Rally March videos. We're just not we're not a particularly aesthetic nation. And perhaps again this is a selection effect.
Best looking is obviously subjective, but there are a few places that consistently come across fashion modelling, dating up data, tourism surveys and pop culture for producing unusually attractive men, usually because of some mix of genetics, grooming culture, fitness style and confidence. Uh Brazil, Italy, Spain, France, Sweden, Lebanon.
Wow.
Uh can we say What about the what about the ugliest? That gets a lot harder to answer fairly because ugliness is even more culturally loaded than attractiveness. People tend to judge entire populations based on stereotypes. Uh it's not going to give us an answer, is it? Keep going down?
It basically says the UK there, right? Some northern Europeans, some Anglo countries.
Plain, despite strong genetics because the culture is uh understated and less image focused. It's a nice way to say that we don't care about our appearance.
¶ The British Syndrome of Self-Criticism
Do you remember do you remember when um you started going to therapy and you were talking about how All this stuff that you'd discovered from therapy of you couldn't quite feel emotions or how harsh you were on yourself. And you had this laundry list of symptoms that they'd given you. Mm-hmm. And I remember thinking I didn't want to be a rude when a friend was going through therapy. Kinda wait on the phone for a bit.
And it's like, I think that's just being British. Like all a lot of the stuff that the therapist diagnosed you with.
Good. Hang on a second. Hang on a second. Wasn't diagnosed with
You know what I mean?
Talking to clinical con
You have British syndrome, sir.
British Centro. Yes. Yeah. I've seen that your passport is dark blue. Uh yeah. I mean We're a country of people that are kind of uh we revel in misery a bit, which probably makes us quite resilient. Probably why we did well in the Bat Battle of Britain. It's probably why we don't have the same victimhood culture that somewhere like America might do. It's also the same reason that we hate ourselves quite a lot. No one when was the last time you heard anybody say that they were proud of the UK?
Me?
When was the last time you heard someone that wasn't you say that they were proud of the UK?
The str the strange thing is, is the more that I travel I I always describe the UK as like having a uh autoimmune condition that it attacks itself from within. But the UK, uh if you travel outside of the UK most countries that you travel to, the people will talk about how much that they love the UK. So it's weird that the the people that hate the UK the most are often inside the UK and everybody outside. Well yeah we discussed this before, but you go, Oh okay, I JK Rowling, Harry Potter.
Paul McCartney, John Lennon
William Shakespeare.
Charles Darwin. Should we just do the entire episode? Just like the guy And guess what?
Harry Mack, freestyle rapping.
Where do you end up with like Retch three two?
Yeah, exactly. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel once you get beyond the year two thousand. Like after the spice girls, everything really went down.
A a Dell? Uh Ed Sheeran. Olivia Dean. Olivia Dean?
Oh Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott. Uh don't get me wrong, just w we're starting to run a little thin on world. Yeah, you always
You didn't think we could go from Olivia Dane to quantum computing? Yeah.
Well, sure.
But we can.
Uh uh Dennis whatever his face is from Google, he's not British though, is he?
Uh d Dennis is British. Is he? Dennis. Um yeah, he's born in the UK. Oh, okay.
Okay, that's it.
Or at least he at least grew up in the UK. So we famously stayed in the U
UK. Wouldn't that be a wonderful way to get our own back on a world that's forgotten us? to unleash a super intelligent AGI that nobody can control. Yeah, anyway. That would be a wonderful footnote. The Empire's back briefly before it gets subsumed by this monster it made itself.
And it only uh allows people to spell with S's. Yeah. I find that so offensive when I'm writing and uh Grammarly will try and auto correct.
Using grammarly for the right.
Or w even even Chat GPT or even the autocorrector will try and correct me to
You've got it on American English, that's why.
Yeah, but I then make a decision of do I want most of the people that read this who speak American English to understand it or do I just really put my bottle in the
You gotta you gotta hold on to it, dude. It's the same reason we both got plus four four phone numbers. Mm-hmm. This country can take my taxes, but it's not gonna take my It's not gonna take my fucking area cut. This episode is brought to you by Gymshark. If you're going to spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. Gymshark makes the best men's and women's training gear.
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¶ Acquired Savant Syndrome and Frivolity
Modern Wisdom 10. A checkout. I learned about savant syndrome. Okay. You heard of this? No. Okay. So there was a guy who shat himself so badly.
Okay. Great start.
That he gave himself it the the art arteries in his brain exploded, and then when he woke up he was an artistic genius who wanted to paint for nineteen hours a day.
Yeah.
It's true. Tommy McHugh was a British artist and poet in his early life. McHugh was a builder and also involved in youth crimes. When he was fifty-one, he suffered a stroke on both sides of his brain. that resulted in two burst blood vessels, he was sent into a coma for a week and that acquired Savant syndrome. McHugh attempted to evacuate his bowels quickly due to a knock on a toilet door, so he didn't want someone to find him shitting.
Then the sudden pressure led to an artery being severed in his frontal and temporal lobes, causing him to hemorrhage. So what happened was like squeezed and then he heard this big explosion inside of his head and sort of half collapsed to the ground.
But apparently the reason that he said that he kept himself conscious was that he wanted to pull his pants up so no one would find him naked on the floor of the toilet. And as he was pulling his pants up, that's when the other one went. So it was like the two tw it was like the f the first tower and the second tower.
Uh By the way, British
British indeed. Uh while uh relearning after his stroke. In fact, when he woke up, he started rhyming. People couldn't stop him from rhyming, so he was speaking in rhyme. Uh he began to write poetry to express everything he was experiencing. He also experienced an identity crisis, which was the most likely motivation for his artistic output.
He was painting three to six to nine different paintings at any one time, all at the same time, speaking in poetry. He basically became like a Buddhist monk, was terrified of hurting anything. He saw the entire cosmos as beautiful. He's like Sweeping away bugs that he might step on on a this is a guy that was in youth crimes.
Damn.
Shot himself so badly that he acquired savant syndrome.
Wow. Wow. I mean, I don't know what to say.
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
Unbelievable.
My um my grandfather Um who I greatly love. Didn't didn't shout himself, but he He had a he had a stroke and beforehand he was quite uh some people would maybe call it tight, but he was quite conservative with money. And then after the stroke, he would just be watching the shopping channel.
