Emotional Support Vapes, Girl Math & Apple Vision Pro: Why Reason Isn’t Running the Show

David McIntosh Jr 0:00 Rory Sutherland, what do you secretly struggle with that no one knows about?

Rory Sutherland 0:03 Bloody hell. Let's be candid about this. I've, I, I've had-

David McIntosh Jr 0:07 I feel like we've just diagnosed you for the last 13 minutes [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 0:11 ... it's the opposite of benchmarking. Don't ask what your competitors are good at and try and copy that. You're optimizing for the wrong thing. You should optimize for attention, and where you get attention and surprise is in doing something... I think they should bring back Club Penguin. Why is vaping banned on planes when you're allowed to take on an emotional support animal?

David McIntosh Jr 0:30 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 0:31 Right? You know, I do, I do talks in front of large audiences. I do a whole load of podcast stuff. I'm actually an introvert. What comedy is, is probably an evolutionary mechanism to reward people for looking at things differently. I mean, comedians are effectively free sociologists.

David McIntosh Jr 0:48 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 0:48 When I first got a mobile phone, which would've been about 1990, 1991, someone rang me on Oxford Street. I answered the phone. Someone in a black cab pulled down the back window and shouted-

David McIntosh Jr 1:00 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:01 Somewhere out there, I think there's a kind of moonshot in our understanding of how consciousness works, which could lead to an extraordinary-

David McIntosh Jr 1:12 Rory Sutherland, welcome to Origin Story.

Rory Sutherland 1:14 It's a pleasure. Delight to be here. Yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 1:17 This time we're doing it in person. Last time you came on, I had 1,000 subscribers. Before that, the first time you came on, I had 98. And here we are in London. I'm sure people from the outside in who haven't come across you or I before are thinking, "Fuck's sake, Miriam Margolyes and Rupert Grint have taken a turn for the worse." [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:34 Absolutely. I do. I get that all the time, yeah. "M- both Miriam Margolyes has really let herself go," is one of the common ones.

David McIntosh Jr 1:40 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:40 Yeah. Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 1:42 I wanna start with a sentimental thank you, Rory. You believed in my sh-

Rory Sutherland 1:45 Well, the more polite one, by the way, is Andy Serkis is great.

David McIntosh Jr 1:47 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:47 Have you ever, have you come across this? I, I didn't, I didn't really know, uh, him that well, but there is actually a freakish resemblance in that I look like a, a very bad AI version of Andy Serkis.

David McIntosh Jr 1:58 [laughs] Uh, Rory, I just wanna say thank you, like a huge sentimental thank you for coming on the show two or three years ago. We've become friends. You came on again about a year ago, and little make you know that I've used your name in so many different conversations to get even greater guests. One of my heroes, Jimmy Carr, came on the show because I titled the subject, "Rory Sutherland spoke about you, let's speak about him." And because of that, he came on the show and said thank you for reaching out. So I just wanna thank you.

Rory Sutherland 2:23 Can I also say it was an absolutely fantastic show. Um, really, really interesting. Was it on that show that Jimmy shared his idea with how to handle gun control in the US?

David McIntosh Jr 2:33 No, no, no. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 2:34 Uh, it's o- on one of the podcasts, Jimmy shares an idea for what you do in the US. You don't ban guns. You simply make it mandatory that if you have a gun, you have to belong to a gun, gun club. Gun clubs typically consist of 100 to 150 members, and they're made jointly and severally liable for the behavior of their members.

David McIntosh Jr 2:53 Hmm.

Rory Sutherland 2:54 So effectively, you see, uh, you have an early warning system so that anybody who notices that one of the members of the gun club is starting to act a bit weird or, uh, behave erratically, you'll have effectively a very, very strong incentive for them to do something about it, uh, because they'd hel- be held liable for any crimes committed by the person who belonged to the club.

David McIntosh Jr 3:14 Jimmy, amongst other comedians, are so socially aware, I think, and they're, they're not scared to speak it. They're not scared to test the edges of their opinion because they can, I guess, preface it with a, "Oh, it's just a joke. I'm a comedian. I can say these things that are touching the edges that we all think and feel."

