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The Hidden Danger of Accepting Social Norms - George Mack

George Mack is a writer, marketer and entrepreneur. What are the most important questions of our time? Some search for the meaning of life. Others wonder how to leverage California’s gay subsidy. Both are equally valid, but one is definitely more interesting. So what are today’s biggest questions, and do any of the answers actually matter? Expect to learn if AI-generated stories can win awards, what qualifies for California’s gay certification program, who the chicken farmer who fooled Hitler was, why men aren’t great at receiving and expressing their emotions, why George is obsessed with Gymshark’s finances, the best lessons Chris and George have learned from this past year and much more… - Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period from Shopify at https://shopify.com/modernwisdom Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com - 0:00 Who is Cristiano Ronaldo Named After? 3:13 Is This the Worst Walkout Song? 7:41 Should AI Be Winning Writing Awards? 12:46 Beckham vs Pitt: Who Do Women Prefer? 17:43 Do Trends in the East Always Translate to the West? 27:24 The Truth Behind California’s “Gay Certification” 32:02 How a Chicken Farmer Defeated Hitler 38:52 Is This the Greatest Civilian Hero Story? 45:37 Why We Experience Survivor’s Guilt 55:53 Are Men Homophobic or Femmephobic? 01:04:05 Why Cash Flow Cycles Matter More Than You Think 01:09:27 The Life Lessons You Come Back to Most 01:22:08 Where to Find George - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Chris WilliamsonhostGeorge Mackguest
Jul 16, 20261h 22mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 3:13

    Who is Cristiano Ronaldo Named After?

    1. CW

      Speaking of football, do you know who Cristiano Ronaldo was named after? Go on. You're a big fan of football. How do you not-- One of the most famous, maybe the most famous player on the planet. Who do you think Cristiano Ronaldo was named after?

    2. GM

      Well, it wouldn't be the Brazilian Ronaldo 'cause he was... They almost overlapped in terms of careers. Oh, is it, uh, Ronald Reagan?

    3. CW

      Yes.

    4. GM

      Yes.

    5. CW

      Yes.

    6. GM

      Wow.

    7. CW

      "My parents named me after Ronald Reagan because they both liked this name and thought it sounded strong," Ronaldo, whose full name is Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro, said in a GQ cover story. Uh, "I know that my father admired him." Ronaldo was born February 5th, 1985, while Reagan was still President of the United States, but according to Ronaldo, his dad was a fan long before then. He told Riley that Reagan was his f- dad's favorite actor. That said, he wasn't too sure how the Republican leader would have felt about Ronaldo's outfit in the GQ cover that accompanied the article. Let's just say it's not very conservative. And that we've got an image of the outfit that, uh, Ronaldo had.

    8. GM

      Oh, wow.

    9. CW

      Ronald Reagan.

    10. GM

      I mean, uh, identical, right? That's, uh, very much nominative determinism right there.

    11. CW

      I forgot 'cause I was [laughs] I was so... I-- Not being in America, too young for it as well, I forgot the fact that Reagan was an actor.

    12. GM

      Mm.

    13. CW

      He was an actor beforehand.

    14. GM

      Yeah.

    15. CW

      Has he been in big movies and stuff?

    16. GM

      I believe so, yeah.

    17. CW

      Oh, okay.

    18. GM

      It's kind of the prequel to, to Trump in a lot of way. There's also, if you like footballers' names, there's a South American player called Osama Vin Laden, whose brother is, I believe, called Saddam Hussein.

    19. CW

      Can you search ChatGPT... And is it V-I-N?

    20. GM

      I think it's Vin Laden and Saddam Hussein, two brothers in South America.

    21. CW

      This does sound too good to be true, and like you've been gazumped by it.

    22. GM

      Well, it's interesting, particularly Br- like Brazilian names, they often decide their own names. So you've ki- you've got, uh, Ronaldinho, Fred, um, Hulk, great name.

    23. CW

      Pepe.

    24. GM

      Pepe. Well, Pepe's Portuguese, but they often just... It, it unlike us, they just kind of... They don't often go with their own name.

    25. CW

      Yes.

    26. GM

      There we go.

    27. CW

      There is a Peruvian footballer named Osama Vin Laden. Jiménez López, oftenly [laughs] written simply as Osama Vin Laden. Very good. Uh, he attracted international attention because it sounds almost identical to Osama bin Laden. Uh, actually, in Spanish it's even closer because V and B are pronounced the same.

    28. GM

      Wow.

    29. CW

      Uh, some unusual details that have been widely reported. He said he was named after Osama bin Laden. His brother is named Saddam Hussein, a Spanish spelling of Saddam Hussein. To avoid controversy, his jersey typically displays [laughs] only Osama rather than his full surname. [laughs]

    30. GM

      Wow. Wow.

  2. 3:13 – 7:41

    Is This the Worst Walkout Song?

    1. GM

      Christ.

    2. CW

      What's that story of Rory MacDonald's walkout music?

    3. GM

      Oh, Rory MacDonald, UFC fighter, used to walk out to some of the strangest songs. Um, and people would kinda laugh as he was walking out, like, "Why, why does he have such a weird niche, uh, in music?" And it was... When it came out, uh, he was interviewed, like, "Why are you, are playing out some of these super strange songs?" It would mix from, like, classical music. It would also have... Jared, look it up, like the different Rory MacDonald songs. And when they interviewed him, he's like, "It's not me who's picking the songs. It's the UFC." Then they go to the UFC and say, "Rory's saying you're picking the songs." And it's like, "No, we text him before every single UFC." And when it actually got into it, they were texting his old phone number, which had been given to somebody. If you go on the, uh... Yeah, go on Reddit. So here's the song. So he has a violin orchestra-

    4. CW

      Scroll down

    5. GM

      ... by George Quintero. Uh, One More Road to Cross by DMX. Personal favorite, Can't Touch This by MC Hammer. UFC 133.

    6. CW

      Grew Up a Screw Up by Ludacris.

    7. GM

      You... [laughs] So you got to think. He goes from, uh, Lightwork, Lupe Fiasco. Not a bad song.

    8. CW

      I love the fact he did We Found Love twice in a row.

    9. GM

      We Found Love. [laughs]

    10. CW

      [laughs] Uh, he came out to St. Anger by Metallica twice in a row as well. He came out by 46 and 2 by Tool. That's a fucking slamming... And then Got the Life by Korn. Okay. Uh, but the... So he says the UFC chooses. The UFC says he chooses. What's the truth?

    11. GM

      Well, it was somebody had his old phone number, so the UFC was texting it, and this person was obviously a UFC fan that was kind of in on the joke and just absolutely, uh, went on a rampage for multiple years. What would be the worst song to walk out to for you?

    12. CW

      For me?

    13. GM

      Yeah, or best.

    14. CW

      Well, when I came down the love lift for Take Me Out, my first dating show, uh, I wanted-

    15. GM

      First

    16. CW

      ... Jamie Jones, Hungry for the Power, because at the time I thought I was really cool 'cause I'd just done the season in Ibiza, and everybody did remixes of it saying, "Hungry for the powder."

    17. GM

      Mm.