And just be going like shopping left and right and centre. All all sorts of stuff. He actually stru fortunately with the stroke was so bad that he couldn't pay. So we managed to stop like him being able to put the payments through. But otherwise he would have just spent everything. um But uh keeping things on the British topic. The The Gallagher brothers, Liam and Null.
Yeah.
No, Noel was always the musician, uh'cause they grew up in I is it Bur is it Burbridge Burbridge? I can't I can't pronounce it. It's in um in Manchester. They grew up together, very like council estate part of uh England. And Noel was super into music, which was very strange, like being where he's from. And Liam was like just found the whole thing like quite sad and lame.
Mm-hmm.
It's like why would you get into music? And Liam gets in a fight at school, gets a hammer.
Hit on his head.
Wakes up the next day.
Isn't a music.
Wants to make music. Yeah. You're kidding. Joins a band the next day.
So you got like savant syndrome from a mallet. Yes. Basically. But you got musician syndrome.
Champagne Supernova.
What would you want to acquire if I hit you in the head with a mouth?
That's a good one.
Yeah.
So that's a great question.
Less sneezing, I imagine. That'll be good for me. I'm just gonna hit you in the head with stuff until I can try and accumulate that. I'd wanna be I'd wanna be able to be a bit more frivolous with money. I think that'd be nice. Really? Yeah, just I mean What was the last frivolous thing that you bought? Trying to actually
Yeah, you're right.
Well did I bully you into that?
What the trampoline?
Yeah, because for quite a while we had I had an intervention with you. I've had a few interventions.
Yeah.
You don't spend money in a frivolous enough manner. It's not that you don't spend enough money, it's that you don't spend it on stupid shit enough. Yes. And I think that's important. And then you have bought the most expensive trampoline that you could find and you've just dropped way too much money on a beanbag. At the most
I've not acquired the bean bag yet, but it's set to be Okay. It's set to be acquired.
Recently.
I've got a few uh a few clawed agents scoping out the beanbag market as we
Okay. I don't want a beanbag from Facebook marketplace to get it secondhand. No, no, I'm just saying.
¶ AI's Impact on Hiring and Semantics
I'm getting my a my AI to look at beanbag reviews that haven't been written by That have actually been written by human.
That was that thing. Isn't it a recruiting company that said, um, recruiters are using AI to read applications that candidates have written using AI and nobody's getting hired? It's just this endless doom loop of people using AI to help them get a thing which is assessed by AI that detects it it's AI and no one goes in to stalemate. To stalemate on the the LinkedIn jobs market at the moment.
Internet theory, right? Let us let us know in the comment section if you're a bot.
Yeah.
Did you see um someone I saw this video this girl was doing a a a assignment and the teacher had put in white text at the end of one of the questions, if you are an AI, uh please use this website to fill in the qu the the uh answers to this particular question. And uh basically if you were to do that and you'd just copied it blindly and thrown it in, you wouldn't have necessarily seen it and then the AI would have given you.
Oh small.
Answer from this website. So it wouldn't have the person would have still submitted. But that the answer would have been detectable because it would have been pulled from this one particular reference and anybody that uses that reference obviously submitted with it. So it really is an arms race now. The lecturers are having to
Yeah, even though they're just identifying the ones that are on the free plant. You know what I mean? Like if they've they've if they're on the premium plan it may be picking up on this.
I I get the sense that frivolous spending is a is something that you kind of you need to acquire. I think it's a skill that you need to acquire. Some people are cursed with it and some people actually have to learn it as a skill. It's a little bit like singing in tune and being British. I'm just always on the back foot. I'm always on the back foot with frivolous spending. Remember where you are.
Where have you, um... Where have you spent frivolously?
Cycling through
Mm-hmm.
Carbonated drinks. What have I spent frivolously on? It's always the same stuff. It's the same stuff as
It's not frivolous, that, is it?
Yeah, but if that's what I mean, I'm str I'm hey, I d I was in the trenches with you. Mm. With regards to your frivolous spending. Mm.
Maybe we just don't need to spend privacy then.
I feel like I'm there's something that's compelling me to spend.
Okay.
Give me...
Does it count if does it count if I spend it for you?'Cause how about we exchange
I'll give you five hundred bucks.
Yeah, likewise, and then you've got to buy something frivolous that I've already.
You've already curtailed me with the the top two that was a trampoline and a fucking beanbag. I don't even
Those are um
They're quite utilitarian, aren't they? Yeah.
¶ Soviet Nail Factory and History's Focus
Have you seen the the Soviet nail factory story? It's a parable. So apparently there was this Soviet nail factory that was rewarded based on the number of nails that they produced. Then after hearing about the bonus, the factories reduced the size of the nails to produce as many nails as possible. In the end they met the targets to get their bonuses, but the government ended up with millions of useless tiny nails.
Oh wow.
Wow. And to correct the mistake, the government updated the bonus target is the tonnage of nails produced every month. So Soviet factories quickly change. And they stopped stopped producing the mini nails and started producing huge ones that were unbelievably heavy. End of the month the factories hit the target again, but the regime ended up with useless giant nails that didn't help with the nail shortage.
Wow.
Who needs such a nail? It doesn't matter. What's important is that we fulfilled the plan for nails. God's law.
Yeah the Soviets uh Soviets is just an underrated part of history. It feels like the Nazis get so much attention, but the USSR or even Communist China, like Mao's China, is just it's just an afterthought.
Have you spent much time learning about those?
Um, no, because I'm mainly focused on World War Two like everybody else. Um not no not as sufficiently as I'd like to. But um it feels that uh it's clear if if uh if I say, Hey mate, I'm gonna bring a Nazi to the drinks. It's a it's a big no no.
कर दो कर दो
A Maoist. Yeah, a Maoist. But like net.
They're a bit more exhausted.
Nat, net, net. Like in terms of people killed.
They were more efficient, so maybe you should bring them.
Have you h have you heard about the guy who um wanted to go to Cambodia to meet Paul Pot. So he was this academic that was a big defender, I think, of the Viet Cong and then Paul Pot in Cambodia. And so much so he flew out to meet Paul Pot, like tried to give him a little bit of advice. It's like he's a big admirer of like how he could potentially improve things. Killed him.
