Waymo, Texas Culture, Airline Lounges, OpenAI & Uber Eats - Rory Sutherland

Chris Williamson 0:00 Welcome back. Good to see you.

Rory Sutherland 0:01 It's a pleasure. What a joy it is. And, and here in Austin, too.

Chris Williamson 0:04 Here in Austin. Uh, Buc-ee's. You went to Buc-ee's. Tell me-

Rory Sutherland 0:07 Absolutely. I actually brought you a present.

Chris Williamson 0:09 Oh.

Rory Sutherland 0:10 I thought, uh, you know, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't bring you-

Chris Williamson 0:12 This is-

Rory Sutherland 0:12 ... local specialties. And of course, some, uh, some, some beef jerky as well.

Chris Williamson 0:17 This is-

Rory Sutherland 0:17 Jalapeno honey, which I thought would be good.

Chris Williamson 0:20 Thank you.

Rory Sutherland 0:20 But the Buc-ee's thing is particularly good because they have a brand partnership with the, uh, TXDOT, the Texas Department of Transportation.

Chris Williamson 0:28 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 0:28 So they licensed the Don't Mess With Texas advertising slogan.

Chris Williamson 0:32 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 0:33 Okay? Now, this may surprise you, that Don't Mess With Texas, the rights to it actually belong to the Texas Department of Transportation because it was an anti-littering campaign.

Chris Williamson 0:44 You're kidding.

Rory Sutherland 0:44 No, no, no.

Chris Williamson 0:45 How old is this?

Rory Sutherland 0:46 It dates back, crikey, to the s- I think the '70s or, or at least the very early '80s. I think the 1970s.

Chris Williamson 0:52 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 0:52 And it's a kind of famous advertising case study because how do you tell Texans not to litter? Okay. Now, in other parts of the world, you know, simple kind of blandishments or appeals to their sort of, uh, you know, (laughs) their, you know, higher order concerns might work. But this is a uniquely Texan message, which takes-

Chris Williamson 1:13 So low-key aggression, unspoken threat of-

Rory Sutherland 1:16 Uh, there, there's a slight un-

Chris Williamson 1:16 ... kinetic interaction.

Rory Sutherland 1:17 Exactly. Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 1:19 Yeah, yeah. And actually, funnily enough, when they presented it, one of the people said, "I find this a bit abrupt. Could we not make it, 'Please don't mess with Texas'?"

Chris Williamson 1:26 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 1:27 But of course, that doesn't work, does it? No.

Chris Williamson 1:29 No, unfortunately not.

Rory Sutherland 1:30 So it developed rather lo- rather beautifully. Buc-ee's, which for the benefit of non-Texan, um, audiences, is ... It's one of those things which I think is proof that one of the great things Americans do is, it proves that you can take something that at a small scale is atrocious, and if you make it big enough, it's a work of art.

Chris Williamson 1:49 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 1:49 And Buc-ee's has done this with the gas station. By making it so enormous-

Chris Williamson 1:53 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 1:53 ... you take it from something, you know, comparatively-

Chris Williamson 1:55 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 1:56 ... ghastly. Marching bands would be another case. You know, if you go and watch the Texas A&M marching bands. Marching bands are appalling at a small scale. I think they're atrocious.

Chris Williamson 2:04 Until there's 100 people or more.

Rory Sutherland 2:05 But if there are 500 people doing it-

Chris Williamson 2:07 Yep. Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 2:07 ... it suddenly becomes magnificent.

Chris Williamson 2:09 Yeah. Well, I think the thing, the interesting thing about Buc-ee's, for the people that haven't been, again, it's 100 pumps, maybe 200 pumps-

Rory Sutherland 2:16 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:16 Something like that. And then the biggest Costco-sized building behind that sells everything from life rafts to barbecues to jerky to ...

Rory Sutherland 2:27 Deer corn particularly, I think they seem to go very big on deer corn, which is not something I'm-

Chris Williamson 2:32 What's deer corn?

Rory Sutherland 2:32 I think, I don't know whether it's a hunting thing, I mean, whe- whether it's just that you want to attract deer to your ... But I, I suspect that's unlikely.

Chris Williamson 2:39 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 2:39 I suspect it's a hunting thing, that you-

Chris Williamson 2:41 Right, like a trap or whatever.

Rory Sutherland 2:42 ... it's a kind of way in which you sort of create a trail of deer corn.

Chris Williamson 2:45 Bait them, right.

Rory Sutherland 2:46 And then they wander into your sites or something.

Chris Williamson 2:48 Buc-ee's, one of the, in fact the only fuel station, gas station that I've ever been to that has so many pumps-

Rory Sutherland 2:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:56 ... that even if you're not filling up for gas, you just pull up outside of one of the pumps-

Rory Sutherland 3:00 Well, well, I had an ethical dilemma as a Brit, because my wife said, "Look, all these other cars next to the pumps are actually empty. The people have just left their car by the pump and they've gone in the shop."

Chris Williamson 3:10 That's because it's under the shade.

Rory Sutherland 3:11 Now, you wouldn't do that in M&S Simply Foods back home. You know, you fill up-

Chris Williamson 3:14 No, there's three pumps. You'd get out of the way very quickly. Yep.

Rory Sutherland 3:15 Then you'd pull into one of the parking spaces and get out of the way. But you're right, there are so many pumps that the pump doubles as a parking space.

Chris Williamson 3:21 Yeah. It's also the only way the ... Because that's covered over, right?

Rory Sutherland 3:25 Yeah, that's what, of course.

Chris Williamson 3:25 You're in the shade, and so it does, means that you don't get to be too hot.

Rory Sutherland 3:28 They also have about 50 electric car chargers as well. They've,

Rory Sutherland 3:31 they've gone big.

Chris Williamson 3:32 Speaking of which, have you been in a Waymo yet?

Rory Sutherland 3:35 Uh, no, because I tried to register. Now, it's, it's an Uber partnership in Austin.

Chris Williamson 3:39 It is. If you get an Uber, they'll send you a Waymo.

Rory Sutherland 3:41 And, but when I asked for a, when I asked for it, they said, "You're on a trial" or something, that I'm on some sort of beta test.

Chris Williamson 3:47 Maybe it's because you, maybe it's because you're British.

Rory Sutherland 3:49 Uh, it could be. It could be some weird thing. Um, uh, but interestingly, I'm, I'm still trying to get a Waymo. I had a friend who took one in San Francisco. Actually, he took about ten because he became addicted to taking Waymos.

Chris Williamson 4:00 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 4:00 And his judgment, I don't know whether you agree with this, he's pretty comfortable in a driverless car just being driven around town. He said, "Out on the open highway, if we hit 60, I'd get a bit nervous."

Chris Williamson 4:12 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 4:12 But he said at kind of town speeds, he was, he was pretty content.

Chris Williamson 4:15 I think the fastest that I'll have been will have been 35 miles an hour.

Rory Sutherland 4:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:19 Uh, I mean, it's just a little ... But I, I do have a theory. I'm gonna give you this one. So, I noticed when I was ordering Waymos on the app, it would say, "It's 10 minutes away," or, "Five minutes away," and it would almost always be between 50% and 100% more time than it said it was to get to me. And it wasn't getting lost, it wasn't, it wasn't accidentally going somewhere. And then when I got in, my journey was also taking way longer. What I've realized is there's only two reasons, I think, that humans behave on the road in regards to other drivers. One is fear of retribution.

Rory Sutherland 4:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:51 And the other is the guilt of inconveniencing another person. But with a Waymo, both of those are taken out of the picture, because the back windows are so blacked out that you can barely see if there's anyone in.

Rory Sutherland 5:03 I see.

Chris Williamson 5:03 There's never anybody in the front seat.

Rory Sutherland 5:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:06 And what retributive ... They're not gonna tailgate you and beep their horn. Uh, you know, in America, road rage is a mortal endeavor, given that everybody's armed. So, basically, every time that a Waymo is at a junction, it gets ... No one lets it out, no one behaves courteously to it. Everybody knows if they pull in front... Pass- uh, pedestrians, I do it all the time when I'm walking, if I see a Waymo in front, I'm like, "Uh, it's a little close." I'm like, "It's gonna slow down."

Rory Sutherland 5:30 I mean, there's an economist, Douglas McWilliams in the UK, and he and I occasionally talk about this because we're both car enthusiasts, about the extent to which motoring, uh, actually teaches social skills.

Chris Williamson 5:43 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 5:43 Social calculus.

Chris Williamson 5:44 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 5:45 So one of, one of the little bits of social calculus a good driver would probably perform is that your readiness to let someone in from a side junction, uh, would be dependent on how fast you were going already. If you're stuck in traffic, okay, the calculus is, "Well, no skin off my nose if I let this person in. I lose five feet of road or whatever, you know, by being generous." Consequently, we engage in those small acts of kind of altruism as motorists. We're also hugely sensitive to, when you perform a favor, whether the person thanks you.So one of the great inventions which I think originated in Japan is the idea of flashing your hazard lights to say thank you if someone lets you in.

Chris Williamson 6:25 Mm-hmm. I've never had that in America.

Rory Sutherland 6:26 I've seen it once or twice here. It's less common, but it's spreading. It's one of those strange things.

Chris Williamson 6:31 Interesting.

Rory Sutherland 6:31 It's, uh, it, it's a kind of a ... Truck drivers kind of prop- propagated it in the UK, but I mean, I just remember talking to Robert Trivers, (laughs) funnily enough who's kind of like, you know, the kind of doyen of evolutionary psychology-

Chris Williamson 6:45 Trivers, Trivers is a fucking legend.

Rory Sutherland 6:47 Abs- absolutely.

Chris Williamson 6:47 Oh my God.

Rory Sutherland 6:48 Uh, he was, he was talking about in Jamaica where, you know, your entire emotional reaction if you perform an act of generosity is nothing to do with the cost of the act of generosity, it's whether it's acknowledged.

Chris Williamson 6:59 Right.

Rory Sutherland 7:00 So if you actually let someone through in East Kent ... Uh, in London nobody does it, but in East Kent I noticed that if you pull in to allow someone to come through a, a, you know, a narrow ... It's usually alongside a row of parked cars.

Chris Williamson 7:12 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 7:13 And you don't at least give them a little wave, it's ... That's-

Chris Williamson 7:16 Bad form.

Rory Sutherland 7:17 Bad form. It's really, really not done. Um, and, but also we learn this kind of calculus of, okay, how much does it benefit them versus how much does it cost me?