    18. CW

      And I was like, "Oh, I'm fucking sick, man. I used to go to a... I'm sniffing ketamine in Ibiza and that." And, uh, the, the producers looked at me and said, "Why have you got this very low energy deep house track for the walkout? We're gonna give you example. Love kicks starts again." I was like, "Okay, [laughs] fair enough." So that's, like, as you come down and everyone's doing this, clapping above their heads.

    19. GM

      And the love kicks starts again. Chris Williamson.

    20. CW

      Yep.

    21. GM

      Do you ever think-

    22. CW

      Single man reveal yourself. That's what it is.

    23. GM

      Did you get-

    24. CW

      Do you remember Paddy, Paddy McGuinness?

    25. GM

      Did... How did you perform? Did you get a date off Take Me Out?

    26. CW

      Did I get a date?

    27. GM

      I don't know. [laughs] I don't know. You might have got-

    28. CW

      Blackout

    29. GM

      ... a media out. The bloke before me did.

    30. CW

      Yeah.

  3. 7:41 – 12:46

    Should AI Be Winning Writing Awards?

    1. CW

      We were talking about AI and writing-

    2. GM

      Mm

    3. CW

      ... yesterday. Uh, one of the Commonwealth Short Story Prizes appears to have been awarded to an obviously AI-generated story.

    4. GM

      Mm.

    5. CW

      This is a relatively prestigious prize. The prize-winning stories all appeared in Granta Magazine, and the editor's response was basically a shrug. When asked whether it was AI-generated, AI concluded that it was almost certainly not produced unaided by a human, and a computer scientist claimed that the empty metaphors that often plague the prize-winning story and that plague all AI writing as well, they come from human-written fan fiction. So this is the source of a lot of the very strange, very clunky analogies that you see. So, uh, for instance, the rare phrase, "the patience of a reptile," which appears in this allegedly AI-generated story, also occurs in a fan fiction based on the Japanese anime and manga Naruto. There's no way to be sure that the LLM sucked it up, spat it back out, but it's worth remembering that a meaningful amount of the text inside of these machines was written by people who were playing pretend with anime characters. So the reason being, if you were to take the total amount of time played, uh, of people playing football globally, and you were to learn how to play football as a robot or an AI system by watching everybody on the planet play football, there are far more people that are bad at football than good at football.

    6. GM

      Mm.

    7. CW

      Therefore, you will learn to be quite bad at football, and this is the same thing with writing. If you think about how few books that are written get published, how little writing is made for a book, and how many books that are written are actually good and go on to sell anything, I don't think that there's that much of a weighting in terms of the LLM-

    8. GM

      Mm

    9. CW

      ... that James Clear's Atomic Habits on Moby-Dick is worth 10 million times that of an anime and manga blog.

    10. GM

      Mm.

    11. CW

      However, by sheer numbers, the amount of bad writing outnumbers the amount of good writing. So there's a sentence from that story, "But a belly sound as if the earth swallows a shout and holds it there." Pretty jarring. It's not really what you find in good writing. Don't worry, this might have been potentially drawn from a fan fiction webpage, The Fall of a Phoenix, where the original sentence was, "He swallows a shout of pain, breathing heavily, his whole body trembling." Another sentence, "His eyes narrowed against the glare outside and the darker glare inside him." Eyes narrowed against the glare outside sounds, like, unnecessarily vain and ominous in a way that's unnecessary. Uh, the reason could be that it was drawn from a random horror blog, the original sentence being, "His eyes narrowed against the glare of the halogen strip lights." And speaking of the darker glare, whilst is pretty common, it appears in another fan fiction story. So basically, the... You can't work out what's inside of an LLM's brain, which is probably for the best, but it's entirely possible that when you prompt it to write fiction, it's not scouring through the greatest works ever put together. It's looking at, like, random fan fiction manga and anime websites-

    12. GM

      Mm

    13. CW

      ... written by somebody at 2:00 AM who really shouldn't have been doing it.

    14. GM

      Well, what makes sense there, and again, snapshot in time, six months, 12 months from now, this may be completely different. But what's interesting is on a coding side of things, it's currently way more capable than the writing side. And I wonder if that's because, um, code itself, there's a lot m- it's a lot easier to come to an objective conclusion. So thing did compile, thing didn't compile, or thing did work, thing didn't work.

    15. CW

      Mm.

    16. GM

      Button appeared, button didn't appear. Whereas with writing, it's so much more around text. It's so much more subjective.

    17. CW

      Mm.

    18. GM

      So it's harder to almost give the feedback loop of success or failure. But it's interesting that you wouldn't... That a- that argument there that you would just have the widest dataset possible for writing versus having an LLM that's trained on more-

    19. CW

      Weighted toward great

    20. GM

      ... but what would be interesting, in theory, that's quite easy to do. So has anybody done that? Probably. But it's still, even when I've given it great writing, it can't, it can't for whatever reason repeat it. Maybe it's not done it wide enough-

    21. CW

      Well, the physics of... The physics that it's built on top of, it's not just here is good writing. It has to understand what each word inside of that writing means, and the way that it understands what the word inside of the writing is, is based on the bigger corpus that it has outside of it. So it's a little bit like saying, "I've got Usain Bolt, but he's running into a 35 mile an hour headwind But regardless of how great the talent is that you're trying to push forward, I think that you're always gonna be working against this. Now, it's gotta be a relatively complex but simple... Uh, sorry, like, uh, arduous but simple solution to be like, just weight it toward great pieces of work, great people-

    22. GM

      It's not arduous, Chris. It's simple.

    23. CW

      [laughs] Said like a true Roman senator.

  4. 12:46 – 17:43

    Beckham vs Pitt: Who Do Women Prefer?

    1. CW

      Question.

    2. GM

      Question.

    3. CW

      What man could get the most number of women on the planet to turn up at his house if he gave them the invite?

    4. GM

      That's, um... Philosophers have pondered this question for hundreds, if not thousands of years, Christopher. So the, the real philosophical insight that's plagued the industry is which man alive could post his address right now and have the largest line. Who do you, who do you go for?

    5. CW

      You need international appeal.

    6. GM

      Yeah.

    7. CW

      You probably need to skew a little bit older.

    8. GM

      Bigger tam.

    9. CW

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta expand.

    10. GM

      Especially with a declining population.

    11. CW

      Yeah. Well, yeah, aging population.

    12. GM

      Yeah.

    13. CW

      Aging population means that I think anyone under age 35 is probably gonna stru- Anyone under age 30 is really gonna struggle. I don't think that you're gonna want, as a mid-50s, 60s-year-old woman, I don't know whether... You probably do wanna be ravaged by that, but I don't think you're gonna go. The likelihood of you upping sticks and getting on the bus, getting on the 59 bus to go to wherever this person's address is. So my, my call for this, I think it's between Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio... I'm trying to think about who the pop star or rock star would be that would be up there. I bet somebody like a Drake would probably be able-

    14. GM

      Mm

    15. CW

      ... to do some damage.

    16. GM

      Mm. I don't think so.

    17. CW

      He's done his damage. He has done a lot of damage.

    18. GM

      Yeah. I think-

    19. CW

      But I think I, I would, I would put my money... I would say I would put my money on Brad Pitt.