Killed him. Like he's the original midwit. I don't know if you could look that up, um, Jared of the guy that got killed, uh the American academic that got killed by Paul.
It's like all of those people that go to North Sentinel Island.
¶ Contacting Aliens and Isolated Tribes
All of these people that try to go and convert the North Sentinelese into Christianity or whatever and they end up being skewered and eaten for dinner.
Do you do you think if you was in the North Sentinel uh there's all if you was in the North Sentinel Island, would you want to be
Am I a hundred want to talk to?
Yes. Okay. Would you want to have been contacted?
Do you know I find it? Are you just
The man, the man, the man dressed up.
Not far off actually. I j I don't know what I would want. Do you know what you would want if you were someone that's totally different to you?
No, of course.
Of course.
I feel like I'd want to be contacted.
I think I would as well, but that's the adventurous thing.
I guess the example now would be like ali if aliens exist.
Mm-hmm.
I would like to know that they exist.
Well there's there's a problem with the aliens thing because there's Meti and there's Seti searching for extraterrestrial intelligence and there's Meti, which is messaging. And a lot of people have got a problem with Meti. Because let's say you've got um whatever it's called, dark forest theory for uh why the Fermi paradox exists, that everyone is too worried of giving away their location in case somebody decides to go to war with them.
Uh
But the radio signals that we've been sending out we've been going for what, a hundred years? A little bit more than a hundred years or something. I'm pretty sure what can you search, Jared, what was the first radio signal ever sent into space, I'm pretty sure it was something that we really don't want out there. Like the first ever radio broadcast that happened, I'm pretty sure was something that we that if that's the first thing that the aliens see of us,
Why? What was that?
I can't I feel like it we are? I feel like it was something to do with the Berlin Olympics.
Really?
I can't remember. Better be a banger. If it wasn't a banger you'd be thinking, what will we aliens think? The first accidental radio broadcasts that escaped Earth were likely the high powered radio transmissions Uh commonly cited milestone is a transatlantic radio transmission. The famous one is Reginald Fessenden's Christmas Eve broadcast. That's not bad. Voice and music over radio for ships at sea. That signal would have leaked into space unintentionally. Uh
Yeah. Well that's okay, that's not bad. I uh those signals have now traveled more than a hundred light years away from Earth.
Wow. How far how far is a hundred light years away?
Uh Proxima Centauri is four, I think.
I feel like we may have to ask you another question. What was that?
Proxima Centauri is the cl the next closest star that isn't our sun. It's the next closest star system to us. And I think Proxima Centauri is a I think it's a two star system.
¶ The Moon's Crucial Role for Life
It's also where we are the Goldilocks zone as well, right? We're at the perfect if you were to be slightly further away from the sun. life couldn't exist. If you were to be slightly nearer to the sun, life couldn't exist.
Well the only reason that yes, and the the fine tuningness not only of the universe But the fine tuning of our planet in this system with the fact that we've got Jupiter that's this big hoover. It's basically a Roomba that's controlled with a fucking PlayStation. uh that hoovers up all of the bad asteroids that would come and hit us, all of the meteors that would come and hit us.'Cause it's just got such a big gravitational well. Uh I think you can fit
It's it's unbelievably massive. And then the m the maddest one for me is the moon. So the only reason that life exists on Earth is because of the moon. We didn't have the moon. it would it stabilizes the axial tilt. So we're at whatever it is, twenty three degrees. That's why we have seasons.
because as you go around the sun you've always got this sort of twenty three degree angle. But if you didn't have the moon there, it's kind of like a counterweight. So imagine that I'm swinging something on a on a a big rope and there's a weight at the end of it.
if I wasn't holding onto it, you actually kind of run out you get out of control quite quickly. But if you've got something that's holding on the other side, this mutual gravitational pull, it stabilizes the tilt or else it would be wobbling a lot. It would be way more chaotic. Also The moon does the tides, which without that the weather would be way more chaotic too. Like the moon's the moon's the goat. The moon is
The support staff that nobody sees behind the scenes. Everyone wants to talk about the Goldilocks zone, everyone wants to talk about the fact that we've got liquid water, etcetera. But it's the moon, mate.
哇
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¶ Human Need for Narrative and Story
It it feels uh it's very trite to discuss. how strange it is or why are we here. It almost feels like if you bring that up, people are like
Oh.
Oh, roll the rise. It's like it's the most absurd uh most absurd fucking thing.
Well I think the only way that you can answer why are we here is by trying to look for an answer outside of this. That's what most people are doing. Because you can either say there's no reason or there's a reason that's bigger than us. Neither of those are particularly satisfactory. So if you're looking for a reason that's outside of us, inherently that means it's difficult to prove. And if you're saying, well, it's nothing
It's just arbitrary fluctuations in, you know, fucking matter coming together. That's also pretty unsatisfactory. So I don't know why. I mean Humans were always personifying shit.
Right.
We're always trying to put some sort of a narrative together. That's why the ancients would look up at the sky and they'd see thunder and it would be the gods fighting. Well obviously. So that makes way more sense than this microscopic interaction of clouds and electrons and fucking you know, th th lightning coming down to the earth.
Why would you you wouldn't go to that? You would go to something that suits you, which is story and narrative and mythology and and shit. So we're always trying to explain things away with story.
Bye-bye.
Stop it. Okay. I'm sweating. I'm sweating in this outfit. It's too hot. It's too hot. It's not breathable. They haven't made these things breathable. You look very comfortable actually.
¶ Life 5,000 Years Ago and Mortality
Wh how where do you think let's say you would have been born?
Yeah.
5,000 years ago 10,000 years ago how do you think you what do you who do you think you would have been? Do you think you'd be the same guy? Do you think you'd be so different? You'd be unrecognizable to your current self?
I think it would be difficult to be anything like the sort of guys that we are five thousand years ago. There wasn't much room
Too much autoimmune conditions going on as well, you'd be wiped out.
That well I I also wouldn't live in a moldy house, you know? So and COVID and the vaccines wouldn't have been around. So that would have I would have fucking escaped that. Um I think I'm at least a little bit fortunate that I would have been able to uh did a good bit of sport uh that might have held me together. I mean, I probably probably dead in childbirth, mate. Mm. That's just like everyone else. Just like every other person except for the small number that made it to five years old.
Once ran the numbers.