Chris Williamson 7:27 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 7:27 And there's a kind of non-zero sum-

Chris Williamson 7:29 Domesticating effect of being on the road.

Rory Sutherland 7:30 Yeah. Uh, so I, I think that's probably true.

Chris Williamson 7:32 I wonder if that's contributing to some of the extended adolescence delayed development thing we're seeing among Gen Z.

Rory Sutherland 7:41 Well, you see, they don't drive.

Chris Williamson 7:42 The, the fewer and fewer people-

Rory Sutherland 7:43 Cyclists, if you're not careful, can be quite psychopathic.

Chris Williamson 7:46 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 7:47 You know?

Chris Williamson 7:47 There's that guy in London, right, that catches people that do that illegal U-turn.

Rory Sutherland 7:51 Yeah. Uh, what, uh, what's his name? He, he, he's-

Chris Williamson 7:52 Isn't he Australian or something?

Rory Sutherland 7:53 He's act- he's actually n- uh, I think he's Zimbabwean, white Zimbabwean originally.

Chris Williamson 7:58 Oh God, that's a terrifying combination.

Rory Sutherland 7:59 Uh, it was, yeah, and it's not, it's not promising, is it? I don't know.

Chris Williamson 8:00 Fuck me, I don't wanna get on the wrong side of a white Zimbabwean. Uh, interesting on the, the roads thing in-

Rory Sutherland 8:05 Cycling Mikey that he's called.

Chris Williamson 8:07 That's-

Rory Sutherland 8:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:07 Uh, in the US ... So if you ... In the UK, if you are in front of the car that is in the lane that you're trying to get into and the car that's in the lane you're trying to get into isn't moving quicker than you, you're either moving at the same pace or around about the same pace, it is almost m- maybe 90% of the time the car that's in the lane you're trying to get into should pull back, give you a little flash-

Rory Sutherland 8:30 Agree.

Chris Williamson 8:30 ... and they'll let you to go in, right?

Rory Sutherland 8:32 Agree.

Chris Williamson 8:32 If you're more than about half a car length in front of them, if they can see your, your, uh, indicator, you do that. In the US people treat their lanes like it's their territory. They're so fucking-

Rory Sutherland 8:42 I f- I found Texans, interestingly, despite their reputation for individualism, Texan drivers seem to be quite generous. I mean, apparently Massachusetts is the worst place.

Chris Williamson 8:50 I-

Rory Sutherland 8:50 But you're right about the whole thing of lane possessiveness, um, that it's more extreme here than it is, uh, over in the UK. But your point, by the way, is quite worrying because it occurs to me that we're breeding a generation of young urban people who can't drive, and therefore that sort of domesticating, uh, influence is, is lost. If you just sit around in public transport you lose that social calculus.

Chris Williamson 9:14 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 9:14 And it occurred to me that when I say they can't drive, they may have passed their test and they may have a driving license, but there's a problem because ...

Chris Williamson 9:22 It's very different to being able to drive.

Rory Sutherland 9:23 Well, if you live in London, two problems, okay? One, you don't drive very often, all right? Secondly, driving in London's horrible anyway. It's not really enjoyable. But the third problem is ... Something occurred to me. Driving's only really enjoyable when you do it frequently. So you'll know this experience, okay, you pick up a hire car, you're in an unfamiliar country, the hire car's unfamiliar, you're not quite sure where the indicator thing is, um, uh, the, the, the country may have sort of weird norms like four-way stops that you're unfamiliar with. For the first 24 hours of driving you don't enjoy it, you know, you're fumbling around. It's, it's system ... What is it? It's system two, not system one, to use a carnival phrase.

Chris Williamson 10:05 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 10:05 It's only with frequency that driving becomes system one. So now I've been in Texas for five days, I'll pretty much pick up the car outside the hotel and I'll drift off pretty contentedly. The first, you know, the first five hours of driving were a little bit fraught. And then something occurred to me that a lot of people, if you live in a city and you don't drive frequently and you only rent cars, you don't know what it is to enjoy driving.

Chris Williamson 10:27 Yeah. You're always in that alien sort of-

Rory Sutherland 10:29 The i- al- alien kind of initial zone-

Chris Williamson 10:31 First element, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 10:31 ... where it's, you know, it's kind of, um, you haven't got over the hump.

Chris Williamson 10:34 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 10:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:35 No, I love driving. I've heard you say that-

Rory Sutherland 10:37 So what have you ... W- you've, given that you lived in Texas for a few years, what, what have you gone for? I've gotta ask about this.

Chris Williamson 10:42 Uh, 6.2 liter V8 Camaro.

Rory Sutherland 10:44 Fantastic.

Chris Williamson 10:45 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 10:45 Okay, that's bril- ... Yeah, you've, you've assimilated.

Chris Williamson 10:47 Correct.

Rory Sutherland 10:48 Well done. Abso- absolutely brilliant.

Chris Williamson 10:48 I've gone totally fucking feral, I think-

Rory Sutherland 10:50 Yes. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 10:50 ... rather than assimilating. Uh, it's beautiful, it's really fun. Dude, it was f- 40 grand, 45 grand USD.

Rory Sutherland 10:57 Oh, I don't ... I know, that's insane. Don't, it do- ... I know.

Chris Williamson 10:59 20 ... For a 22 model it was beautiful, it was everything that I wanted. It's got wireless Apple CarPlay, it's got cooled seats that you can, uh, press the remote start and it'll turn the engine on and begin air conditioning the car before you get in, including cooling the seats down, which in 105 degree weather-

Rory Sutherland 11:15 Is, is, is actually an essential-

Chris Williamson 11:16 ... is, literally it's fucking life changing.

Rory Sutherland 11:18 ... it's not really a luxury. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:18 Yeah, exactly.

Rory Sutherland 11:18 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 11:19 And I was like, "And this is 35 grand GBP?" 30-

Rory Sutherland 11:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:23 ... less than that maybe?

Rory Sutherland 11:24 Yeah. I mean, they, they pay for cars in dollars less than we pay for them in sterling generally.

Chris Williamson 11:29 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 11:29 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 11:29 It's crazy. So, uh, yeah, I love it, I love it. It's, it's-

Rory Sutherland 11:32 Yeah, I, I hope actually (laughs) y- y- th- this is one area where Trump's tariff negotiations ... I'd quite like to volunteer for the Trump team negotiating with the UK-

Chris Williamson 11:41 Right. Okay.

Rory Sutherland 11:42 ... trade people on the grounds that, you know, compulsory and, uh, zero duty on Mack trucks, yeah.

Chris Williamson 11:47 We'll exchange ... You can have our Land Rovers, you can have our Rolls-Royces, you can have our Mini Coopers, and we'll-

Rory Sutherland 11:52 You want a Corvette.

Chris Williamson 11:53 Yeah, we'll ... You would upgrade your Mustang Mach-E.

Rory Sutherland 11:55 Yeah, no, no, absolutely.

Chris Williamson 11:56 Have, have you still got it?

Rory Sutherland 11:57 I've still got it and love it actually. And I'm debating ... There's an interesting question about whether the new Cadillac LYRIQ will be introduced, which is electric, um, and is arguably perhaps, uh, w- what would I say? Well, you know, it's an extraordin- ... I, I like luxury cars, okay? So this is-This is slightly embarrassing. I used to have a German boss, and I used to really, really rile him by saying things like, "Lincoln Town Car, best car in the world," okay? Because when you got off an eight-hour flight in New York, that's what you want to sit in, isn't it-

Chris Williamson 12:27 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 12:27 ... to be driven into New York.

Chris Williamson 12:29 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 12:29 And I think Europeans are absolutely unhealthily obsessed with cornering on the grounds that you don't do it, right? Acceleration is really valuable. You don't throw your passengers around corners at extreme speed. I don't, you know, I don't drive as if I'm on the fucking Nürburgring, okay? I drive in a way that maximizes sort of, I like a little bit of speed and maneuverability, but I don't, I don't want all this European nonsense-

Chris Williamson 12:51 Mostly in a straight line.

Rory Sutherland 12:52 ... about hurling things around hairpins. So, a really good American car, this is not a fashionable opinion, I might add, in Britain, but my love of American cars is unabated,

Rory Sutherland 13:02 yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:02 Good. How would you improve airport experiences? I've spent a lot of time in airports recently.

Rory Sutherland 13:07 Oh. So, I mean, one of the interesting ones is they're too big. I mean, the, you know, the, the shopping center component, which was novel when it first started has now become obligatory, and you basically have to walk through the Houston Galleria before you can catch your plane. Um, and, uh, London City Airport, I, you've probably used that, have you? It-

Chris Williamson 13:29 No, I've never been.

Rory Sutherland 13:30 ... oh, you've never, okay. It's, wha- what, this is, this is what's so funny, okay? Tha- so there's an idea I'm playing with in marketing generally and in innovation, which I call reverse benchmarking, okay? So, the idea is what most companies do is they benchmark themselves against their competition. Now, the great writer on this is a guy called Roger L. Martin, who's my own personal, he's Canadian, my own personal business guru, extensive writer. He was dean of the Rotman School in Toronto. And he wrote a piece called Benchmarking is for Losers, okay? That all you do is you, you diminish your margins by making yourself in direct competition with your other competitors, so you don't benefit, uh, your, uh, your profits or your shareholders, and also you don't benefit your customers, okay? And the reason you don't benefit your customers is because they're then deprived of choice and, and differentiation, and you don't benefit the overall category because the category loses value because it's more homogeneous, okay? And my argument is, and I got this inspiration from that great book, you've probably had him on, Will Guidara, have you ever had him on?

Chris Williamson 14:43 No.