    20. GM

      I think-

    21. CW

      I think it's very hard to fight back against Brad

    22. GM

      ... Pitt and DiCaprio are very much the Intel or Microsoft in this moment, in that I think 10 years ago, I think you're correct. But I think you've gotta be looking at a little bit more blue chip. I think David Beckham's probably the Apple stock here. Been around for a while, but I think Beckham still outperforms Pitt, um, and DiCaprio.

    23. CW

      Right.

    24. GM

      'Cause I think Beckham's actually more global. 'Cause we've gotta, you've gotta be looking at-

    25. CW

      Less relevant, mate. When was the last-

    26. GM

      You've gotta be looking at Africa.

    27. CW

      What was the-

    28. GM

      You've gotta be looking at Southeast Asia.

    29. CW

      I'm always looking at Africa. Why... What, what was the last thing that David Beckham did that was globally recognized?

    30. GM

      He... If you turned on the World Cup recently, he's on every single advert, my friend.

  5. 17:43 – 27:24

    Do Trends in the East Always Translate to the West?

    1. CW

      Dopamine websites are becoming a new trend in South Korea. These services let users endlessly browse food delivery menus, read reviews, fill shopping carts, and even track a courier. The only catch, you can't actually place an order. There are also virtual smoke breaks where users join anonymous chat rooms and socialize with strangers, recreating the feeling of taking a break without smoking a single cigarette. The idea is simple: get the familiar dopamine hit without spending money, smoking, or giving in to other impulsive habits.

    2. GM

      I saw that, and I think the argument they... A, a big argument you'll see online is this behavior is happening in Asia, therefore it's going to ... downstream happen in the West. And I think it's a little bit of a coin toss. Sometimes Asia is ahead of us, but sometimes it's just such a different culture.

    3. CW

      Mm.

    4. GM

      So I think it was... I forgot which Facebook product manager was talking about how they'd release a new feature, and they'd test it often in the Philippines, and the, this crazy reaction, and they go, "We have to launch this new feature immediately."

    5. CW

      Mm.

    6. GM

      And the amount of times they'll then test it on the West or anywhere else in the world, and it wouldn't work. So they actually banned doing tests, um, or stopped doing tests-

    7. CW

      Specifically in the Philippines

    8. GM

      ... for a lot of the features in the Philippines because their phone usage is so different to ours. They spend so much more time on their phones than any other part of the world. So it's just-

    9. CW

      Why is that?

    10. GM

      ... where, where is it, like, a, a human thing that these people are just ahead versus where is it just a cultural thing? Have you ever, have you ever come across Montaigne's lists?

    11. CW

      No.

    12. GM

      Do you know who Montaigne is?

    13. CW

      The philosopher?

    14. GM

      Montaigne. Yeah, so French, uh, French philosopher. Would be fascinating to hear his, uh, perspectives on the, um, the old Q debate. But Montaigne used to have lists that he would keep of what different cultures thought were acceptable throughout history, just so he could remind himself that this whole thing is largely made up. It's largely social contagion. So some of my, like, favorite from Montaigne's lists. So one, where it's normal to grow out your hair on the right side of your body, but shave everything on the left, where white teeth is deemed as unattractive, so they purposely get their teeth blacker and blacker and blacker, where at a certain age, you're supposed to kill your own father. When you and your father hit a certain age, you say goodbye. Another one on Montaigne's lists are when at a funeral, you're supposed to chop up the dead, grind them to a pulp, pour it into wine, and then drink them on the day of the funeral. And a final one, one for you actually, Christopher, because I'm sure you've attended many events like this, which is certain cultures for their weddings, the success of a wedding was judged by how many of the groom's friends could sleep with the bride, which I know is actually quite common in, in the northeast of England. But-

    15. CW

      That's only if they're family

    16. GM

      ... so Montaigne kept these lists to himself, like more and more and more and more examples like that just to hold a mirror up to himself and the times that he's in.

    17. CW

      So he's collecting weird cultures, uh, cultures that we would find strange and that their norms are different to ours in an attempt to try and highlight, hey, whatever it is that you think is normal is just consensus because of where you are, and if you were to be somewhere else, your consensus would be totally different.

    18. GM

      Yes. Do you want... I tell you what. Do you want a list of... I, I was thinking, okay, let's say Montaigne came back today. I was writing this chapter recently. So let's say Montaigne came back today and was like, "Well, what's normal today?" So normal consumes 17 teaspoons of sugar per day. Normal has $104,755 in debt. Normal is 30 pounds overweight, Ozempic pending. Normal averages less than 4,000 steps per day. Normal spends 90,000 hours of their life at work disengaged. Normal stays indoors for 22.3 hours per day. Normal spends more th- time on the toilet than exercising.

    19. CW

      That is strange.

    20. GM

      Normal hasn't finished a book in the last 12 months. Normal experiences under 10 minutes per day in silence. Normal will spend 20 years of their life watching TV or scrolling social media.

    21. CW

      Under 10 minutes a day in s- in silence.

    22. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. CW

      And more time on the toilet than exercising.

    24. GM

      Averages, but then there's always a criticism around averages that you end up netting it out.

    25. CW

      Mm.

    26. GM

      But when you begin to look at, oh, is this is just what's accepted today-

    27. CW

      Mm

    28. GM

      ... and maybe tomorrow weddings will be back that you like to attend.

    29. CW

      In the 1830s in Massachusetts, beards were so uncommon and strange that a man named Joseph Parker was mocked and shunned for wearing one. Assailants tried to forcibly shave him, but he fought them off with a knife and was imprisoned for assault.

    30. GM

      [laughs]

  6. 27:24 – 32:02

    The Truth Behind California’s “Gay Certification”

    1. CW

      California's gay certification. California is pressuring public utilities to award $633 million in special contracts to LGBT-owned firms. To qualify, residents must go through the state's official gay certification program and face up to a year in jail if they're not gay enough. By 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission established a goal for utility companies with annual revenues exceeding $25 million to buy things from state certified LGBT businesses, 0.5% of procurement in 2021, 1% in '23, 1.5% in '24 and beyond. If large CPUC regulated utilities meet these goals in 2024, they would have sent $633 million to LGBT-owned firms. The scheme raises an obvious question: How does a business qualify as officially gay? Paperwork. Supplier Clearing House, a group that certifies firms for the CPUC program, features a list of qualifications linked on its website. Applicants can secure certification by providing a letter from an LGBT organization attesting to their sexual preferences, proof that a newspaper identified them as LGBT, or three letters from personal contacts written on company letterhead attesting to their homosexual orientation. Corporate officials who falsely represent their business as gay face up to a year in county jail. Supplier Clearing House also accepts gay certification letters from the National LGBTQ+ and Allied s- Chamber of Commerce. The chamber has its own list of accepted documents, including human resources complaints [laughs] or police records claiming LGBT discrimination. As it states on its website, "Certification is a journey, not a destination."

    2. GM

      Wow.

    3. CW

      Think you'd be able to pull off getting California's gay certification to receive th- $633 million?

    4. GM

      What, so what percentage do you need?

    5. CW

      To be gay?

    6. GM

      Yes.

    7. CW

      You need to be gay. You don't, it's not a percent.