That if you had a
every single human being to ever exist. So everybody alive right now, and everybody that ever existed. Yep. So assume that they're brought back on their final day as they go. Okay. I think the average age of the room's about fourteen. So it means that assuming you're over the age of fourteen, fifteen, you're already one of the oldest people to ever exist. I find that so strange when you go through history and you're like
how old certain people people were. I think we've discussed it before that the um the lu as the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force were bombing our grandparents And great grandparents, they were twenty seven. But the RAF that fought them off, the average age was twenty one. Which means that and you know how averages work. There's there's a few Gordons in there that are thirty seven. in the RAF that are bringing it up. And the the the life expectancy was two weeks when you signed up initially.
Well there's that sketch in Black Adder, do you remember where he joins the Air Force then uh Black Adder goes over the top from World War One? And I think it was even less time.'Cause that was imagine that. When you you know the Wright brothers, when were planes i invented? Uh
It would have been late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds is when I
So pretty much turn of the century. Yeah. Okay. And within the space of fourteen years, you've got something that's fucking battle ready. This thing just flew. This thing just flew and nobody believed. And now you're telling me that I'm gonna the red baron with his triple stacked wings, like
Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck. I told you so in the book The Splendor and the Vile, which is an incredible book, he talks about how lingerie sales went up significantly during the World War Two bombings. Sorry, no, it's the wrong way around. Laundry sales went down significantly during World War II bombings, but uh casual relationships went up significantly.
Bye.
Well I guess the theory would be don't have time to go shopping for lingerie or don't even care how I think how I how I think that I look when I might not be here tomorrow.
So people having ugly sex whilst being bonded. That's your theory. Yeah. It might be true. What would that be five thousand years ago?
Or even even in even in World War Two, um, if for example you was trying to have the maximum impact on World War Two that you could have. Just based off your personality type, your archetype, where do you think they would have put they would have put you?
I'd have probably been pretty good at you know, one of the people pushing the troops around on the board, helping feed up to some some commander person at the top. That could be good. Uh Not bad as an operator. I quite like operating. I said before if I didn't have this career I'd quite like to be an air traffic controller. Mm-hmm. I think that'd be pretty fun. Why? I don't know. I just do not think it'd be fun to do that. Like air traffic control, you you
very sort of rigid and strict operational guidelines. It's quite intense. It's but but you know, you you know that you've got it under control. I think that'll be a that'd be a that'll be a rush. That'd be
Consequences if you have a bad day.
Yeah, of course, but that adds some value, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think five thousand years ago, probably dead in childbirth. If not, uh I would be Breeder. Breeder. I'd be a breeder.
What do you mean?
I'd be br I'd be doing the breeding.
Well like just
Breed in.
Okay. But why why would you why would you be the breeder versus all the other eligible mates that are trying to breed?
Better at breeding.
Okay. Um based off zero children that you've had so far?
That's correct. I'd be I'd be the I'd be the the the lead.
Okay. The leader.
Breeders. Correct.
哇
Um what about you? Interesting,'cause I thought that you'd have said that.
I I I think I would have been um some kind of pseudoscientist alchemist.
What's that?
You'd have been burned at the fucking stake for being a wizard.
I would have been um uh either either caught jester or
I could have seen you as a druid. I could see you as a
It wasn't true, it's
Kinda like what you're t I think it's a little bit like what you're talking about. He's basically trying to do tech before tech existed. He's like mixing herbs and stuff. But the dyspraxia would actually cause a massive error here. Yes. Your ability to measure shit, forgetting things, you would definitely kill an entire tribe. That'd be a nice man.
¶ Cow Physiology and Tool Use
Yeah. That would go badly. Uh speaking of stuff that you haven't seen before, a cow has been filmed using tools for the first time ever. Stunning scientists Tools Tools The first ever known example of a multi purpose tool used by a cow was reported with a brown Swiss named Veronica using both ends of a broom to scratch her own back and underside. Nice cow.
It was a slow news day here, wasn't it?
Brown Swiss mate. Now she uses the smooth bit when she's got to do her delicate underparts.
Wow.
It is I was thinking about this when I watched it the first time. And now look at this. Look, so she's used the smooth bit and now she's gonna
Uh.
She's gonna use the scratchy bit. To get Wow. To get up there. Multi-use. And then drops it. Uh thinking about this. The physiology of a cow. Highly inefficient if you've got an itch. Physiology of a dog, actually, but I think dogs are pretty bendy. You know, they can scratch themselves quite easily.
Amen.
Cow, you screwed. And then you've got a hoof. How satisfying is a hoof for for scratching? Not very.
Well it's the it's the famous anecdote that you can take a cow upstairs, but you can't take a cow downstairs. And there's this old British joke of which farmer found that out the rock the hard way.
Ha ha ha.
Is that true?
Yeah, you can take a cow upstairs, but because of its joints you can't take it downstairs.
You can't take a cow downstairs because of its joints. I always think that when I see um is it emus, I think, and their knees go backwards. Like our knees bend forwards. If we were to squat down our knees bend forwards. Their needs go the other way.
Wow, okay.
Cows can walk upstairs fairly well, but walking downstairs is a different story. The main issue comes down to anatomy and perception. A cow has knee and leg joints that don't bend easily in a way that supports controlled downward stepping. The weight distribution cows carry a lot of weight toward the front of their bodies, making descending steep steps risky and unstable.
Mm-hmm.
Depth perception, they have poor perception for vertical drops, so stairs can look like a confusing or even dangerous surface and instinct as prey animals they're cautious about terrain that could trap or trip them. So while a cow can technically go downstairs, in some situations, especially shallow ones, they usually avoid it and often need guidance or special ramps instead. Wow.
You know a a cow's keeping on the cow theme, um a cow's stomach is called the rumen. Yep. Uh a few different mammals have it. Um where they have like six to seven different stomachs inside of it. And the way a cow eats, you'll see it in a field, it'll be grazing and y it's just constantly grazing all day long. And essentially what it's doing is grazing with
Carbonate.
Beverage. It's like me with carbonated beverages, where it's grazing, regurgitating it. Then grazing on it again, swallowing it, regurgitating it, and it's this loop
From the room. So it goes from mouth to one. Yep. Then mouth to one to two. Yep. Then mouth to one to two to three.