Rory Sutherland 14:43 Okay, Unreasonable Hospitality, fantastic book about a guy who ran Eleven Madison Park. He's a major sort of food innovator in all kinds of ways. I think he's married to the woman who invented cereal milk, which I think is one of the most brilliant inventions, which is, you know the milk you get at the bottom of Coco Pops-

Chris Williamson 15:01 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 15:01 ... would be the British, which is tastier than anything else you've ever drunk. And she had the inspired idea of just (laughs) flavoring milk with breakfast cereal and selling it as a drink, which I have to say (laughs) I think is just genius, okay? (laughs) Now, his brilliant thing was he's number 50, I've told this story a lot, so apologies to people who've heard this before. He's number 50, uh, restaurant in the world in the San Pellegrino Restaurant Awards. It's a three-star Michelin restaurant in New York. That's 2011. He wants to get to number one. Pretty, you know, remote ambition, it's not gonna be easy. But one of the things he did was what I call reverse benchmarking. He took his team to the number one restaurant in the world, and they started up doing what we all do, which is, how are we doing compared to them? They do this really well, let's copy it, et cetera. And at the end of the whole experience, Guidara just goes to his team, "I'm not interested in any of that stuff. They're already doing that well. If we merely copy them, no one will notice." What I wanna know, given that you've just been to the best restaurant in the world according to San Pellegrino, um, is what, what was a bit disappointing? 'Cause we're gonna double down on that, all right? And the, the approach was they finally came up with two things that were a bit disappointing, which was, one, the coffee was nothing special. I mean, I find American coffee quality unbelievably high variance. And they just said it was fine, the coffee wasn't disgusting, it was just there was nothing particularly-

Chris Williamson 16:29 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 16:29 ... interesting about it. And of course, because he'd taken a few people to the kitchen along, a few of them wanted to drink beer, and the beer drinkers were treated a bit like second class citizens compared to the wine drinkers who were given all manner of bullshit with a, you know, sommelier and led a conversation about the terroir, you know. And so he goes back to his own restaurant and he appoints one of his guys who's a coffee obsessive the coffee sommelier, and another guy I think from the kitchens who is obsessed with American craft beers or all craft beers, he makes him the beer sommelier. Now, imagine you're in this restaurant. Now, most of the people in the restaurant aren't gonna ask for beer, but 10 or 20% of them will, okay? And they're, and they're expecting, yeah, we got Sam Adams on draft or we've got this in bottles. And instead, they get a beer menu from the beer sommelier with suggested beer pairings, you know, the citrus IPA goes really, really well with the cod or whatever it might be. Now those people, you've blown their minds, okay? It's not a question of, "Hey, that was a bit better than I expected." So this reverse benchmarking is find out something that your competitors have completely overlooked, do it really, really well, and I would argue as a marketer, and then actually turn it into a feature.

Chris Williamson 17:45 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 17:45 You know, spotlight it.

Chris Williamson 17:46 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 17:46 And you could, you, you could almost take this and make it into a, I'm, I'm not gonna say it's everything, but it's a generalized theory of innovation, which is, you know, what Steve Jobs did was take a field where everybody was focused on the tech and the capability of the machine to the complete exclusion of any aesthetic or usability consideration.

Chris Williamson 18:08 He made it beautiful.

Rory Sutherland 18:09 And what he does is go, okay, well, now, what, what I'm not saying is you can be shit at the technology so long as you make it lovely. No, you merely have to be kind of, you know, what you might call-... top decile in what you do somewhere else. But then you go off and you find the area which everybody else has ignored.

Chris Williamson 18:27 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 18:28 I, I look at things, like, I'm a big fan of the Moxy Hotel chain, I often talk about that. And what that is, is double down on the ground floor.

Chris Williamson 18:34 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 18:34 You know, make the ground-

Chris Williamson 18:35 We work on the ground floor, don't feel weird when you've checked out.

Rory Sutherland 18:37 Yeah. Y- y- and th- that's one of the m- marvelous benefits you discover through experience. Uh, you know, that actually after I've checked out of a Moxy, I, every other hotel makes me feel homeless. But the Moxy, you, you know, you make... (laughs) Okay, take your shopping trolley and your plastic bags-

Chris Williamson 18:52 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 18:52 (laughs) ... and go and push them through the streets-

Chris Williamson 18:54 Fuck off, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 18:54 ... until your flight leaves. Whereas in the Moxy, you just hang out for another five hours and get on with some shit and order their coffee, and you don't feel remotely unwelcome.

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Chris Williamson 20:13 So what would you do to airports?

Rory Sutherland 20:15 Right, that's a really interesting question. Um, uh, what interests me about London City Airport is the fact that there's a natural benchmarking tendency, which is that when I was a kid, the rich kids had been to, you know, they might have been to, actually wouldn't have been Dubai back then, would have been Sharjah or something, but they'd been to Schiphol or they'd been to Changi in Singapore, they go, "It's amazing, those shops." You know, it's like, 'cause back then, we hadn't seen a shopping center before, and it was really novel, you know, "I bought a Walkman," you know, it was fantastic, right? And then suddenly, all airports became like that, okay? And suddenly people went, "Have you been to London City? It's incredible. You go in, and six minutes later you're at the gate. There are hardly any shops. It's brilliant."

Chris Williamson 20:59 Yep, yep.

Rory Sutherland 21:00 Okay? So there is a really, really interesting idea. I mean, there is scope, lots of scope for really interesting innovation. Um, I think it's a lot easier also, it's worth noting, it's a lot easier if you want to premiumize an experience, it's a lot easier to in- innovate on the ground than it is in the air. Now there is a fantastic thing which a friend of mine called Jeremy Stone tells me about, which is at Washington Dulles, where they still have these vehicles which I think were designed by Eero Saarinen, the Finnish kind of inventor, where your lounge drives the plane. Okay? So you get in something that looks like a room, where you're all sit- seated down and, you know, you've got a few little tables and you're comfortable. And then the actual lounge is on wheels and drives to the plane.

Chris Williamson 21:46 Wow.

Rory Sutherland 21:47 Now it's a really, really interesting innovation, because there's a Soviet-era innovation thing called TRIZ, uh, which is, it- it- it's the Russian for a technique for creative innovation or something. And they have a whole list of kind of principles, one of which is make the thing that stays still move and make the thing that moves stay still.

Chris Williamson 22:08 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 22:08 It's just something in kind of mechanical and engineering innovation, which is a different way of looking at things. And so what's interesting about that, of course, is you, the planes don't need then to go to a gate. So the constraint... First of all, you probably save a lot of fuel because the plane doesn't have to spend so much time taxiing. The plane can be parked pretty much next to the runway-

Chris Williamson 22:29 Can have a much smaller number of gates or whatever it is.

Rory Sutherland 22:32 ... and you shunt the passengers. And it means that every time you expand your airport, you just buy a few more vehicles. You don't have to go into a $1 billion building project.

Chris Williamson 22:39 Well, you treat, you treat your airport more like a car park than a building.

Rory Sutherland 22:42 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 22:43 Right? How can we slot these different maneuvering Lego pieces together so that they can fuck off in a straight line toward where the plane is?

Rory Sutherland 22:50 Here's a weird one. So one thing would be, now nothing to do with airports themselves, but it occurred to me the other day. I was thinking, I was trying to do a bit of reverse benchmarking. No hotels offer you a monitor. Okay?

Chris Williamson 23:03 An external screen.

Rory Sutherland 23:03 Y- you might have a 4K, you might have a 4K, you know, 85-inch TV-

Chris Williamson 23:07 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 23:07 ... but in order to plug your laptop into it, you'd have to rip the thing off the wall.

Chris Williamson 23:11 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 23:11 Okay? It's weird to me that no hotels offer a dual screen experience. And it's weird to me that car hire companies, if you wanted to, if you wanted to employ all of America's young people in the summer... See, see if you agree with me. If you could pay a car hire company-

Chris Williamson 23:29 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 23:29 ... very simple thing. You pay a hundred bucks, okay? And it's big money, okay?

Chris Williamson 23:35 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 23:35 We will meet you at the arrivals gate and with your keys, and we will walk you to your car.

Chris Williamson 23:41 Oh yeah, that's good.

Rory Sutherland 23:42 Right?

Chris Williamson 23:42 Like a concierge.

Rory Sutherland 23:43 Because the, uh, yeah, because that's the wor- a car hire is terrifying if y- if you're familiar with the airport, it's fine. Okay? But if you're going to an unfamiliar-

Chris Williamson 23:51 Where's the Avis? Oh no, that's the Enterprise.

Rory Sutherland 23:54 Oh no, don't worry, we've, we've, we've mo- we've moved off-site, so there's a shuttle bus to take you here.

Chris Williamson 23:56 There's a huge queue that I need to get through.

Rory Sutherland 23:59 There's a queue, you've got luggage, yep.

Chris Williamson 23:59 Oh yeah, I haven't pre-registered my driver's ID, all of this stuff hasn't been submitted. Here's a QR code, here's a single piece of ID that says I'm the person with the QR code. Here's a one-time password that's texted to the phone that two-factor authenticates the fact I'm here. Hello, sir. Have you ever been through a Dubai Airport or- or the Middle East and been met by one of those concierge people?

Rory Sutherland 24:20 It's Sibaya, I think it's k- No, I haven't got that right. That's wrong. There's a word for it which is an Arabic word for hospitality or welcome. Um-

Chris Williamson 24:27 So you get off, you walk off the plane.

Rory Sutherland 24:29 That might be a book by someone in the 12th century, so d- don't, qu- Ignore that bit.

Chris Williamson 24:33 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 24:33 Uh, you walk off the plane and someone meets you and then...

Chris Williamson 24:35 Well, it's the same as being picked up by a driver-

Rory Sutherland 24:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:38 ... at the arrivals gate exit, but it happens as you get off the plane at the gate.... and then they say, "Oh, Mr. Williamson, here, let me take your bags, let me take you through a special bit of immigration. Here's a, a, a arrivals lounge that you can get into. Please give me all of your documents. I'll go and speak to the people for you." This is, and it's air conditioned and lovely, and there's water and a cool towel that smells of cucumber, and they look after your immigration experience. And I've only ever done this once, and it wasn't me that was paid.

Rory Sutherland 25:09 It would be nice as well if... I mean, because actually the airport experience, if, if you do it, if you go through it frequently, does get weirdly stressful and annoying, precisely in a weird way because it's repetitive and there's that paranoia that you're only one lost bit of paper away from complete-

Chris Williamson 25:26 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 25:26 We, we were debating this. Why is it that airports are so stressful? Now, there are other things. Why is it that the, uh, the boarding pass is completely unlike the dimensions of your passport?

Chris Williamson 25:36 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 25:36 Shouldn't it have kind of 3M sticky Post-it note glue on the back?

Chris Williamson 25:40 Well, imagine if every, imagine if every, um, passport around the world just had a small number of magnets on each corner, and you could have a tiny bit of printed, on the printed paper, a tiny bit of magneti- it snaps onto the back the same way that your, um, iPhone has the mag safe thing on the back. And all that you would need to do is hand the person, "Hey, here's passport and boarding pass." 'Cause that's the thing, you know, you don't ever know when you're going through TSA at the front. Sometimes they seem to want your passport, sometimes they seem to want your boarding pass, and I can never fucking tell before I get there.