    8. GM

      Oh, so it's not a recruitment percentage.

    9. CW

      No.

    10. GM

      So, oh, okay.

    11. CW

      No. It's-

    12. GM

      So you have to hit, if you have a certain level that you get the funding.

    13. CW

      Yep, yep. Exactly. But you n- also need to be gay to unlock it.

    14. GM

      Hmm.

    15. CW

      So whe- if you're not gay, you don't get it, and if you're not big enough, you don't get it. But if you're big enough, they need to be finding sufficiently diverse. So these companies, actually, one of the best ways to do this would be to hire, this is an incentive to hire C-suite executives that are gay.

    16. GM

      Damn.

    17. CW

      It would unlock an awful lot of CPUC funding in California.

    18. GM

      Damn.

    19. CW

      And you face a year in county jail if you-

    20. GM

      That's, that's real, that's real founder mode right there. Like, if you're willing to-

    21. CW

      Take it up the ass

    22. GM

      ... y- to... Yeah.

    23. CW

      Yeah. If you're gonna power bottom your way to the top.

    24. GM

      Yeah. [laughs] You can either get fucked by investors or get fucked by-

    25. CW

      Someone else

    26. GM

      ... Craig.

    27. CW

      Well, look, it's gonna, it's, it's, it's, uh... I don't know, man. The, the whole state-

    28. GM

      It's real. Is that all real?

    29. CW

      That's real.

    30. GM

      Wow.

  7. 32:02 – 38:52

    How a Chicken Farmer Defeated Hitler

    1. GM

      Story of a Spanish chicken farmer called Juan Pujol. So it's 1941, start of World War I, and he's essentially a failure his entire life. So he's been a chicken farmer, a, a manager of a one-star hotel, um, before, uh, bankruptcy, and he's after a new job with a tremendous CV. So he's walking along the streets of Madrid, takes a right, goes into the British embassy and says, "I want a job at MI5 to help out and spy on the Nazis." And MI5 or the embassy sort of say, "Okay. How about you put that in writing, and we'll come back to you?" Which is the British way of saying, "Get the [censored] out." So he leaves the building, comes back, walks across, goes into the embassy, says, "I want a job with MI5." They ask him to leave. Tries again. Leaves-

    2. CW

      You mean he just, like, walks across the street and turns around?

    3. GM

      No, these are multiple, like, future events-

    4. CW

      Right, right, right, right, right, right

    5. GM

      ... so he keeps coming back. Fourth time, he's walking along, and he decides... He walks up the steps, but this time he goes into the German embassy, and he goes, "I hate the Brits. I want a job for the Nazis to spy on Britain." And the Nazis are eyeing him up, and he talks about his love for the Führer, the love, um, for the Third Reich and how much he hates... his new inspired hatred for Great Britain. And the Nazis end up training him up, giving him little tasks, and he keeps proving himself, learns how invisible ink works, um, ends up recruiting multiple agents inside of Great Britain. So he builds his way up.

    6. CW

      Hmm.

    7. GM

      And then he walks back the street of Madrid, goes to the British embassy and says, "I now want a job at MI5 because I'm one of the most valuable spies for the Nazis." So he got rejected, rejected, rejected and was like, "Okay, I'll take matters into my own hands." So he then becomes the most valuable spy for Britain during World War II. He builds up a network of 27 sub-agents inside of Britain that the Nazis believe are true, but it's all his own imagination, all these different agents that he would create stories from-

    8. CW

      Hmm

    9. GM

      ... that they were doing. So much so, when he arrived, the MI5 called him Garbo because Garbo at the time was the most famous actress in the world. Speak-

    10. CW

      Greta Garbo.

    11. GM

      Yes. So named after, for his acting skills. So Juan Pujol, the Spanish chicken farmer, the most important moment in World War II was D-Day. So as D-Day was happening, Juan gave so much fake information. He convinced them that D-Day was gonna happen in Calais. So Hitler and Himmler were getting these reports from Juan. They thought the war was gonna happen in Calais, so they sent some of their most important armies to Calais. Then the, uh, D-Day happens, and Juan was so convincing, even with these fake reports, that Hitler gave him, um, the Iron Cross. So he's the only agent to get both an Iron Cross from Hitler and an MBE from-

    12. CW

      No way

    13. GM

      ... the King. Yeah. Um, do you know what's tragic, though? So they say that in-- when it comes to D-Day, the most important day of World War II, the three most important people were Eisenhower, who looked after the US, um, I think Montgomery, who looked after the Great Britain, and Juan Pujol, the Spanish chicken farmer. That's the three most important people in D-Day in terms of the impact. But this guy who gets these double awards ends up dying in 1949, Mozambique, to malaria. And, uh, in the 1980s, three of the agents that worked with him in MI5 are sat at a bar. So they're all in their, like, late 80s now, and they're talking about the war. They're in this former little intelligence pub, and they're chatting about the war and having a few drinks, and they have this kind of confused look on their faces. This old guy is walking towards them, and they get more and more confused with their face. And then this 80-year-old man, who's a MI5 spy, breaks down in tears, crying, and they go, "It, it can't be. You're supposed to be dead." So His final last act was to fake his own death in 1949, and he lived in a bookstore in Venezuela [laughs] so the Na- so the Nazis would never know where he was.

    14. CW

      That's insane.

    15. GM

      Yeah. Spanish chicken farmer.

    16. CW

      Was he really worried about Nazi retribution in 1949?

    17. GM

      Yes.

    18. CW

      Were the Nazis still going around and chasing people in the '50s?

    19. GM

      Well, there was-- Ironically, even though he's in Venezuela, there was a lot of Nazis in South America.

    20. CW

      Well, yeah, but if he'd not gone to fucking Venezuela-

    21. GM

      But-

    22. CW

      ... he caught-- supposedly caught malaria in Africa

    23. GM

      ... there's, there's still a lot of-

    24. CW

      Where's Mozambique?

    25. GM

      Uh, Mozambique is, I think, West Africa.

    26. CW

      Right, okay.

    27. GM

      But-

    28. CW

      Should've stayed there

    29. GM

      ... in 1949 or even onwards, there was st- First off, we're viewing history through hindsight. At the time, there was still millions of Germans that served for the Nazis that were still alive. So yeah, there was lots of Nazis afterwards.

    30. CW

      Hmm. And they would've wanted retribution for people that had... I d- I, I, I guess I don't know what-

  8. 38:52 – 45:37

    Is This the Greatest Civilian Hero Story?

    1. CW

      pivoted into a new one. All right, so that's your story time.

    2. GM

      Go on.

    3. CW

      This is a new segment, a new segment on our episode, story time. My story time, Levon Hayrapetyan. Are you familiar with Levon Hayrapetyan?

    4. GM

      No.

    5. CW

      Okay. So, uh, 1976 in, uh, Yerevan, and there's a trolley bus carrying around about 90 passengers, and we don't know what happened. Uh, some people say that the, uh, driver of the bus had a heart attack. Some people say that he was having an altercation with a, a passenger on board. Whatever happened, it crashed into a reservoir-

    6. GM

      Huh

    7. CW

      ... Yerevan. The bus sank roughly 10 meters, so 30 feet to the bottom, freezing, murky water. There's a 23-year-old man who's training with his brother nearby, Levon Hayrapetyan, and, uh, without giving it much thought, jumps into the water and ordered his brother to help him from the shore. He said, "It was scary at first. It was so loud, as if a bomb went off. I almost drowned several times. I could imagine the agony of those 92 people, and I knew how they would die."