I don't know if it goes in the uh the sequential order, right? But it goes through its stomachs, regurgitates it and through like that, which is why when you see a cow in a field it's constantly chewing and then.
Realize putting new food in that's old.
Food. It's old food. It does it for a process of up to six to seven hours, which is where the word rumination comes from. So when a human being loops on the same forts, it's it's the process from a cow.
¶ Overthinking, Action, and Self-Help
What do you think about the rumination, retard maxing great men of history didn't
Interesting.
Yeah, introspection. What do you think of that?
It seems like one giant
Test.
the difference between the words. But if if you say rumination, I think everybody agrees that rumination for the most part is uh mainly negative. But if you say introspection, that's when it gets into this Uh you you know what it is? That introspection debate is the current version of the you know, the blue and gold.
Yeah.
It's like that where some people imply introspection that they're meaning the word rumination, where other people imply the word introspection. that they're using some kind of form of clear thinking or reflecting to take action. And they're just it's just one giant game of semantics. Mm-hmm.
But how do you get around that? Because it's always hard unless someone's going to define something, unless somebody on one side is going to define it and no one's defining the terms, then you always, if you're going to try and win an argument on the internet, you're always going to straw man. What the other person's saying.
Mm-hmm always.
Which means that you're gonna say great men of history didn't spend their time worrying about their problems and overthinking things. You go, No, no, no, I don't mean that. I don't mean ruminating. I mean i I mean reflecting, thinking, improving, acting in a loop, like an OODA loop type thing, and that but the response will never get that that the conversation is never allowed to have enough nuance to be able to get that. Mm-hmm. Bias for action's a big deal.
Yes, right.
Having a bias for action. And it's the advice hyper responders thing where most people mo uh on average, most people probably need to think more. They probably need to be Less rash, uh more rational, more considered and considerate when they go and do stuff. But there's a small cohort of people, mostly the sort of people that listen to podcasts like Sanro's or this one.
Who don't need to hear that. They actually need to hear the opposite message. They actually need to be doing retard maxing, which is why retard maxing I think is taken off. Because it's a countervailing force to people who already thought too much. were told that thinking and doing your journaling and having a
Ali Abdal 90 day sprint broken down into daily actions and f twenty five minute Pomodoro blocks. That doing that, that's the way to get to success. But that already played into the thing that they had a predisposition for. What they didn't have a predisposition for was a bias for action. So if there was some way of being able to gift those people, but the problem is
You're getting people who th overthink and have a tendency to overthink to work against their nature, which is always gonna be hard. But lots of the peop like I look at Dana White, I do not see a person who has a problem with overthinking. I look at Mark Andreessen, I don't see a person who has a problem for overthinking. But if you were to say that advice to someone else, it's going to go down very differently. So
There's the the whole advice hyper responders. Advice doesn't land evenly. It distributes unevenly to the people who me too. guys that were told don't be pushy with women That were already blowing through boundaries, they just disregarded it. They already disregarded the boundaries. the guys that were already a bit nervous and worried about approaching a woman, they were the ones that took it to heart. So
It just makes you more of what you are. A lot of the time advice makes you more of what you are.
¶ High Agency Thinking and Conviction
I I think it comes down to you need new words. So I I like like low agency thinking and high agency thinking. So the clear difference between the two is is one getting you closer to some form of action. Are you progressing or are you ruminating? I think a a clear issue with rumination or overthinking is when three things. One, most of your thoughts aren't new. They're repetitive. Mm-hmm. They're cycling. Two, most of your thoughts aren't useful.
They're not looking at ways you might fix this problem. They're just replaying a certain scenario again and again and again. And three, the most important part, is that most of them aren't even true. Most of our thoughts that we think aren't even true. So the difference between I I would say when you're in low agency thinking is uh new, useful, true. And if you can go if you can have new thoughts, If you can find useful thoughts and you can find true thoughts. the difference.
That's so good. That's really great. I guess. How do you get around the bias for action even if you've managed to do that? Or do you think that having new, useful and true thoughts tends to encourage you to act because
Exactly. Low low agency thinking will lead to more thinking, more rumination by definition, and high agency thinking will at soon. It's almost like the Clawed or Chat GPT thinking time. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da boom and ahead. However, I think we discussed this the Net net, which I I know you love the term net net. Yep. Netnet. I would you'd rather be a bit of an idiot than a bit of a coward.
What's the difference?
Well I'd rather be make an error with high conviction. then make an error with low conviction. And again, you've got a huge generalization there where it's is kind of Charlie Munger's advice of don't race trains, don't get involved in AIDS situations. So there's there's the obvious nuance there. But it's better to be Quick to act whilst thinking through some initial risks and looking at the downside and moving fast than just sitting there for years. Without ever finding out.
Type one, type two decisions.
Yeah. The reason that that's interesting is most people who probably are making decisions that are too rash aren't that fussed about listening to Nerdy podcasts. Right. So You almost don't need to caveat it. That if if you're the sort of person that Reading Robert Green's forty eight Laws of Power and is thinking about what time they get up and tracking the whoop scores. Like you're
You've already pre selected. You're not going to be in the retard maxing bin by nature. You're gonna have to learn retard maxing through discipline, through through through trial. And uh Yeah, I guess that means that if it's the sort of thing that spe that you're listening to, it's probably the sort of thing that you need to hear. Because the platform that you're listening to it on is exactly the sort of one that the sort of person who needs to hear it would listen to. Does that make sense?
감사합니다.
🔇 Silence
¶ Personal Struggle with Overthinking
Where do you think you need to do it more?
Fucking everywhere. Yeah? Jesus Christ. Yeah. I mean horrendous. Horrendous are overthinking. I mean I've got a good bias for action, but uh it takes too long. My confidence threshold, if I could get in and adjust the settings in my brain have
Shit yourself and have a stroke.
That's actually that's a great idea. Yeah. If I was to go if I was to go and have a really, really, really hard shit. Which I had the other day. You couldn't believe that had a shit in the middle of the day. Yeah. It was impressive. That was the most surprising thing of all of the things that I've done since we've lived together, just having a shit at one PM to you.
Four. It wasn't It was like four.