Rory Sutherland 3:30 Yes.

David McIntosh Jr 3:30 "But I'm willing to say it." And I think Jimmy is a prime example of that. He's so intelligent. You've become friends with him-

Rory Sutherland 3:34 Yes

David McIntosh Jr 3:34 ... uh, recently actually.

Rory Sutherland 3:35 He, he's a fantastic, uh, a fantastic, uh, social... I mean, comedians are effectively free sociologists in a way. Um, and their social observation skills are obviously heavily attuned. A- as he put it very simply, w- he was making a case for involving comedians in solving marketing and advertising problems, you know. We notice things. Fundamentally, it's about observation, and what comedy is, is probably at some very simple level, an evolutionary mechanism to reward people for looking at things differently in some shape or form.

David McIntosh Jr 4:10 Uh, Rory, I had a, a guy on the show a couple years ago, maybe after you came on or just before you came on last time, called David Pinsof. You aware of him?

Rory Sutherland 4:18 Hmm. Know of him. Yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 4:20 Yeah, yeah. Um, mutual friend Rob Henderson introduced us. He, uh, he's the founder of Cards Against Humanity, which essentially-

Rory Sutherland 4:27 That's right

David McIntosh Jr 4:27 ... is a joke rating machine.

Rory Sutherland 4:28 Hmm.

David McIntosh Jr 4:28 And I asked him, "What is humor? What is comedy?" And all he, he, he boiled it down to this, Rory. He said, "Humor is a deviation from an expectation," probably expanded to a deviation from a social expectation. And if you think about your work where we, you speak about how innovation happens at the edges, at the extremes, comet- that's a lane to that sentiment, right?

Rory Sutherland 4:49 Uh, absolutely right. Um, I also think that you should tap comedians for, for example, innovation and new product development because they notice something which it, it, I mean, an, an awful lot of businesses get trapped in what you might call the benchmarking trap, where a lot of people in a business are keen to impress other people within the sector. So you end up with a lot of businesses all competing along the same dimensions of what they think is important, what they think is good. Meanwhile, consumers may have lost interest in this particular area of pursuit, or because consumers are consumers, they've moved on. There's a trend, there's a technological change, a behavioral change or whatever. And actually, I'd like to tell this story 'cause I think it's quite important. Um, I've invented a concept which I think is really useful for every business, and it can be stolen from a brilliant guy called Will Guidara. He wrote a book called Unreasonable Hospitality, and he tells the story in that book of how he took 11 Madison Park from number 50 in the world in the San Pellegrino Restaurant Awards to number 1, from between, I think, about 2010 and 2017, something like that. Now, one of the stories he tells is such a valuable story Because he does the opposite of what most people would've done. So he takes... He says, "We're number 50." Their Michelin's a three-star restaurant, okay? It's not shit, okay? It's obviously pretty good to begin with. Uh, and he takes a cross-section of his staff from the kitchen, from the front of house, et cetera, to dine at the number one restaurant in the world, and that also is a Michelin three-star restaurant. Of course, everybody goes there, and it's incredibly impressive, and they're making notes of the kind of things they can copy. At the end of the evening, they're all talking about what impressed them, and Will Guidara says something really fascinating, and I think there's a lesson which literally anybody in a business could steal this idea and apply it. It requires a bit of imagination, and it requires a bit of observational skill. Actually, you know, a comedian might actually help, okay, here. So Will-- They're all talking about what was good about the, the experience, and Will says, "I'm not interested in any of that. I'm not interested in copying them, what they already do. I wanna know what about the experience was slightly disappointing, and then I'm gonna double down on making the two things this restaurant was disappointing about utterly brilliant." Okay? And so they eventually come up with two things that the best restaurant in the world, according to San Pellegrino, had disappointed them in. One of them was the coffee was just meh. You know, it was fine. You know, obviously it wasn't terrible, but I mean, American coffee is highly variable anyway. It just wasn't very impressive or interesting. And the second one was some of the s- people who he'd taken, probably, I'm guessing, chefs, preferred to drink beer than, rather than wine. Um, uh, and the beer experience had been dismal compared to the kind of fuss that was ladled onto the people who were choosing wine varietals and food pairings and all that sort of stuff. So he said, "Okay, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go back to Eleven Madison Park. One of you," I think there was a waiter who was a single origin coffee nut, "you're now the coffee sommelier." And this guy from the kitchen who's obsessed with kind of craft, American craft beers, which are superb, by the way, okay? And America's gone from literally the worst country in the world in which to drink beer to the best-