Rory Sutherland 26:11 And there's, by the way, a very interesting hack. There... I mean, there are various hacks, one of which is, and I can do a bit of product placement here for the Hotel Emma in San Antonio-

Chris Williamson 26:18 You're gonna say-

Rory Sutherland 26:18 ... which is absolutely fantastic, by the way.

Chris Williamson 26:20 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 26:20 Um, is I do actually carry an open bag 'cause the trouble, the trouble with having everything zipped up, as I said to the spectator, is that every time you want to retrieve something, it's like making love to a goth. You know, there are just too many zips, okay?

Chris Williamson 26:35 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 26:35 Right? You know, you know, you, you know what I mean. It's, it's kind of, you know, this... Oh God, I left that thing. Oh, which of these 17 compartments is it in? And I think a lot of, a lot of baggage design has gone in the wrong direction, which is multiple sealed compartments.

Chris Williamson 26:49 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 26:49 But you actually need one thing where you just go, "I'll chuck it in there."

Chris Williamson 26:53 I have a friend who uses a workman's bag, like a carry... that, that you would have drills in.

Rory Sutherland 26:59 Oh, that you unf- you unfurl, no?

Chris Williamson 27:00 No, no, no, no. It's... Imagine that, but cut the top half off and make the handles longer. So it's basically a tray.

Rory Sutherland 27:06 Clever.

Chris Williamson 27:07 Yeah. And it would have, you know, this is where the hammer goes, this is where the drill goes, and you can see everything from above, and he just picks his bits out and puts them back in.

Rory Sutherland 27:14 So, so London City Airport, which I recommend you... because I think you invited Newcastle, but I'm not quite sure.

Chris Williamson 27:18 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 27:19 I- it has some pretty good strengths in that they have the new scanners so you don't need to take your laptop out of the bag. Now, it's amazing how irritating that is. It shouldn't be, okay? But, you know, the kind of rigmarole you've got to go through deciding what goes into your checked luggage, what goes into your hand luggage is really, really tedious.

Chris Williamson 27:38 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 27:38 Um, so there are technologies which are starting to improve things, undoubtedly, um, uh, 'cause I, I, I... it's... I mean, it is kind of weird, uh, why that's so unpleasant. But I suppose, I suppose what it is is there's something about going back to school about an airport, which is you're at the mercy of various-

Chris Williamson 27:56 Being dictated to, you gotta wait in queues, you can't get, you can't do the thing you want. A- another element-

Rory Sutherland 28:00 There's a slightly weird one in... I always think, which is, "Oh, you have great privileges in... you're in group one, uh, which means you get to wait in an un-air-conditioned air bridge for 11 minutes-"

Chris Williamson 28:11 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 28:11 "... standing there like a prat before we'll let you onto the plane."

Chris Williamson 28:14 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 28:15 Whereas I imagine the people in the later groups can just breeze straight on. I don't know what's going on.

Chris Williamson 28:19 Some time... And so I think it's an interesting one, at least in America, uh, something I've noticed, I live 12 minutes, maybe 15 minutes from Austin Airport. The reason that it gets stressful to me is that there's an inverse curve of tolerance that you have because you start to take the piss more and more. You assume that with experience you're able to navigate the airport more quickly, but it's mostly out of your control. Yes, maybe you've got all of your stuff in the right places, you've packed the night before, you've already pre-ordered the Uber, you know when it's gonna come. You know that if you order Uber Black XL, that it actually arrives a little bit quicker or they can take a different road because of the HPV people or whatever the fuck. But then when you get there, if TSA is slammed or if y- you know, you forgot that it's the beginning of spring break or something else that's going on-

Rory Sutherland 29:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:09 ... you're still gonna be screwed. So for me, the problem is as you get more experienced at it, you try to take the piss more, but your experience isn't able to impact how quickly you can really go through the airport experience.

Rory Sutherland 29:22 So, so you know this, you know this weird thing that, you know, the biggest car company in the world doesn't own any cars. That's Uber.

Chris Williamson 29:28 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 29:28 You know, the biggest, uh, lodgings company in the world doesn't own any property. That's Airbnb.

Chris Williamson 29:33 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 29:33 And I always wondered whether you (laughs) could, um, piggyback on Ryanair, which for American listeners is a bit like Spirit Air, (laughs) okay, uh, in the US. It's a very ultra low cost carrier. Okay. And this is how you do it. You'd basically produ-... you'd have a luxury airline which was totally banal in the air, but then that's only an hour and a half anyway in Europe, okay? So you buy a country house near Stansted Airport, and it would cost you 600 pounds return to go to, let's say, Madrid, okay?

Chris Williamson 30:02 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 30:02 And you'd turn up at the country house, park your car. There'd be a party going on, like something out of Eyes Wide Shut or, you know, (laughs) the, the beach party in The, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Chris Williamson 30:12 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 30:12 You know, there'd be fine wines and Belgian chocolates. And then you'd be driven to your Ryanair plane, okay? Cost of flight, 17 pounds, 95 (laughs) , okay?

Chris Williamson 30:21 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 30:21 And then you'd be kind of met at the other end. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 30:23 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 30:24 So in other words, you... in other words, you take a totally banal experience in the air, but you absolutely make the ground experience fani-

Chris Williamson 30:31 In parentheses of something that's wonderful.

Rory Sutherland 30:33 So there's... I mean, there's emphatically scope for creating a kind of parallel network of, uh, air routes, which are small airport to small airport, simply because, you know, Austin probably is, is a lot easier than say Houston or Dallas-

Chris Williamson 30:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 30:48 ... or something like that. But although Dallas, Dallas gets very high scores from users-Um-

Chris Williamson 30:53 Austin's great.

Rory Sutherland 30:54 It actually, Dallas, DFW employed its own behavioral scientist, someone called Courtney Moore. I don't know if she's still there, but she had some very, very interesting ideas. So how do you stop people feeling compelled to queue before the gate has opened? And one of her ideas was you made the gate ambiguous until it, you were ready to board.

Chris Williamson 31:13 So you don't know where you're supposed to be.

Rory Sutherland 31:14 So you basically say, you know, "Your flight to London from DFW is boarding from gate 47 or 48." So you go, "Well, there's no point in me standing in a queue 'cause I might choose the wrong gate and I'll look like a prat, so I'll go and sit in the coffee shop instead."

Chris Williamson 31:27 That's clever.

Rory Sutherland 31:27 And then only when the gate opens does it become obvious which gate is actually your gate.

Chris Williamson 31:32 It's, uh, it's interesting with gates because you can be l- more and less lucky based on where the gate's located and what the close, uh, retail spots are around it. If you're in between the DKNY and the Louis Vuitton shop, you think, "What the fuck? I wanted to be next to the Starbucks." Heathrow Terminal five, everybody thinks Pret A Manger, good. If you're going through Heathrow Terminal five, you need to go to Pret A Manger. It's a British staple, even though I don't think it's British. It's not meant to be.

Rory Sutherland 31:57 It, it... I think-

Chris Williamson 31:58 It's, it's built in Britain, but it... Pret A Manger is hardly a fucking-

Rory Sutherland 32:01 You might be right. It might be owned by McDonald's actually.

Chris Williamson 32:03 I think it is.

Rory Sutherland 32:04 Hmm, okay.

Chris Williamson 32:04 Um, but if you, if you're looking at the main Pret, if you're looking at the big windows at the far side, you've come in from the back, if you take a left all the way down toward the lower numbers, away from the business class lounge behind you-

Rory Sutherland 32:15 You've really hacked this, haven't you?

Chris Williamson 32:16 Keep all, keep going all the way, all the way, all the way down to the end, take a left, keep going, keep going, keep going, there is a much smaller Pret that's there that still has everything, but it's down and on the side, and there's ne- never any queue. You've got a little walk in. You go past the WHSmiths, have a little look at any of the books, but it is a...

Rory Sutherland 32:34 There used to be a brilliant easyJet hack which was that there was a pillar at the end of the check-in desk. I don't think it works anymore at Gatwick. And the pillar led people to believe that there was only one gate there, but there were actually two, but the queue was the same length, okay?

Chris Williamson 32:50 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 32:50 So it was actually, uh, because, because nobody could see the extra little check-in desk-

Chris Williamson 32:55 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 32:56 ... effectively the queue moved twice as fast. Um, I think they've changed it now so everybody queues in one line, but there used to be a rather brilliant... I mean, I, I, there are little hacks you can find. So an interesting... Okay, here's an interesting theory for airports, okay? Which is that generally people who fly infrequently aren't that bothered by streamlining the whole process, whereas George Clooney in Up In The Air, if you're a totally frequent flyer, you get almost unhealthily obsessed with streamlining the process.

Chris Williamson 33:27 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 33:28 And one clever thing you can do as an airport, it probably wouldn't work at the scale of something like Heathrow, is you could build in secret shortcuts which were known to your... Uh, it, it, the Tube has them, I mean, the London Underground. So there are places where it signposts the exit is over there, but the cognoscenti know that if you turn right down a, you know, down a s- funny little tunnel, you cut 150 yards off your walk.

Chris Williamson 33:51 Mm-hmm. But it wouldn't do to advertise it because it couldn't handle the traffic.

Rory Sutherland 33:54 No, no, no. You never advertise it, you simply allow them to be Easter eggs. People-

Chris Williamson 33:57 Okay, so let me give you an, let me give you an Easter egg which is gonna ruin this for everybody that's listening. Uh, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, if you go to the-

Rory Sutherland 34:04 That's a really annoying airport, by the way, because they should have made it two terminals really.

Chris Williamson 34:09 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 34:09 Okay? So what they've done is they've endlessly expanded that airport, you know, and-

Chris Williamson 34:15 D, E, F, G-

Rory Sutherland 34:16 And if you're, if you're from gate whatever it is, C148, I mean, frankly, you could have walked home, you know?

Chris Williamson 34:22 Yeah. (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 34:23 Right.

Chris Williamson 34:23 Um, so most of the... A lot of people have, uh, layovers in Amsterdam. It's a real hub.

Rory Sutherland 34:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 34:30 It's well, well positioned. Uh, problem is, it's kind of a bit of a fuck-on to find somewhere to relax. It's really difficult. And the way that they've done this, kind of the same way that those benches have been designed in New York City to mean that homeless people can't lie on them because they're precisely the inverse of the shape that a human spine-

Rory Sutherland 34:47 That's right, yeah.