    8. GM

      Jesus.

    9. CW

      The thing was, Hayrapetyan wasn't an ordinary bystander. He was a 17-time world champion and 11-time world record holder in fin swimming.

    10. GM

      Huh.

    11. CW

      He was one of the best underwater swimmers on Earth. Immediately dives into the water to help. Visibility is basically zero 'cause the reservoir is full of mud and sewage and debris as well. Obviously, the bus has gone in, so it's kicked up all of this silt. It's basically impossible to see. So he swims down into the dark, locates the bus. He's, he, he called it, uh, a traveling coffin for all of these 92 people. He kicks the rear window in underwater to get inside, dives down, dive after dive, holds his breath, finds trapped passenger, drags him back to the surface, hands them to the rescuers and his brother in a rowboat, goes straight back down again. Reportedly made dozens of dives of around about 20 minutes and physically pulled out about 37 people.

    12. GM

      Wow.

    13. CW

      20 of them survived. During one dive, he accidentally grabbed a leather seat cushion instead of a passenger 'cause his visibility was so poor. You know, it'd be one of these old-school buses that would've had movable cushions, and he grabbed this, this leather cushion and brought it up thinking it was maybe a small human. And he later said that this one decision haunted him for years because he believed someone may have died while he carried up the cushion instead. Hayrapetyan was hospitalized along with the victims of the accident because he'd lacerated all of his legs, all of his body from going through the broken glass, from breaking the glass himself. Uh, septic fever, double-sided pneumonia, and nervous prostration had doctors fighting for his life for over a month. When he was finally discharged, Levon went back to practice, but swimming underwater echoed painfully in his yu- in, in his lungs, but he wouldn't give up without having one final medal. So during the next championship that he swam in a haze, he still wasn't in any way back to full capacity. His brother, Kamо, ran along the side of the pool, ready to jump in in case he suddenly lost consciousness. But he came in first and set another world record-

    14. GM

      Jesus

    15. CW

      ... without even realizing that he'd done it at the time. He was so delirious. But the rescue that he'd done of the bus destroyed his athletic career. Broken glass shredded his legs. Polluted wa-water had caused severe pneumonia and sepsis he couldn't recover from, and he spent all of those weeks plus then months critically ill and then recovering. Soviet authorities initially downplayed the story, so it remained relatively unknown for years, and today, the rescue is considered one of the greatest acts of civilian heroism ever recorded.

    16. GM

      Jesus Christ.

    17. CW

      There's him.

    18. GM

      Thick Russian.

    19. CW

      Hayrapetyan. Yeah, yeah, like a serious Russian guy. That's him there in just a pair of pants, and everybody else is trying to pull it up.

    20. GM

      Wow.

    21. CW

      Isn't that insane?

    22. GM

      Wow.

    23. CW

      There's a, an award-- Jared, ask, ask A bold friend. Uh, what's the name of the award that's given to people who risk their lives for strangers? The award you're likely thinking of is the Carnegie Medal. It's given to civilians who risk their lives to save or attempt to save strangers. Is there anything interesting about the demographics of the people who've been given that award? There are some patterns worth noting. The Carnegie Hero Fund, which awards the medal, has found that recipients come from all walks of life. Age- That's not interesting ... gender, and background vary widely. That's not interesting. Historically, men have been the majority of recipients, but women have also been recognized. How many men, how many men won? The Carnegie Hero Fund has awarded thousands of people since its inception in 1904. That's so fucking woke. Historically, the majority have been men. What's the percentage of men that have won the Carnegie Award? [laughs] The Carnegie Hero Fund reports that historically, about 90% of recipients have been men. [laughs] All right, shut up. I, I just, I... Whatever happened in 2020 continues to carry over now. Do you know what I mean? Like, California thinks that the most important thing to do with its utilities is not give people cheap and reliable energy, but to make sure that the diversity of the sexuality of the people who own the companies is important, and you fucking 5.5 need to have a chat with someone about you. Anyway, uh, that Karapetyan, I, I love that story. I think it's fucking awesome. And, um, what, what the kind of kicker is the fact that you know that he was-- he made such a personal sacrifice, but then also was ravaged by the fact that he picked up a fucking cushion, having gone down 37 times. Mm. Mm. And one time he made a mistake in pitch blackness when he couldn't see. What's the likelihood that the guy that's running on the side of the road with his brother... Like, he's got his pants on. He's got the, he's got the out... He's the, the number one fin swimmer, deep sea swimmer in the world, 17 times, 11 world records. Tragic. Yeah. Tragic. Yeah. If you're trying to go from Joey Chestnut to Joey Swoll, the RP Strength app is the best place to start. I've been in the gym for two decades, and it wasn't until this last year that I had some of the best training sessions of my life, and RP was a massive part of that. Actual scientists built this thing around the obsession to beat up their high school bullies and provide the most science-backed, effective path to maximizing muscle gain. It tells you your exercises, how many sets, reps, the weights, everything. So all you have to do is show up and lift. If the RP Strength app could wipe your ass for you, it probably would, and it adjusts automatically every week based on how you're actually progressing. For me, following a proper evidence-based plan has made a massive difference, and if you're serious about your training, it'll do the same for you. Right now, you can follow the exact same training plan that I use and get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below. By heading to rpstrength.com/modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's rpstrength.com/modernwisdom and MODERNWISDOM at checkout.