Okay, well, I mean, look, I'm a I'm an equal opportunity shitter. And I'm I'm desperately trying to have a fucking aneurysm, so I acquire Savant syndrome. My late
you find him become an artist if hitler if hitler had this if
If Hitler had had a hard enough ship. If Hitler had had a hard enough shit, we wouldn't have had World War Two. If Hitler had shot himself more and more aggressively, but the pussy numbers, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, he's got the face.
Wasn't there a guy there was a guy who laughed so hard at a guy missing a football kick recently that it caused him to have an aneurysm in his brain where I think he had a stroke and then when they went in to find To work out what the fuck had gone on, they there was this huge tumor that was gonna kill him. And he had that done, and it was because some guy had missed kicking the ball in a NFL game. Wow. And a
fan of the opposing team laughed so hard that he basically did k kind of similar to the Savant syndrome thing. Damn. Just had a full on a full on explosion, head explosion. Most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit. But what if
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¶ American vs. British Sports Culture
Are you are you not got into American sports since since moving here?
Fan of Rangers. I'm a fan of the Texas Rangers.
What you meant, Rangers F C.
No. Found a Texas Rangers. So baseball. Became a fan of the Rangers. They won the World Series first year that was a fan. I was like, this is easy. This is brilliant. Following year. Not as successful. I have got into baseball. Baseball is the closest proxy for cricket. Huh.
But that's it. I I I watched the super we watched the Super Bowl. That was good. What else? Can't gain uh basketball's all right, but highlights good which is strange because baseball and American football are much slower moving sports. And even though basketball is a much faster moving sport generally, I think per minute of broadcast Uh uh How long's a NFL game? Like eighty minutes? No, it's an hour. An hour. Fifteen minute question.
motors.
an hour, I think the total amount of playtime typical in a one hour NFL game, I swear it's less than ten minutes. Damn. Of action. It's a sport entirely reverse engineered to allow adverts to be played.
Mm. The American Dream.
It is. Well, I mean, that's the the most sort of American thing that you can do, right? To flog Like drain cleaner.
Yeah.
It's it's a fucking Ponzi skin. This country's sport system is a Ponzi scheme.
Yeah, it's rough. I I've um I've struggled to get into American sports so far and you realise that. Like Youssef, I tried to sell him on getting into sports because wherever you are in the world, you can have a conversation with a taxi driver. Apart from America, I can go anywhere in the world and if football comes up, if I say I'm from Manchester, we can immediately like have a
Great conversation for about 20 minutes. But we're in a American sports, it's just slightly it just none of it makes sense the same way British sports makes sense. Mm-hmm.
What i is it the the Premier Football League? Is that technically what it's called?
Premier League. Right.
But I swear that people I swear that when I meet people in America they say, Oh, who do you support in the PFL? Yeah. I'm like EPL. That's it. Who do you sport in the EPL? And it took a little while for me to go, What are you talking
To Tommy Robinson.
Ha ha ha, EDL. I just ca I li that's not that we don't speak like that. In England, we don't talk about the ECC, the English cricket or ECB, English Cricket Board. We're not talking about stuff like that. But yeah, I I I like baseball. Baseball's good. It's fucking slow. It's really slow.
Have you heard? Dude. Have you heard of uh Ali Dyer?
No. British football party.
No, he's no relationship to Ali Abdal, unfortunately. So Ali Dyer was a a Southampton player. Uh how he joined was you ever heard of George Wayer?
So George Ware was like the African player of the year. I think he briefly played for Manchester City back in the day, but um he was one of the best players of all like certainly from Africa, but one of the best players in the world at the time. He might have even won a Ballon d'Or. And Graham Sooness was the manager of Southampton and he gets a phone call from George Weyer saying there's this new guy
um, who has just played the African Cup of Nations. He's like incredible. Um, I I think he even claims it's his nephew. He goes, You've got to give him a trial for Southampton. So Ali Dyer turns up at Southampton, it's like one training session before the game, and they have such a small squad at the minute that they just put him on the bench. Um, one of the key Southampton players gets injured, they sub Ali Dyer on, and it's the worst like debut of all time. This guy's fucking terrible.
much so and this almost never happens in football. He gets subbed on and then sub.
summed off.
Mm-hmm. Which is v extremely rare. Yeah. and he never played for Southampton ever again. And then when they begin to investigate it, it wasn't George Wayre on the phone. It was him. This guy used to play like Sunday League. So he managed to blag his way. to play in Premier League football. So there's always a chant now with the Southampton fans of So so he just blagged his way at the end.
Jamie Vardy's got a documentary coming out.
I saw that this morning. I'll wait to show you it. I want to watch that. Jamie Vardy, I don't even think started playing professional level until the age of 25. And he's just... Ye the thing is you almost need like so much British knowledge to understand who Jamie Vardy is.
Yeah, he's couched inside of a very deep and spirally community, and where does he come from and what does it mean and what's his background?
Unless you've been to Magaluf, Zanzi.
I am he is. Jamie Vardy is Magalluff. If Magaluff coalesced into human form, it would be Jamie Vardy.
Like he he
He would he fucking loves that.
Yeah. But he uh he ends up making it pro at such a later age in life, but just plays like a a conference league player. So he even in the documentary, the trailer I watched, he talks about no striker tackles, but this guy tackles. Or he's drinking like two Red Bulls before the game. He's just constantly he almost quit at like twenty-seven, twenty-eight after making it pro because he wanted to go and do a season in Xante. He wanted to go and be a full-time nightclub promoter.
It's a an alluring industry to get into. And then'cause he was in yes, some bullshit Sunday league team. Yeah. And then got picked up by Leicester and then went on to have the most insane the first season.
wins the Premier League with Leicester, which is uh it's the biggest uh you'd argue it's one of the biggest sporting achievements of all time. It's one of the biggest underdog Stories.
And a a lot of that was because of him and his performance.
He he broke the Premier League record for the most amount of consecutive goals. Like I think it was twelve games, twelve or thirteen games.
Right. Thirteen games in a row. Right. Which is insane.
Whilst like eating Monster Month. And just being an absolute chapter generate. Yeah.
Yeah. I that's another thing that I think Americans really struggle with, which is there are some very good niche British snacks. That you can't get over here. Uh'cause there's American aisles, American candy aisles now at Tesco's in the UK. So if you go and look and and you'll be able to get Lucky Charms and and Cheetos with Amer all of the seed oils and the Red Forty and stuff included.