Chris Williamson 34:47 ... is supposed to ma- Some weird medieval torture device that's macerating-

Rory Sutherland 34:50 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 34:50 ... as a fucking piece of art next to the street. Um, but gate D2 in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport is the only one that I've found that doesn't have armrests in between the seats. So it's a low bench that's padded and there's no armrests in between it.

Rory Sutherland 35:06 D2 Schiphol, is that right?

Chris Williamson 35:07 D2 Schiphol.

Rory Sutherland 35:08 Yeah, there's a gate-

Chris Williamson 35:08 And you can lie down, put the, put the thing on, you can lie flat on this. I've spent many a time at gate D2.

Rory Sutherland 35:12 There's a gate to London City which is most people stay in the main kind of holding pen.

Chris Williamson 35:17 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 35:17 But if you walk towards gate three or something, there's a little cafe and a seating area next to it, which most people don't know about. So that's, that, that's... I've ruined, I've ruined that now-

Chris Williamson 35:26 Whoever's, whoever's staffing-

Rory Sutherland 35:27 ... for everybody.

Chris Williamson 35:27 ... the fucking, yeah, whoever's staffing the Easter egg Pret A Manger and is near gate D2 in Amsterdam Schiphol is gonna be fucked. A quick aside, if you're anything like me, packing for a weekend trip somehow takes longer than the trip itself, which is why I've partnered with Nomatic because this backpack is the best, most beautiful, most life-changing piece of luggage that I've ever found. It's got a compartment for everything. No more playing suitcase Tetris or rolling your clothes like you're some sort of burrito chef. You planned a beautiful trip. Do not let a disorganized bag ruin the vibe. Look, if you're still on the fence about their products, they come with a lifetime guarantee so this is literally the final backpack that you'll ever need to buy and you can return or exchange any product within 30 days for any reason. So you can buy your new bag, try it for a month, if you don't like it, give you your money back. And they ship internationally. Right now you can get a 20% discount, see everything I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below or heading to nomadic.com/modernwisdom. That's nomadic.com/modernwisdom.

Chris Williamson 36:28 Talk to me about, uh, takeaway food. We... You linked me in with some guy that makes crazy Indian takeaway food. I want-

Rory Sutherland 36:33 Oh, yes. It's Nostalgia Foods and, um, Naresh Sankara-

Chris Williamson 36:36 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 36:37 ... who's a s- food scientist at, uh, Berkeley, who, uh, like most Indian emigres and indeed British emigres to the United States, definitely-

Chris Williamson 36:47 Woefully disappointed.

Rory Sutherland 36:48 Uh, well, not always. There are, there are very good Indian restaurants in, in the US but they're few.... okay? I mean, certainly in proportion, uh, I mean, of course there wasn't much of an Indian population and of course your spicy food is partly taken care of with things like Tex-Mex, et cetera.

Chris Williamson 37:03 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 37:03 Okay. But anybody who's either British or, or Indian or Pakistani, Bengali, et cetera, uh, would feel a bit deprived. And so he's found this technology where you basically, you can ship chefs over from Hyderabad. Uh, they then prepare biryani, which you then preserve using NASA food preserving technology.

Chris Williamson 37:23 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 37:24 And I've tried it and I've shared it with other people and it's astounding.

Chris Williamson 37:29 Was it, was it the parathas that you were talking about?

Rory Sutherland 37:31 Oh, that's a different one. That's a thing called a frozen paratha.

Chris Williamson 37:34 Right.

Rory Sutherland 37:34 Which you probably could get here.

Chris Williamson 37:36 Right.

Rory Sutherland 37:37 Um, uh, uh, and that's, that's an extraordinary thing because you just, weirdly you don't thaw them. Take them straight out of the freezer, bang them with a bit of oil in a frying pan, uh, about one minute each side-

Chris Williamson 37:48 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 37:48 ... and it's fantastic.

Chris Williamson 37:50 Yeah. I, I can't believe I, the email thread that I was put in was s- somebody, somebody at berkeley.edu telling me that my industrial sized order of NASA freeze dried fucking Indian food had been, and I was like, "What? How have these five different things contributed s- to result in me eating Indian food?" But Rangi-

Rory Sutherland 38:10 He makes, he also makes haleem, which is one of my favorite things of all time, by the way. If you've never had it-

Chris Williamson 38:15 What's haleem?

Rory Sutherland 38:16 It's, it's usually I think lamb and I think wheat grass, which is kind of soaked overnight in some shape. So it's like, the only way you can describe, it's like a very meaty porridge. And then you can pimp it. If you ever go to Salou in Kinnerton Street in London, they, they then bring you a little tray which has little bits of chili, little bits of ginger, little bits of something else, maybe saffron.

Chris Williamson 38:36 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 38:36 And then you pimp the top of it by sprinkling these things-

Chris Williamson 38:38 Oh, ver- like you make your own pizza.

Rory Sutherland 38:40 Yeah, yeah. And then it sits, eh, probably sits on top of rice or, or, uh, yeah, typically I think it will come with rice. Absolutely magnificent thing. It's wonderful. And he makes haleem, he makes biryani, um, and, and Hyderabadi biryani is considered the kind of gold standard in India.

Chris Williamson 38:55 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 38:56 Um-

Chris Williamson 38:56 What's happened with changes in people's ordering preferences, given that so much of this is now done over screen? You look at McDonald's, you look at even ... I, I would be very interested to know the difference between a touch-

Rory Sutherland 39:10 Okay. This sounds a really interesting ... I don't normally talk about AI 'cause everybody else does, but one thing that strikes me as interesting about AI is when you change the context and the choice architecture within which people choose, so it's a screen rather than face to face, okay? They make different choices. If you want my frank opinion, I think the whole property market is broken because everybody searches for property in the same way, okay? Uh, uh, now one way in which you can innovate very reliably is it's quite hard to change a million people's behavior, okay? Because people are driven by habit and they, you know, they've already got a sol- I mean, they've already got a solution to the problem, uh, a lot of the time. Yours may be better, but they're ba- you know. I mean, literally when mobile phones were invented, we forget this 'cause your generation think nobody had mobile phones, they invented the mobile phone, everybody bought a mobile phone. It was about 20 something years before it reached kind of, you know, mains, really mainstream adoption. Now part of that was price, part of that was technology. A lot of it was people saying things like, "Why would I want to make a phone call on the street?" I mean, I don't ... Literally. Because they didn't really envisage the value that a mobile phone brought you until they owned one. Okay? And there's also the whole social proof thing, that in the early days of owning a mobile phone you were a bit of a wanker. Okay? So translation for Americans, jerk. Okay? Now, uh, what's quite interesting there is that behavior is slow to change.

Chris Williamson 40:42 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 40:42 Okay? But if you change the context or the f- or the interface which people use to make a decision, everybody's behavior changes. And so in McDonald's one of the things they found, I think people tend to order a bit more when they order on a screen. I think I've heard anecdotally that the number of particularly males who order a meal with two burgers in it has gone up a lot because you felt awkward doing that face to face, even with a complete stranger who you are never gonna meet again in your life. You just felt a bit awkward, okay, doing it. Whereas when, when you're ordering on a screen they don't even know how many of you there are, okay? 'Cause it's a screen.

Chris Williamson 41:21 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 41:22 Obviously upselling may or cross-selling may become easier.

Chris Williamson 41:25 Uh-huh.

Rory Sutherland 41:25 You know, there's a limit in a spoken conversation. So it does strike me as interesting with AI which is if ... Which is possible, you know, there's this new device I think Johnny Ive's been involved in-

Chris Williamson 41:37 I wanted to talk about that.

Rory Sutherland 41:38 ... wh- wh- which is a thing which you wear around your neck and it uses the processing power of your mobile phone but it basically talks to you. Okay? I think you'll also need a matching eye piece.

Chris Williamson 41:49 I think that the glasses piece is a huge

Narrator 41:51 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 41:51 A, a digital monocle would be quite good I think, wouldn't it? Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:53 I can see you stu-

Rory Sutherland 41:54 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 41:55 Stinks of you. Absolutely stinks of you.

Rory Sutherland 41:58 Um, the digital monocle. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 42:00 Yes.

Rory Sutherland 42:00 The digital pince-nez for a ... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:03 (laughs) .

Rory Sutherland 42:03 Or, or lorgnette. You know those things on a handle which you ... But, um, uh, they, um, uh, if you change the way in which ... So if, if suddenly instead of going to a screen I'm going I need to renew, I need to rent a car, I, you know, I'd- I'd like you to show me details of this, I need to choose a toaster, and that changes from being screen based to, say, conversational and iterative, then everything changes. Okay. Now, there's a po- okay, there's a possible way in which AI will make me completely redundant, which is not in the way that most people anticipate-

Chris Williamson 42:38 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 42:38 Which is advertising generally is a business trying to reach consumers. Okay? The natural direction of travel of an AI empowered world would surely be the other way round, where consumers appoint agents to find them things to buy-

Chris Williamson 42:58 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 42:59 Yeah. So actually, once you have unlimited what you might call search ... There are no search costs, you know? Okay? Right? For the consumer, effectively, in the sense that the searching is being done by an AI, uh, agent. Then, effectively, what you're doing is the consumer is appointing an advertising agency to find them stuff-

Chris Williamson 43:23 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 43:23 ... rather than the company appointing an advertising agency to find them customers.

Chris Williamson 43:27 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 43:29 And I can't see ... N- and, um, now, I'm sure there, you know, I'm sure ... you know, I don't think I'm gonna starve to death, but it does strike me that that would seem a pretty natural direction of travel. And f- for example, things like the, you know, the real estate industry now. Okay? Now that c- that sort of works with fairly crude search, but it's not ... I th- I think it's very, very simplistic, which is where do you want to buy a house, how much do you want to spend, do you want a flat, do you want a house, do you want to buy, do you want to rent? Okay? That's actually ... It seems perfectly satisfying to the person going through that process, but I don't think it's a very good ... a- any more than dating apps are a great way of finding a lifetime partner, necessarily.

Chris Williamson 44:11 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 44:12 Okay? Uh, you know, the process of dating probably should be highly iterative, which is that you use what you find in the marketplace to refine your preferences.

Chris Williamson 44:20 Re- yeah. You train it over time. You do it with your YouTube algorithm. Y- even Spotify. Spotify suggests new bands and songs to me. Like, just really, you know, I would never even pick that-

Rory Sutherland 44:30 No.