David McIntosh Jr 8:11 Best, yeah

Rory Sutherland 8:11 ... you know, in a period of about 15 years. Um, uh, he said, "You're now the beer sommelier." Now imagine this, okay? Now it's only a minority of people, I get that, but you go to this restaurant, and you actually ask the waiter, "What have you got in the way of beers?" And someone comes over with a menu of beers and says, you know, "This particular citrus IPA would go really, really well with fish," for example, okay? You're just going, you're not just going, "Oh, that's good." You're going, "Wow, this is something else. This is, you know, this is another planet." Similarly with the coffee. You know, you have a menu, you know, or a choice of two, you know, dark roast. Even dark roast, medium roast would be something, wouldn't it, okay? Rather than just, "Do you want regular or decaf?"

David McIntosh Jr 8:52 Flowing like a-

Rory Sutherland 8:52 I call this reverse benchmarking. In other words, it's the opposite of benchmarking. Don't ask what your competitors are good at and try and copy that. What you're doing by that is you're optimizing for the wrong thing. I would argue, and I would as an advertising guy, you should optimize for attention. In other words, make a difference where people notice. And where you get attention and surprise is in doing something that nobody was expecting. And you made that point that all comedy is, to some extent, about, has some degree of the unexpected about it. If you want to get into neuroscience, uh, there are a whole load of people, genuinely, this is way above my pay grade, people like Karl Friston, people like Andy Clark, who fundamentally believe, not the first people to suggest this, that most of our perception is a prediction, okay? Most of what we perceive is an expectation, and we use our senses, the limited bandwidth in our optic nerve or our auditory nerves or whatever, simply to correct for prediction error. It's how MPEGs work. It's how JPEGs work, okay? They don't-- In other words, we haven't got enough optic bandwidth to,

Rory Sutherland 10:00 um, uh, process raw imagery, okay? RAW, if you're a phot-phot-photography nut. There's just too much there. So instead what we do is we form an expectation, and we use our eyes to correct for error. That, that's effectively how data compression works in, in imagery, in pictures. Now, by the way, I think this might ex- if this is true, this might explain why Apple Vision Pro doesn't succeed, and it also explains, I think, why 3D cinema and TV doesn't succeed.

David McIntosh Jr 10:28 Why is that?