  9. 45:37 – 55:53

    Why We Experience Survivor’s Guilt

    1. CW

      Yeah, it's, it's interesting, uh, how often that is the case where you'll have these acts of great heroism that don't have 100% success rate, and then the individual spends so much time looping on that. Yeah, that's sur- that's survivor guilt, I suppose, right? I've known some people who've done some incredible things, like in the police or fire work, for example, and it's the same thing. They don't ruminate on the, the heroism. It's the, it's the one that- The mistakes that they made. Yeah. Yeah, the people they could have saved. I wonder what that's for. I guess that adaptively it's trying to get you to focus on this is something pro-social that you could have done if you'd been more prepared, more skillful. Um, therefore, in future you need to, you need to adapt your, your approach so that this doesn't happen again. Maybe that's the reason for survivor guilt. Actually, Jared, just type it in ChatGPT, what is the reason... What is the adaptive reason for survivor guilt or adaptive explanation for survivor guilt? Because I, I... The only thing that I can think of is that it's supposed to try and guide your future behavior so that... Well, I mean, fucking Bluetooth came up as a thousand-year-old Norse god or something like that, so fuck knows if we're gonna find out. What is the adaptive explanation? From an evolutionary or adaptive perspective, survivor guilt can be understood as a by-product of mechanism to help humans maintain social bonds, cooperation, and group cohesion. Okay, so my hypothesis is looking good so far. Basic idea is that in ancestral environments, humans survived and reproduced largely through belonging to a group. When one person benefited while others suffered, there were often social consequences. So the inverse of that. Okay. Maintaining group cohesion. If you survive a dangerous event while close allies did not, feeling distressed rather than indifferent signals... Oh, that's cool. So because if something bad happens and you were one of the few that survived, if you show that you feel distress as opposed to indifference, it reinforces to everybody else that you weren't selfish and an asshole, that you actually regret the fact that they died and that you didn't. I am still a part of the group. I didn't take it all for myself. I didn't just swim out the back of the bus myself. I really did try. Um, reciprocal altruism and fairness mechanisms, they've got strong intuitions. So when we receive an unexpected benefit relative to others even when we did nothing wrong, our minds may interpret the situation as a violation of fairness expectations. Survivor guilt may arise from the same psychological mechanery, uh, machinery that makes people pretty uncomfortable receiving disproportionate rewards. Okay. Motivation to help survivors. Yeah. Okay. So it encourages caring for bereaved families, supporting injured group members. Counterfactual learning. Humans are unusually prone to imagining alternative outcomes. The counterfactual helps us learn from near misses and dangerous situations. Dude, don't fucking test me on evolutionary theory, okay? Don't test the Hamburglar on evolutionary theory. My intuitions are strong. [laughs] Costly signal of commitment as well. Grief and function, you can't fake it. That's an interesting one. So that's the, the reason, um, why would it be the case that when you're sad or distressed or overwhelmed with, um, negative emotion that The same thing your eyes do to make sure that your eyes stay lubricated would go into overdrive. Uh, why do we cry? Mm. Like, what's the reason for crying? And one of the, uh, adaptive explanations for this, which is pretty fascinating, is it's such a costly signal to do because the most important sense you have is your eyes. And if- Wow ... you're prepared to fill them with water to say how much I've been hurt- Uh-huh ... or how much I'm suffering, you're in an unbelievably vulnerable position. You can't fight, you can't see, you can't defend yourself. Tears are coming out, and you can't fully operate. This is how much I'm in pain. I'm in so much pain that I'm essentially exposing my neck to you. So how do you then factor in tears of joy? Why do we cry out of joy? I did ask this question. So it could be a spandrel, which is just a crossover between the two, but it could just be the same thing. It could be a very costly signal, "Hey, look at how much I love this thing that's happening. I am here, collective effervescence, me and the group, we are one. I experience this thing with you, too." And I do think when it comes to sort of emotions, um, sadness, like peak joy, joyful experiences, beautiful experiences, and sad or sort of dreadful experiences, they kind of have this same, like, part of the pitch- Mm ... of the, of the, the chord that they play. It's kind of similar, right? It's like an outside of the body. At least when I, when I, uh, experience stuff that's, like, really intense, whether it's good or bad, I always feel it sort of across the top of my shoulders and at my traps and, like, sort of everything feels like it lifts up a little bit if I'm being delivered bad news by somebody or if there's something that's really beautiful happening. It always feels like I'm sort of being lifted a bit. So there, there seems to be similarities, resonance between those two. Um, there's two, there's two visuals. Jared, if you could pull them up. There's one of how emotion feels in the body. I don't know if you've seen this one where it's like all the different- Heat map ... heat maps. Yeah. And there's also- Heat map of emotions. Yeah. There's also the topography of tears, how different types of tears look under a microscope, and they're slightly different. No way. It's this artist- Constitution? Yeah, this artist produced it where... So top left. Beautiful. So here is, yeah, how, uh, emotions at least feel in the body, which kind of makes sense. But is that a map? It- Mapping emotions. So is that self-report? I think this is more self-report of how it, how it feels. Okay, so anger- I, I haven't gone any deeper into it ... an-anger seems pretty right. So anger's sort of above the, like, upper chest- Well- ... arms and hands a lot, lower face a lot, and head ... and if you start with neutral on the right, so you kind of see, okay, this is neutral. Nothing. And then you compare that to all the different ones. Surprise is definitely a lot in the head. That's cool. Mm. Sadness is kind of in the middle of the chest. Happiness sort of everywhere. Disgust definitely in the stomach. So disgust, disgust and anxiety both in the stomach the most. That would make sense 'cause, uh, disgust is a pathogen rejection. Mm-hmm. Uh, fear, middle of the chest. I think that seems quite right. Interesting that happiness is basically just tuned down love. Depression's cool, that depression, it says here it's just sort of a, a low energy state or on your extremities as opposed to anxiety, and I would agree with that. I think anxiety is a much more active version of depression. Contempt ex- uh, like existing exclusively in the head- Mm ... is pretty cool. Pride, so the swelling in the chest makes sense. Shame, the, uh, cheeks. That's people get embarrassed, and envy, sort of little bit of head and some heart. That's actually... Would you disagree with any of those? I th- I think it feels, it feels accurate as trying to be neutral right now. Uh, could you search topography of tears, please, Jared? This was done by, I think, an artist that made this. Uh, go to that video, that Instagram video. Let's just see what this, uh, what this lady's got to say. Third one. Click and open.

    2. SP

      That your tears look different underneath a microscope depending on the emotion that you're experiencing. This project was called The Topography of Tears by Roslyn Fisher. She's a photographer, and what they did is they looked at tears underneath a microscope, and you will see that depending on what these participants were experiencing, their tears look different. This is tears of laughter versus tears of change, tears of grief versus tears from cutting onions.

    3. CW

      Wow.

    4. SP

      This is tears when someone is experiencing a moment of catharsis, whereas someone is experiencing a moment of change. I'm a therapist, and I often show this to my clients because I think it gives a really good demonstration that crying is actually really important at times to release certain things from our body, and being able to see that our tears actually look different depending on what we're experiencing, I think really demonstrates that really well. Did you know-

    5. CW

      Insane. That's cool. I want to know what the... Fuck it, just ask. Jared, ask ChatGPT, from the topography of tears study, what are the differences in the structure of tears, or why are they there? Because I want to know what, what is inside of the tear that's different. Is it more salt content? Is it... Like, what, how much shit's in tears? Like, I guess maybe you could have, you could... I don't know. Is cortisol in the blood that leaks into the tears? But surely tears are kind of like sperm, produced in advance and then released. Uh, there are three main categories. Basal tears, constantly produced to lubricate the eyes. Reflex tears, produced in response to irritants like onions. Interesting. And emotional tears. Key biochemical difference, here we go, is that emotional tears contain higher concentrations of certain proteins and hormones, including prolactin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, stress-related hormone, leu-enkephalin, a natural pain-relieving peptide, differences in minerals such as potassium and manganese. When tear dries on a slide, these dissolved substances crystallize into different patterns. Wow. There isn't a simple one-to-one mapping of grief. So grief always looks like X and joy always looks like Y. The patterns vary considerably even within the same emotional category. The amount of ratios of protein, salts, hormones, and other biochem... I didn't realize that you had that much. Obviously, you can cry for different reasons. If I start cutting an onion in front of you or if you're in pain or if you're feeling something or if you're just lubricating your eyes.

    6. GM

      Testosterone tears as well.

    7. CW

      Okay.

    8. GM

      The high, the higher T that you have, the, they're completely different-

    9. CW

      That's Greg Leveque

    10. GM

      ... that's what, yeah. [laughs]

    11. CW

      Greg Leveque's tears from Bloom are actually a protein shake.