Chris Williamson 44:31 ... and it knows. And that, going back to your air fryer girlfriend, not a Corvette girlfriend idea, w- experience good ... look, just trust, trust that I know your preferences.

Rory Sutherland 44:40 Yes. There are, there are, th- there are things where the experience is better than the promise. There are things where ... I mean, th- the classic case where I always think the experience and the promise are absolutely at loggerheads in consumerism is camping equipment. So, you buy a tent or a sleeping bag, and the thing that really impresses you is how small it is when it's in the bag.

Chris Williamson 44:58 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 44:58 Okay? And then you use that sleeping bag. You take it out of its bag and it turns into something, you know, basically the size of the Hindenburg (laughs) , right? Okay. You think, "That is magnificent. How do they manage to get that sleeping bag into that tiny bag?" And then it's raining, and it's eight o'clock the next day, and you've gotta get the sleeping bag back in the bag.

Chris Williamson 45:15 Wet.

Rory Sutherland 45:16 Okay? Wet. And it's a living fucking nightmare. So you could say there are air fryer girlfriends and there are sleeping bag girlfriends. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 45:24 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 45:24 The air fryer girlfriend is, "Wow. This is much better than I s-" you know, "It's much more than it said on the tin," and the sleeping bag girlfriend is, "God (laughs) , it looks so great," you know? What I mean about how

Chris Williamson 45:36 But a nightmare to live with.

Rory Sutherland 45:37 ... s- there's all kinds of things like that, which is, you know, the conflict between the promise and the ... You know, and then ... And, you know, undoubtedly advertising, I think, sometimes over-promises and under-delivers, and then there are experiences where you under-promise and over-deliver.

Chris Williamson 45:49 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 45:49 Um

Rory Sutherland 45:51 ...

Chris Williamson 45:51 Interesting with the way that dopamine works with that stuff, right? That over-promising on the front end is good for getting people through the door, and I imagine that you can launch businesses very hard with that. But how do you get repeat purchase and how do you get good customer satisfaction with that?

Rory Sutherland 46:05 Actually, I wish ... A, a very interesting question, actually. I wish there were ... A, there are a few things, and this is the whole question of how search works. And i- uh, it's, it really comes into the field of sort of decision science and choice architecture. Okay. So, at the moment, you tend to get ratings for restaurants. I've always wanted hotels. And one thing I've always wanted TripAdvisor to offer is a list of, uh, the most polarizing hotels. Okay?

Chris Williamson 46:33 Oh, wow.

Rory Sutherland 46:33 'Cause really interesting hotels are going to be slightly divisive, okay? The Moxy would be divisive, actually.

Chris Williamson 46:40 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 46:41 You know, if you turned up expec-

Chris Williamson 46:42 If you're a family of four.

Rory Sutherland 46:43 If you're a family of four, you go, "Oh, my God, this is a living-"

Chris Williamson 46:44 Where's the fucking pool?

Rory Sutherland 46:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:46 There's no kids' club.

Rory Sutherland 46:47 But anything that's really good for some people is probably going to be deficient on some other measure, you know. I mean, the most extreme ... I've always given this example. The hotel I stayed in in East Berlin, uh, where (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 46:59 (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 46:59 ... it was, it was a former East German police station. The s- the rooms had been cells, okay? You actually slept on a large platform above your own shower 'cause there wasn't room in the cell to have a whole bed and separate shower. There was one television in the room. It was black and white, wasn't even a flat screen, one channel, and it showed - still does show to this day - The Big Lebowski on continuous loop. Now, if you'd turned up expecting the Marriott, okay, it would've been literally traum- traumatizing, okay? On the other hand, if you wanted something that was authentically Berlin-

Chris Williamson 47:32 An experience holiday.

Rory Sutherland 47:33 And I wanna make the point, okay ... Um, I wanna make the point that in the middle of the hotel it was a bit like The Moxy in that thing in that we invest in the communal areas, not in the rooms. Okay? There was a barista and a coffee shop.

Chris Williamson 47:46 Are you sure it wasn't a panopticon in the middle of that hotel?

Rory Sutherland 47:49 No, no, no (laughs) . Imagine (laughs) -

Chris Williamson 47:50 With everybody's room being looked at.

Rory Sutherland 47:52 No, it wasn't. I'm, I'm pretty sure you're right. It should've been a panopticon. We shouldn't have-

Chris Williamson 47:55 That would've been-

Rory Sutherland 47:56 But actually-

Chris Williamson 47:56 ... real authentic.

Rory Sutherland 47:57 In the middle, in a kinda courtyard, was literally a, a coffee shop where I had probably the best flat white I've had in my life.

Chris Williamson 48:04 When are we gonna get a Hindenburg? We spoke about this last night. We want-

Rory Sutherland 48:06 What, the, the dirigible?

Chris Williamson 48:07 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 48:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:08 What ... Talk to me about everybody's desire to have a dirigible.

Rory Sutherland 48:12 Well, I've always wondered ... By the way, I didn't fully answer the first question about star ratings, but I've always wondered-

Chris Williamson 48:18 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 48:18 You, you mentioned repeat purchase.

Chris Williamson 48:19 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 48:20 Nearly all businesses over-invest in acquisition and under-invest in, in, in, um, customer retention.

Chris Williamson 48:26 Right.

Rory Sutherland 48:26 And the reason is ... I, I'll tell you the companies I don't think do, though. I think family com- family-owned companies tend not to because they've got a kind of reputational skin in the game and they've got longer term time horizons and they're actually building a brand. Okay? I think companies that are owned by like private equity, companies that have short-term time horizons, are obsessed with quantification-... and it's always easier to quantify and measure acquisition of customers than it is to, to actually measure retention of customers. Because retention of customers is harder to measure, but it's also slow.

Chris Williamson 49:01 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 49:01 Okay? If you do something... But I would argue, and this is when I, this is where I was gonna go, the only really... Uh, obviously it doesn't work for one-off purchases like marriage, okay? Right? It wouldn't work for... Okay. But repeat purchase. You know, Amazon should have a kind of repeat purchase-o-meter. Obviously, again, not on things you'd only buy once in your life-

Chris Williamson 49:21 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 49:22 ... but actually it's a pretty significant measure.

Chris Williamson 49:25 It's not just how many people bought this thing, it's how many people that bought this thing before rebought it.

Rory Sutherland 49:29 N- n- n- so to tediously go back to air fryers, okay, very simple question. If your air fryer broke, would you go and buy another one the next day?

Chris Williamson 49:36 Yes.

Rory Sutherland 49:37 Probably would.

Chris Williamson 49:37 Yes.

Rory Sutherland 49:37 Okay? Now that's not true of yogurt makers, okay?

Chris Williamson 49:41 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 49:42 And so, they, e- e- consumers would benefit enormously. Now interestingly, there are some libertarian economists who believe in this, that it'd be perfectly acceptable for the government to collect information on certain things and to share it with consumers to make them better informed.

Chris Williamson 49:59 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 49:59 So one interesting thing would be people who enter this category, so you might have, you know, yogurt maker. I'm being a bit unfair to yogurt makers, I'm sure there are people who love them, right?

Chris Williamson 50:09 They fucking suck.

Rory Sutherland 50:09 (laughs) I can never be bothered. The second-

Chris Williamson 50:11 Churn our own butter as well, why don't we do that?

Rory Sutherland 50:13 No, no, no. Exactly. Let's pretend we're 17th century peasants. Yeah, I don't really get that. Um, but it would be useful for the government to... You know, electric cars, interestingly, generally have a very high repeat rate within the category.

Chris Williamson 50:27 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 50:27 The, you know, it's, it, most people who actually go electric don't revert.

Chris Williamson 50:31 Question on that. I wonder how many of those situations are due to the fact that when you've planted your flag in the ground and your next door neighbor's gone, "Oh, Rory, that's a... Well, that's an interesting... Oh, is that a, it's a Mach-E? It's an electric one. Oh, well, you, it's the future, you know, it's the buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh." And then four years later when the car needs to be renewed and you go, "Yeah, I got, I got the 6.2 liter V8 fucking Camaro." And they go, "But what about the whole, you said about the..." And it's, you have to eat your own pride.

Rory Sutherland 50:56 No, n- part of it's consistency biased, by the way, part of it's regret minimization, part of it may be sunk cost, which is, it took me three months of effort to become really good at owning an electric car, such that I could turn up more or less anywhere, charge the thing, not look like an idiot. Having invested that cost, okay, I'm more likely to actually stick with it.

Chris Williamson 51:16 Let me reap the rewards now, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 51:17 Which is, in a sense, you know, in the dating market, that's why women have to play hard to get. Okay? Which is the cost of acquisition probably translates into, into loyalty and consistency.

Chris Williamson 51:28 Absolutely, yeah. I mean, you don't wanna give somebody the job as they're at the interview the first time that you see them.

Rory Sutherland 51:33 (laughs) No.

Chris Williamson 51:33 It's usually not a good indicator.

Rory Sutherland 51:34 A- and apparently places like Goldman Sachs not only will subject you to about six interviews, okay, probably three of which are entirely gratuitous, but they don't even offer you a job. They wait for you to ring and ask. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 51:47 No way.

Rory Sutherland 51:48 Somebody literally told me this. Uh-

Chris Williamson 51:49 It's a good, a test of agency.

Rory Sutherland 51:50 So, so literally they said, "It's really weird because I had six interviews and they all went really well, and I haven't heard back." And somebody said, "You won't hear back. They want you to ring up and actually pester them." Um, now that may, it, it was certainly one New York inve- uh, uh, New York investment bank that literally would do that. They go, "I'm not, I'm not gonna actually offer the guy a job. You know, I'm, we've, we've done six interviews," but um-

Chris Williamson 52:12 It's on him now.

Rory Sutherland 52:13 It's on him.

Chris Williamson 52:13 We did six interviews, it's now on him.

Rory Sutherland 52:15 So, so there are, there are products, by the way, which is almost certainly good to add a degree of friction, because if there's a degree of difficulty... I mean, I have this-

Chris Williamson 52:22 The IKEA effect?

Rory Sutherland 52:24 I have a... Yeah. You, the effort you put into the acquisition of something contributes to the perceived value of the thing.

Chris Williamson 52:30 Yeah, this is your bit about, uh, the difference between cheap strawberries and pick your own strawberries.