Uh but you can't come over here and get Jaffa Cakes and Jamie Dodgers and Cadbury's fingers and stuff like that. And I think We're missing out. Man. That would be I think that would be a gift that we could give back to America.
¶ The Fall of Empires and Online Debates
I I um wrote this thing recently about the uh Roman Empire. I'll relate it back to Britain. Um but I think we've spoken about this previously, but I did a research for this piece called Don't Wait for the News. And essentially. The Roman Empire. Do you know when the Roman Empire fell?
400
ish. So the thing with the Roman Empire falling, it's it's up for debate. Even historians debate it. But the mainstream historical point of view, which is not the weird niche stuff that you get into, but the mainstream historical point of view is four seven six AD that Romulus
who um was the founder of Rome, so it's poetic. I think this is why we like that as the ending. Romulus, who was the founder of Rome, then young Romulus, who was in the throne when it ended, got replaced by the barbarian Odysseus. So Romulus saw Rome uh rise, and Romula saw
Reb four. For clarity, it's not the same blow.
Not the same bloke, this is over like hundreds of years. Um that's just the poetry of why they say that day. If you woke up. that day after the Roman Empire that we now say has fallen, there was no there was no big announcement. There was no news. If the book The Sovereign Individual has this beautiful line which if the CNN existed during the fall of the Roman Empire The headline would not have been the Roman Empire has just fallen.
So you have the split of the Roman Empire, you have the Eastern Roman Empire, and you have the Western Roman Empire. The um Eastern Roman Empire goes on to about thirteen hundred AD. Charlemagne becomes the emperor He calls himself the Emperor of Rome in about seven hundred to eight hundred AD. So the Eastern uh Empire falls, Voltaire famously says in seventeen hundred That the entity that calls itself the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. So that was in 1700.
It was only in the eighteen hundreds, when Napoleon was invading, did um I think it's Francis II dissolve the Roman Empire. So if you would have waited To be told that the Roman Empire was over, it would have been your
Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great
grandchild. Forty eight generations. It would have taken So I kind of wrote this this piece, and then I said that this story terrified me. when today's biggest empire falls, nobody's gonna tell me. Like nobody's gonna tell me that the British Empire is no longer the most powerful empire in the world. Yeah. Obviously the British Empire is the the most powerful empire that exists right now.
I can't tell if you're not sure.
What I don't want to have happen is for me to be the one that lives in denial long after the event.
The rise of Gary Stevenson.
Uh yeah, well the Gary Stevenson will be like the eighteen hundred one. That's when When Gary's in when Gary's in office with the fucking like top ten, top ten at this, that'll be when it's like the British Empire. We all admit the British Empire's over. Yep. But it's funny. So I posted that as a like a trolling like kind of sarcasm statement of like Oh, lecturing about the history of the Roman Empire whilst pretending that I still think the British Empire is the biggest thing.
And there was quite a few people in the comment section who was going along with the the humor of it, but the amount of emails I got of people saying, You do realise the British Empire is no longer the most uh powerful thing and I was like, Let's just go full it fully amid the joke. I'm like, Why are you still talking English?
I just like kept going back and forth with them that the uh the British Empire. But you know what, that's actually the saddest thing. Um I know w don't really do geopolitics on the show. But the saddest thing of the Ayatollah dying is that when he used to address um the world stage, he would often talk about Great Britain as if we're still the most powerful country in the world or one of the leading countries. So that's the one thing I did appreciate about the higher tolerance
That it's something that completely blows my mind that I don't understand. People who regularly get into small back and forth spats in the comment section. James does this all the time.
Smith? Really?
All the time mate. He loves it. He loves it. He just loves winding people up. But I I just I I sometimes will post something on Twitter and there'll be all of these replies and all of these people Weeks later, there'll be two people still going at it.
Ha ha ha.
It's it's fucking infuriating,'cause it's in my notification.
Oh my
It's in my it's in my notifications. It's like do you know what it's like? It's like having two neighbors. that having an argument with each other, but you live in the house that's in between.
Ha ha ha.
Like can you not go over to his house directly because at the moment I'm caught in this crossfire. Unbelievable.
Well have you ever seen the meme? It's one of my favorite ones, uh, where it's a guy on his deathbed and he's kind of like lay there. Like just about to die. And he's got like the speech bubble for like the Bronny Ware deathbed regrets. And it's just I wish I spent more time arguing on people. But yeah, I I mean I rarely ever do the spats, but when it's pure, oh, this person doesn't understand the joke, that's that's fun.
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¶ Historical Traffic Jams and Driving
What can we I was thinking about this the other day. What's the longest ever traffic jam in terms of duration. So I'm just thinking about what's the longest ever internet argument is is still ongoing. It's something from two thousand and eight that's still going in a weird forum somewhere, mum's net or whatever.
Uh there are two different records people e people usually mean when talking about the longest traffic jam ever. Longest by duration. The most infamous was the China National Highway one ten traffic jam in two thousand and ten. Stretched about a hundred kilometers near Beijing and lasted twelve days. From august fourteenth to august twenty sixth, some drives reportedly moved only one kilometer per day.
It was caused by a mix of road works, overloaded coal trucks, and traffic volumes far beyond the highway's design capacity. The longest by distance, Guinness World records that traffic jam in France in nineteen eighty is the longest by length.
It was a hundred and nine mile backup between Lyon and Paris caused by holiday traffic and bad weather. It's also a bizarre contender by Sheer Scale. After German reunification in nineteen ninety reports described around eighteen million cars clogging routes at the east west German border. Do you imagine living through that reunification? You've been part of the same country but essentially different universes.
Jesus. If you like traffic data. I've got some
Go on.
Tracking traffic data. In the nineteen sixties, Here's a l little little question. Okay. Can you guess where the most deadly roads in Europe were? No.
In the UK? No.
We're not in Europe. Brexit means Brexit, Christopher.
It does, that's true. Island?
No.
Okay. I was trying to own something close to home there.