    12. GM

      [laughs] Yeah.

    13. CW

      For the people that don't know, Greg Leveque has got 2,000 nanograms per deciliter of testosterone.

    14. GM

      [laughs] Yeah, Greg's tears.

    15. CW

      I suppose that's actually in this bag. It's not money, it's just Greg's-

    16. GM

      Yeah

    17. CW

      ... next testosterone order.

    18. GM

      You pull up Greg's tears, they're just fucking draining.

    19. CW

      Yeah, exactly. They've got, they've, uh, vascular tears. Uh, yeah. Yeah. It's, uh

  10. 55:53 – 1:04:05

    Are Men Homophobic or Femmephobic?

    1. CW

      ... The emotions thing's been interesting, uh, trying to navigate this over the last 18 months or so. I still think kind of interested in what the, the conversation around men showing emotions is. Obviously, I've talked about it a lot, like everyone's talked about it a lot. But, uh, one of the interesting wrinkles that I learned about was I don't think that men are particularly good at receiving other men's emotions. Like we often talk about guys need to open up more. Look at all of the people that are taking their own lives, whatever it is. However many men per minute or men per day are doing this, uh, you need to open up. But a lot of the time, if a guy does that on the internet, it's not just women that are unaccommodating to a guy that's maybe crying or feeling bad or seeming a little weak. Like guys, I would guess on average, are actually more discarding. Men are less accommodating of other men's sad emotions than women are.

    2. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    3. CW

      And a lot of the time these would be the same men that would say something to the effect of, "Well, men's mental health's in a, in a state." Like nobody really cares that much. You go, "Okay, so which one is it?" Because if you're not prepared to hold your boy, like while he's going through a hard time, you don't also really get to say, "We need to talk about men's mental health more." You need to put where your, like your emotions where your mouth is, so to speak.

    4. GM

      Mm-hmm. My natural thought, uh, at least from my experience, is I don't expect friends to be these pure mixed martial artists that have everything across the board.

    5. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    6. GM

      So I know if, let's say for example, I want to break down in tears, there's certain people who I will, who I'd speak to, and then there's other friends where if I, you know what I mean, want to fucking pull it together-

    7. CW

      Yeah

    8. GM

      ... I'll speak to them. So this like having a little bit more of a decentralized on chain, uh, friend base. I ju- I just think, yeah, I think, uh, expecting the, the person who helps you to pull it together to then also be the person that's perfect with your emotions-

    9. CW

      I, I, I-

    10. GM

      ... it's hard to have that

    11. CW

      ... I agree. But if it's the person who, uh, is saying, "We need to have better resources for men's mental health," but they're also not being accommodating, that just seems like a kind of hypocrisy-

    12. GM

      Mm-hmm

    13. CW

      ... to me. And this is from, uh, uh, Men Are Good, Tom Golden's thing. And, um, it makes sense because what you basically have as a ma- Like, I think that it takes a lot of work for guys to get over their sort of visceral ick of other men's sad emotions. Uh, this is a price that's maybe not seen by women or it, it's al- also hidden by men. But if there's a guy who's able to sit and hold, like Charlie Hooper for instance, or Connor Beaton or Joe Hudson or Dr. K, uh, these are people that are trained professionally to be able to do this obviously. The fact that they can sit, they have had to get over a lot of their programming because your programming as a man is, "If I'm around another guy who doesn't seem to be able to hold it together emotionally, he's an unreliable ally. How do I know that when we go on our next hunt or when the tribe from the next valley comes and tries to attack us, that he's actually gonna be able to hold it together?"

    14. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    15. CW

      "How do I not know that he's gonna break down in tears?" This is the same reason... This is a spicy one. I need to put a ex- second fucking pair of glasses on for this. William Costello taught me that most homophobia in men isn't homophobia, it's femmephobia. So we're actually... The disgust mechanism that gets turned on or the aversion that some men have to seeing gay men isn't necessarily about the gayness, it's about the femininity that is being presented by a man, and that's the same mechanism that, uh, unreliable ally. If this guy doesn't seem to be showing the typical masculine, uh, uh, sort of control, conquer, aggression, f- 10 toes forward energy that I expect from other guys, what happens when there is some sort of altercation or issue in future that we need to, to step in on? So yeah, femmephobia, homophobia is like kind of interesting.

    16. GM

      I immediately think of who's the most masculine gay man in the world?

    17. CW

      Who's the most masculine gay man you know?

    18. GM

      Who then breaks that? Who, who creates a, a paradox?

    19. CW

      Tell me, who's the most masculine gay man that you know?

    20. GM

      I don't know. I'm usually multiple drinks deep at the time.

    21. CW

      [laughs] That is a fucking great question. What if the tech bro people... I, I, I... Would you look at Peter Thiel and guess gay? I don't think I'd look at him and guess gay.

    22. GM

      He was in the closet for a long time until-

    23. CW

      Gorka

    24. GM

      ... Gorka.

    25. CW

      Yeah. Yeah, with the Hulk Hogan thing.

    26. GM

      Mm-hmm.

    27. CW

      By the way, uh, if you need a new listen on Audible of a very old, relatively old book, Ryan Holiday's book, Conspiracy. Guy that's written a lot about stoicism. Books on stoicism are good. This one's his best one by a distance. So fucking good. Can... Have you ever... You've tell me you've read it.

    28. GM

      A while ago.

    29. CW

      It's fucking amazing. It's so fantastic. It's-

    30. GM

      What's the plot? It's around Hulk Hogan.

  11. 1:04:05 – 1:09:27

    Why Cash Flow Cycles Matter More Than You Think

    1. CW

      Do you wanna explain why you were so obsessed with Gymshark's negative cash flow conversion cycle?

    2. GM

      N- no, no, no, no, no. Um, first off, w- we've, we've got-

    3. CW

      Do defend yourself.

    4. GM

      No, no, no, no, no.

    5. CW

      Stop defending yourself.

    6. GM

      Uh, so for people, uh, who want to know what a cash flow conversion cycle is, which is approximately about 1% of people listening, I'll get through it fast. Essentially, a cash flow conversion cycle is when you get the money. So let's say for example, Chris is running Neutonic. He'll pay a manufacturer to make this beautiful drink. Then, um, he will obviously sell it to potentially supermarkets, big stores around, uh, the UK. There's a crunch period of, well, how much credit can I get with manufacturers? And then how much credit can I get with the supermarkets? 'Cause if you, if you have to pay your manufacturers today for stock that'll arrive in three months, and then the supermarket doesn't pay you for three months, that's what's, that's a, a, I think, a positive cash flow conversion cycle. So a negative cash flow conversion cycle is when you get the, um, you almost have delayed from the manufacturers and then you can sell right away, which is a lot of what e-commerce companies do.

    7. CW

      Mm-hmm.

    8. GM

      So I was once at a bar in Manchester talking to my friend about negative cash flow conversion cycles, and we saw these, like-

    9. CW

      Just repelling anyone-

    10. GM

      We saw these-

    11. CW

      ... within a five meter radius

    12. GM

      ... Well, this is it. These... No, no, no. We saw, we saw this group of girls, like, look over and, like, say hello. And I had a girlfriend at the time, so I wasn't, wasn't gonna do anything. But I just started laughing at the thought of, if only they could hear. They would be repulsed.