Rory Sutherland 52:34 Yeah, yeah. Fundamentally, they mean something different. One of them is, I put effort into the creation of value here, and therefore, uh, the low price is destigmatized. Whereas if you made IKEA really, really easy furniture to buy, I think they had to offer delivery when they moved to the US, didn't they? 'Cause they were met with complete incomprehension or something, uh, because Americans had a higher expectation of service. But fundamentally, uh, pick your own, IKEA is pick your own strawberries. It's, I've put some effort into the creation and, and, uh, accumulation of this-

Chris Williamson 53:08 Well, there's a double-

Rory Sutherland 53:08 ... of these items. Therefore, the low price is partly a, a reflection of my own effort-

Chris Williamson 53:13 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 53:13 ... rather than just low product quality to begin with.

Chris Williamson 53:15 Yeah, there's double effort as well. For the people that have never been to an IKEA, first try and find the nearest IKEA to you. It is a real experience. Halfway around, there's great quality meatballs. But it's a...

Rory Sutherland 53:25 There is a big one near Austin, isn't there? I seem to remember seeing-

Chris Williamson 53:27 It's not far. It's just in Round Rock.

Rory Sutherland 53:28 I remember driving past it, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:29 It's just in Round Rock or something.

Rory Sutherland 53:30 It's not quite as big as the Gigafactory, but it's pretty vast.

Chris Williamson 53:33 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 53:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:34 Um, you walk around this big maze for ages. So not only did you have to build the thing yourself, look at the instructions, have an argument with your wife about how it was going to work. Even before that when you were in the selection period, you had to go through, "We are here to get kitchen stuff. Well, we've got to walk through the bedrooms and we need to walk through the lounge. We've got to go through the lighting department. Oh, we're at the kitchen. Okay. That piece of art over there is quite... No, we're on kitchen duty."

Rory Sutherland 53:57 No, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:58 Yeah, yeah, it is.

Rory Sutherland 53:58 Yeah, you, you could actually-

Chris Williamson 53:58 It's an ADHD sufferer's nightmare.

Rory Sutherland 54:00 ... you could actually sort of sell IKEA blinkers, couldn't you? Which would sort of, you know-

Chris Williamson 54:04 To focus you in.

Rory Sutherland 54:05 (laughs) Effectively, yes.

Chris Williamson 54:06 But what you could get a, you could do the concierge service again. "Sir, I'm gonna take you directly to, to the kitchen area."

Rory Sutherland 54:12 I'll take you... I will blindfold you-

Chris Williamson 54:13 Exactly.

Rory Sutherland 54:13 ... and put your, put... (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:14 It's like being...

Rory Sutherland 54:15 Put a sack over your head like in dark ages-

Chris Williamson 54:16 Being fucking abducted. Exactly.

Rory Sutherland 54:17 ... and I'll lead you straight to the kitchen section.

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Chris Williamson 55:32 When are we gonna get a Hindenburg? When are we gonna get one?

Rory Sutherland 55:33 Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah, you're absolutely right. Blimps.

Chris Williamson 55:35 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 55:36 See, we had this conversation that actually helicopters are not only dangerous but actually they're a poor status marker 'cause they suggest you're time poor. And so the theory was that the air yacht, which, by the way, did exist, you can see it on YouTube, there were l- uh, after World War II, there was a company that turned something like Boeing Stratofortresses into flying luxury yachts, which I think could land on water. So it actually wouldn't have been a Stratofortress, it must have been some sort of seaplane, okay? And, um, there's actually a tragic thing of a family who set out to fly around the world and were actually killed by people somewhere in the Middle East, because they landed somewhere in the middle of some tribal conflict. Um, but the, the airship, um, would be extraordinarily high-status as a mode of transport, because it suggested you had money but you also had spare time. And, of course, you could have a degree of luxury, which is difficult in all but the largest aircraft.

Chris Williamson 56:32 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 56:33 I mean, I've always wondered about it, which is, why is it yachts are high-status but RVs are low-status, relatively? 'Cause I think American RVs... Did you ever watch Matt's RV Reviews on YouTube?

Chris Williamson 56:44 I did, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 56:45 Matt Foxworthy. Absolute genius, in my opinion.

Chris Williamson 56:48 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 56:48 Um, and, and actually, by the way, interesting detail about salesmanship. "Three things we like about this motor home, three things we don't like." Actually, that's it, it would give a-

Chris Williamson 56:57 That's your one-star, five-star reviews again, right?

Rory Sutherland 56:59 Th- th- actually the admission, the admission of, uh, uh, what you might call disarming candor, uh, is actually a good element of salesmanship, 'cause it actually contributes towards trust.

Chris Williamson 57:09 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 57:10 The, the too-good-to-be-true heuristic kicks in, and people actually get a bit unnerved. And one way of doing it, of course, is just to say, "It is expensive but it's worth it." Okay?

Chris Williamson 57:19 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 57:19 But some acknowledgement of a downside, um, can be actually particularly c- I think R- Robert Cialdini says close to the point of sale can be very convincing. Uh, Jay Leno on the Jay Leno's Garage talks about the fact that he won't buy a Ferrari because the whole thing is mired in all sorts of weirdness, okay? But he was very impressed, because when he was buying a McLaren he said, "I'm quite interested in the ceramic brake discs," or whatever it is. And the guy said, "Are you planning to track the car?" "No," he said, "I'll mostly be dri-"

Chris Williamson 57:47 Don't need it.

Rory Sutherland 57:47 He said, "Let me save you $20,000 straight off the bat," you know, because, um, if you're driving around LA they take ages to warm up, you'll end up hitting the car in front.

Chris Williamson 57:56 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 57:56 Now, that's a brilliant way of establishing trust, of downselling someone slightly. Um, who, who else... Alex Hormozi's very, very good at this.

Chris Williamson 58:04 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 58:04 Uh, I mean, and that guy is an absolute genius, in my opinion.

Chris Williamson 58:07 Yeah, he's one of the best funnel hackers in the world, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 58:09 Absolutely brilliant. I mean, it's fascinating to watch. Um, you know, I feel like, you know, um, but, um, but the, but the airship... Uh, 'cause I've always thought, when you think about RVs, okay, um, 99% of the world's interesting things are actually found on land, aren't they? Really. Okay? And so there are also problems with the very big yachts, which is you can't go into small harbors. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 58:32 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 58:33 So you end up next to an even bigger yacht, feeling that you've failed in life, you know, at the Monaco Grand Prix. I've always thought that actually ha- you know, if I, if I was supremely rich, having a really, really luxury land yacht would be a great thing.

Chris Williamson 58:47 Didn't we think about the fact that a hot air balloon is even more high-status than a blimp? Because at least with the blimp you have a tiny little turbine at the back that can direct you roughly.

Rory Sutherland 58:56 Well, a hot, a hot air balloon says, "I've got money." It'd have to be a luxury hot air balloon. "I've got money, um, I've got lots of time to spare, and I don't really care where I go." (laughs)

Chris Williamson 59:04 When you do- Yeah. (laughs)

Rory Sutherland 59:09 (laughs) Um, you know-

Chris Williamson 59:10 I'm so rich that I'll make it good wherever I go.

Rory Sutherland 59:12 I mean, that, that's very much the weird finding on airlines, which is that when you have a flight that's canceled and people have to travel, uh, the ne- on the next day, the general finding of airlines is that the people in the middle of the plane are really angry about it, okay? The people at the, uh, you know, some of the economy travelers, they're like students, okay? You give them a free night in a four-star hotel, they're going off to Asia for, you know, five weeks anyway, okay? This is a bonus. They're delighted, okay? They, you know, they get a night in a hotel, it's all a bit of a novelty. The people at the front of the plane just go, "Yeah, that's fine, I'll just get back into the Savoy and I'll book an extra night." And then they're not bothered either. The people in the middle are going absolutely-

Chris Williamson 59:51 Premium economy are fucked.

Rory Sutherland 59:52 And they, I mean, the whole question, by the way, of... You know, uh, one of the most interesting things, you know... And e- you, we're both fans of evolutionary psychology. And one of the great predictions made in evolutionary psychology, uh, was made by Geoffrey Miller in his book, both Spent and The Mating Mind. Have you had him on, actually?

Chris Williamson 1:00:11 I had him multiple times.

Rory Sutherland 1:00:12 Multiple times, okay. Uh, this is a case of someone actually getting it bang on the money. He predicted that social media would fundamentally change not the human urge to display status but what the currencies were. So he predicted that travel would become much more valuable as a status marker because you can now photograph yourself in front of Machu Picchu, okay, and basically, you know, sh- wh- while all your friends are at work in the rain, okay? And th- that the nature of the things that would actually d- enable you to display status through digital means wou- and cars would be probably diminished for all... You know, household possessions-

Chris Williamson 1:00:49 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 1:00:49 ... except to the extent that you can photograph them would be kind of diminished. And that prediction has been pretty much borne out. And what you're, I mean-What's interesting there is that, you know... A, a very interesting question would be status of a job, okay? There was no debate, okay, that it was better... If you had to work in London, okay, it was better to earn 100X than 50X, okay? If the choice becomes to today's young, you can live in Lisbon or Fuerteventura or for that matter, you know, uh, in the middle of the New Mexico desert, you can live there for 50 or you can live in London for 100, it's not altogether a slam dunk to decide who's got the better job. You know, when you are both competing for identical resources and that the only variable in employment was how much you got paid, how long you worked, how much you got paid, that, that was employment economics for, you know, hundreds of years basically. It was, it was assumed that place was a given, that when you worked was a given, and so the only variables were effectively, uh, you know, how long you worked, how much you got paid.

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 Maybe commute?

Rory Sutherland 1:02:04 And, uh, yeah, I guess, I guess. I mean, there would be people who'd choose jobs because the commute was easier. Um, famously there was one London bank that moved (laughs) next to a railway station and they found they could never get rid of their other (laughs) staff because it was... They'd all moved to the country, bought an F-off house-

Chris Williamson 1:02:21 Ah.

Rory Sutherland 1:02:21 ... and they just rumbled in on the trade and walked, walked 100 yards to the office, and they were, those guys weren't going anywhere, you know.

Chris Williamson 1:02:27 Wow.