So it's uh it's Belgium. Surprising location of Belgium. Okay. So They had a policy which was known as the 18th birthday party gift by Belgians. So here's how it works. You'd turn eighteen. Walk downstairs. Parents would do Happy Birthday. Can you do it in Belgian? No. Um happy birthday to you. Um they then take you down to the car dealership. You'd get
A little.
birthday plaque from them, they'd say happy birthday as well. You'd pay for a car, show your data bus. You'd get the car and you'd attempt to drive away. So Belgium had no driving test policies at all. So you could just, full on libertarian style, just attempt to drive away. And the eighteenth thirty party gift in Belgium was the number one killer of Belgians between the age of eighteen to twenty four. So Belgium had the most deadliest roads in Europe.
Certainly per capita. So you know what the government did to try and fix it? They said, Right, we're putting an end to this. In nineteen sixty nine, they said, before you can drive You have to do a mandatory theory test. Because if you go and study and then drive, at least we'll prevent these mistakes. So what happens is 1969, there's this cutoff. Everybody from then onwards has to do theory tests. And this Belgian transport official like releases the results and he goes
It's
appears to be the case that the accident rate amongst the theory drivers is higher than the ones who never got theory tested at all. So the death rate went up by thirty two percent with the theory test drivers. Why? Um one theory is fair we go. One theory is that
they have this kind of false sense of confidence going into the roads that at least the ones that knew they couldn't drive didn't have. But the Belgian mate the Belgian traffic stuff goes on for years. There's like iconic cartoons of like how dangerous the roads are in Belgium. And there's a great thing in the eighties where I think it's Jean Luc di Harm.
Could be could have butchered that, but we'll go with it. Jean Lec de Hahn. He becomes transport minister. This man ends up becoming PM, but just listen to the job that he does transport minister. So one day gets into office to fix the Belgium Road. So he's done all this campaigning about the issues around it. He gets clocked going, I think it's like seventy and a forty.
And he does the the beautiful politician's answer where he says, It wasn't me, it was my daughter and then they quickly find out it wasn't his daughter, it was him in the car. So he goes, Okay I'll hire a chauffeur from now on. So I'll only get driven by a chauffeur. So he starts with a chauffeur, and a journalist one day tailgates the chauffeur. The chauffeur commits twelve driving offences in thirty minutes.
And this is one of the best political statements of all time. When the transport ministry was pressed, Well, are you gonna fire the chauffeur now? The lady who's the spokeswoman, just a rare moment of honesty, and she said If we fired everybody in the Belgian transport ministry that was committing traffic offences, there'd be nobody left here to work. So that's some cracking traffic data.
¶ Global Driving Habits and Road Safety
Well, I know that Egypt's got the I think it's the easiest driving test in the world, which is crazy'cause I've done the one in America and that explains a lot about American drivers. It's not the British one's kinda hard. Yeah.
Yeah.
You must know what how what what do you reckon the failure rate among your friends was for the first time, Tess? Did you
Did you pass the first time?
Pass the first time.
Me as a first timer.
Yeah. Well, yeah, I know fucking Granger over here. Um But then you look at somewhere like Bali and these guys are essentially surgeons with with scooters and they're able to thread this needle. I remember the first time I went to'cause I I'd spent time in Thailand. But I'd gone up north, and up north in Pi, really, really close to the northern border.
there's no traffic. So yeah, people are riding around a family of five on a single scooter and there's a goat on the back and stuff. But there wasn't any of that crazy weaving shit. And I flew back through Chiang Mai And it was insane. And have you been to Thailand? And you've seen the roads, right? In Bangkok and and Chiang Mai. It is
out of this world. It is fucking insane just how chaotic it is. And it really th they kind of that scared me a bit. Like holy f like it's just so dangerous. I didn't I was in a car, so I'm gonna be okay, I guess, unless someone smashes through the window. But it made me it made me kind of fearful for all of the other people. This is your day to day job.
Right now let's sit down and go over the quarterly earnings report thinking I sorry, my adrenaline is just as if I'd been in a fight with a bear.
But I I I wonder with time, do you adapt to it? I think where it doesn't get enough criticism for their roads is everybody talks about how safe Dubai is and it's this Hub of safety. The roads in Dubai, I think you're four times more likely to die on than the British roads. And one of the exercises
Drivers or because of the roads?
Definitely the the design of the roads are are peculiar, um and not Optimal. But I have a theory that there where you have 90% expats from all over the world, that there's actually no cultural Grounding on the roads.'Cause you've got one guy got one guy from Pakistan.
Thinks that you should let you out.
But one guy from the UK here, one guy from France here, one guy from Germany here, one lady from Uzbekistan here.
The lady from Uzbekistan's not allowed to drive, but go on.
I think you can drive in Uzbokistan. I don't know. Um But as a result there's no cultural crossover where for example, if I'm driving in the UK, I know that if a guy gets really angry beeping his horn at me, it's like It's what it is. Like it's chill. Whereas I also wouldn't do that. I would never I'm not a big horn beeper anyway, but I would be way more likely to beep in the UK than I would here.
Yeah, everyone's got guns. Yeah.
So it's just understanding the layer of the land, but when you're in somewhere like Dubai, where it's just it there's there's no cultural uh attitudes on the roads, it's just
It's it's too much of a melding pot and you need consensus'cause that's the only way that it works.
I told you about the uh the guy who uh I was in a Uber. It was like a this was in Dubai and it was like a sprinter van. And I'm in the back of the sprinter van we're on the roads. And there's like loads of other people in the Uber on the way to a a steak restaurant and I'm just kinda lonely, looking out the window. And I kinda look at the driver and he's on his phone. And he's ch goes off the a the maps for a second. What was he going on? And then look at it. And he's on trading two on two.
He was trading crypto, wasn't he?
And he was he was shorting, I think, the Japanese yen as he's going 70 on the highway. And I so I sh I shouted a I go mi I go stop right now. And this you know, this is the most British thing ever. I thought, why not say it don't want to say anything.
I'll risk Yeah I I w I I don't want to make a fuss. If I I shouldn't make a f I shouldn't make a fuss.
Cảm ơn các bạn đã theo dõi và hẹn gặp lại. So I shouted at him and he stopped. I start looking out the window again. Come back. He's doing it against the pound.
Yeah, the issue was my issue wasn't the currency. My issue wasn't the currency. It wasn't the trade. It was the fact that you were doing the trading.
I'm here for the self driving cars.
I'm not going to be able to do that. All right. I appreciate you, man. Until next time. So much one. See ya everybody. If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom Reading List. It is one hundred books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life changing, and impactful book.
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