    13. CW

      Well, we've done that. We... Was it, uh, at Summer of Loud Festival last year in, uh, the amphitheater, the Georgia Amph- Amphitheater here in Austin. And we were backstage, and we got all the cool passes, and there were all of these, like, cool metal chicks walking around. And then a couple came over and sat down next to us. What the fuck were we talking about? I swear it was something like this. There was some debate that we were having, and these girls sat down from a distance, and we had a couple of our kind of, like, super chatty mates with us. Keegan was with us, right? Who's essentially, like, proper Roman Adonis, not you, Lach.

    14. GM

      The Chad's Chad.

    15. CW

      Yeah, he's the Chad's Chad. And these women come over and obviously look, thinking, "Oh, what can they think of? What are they gonna be talking about? It's gonna be so cool and sexy." And they came over, and they were talking about how we all come from a conversion rate optimization background.

    16. GM

      [laughs]

    17. CW

      And the blended end sem- uh, end CPA of our Facebook Ads manager could be doing with a little bit of improvement.

    18. GM

      [laughs]

    19. CW

      "Well, tell me, how many are split testing on the back end? It's interesting. I'm not sure if Opus 5.5 is actually gonna be as good as people expect." And they just slowly over time got this look of... It's probably... It wasn't boredom. It was closer to disgust. It was like watching somebody desecrate a beautiful temple, 'cause what they saw was this amazing potential in Keegan, this beautiful man. But the way that he was handling himself and what he was talking about-

    20. GM

      The biggest takeaway I always get whenever I'm in a, a, a friend's birthday or a bachelor party of, there'll be a moment where I'll just start chuckling to myself at the... Often it'll be- Somebody might have a girlfriend. Like, one of the guys in the g- will have, like, a new relationship where she's been, like, really wary about him going to this birthday party or bachelor party. Meanwhile, it's me in a, a one-hour debate at dinner talking about whether Ruud van Nistelrooy was a better footballer than Thierry Henry. Like, that's what they don't see.

    21. CW

      Yeah.

    22. GM

      Or, like, Jim, Jim Shark's negative cash flow conversion cycle.

    23. CW

      Yeah.

    24. GM

      I think if a lot of guys' girlfriends or wives could see... Th- they have this imagination that there's gonna be all this chaos, and these girls that are coming over, and-

    25. CW

      Mm-hmm

    26. GM

      ... the strip club.

    27. CW

      Yeah.

    28. GM

      Meanwhile, it's usually a Google sheet or Excel formulas.

    29. CW

      It's, it's, it's us trying to track down that guy that bought the cigars and opened up the Strait of Hormuz by sneaking himself in, in, into the middle of Iran.

    30. GM

      Yeah.

  12. 1:09:27 – 1:22:08

    The Life Lessons You Come Back to Most

    1. GM

      Little question for you.

    2. CW

      Yeah.

    3. GM

      Um, I can't pronounce this word, but I'm gonna give it a go. Have you heard of... I think it's hypo, hypomeneta?

    4. CW

      No.

    5. GM

      So I got it from my friend, uh, Henrik Carson, who has this wonderful Substack, and during my era, the either ancient Greek or Roman era, it's very different to what it was today. So we have this kind of bombardment of new information. We're constantly scrolling social media. I'm sure you have this, where you'll see this amazing pithy tweet, or you'll read something incredible, and your life's gonna change forever after from this point onwards. And then three months later, you see the thing again, you go, "Oh, I completely forgot about that," and it had no impact at all.

    6. CW

      Hmm.

    7. GM

      So what the ancient Greeks or the Romans used to do would be they would have, um, a book of all these insights that they'd collected, and each morning, they would think of a problem that they're facing, and they would go and meditate on the specific passage or the-

    8. CW

      Mm

    9. GM

      ... specific quote. So what I was actually... This is where my question-

    10. CW

      Question. Question time

    11. GM

      ... que- question time kicks in, is, let's say you was to have that little notepad, notebook of lessons that you often forget or simply just wish that you took more seriously-

    12. CW

      Hmm

    13. GM

      ... that you would look at each day. What is on your list?

    14. CW

      So what i- what are the most known but not followed-

    15. GM

      Not necessarily-

    16. CW

      ... repeatedly

    17. GM

      ... not followed, um, by other people. It could just be... Or it could even be followed by yourself, just not as much. You always underprice this lesson. You wish you took it more seriously.

    18. CW

      Hmm. Something like no amount of worrying is going to make any difference to what happens. Some lesson along those lines, 'cause worrying's very addictive. It's very addictive because it feels like making progress. Hormozi once, when I started doing investing, he gave me this really wonderful piece of advice on a call, and he said, "The most dangerous calls in all of business are just calling to connect. Would just love to, would just love to explain the business to you." It's like, 'cause they have all of the trappings of doing work and making progress but never result in work being done.

    19. GM

      Hmm.

    20. CW

      You need to join that sequence further down the line once, once more scrutiny's being done, like the first stage, second sta- ... This is why I think in order to end up in front of him to do acquisition.com, you're 10 stages deep into the circle of hell.

    21. GM

      Hmm.

    22. CW

      And worrying kind of feels like the same thing, although it's not as conscious. You're not doing it because you think that it's going... W- you forget, this is not moving my situation forward. No amount of anxiety is going to change the outcome. No amount of worrying is going to actually make a difference to anything that happens, and ultimately, all of your worries were a waste of time in any case.

    23. GM

      There's a, a great, um, book that I, uh, or, like, book of stories of interviewing old people about their lives, and one of them, she said, "What was one of your best lessons you ever had?" And she goes, "I had this, like, nightmare thing that I was ruminating on, worrying about, so I called one of my friends, and I tell her, I just kept spilling and telling everything that I'm worried about." And she goes, "Do you remember six months ago when you came to me about this nightmare worry that you had?"

    24. CW

      Hmm.

    25. GM

      And she names it back. She goes- No, I, I don't. And she goes, "Exactly." Just hung up. Just it was one of the best lessons of my life. I was like, "Oh, this thing is gonna be here today and then gone tomorrow." I also saw this humorous statistic, which was they had people apparently with generalized anxiety disorder put down their worries, and then they tracked how many of them came true.

    26. CW

      Hmm.

    27. GM

      And it was found that 91.6% didn't come true.

    28. CW

      Right.

    29. GM

      But if you have true anxiety, you start wondering, well, what about that, what about that remaining, uh-

    30. CW

      8 point

  13. 1:22:08 – 1:22:35

    Where to Find George

    1. CW

      Uh, anyway, George Mack, ladies and gentlemen. Love you all. Thank you very much for tuning in. Where should people go?

    2. GM

      highagency.com/books. Read them.

    3. CW

      Heck yeah. All right. Goodbye, my beauties.

    4. GM

      Let's go.

    5. CW

      Whoop. Dude, yes. Let's go. [upbeat music] Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply. It thinks you're gonna like this one even more. Go on, press it.

Episode duration: 1:22:35

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