Rory Sutherland 1:02:28 Um, but suddenly you have this technically employment market where n- as well as free time, there's free where and there's free when. So if you can work where you like, when you like... And a colleague of mine, Brian Featherstonehaugh, said also if you could work with whom you like, all of those things are now negotiable value counters alongside the money. And so, you know, it's, it's a really interesting debate. If you're an employer and you want to, you want particularly talented people but you haven't got the immense budget which enables you to compete with JP Morgan or something-

Chris Williamson 1:03:03 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:03:04 ... well, offering lifestyle benefits or locations where near affordable housing strikes me as a pretty smart place to go.

Chris Williamson 1:03:12 Mm-hmm. What would you do to improve food delivery apps? This in the US is even more than there are in the UK. So many different-

Rory Sutherland 1:03:20 So we have, we have Deliveroo, which you don't have, do you? We have Just Eat, which you don't have.

Chris Williamson 1:03:25 No. And Just E- Just Eats kind of feels a little bit sort of internet in 2005E to me, up against something like an Uber Eats.

Rory Sutherland 1:03:34 Um, I mean, Deliveroo interestingly is... I mean, they're probably moving into delivery of not just food as well-

Chris Williamson 1:03:41 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:03:41 ... which is interesting. I mean, what, what ultimately happens there, uh, is fascinating. Um, what, what s- so you use DoorDash presumably or Uber Eats?

Chris Williamson 1:03:52 I use U- I use Uber Eats, but one thing-

Rory Sutherland 1:03:54 They do this slightly annoying thing that I always find, which is, "Oh, yeah, okay. Your meal comes to $35." Yeah, it's a bit expensive, but hell they're delivering it, what the hell. And then they go, "Pay us another $5 and we won't urinate on your food."

Chris Williamson 1:04:05 Ah.

Rory Sutherland 1:04:05 That's another $7.

Chris Williamson 1:04:07 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 1:04:07 And by the time you've got out and finished-

Chris Williamson 1:04:09 Have you ever done this? So if you go into-

Rory Sutherland 1:04:10 Go on. Hit me with it. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:11 If you, if you go into the Uber app, just a normal Uber app here, and then it's got this suggestions thing in the middle. Now, everybody, below your two most recent places that you've been and whatever it is that you're gonna type in about where you need to go, everybody forgets that. If you go to Suggestions, and you look here, car hire-

Rory Sutherland 1:04:28 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:28 ... bikes, stuff for teens. And then if you go down, "Get anything delivered, food, grocery, alcohol, convenience, health, personal care, baby, gourmet, pet supplies, flowers, retail, electronics." You can, oh, "Get anything done, a courier or a store pickup." So if you've left your watch in a gym, you can send the fucking-

Rory Sutherland 1:04:46 You could send Uber to go and pick it up.

Chris Williamson 1:04:46 ... Uber guy to go and get it for you. Or you can get your, uh, pharmacy delivery. You can get them to get pretty much anything.

Rory Sutherland 1:04:53 What they're interestingly suffering from is the interesting thing which is kind of the Starbucks-Pret dilemma.

Chris Williamson 1:05:00 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:01 Which is Pret is mentally known for food in the UK-

Chris Williamson 1:05:06 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:06 ... and they want to sell more coffee. And Starbucks is known for coffee, and they wanna sell more food. And what's, what they're doing there with, with Uber which is quite clever, is they're obviously predominantly associated with one particular application, okay? And people have got into the habit of getting food delivered because they had food delivered before, you just booked it by telephone. You know, it was a pizza in 1989 or whatever. That was Domino's whole stock in trade. And so actually getting people to broaden their repertoire within... It's quite a common marketing dilemma which is, it's almost su- it's almost the market equivalent of the innovator's dilemma. You get known for one very good thing.

Chris Williamson 1:05:46 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:47 Now, Starbucks I think possibly... You know, and I think Howard Schultz was conscious of this, they were so desperate to sell food because they saw it as incremental value, you see, okay? And so, you know, i- in other words, it, you know, the coffee stuff was one thing, but the food they, they more or less saw as incremental profit, that you then start diluting your coffee credentials if you're not careful.

Chris Williamson 1:06:07 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 1:06:08 And, you know, it's, it's interesting with, you know, for example, Pret, um, I think, you know, has experimented with various subscription services and so on and so forth, um, uh, to, you know, to get people to up the coffee consumption.

Chris Williamson 1:06:21 What, like a loyalty card?

Rory Sutherland 1:06:22 But, but what Uber's doing there is it's qui- Because they do trains in the UK, obviously you don't... You know. So you, you literally you can book, you can book any train on Uber-

Chris Williamson 1:06:30 No way.

Rory Sutherland 1:06:30 ... and coaches, and I think, um, a few other things.

Chris Williamson 1:06:35 Fuck me. I haven't been back to the UK for long enough. Wow, that's cool.

Rory Sutherland 1:06:38 And so... But, uh, but I mean, the, where's your, uh, what's the problem you have with it? 'cause I, I find the... I- I've used Uber Eats and apart from that slightly weird thing of continually demanding extra money for, uh, for, you know-

Chris Williamson 1:06:50 I'm a, I'm a fan of Uber Eats. I think the, the main issue I've got at the moment when it comes to the intersection of food and digital-... is, I'm still often overwhelmed and confused when it comes to choosing, especially in a city that I'm not familiar with.

Rory Sutherland 1:07:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:06 And I don't quite know what the metric is that I want. So, distance from where I am, especially if I'm gonna go somewhere. You know, you, you land in Manhattan or you're on the Upper East Side and you think, "I f- I wanna go for some food this evening." And maybe you don't even have that specific, your missus can't decide, whatever.

Rory Sutherland 1:07:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:23 And you go, "Oh, fuck. Like, I... Okay, so I need to kind of reverse engineer what I think it is that she wants, and she says she doesn't want anything, but I need to... If I get this wrong, I'll know-"

Rory Sutherland 1:07:30 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Chris Williamson 1:07:30 "... and if I get this right, it's acceptable."

Rory Sutherland 1:07:32 My wife claims to be lactose and gluten-intolerant, which makes things even more tedious.

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 Right, okay.

Rory Sutherland 1:07:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:37 So, I'm looking on Google Maps and I go, "Okay, well, I'll, I'll order by..." First off, I need to filter by Open Now, that seems pretty important given-

Rory Sutherland 1:07:44 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:07:44 ... that I'm trying to go now. But after that, it's just this... It's really difficult to... Uh, okay, well, this one's, uh, 4.5 stars but it's only got 100 reviews. This one's a four-star but it's got 2,000 reviews. And you, i- i- it's just-

Rory Sutherland 1:07:57 You're probably a Brit, so you'd like to order the food by degrees of spiciness in some cases, would you?

Chris Williamson 1:08:01 That... I mean, I-

Rory Sutherland 1:08:02 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:02 ... I do... I- it's certainly a, a criteria I look at. But yeah, it's just... I, I struggle, and especially if I'm somewhere new and I'm on Uber and I'm like, "Right, okay, I can either order Sweetgreen or Carver or Flower Child for the millionth time-"

Rory Sutherland 1:08:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:14 "... or I can try and get something that's at least remotely, like, localized to wherever it is." It's gonna be a unique experience. But also, I've got such potential buyer's regret here that I think, "God, this is my only sustenance for the evening, I've had to wait 50 minutes for it to get to me, and I'm gonna hate it."

Rory Sutherland 1:08:30 Yes, I agree, yeah. By the way, by the way, I think all these people will start ho- start to have, uh, st- (laughs) have to start offering Mounjaro portions soon.

Chris Williamson 1:08:38 Okay.

Rory Sutherland 1:08:39 Uh, you know, uh, 'cause actually, if you look at the effects of... What are they, GLP-1s? On people's calorific consumption, it seems to affect all sorts of impulsive behaviors-

Chris Williamson 1:08:49 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:08:49 ... actually. Seems to have an effect on sort of gambling addiction, and, and, and weirdd-

Chris Williamson 1:08:53 Weed.

Rory Sutherland 1:08:53 ... things they never anticipated. Um, but if you look at... Walmart had a lot of good data on this because they obviously have pharmacists, but they also have their loyalty card data, so they can see the effect that it has on what people buy. Uh, th- s-... What you might be purchasing... I, I, I saw a talk from the chief economist at Visa about two days ago, and purchase... Now, some of this is people eating out more and shopping a bit less, but purchasing, which was on a constant upward trend, purchasing of food from the grocery aisle, which was on a constant upward trend, seems to have flat-lined. Now, what's interesting about that is, that's with probably eight to 10% of the US population on some sort of GLP-1, um, treatment. Now if it causes flat-lining with 8%, what the hell happens when it's 25?

Chris Williamson 1:09:43 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:09:44 Um, so... And now, I don't think the prognosis is all bad. I think that people on those things will actually have small... Which mayb- maybe, maybe this is, you know, the direction of, o- of capitalism, I would argue, or the desirable direction of consumer capitalism, of which I'm something of a fan, is actually less but better. You know, that actually-

Chris Williamson 1:10:05 Oh, so the quality, it's gonna be better sourced-

Rory Sutherland 1:10:06 In other words, ra- rather than having a chocolate bar that's, you know (laughs) that's the size of a small field, you have... You know, y- in other words, you treat yourself to smaller quantities of things that are of a higher quality-

Chris Williamson 1:10:16 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:10:17 ... and you become more mindful about your enjoyment of them. Did you see that speech at the end of The White Lotus where the lady from North-

Chris Williamson 1:10:24 Didn't watch it.

Rory Sutherland 1:10:24 You haven't watched it? Okay. She gives a, a speech which is, you know, "Effectively, we're the most privileged one percent of people in the history of the world. We have a duty to enjoy ourselves." It's a m-... Very interesting speech.

Chris Williamson 1:10:35 It's a wonderful argument. Wonderful argument.

Rory Sutherland 1:10:37 And it was, it was interesting because she wasn't an altogether sympathetic character (laughs) , it's probably fair to say. Although, um, the whole family were actually more interesting in many ways, uh, than anybody else. Um, uh, it was int-... I don't know why they were chosen as being from North Carolina. Sh-... I think she... Th- there's a whole lot of American nuance in there that he went to Duke and she went to UNC or something. I... Well, you know, o- or, uh, o- okay, a, a, a whole lot of weird sort of stuff in there which, as a Brit, I couldn't entirely disentangle. Um, but, um, uh, there's a, there's a... There is actually a degree of validity to that, which is that, you know, if, if you're in a privileged position, it's actually slightly rude to your ancestors (laughs) . It's disrespectful to your ancestors-

Chris Williamson 1:11:25 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:11:26 ... in a sense, and to other people less fortunate