Rory Sutherland 10:29 Which is that actually 3D isn't that important to us. The, it's perfectly possible we have two eyes not for 3D vision. We have two eyes either because evolution makes most animals symmetrical, and it helps to have a spare. If you think about it, if you only had one eye, uh, as Cyclops has found, okay, if you're, if, if you're one eye, you, you get a cataract, you get hit in the eye, okay, you're now blind. If you've got two eyes, the chance of being completely blind probably is reduced by, yeah, do the maths. You know, you can imagine, okay? Enormously. So it probably pays us to have two eyes just as we have two kidneys. Yes, we can see in 3D in terms of spear throwing and catching. But if you think about it, okay, we can do this experiment, okay? If you go and look at a view of the sun rising over the Acropolis, okay, and then you cover one eye, you don't go, "Oh, that's shit now." [laughs] "Oh, it's completely ruined me, right? Okay. Why would I wanna look at this? Ooh, that's better." Right? And so my contention is that actually most of our 3D-ness in the environment, which is why we're totally happy playing computer games and, and looking at art and watching films, is that most of the depth is actually created internally, okay? It, you know, now obviously it helps if, if the imagery respects perspective, okay? Computer games, there are 2D computer games. I suppose, you know, uh, an awful lot of early computer games didn't really attempt to recreate a 3D environment. But the screen is 2D, and nobody has a problem with that because our brain basically constructs, I think, the 3D environment from the 2D image without the need for the two eyes comparing, uh, the slightly different angle of vision. And so my contention is that actually augmented reality or virtual reality might be huge, but we don't actually need to make it 3D, and therefore this may, you know... And now why that's important is that- I, okay, this isn't gonna be me, okay? It may not even be anybody who's alive today, but I think we will eventually make a leap forward in neuroscience, in understanding human perception and phenomenology, which will rather equivalent or analogous to, uh, improvements in our understanding of physics, okay? Which will have an enormous effect on, uh, the way we design the world, the resolution of conflict, uh, you know, the design of products and services, where we will be optimizing for perception rather than optimizing for some, uh, proxy measure of, you know... In other words, when, when I use the story of the Uber map, okay? It doesn't make the wait shorter objectively, but it makes the experience of waiting for a cab much less frustrating 'cause you can see where it is. That's an example I, I give of designing for emotion and perception, not designing for objective reality. Now, somewhere out there, I think there's a kind of moonshot in our understanding of how humans' consciousness works and how we perceive the world and what we really care about, which could lead to an extraordinary, um... I mean, it might actually, weirdly, it might actually lead to a weird fall in GDP in a weird way because we've become so much more efficient at making people feel really good. Now, okay, there are pharmacological versions of that already in existence-

David McIntosh Jr 13:47 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 13:47 ... if you think about it. There are drugs that make people feel great.

David McIntosh Jr 13:51 Have you taken a pill in Ibiza? Is that what you're telling me?

Rory Sutherland 13:53 No, no, no, no, no.

David McIntosh Jr 13:54 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 13:54 I don't, I didn't do any of that stuff. I'm, I always joke about this, by the way, that I'm, I'm actually too grumpy and right-wing to take E-

David McIntosh Jr 13:59 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 14:00 ... 'cause I don't like this idea of just indiscriminately loving your fellow man, you know?

David McIntosh Jr 14:04 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 14:04 I want a drug where you sit in the corner and make snarky comments about the other people. But, but, um, I, I'm always a bit wary about that kind of universal kind of, uh, e- e- ecstasy. I, I'm, I'm very strange about this, by the way, 'cause I'm, I'm absolutely terrified of being... You know, I spend my whole time studying kind of behavioral science, and I'm completely ready to accept the fact that a large part of our mental processing is unconscious, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I really, really hate the idea of being hypnotized.

David McIntosh Jr 14:32 Why is that?

Rory Sutherland 14:32 Dunno. A loss of control. I, I mean, I don't drink very much, interestingly. I mean, I did when I was younger. Uh, maybe I got my drinking over with just quite early. But most people, 'cause I'm a bit of a lard ass, assume I'm fairly boozy. I'm actually a pretty moderate drinker. Beer and spirits, not wine, largely. Um, I, you know, I quite like a, you know, couple of drinks at the beginning of the evening just to chill things out a bit. But, um, I, I am slightly, oddly, uh, really wary about, you know, the loss of control, which makes no sense in a way because I'm kind of half acknowledging that there's an elephant in my brain effectively making all the decisions beyond the reach of conscious awareness. [laughs] But at the same time, the illusion of control really, really appeals to me.

David McIntosh Jr 15:15 [laughs] I've just slipped you a, what is a kind of colored powder to drink on-

Rory Sutherland 15:20 Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 15:20 ... during this. I didn't tell you what that was, Rory. That could've been a lot of things. It could've been-

Rory Sutherland 15:23 But I, I, I understand it's from Mr. Chris Williamson, isn't it?

David McIntosh Jr 15:25 Yes.

Rory Sutherland 15:25 It's one of his nootropic, uh, drinks.

David McIntosh Jr 15:28 Yes. Um-

Rory Sutherland 15:29 Uh, by the way, um, nobody has ever considered, this is straying into dangerous territory.

David McIntosh Jr 15:34 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 15:34 No one has ever considered the fact that some part of a slight decline in manners, thought, conversation, or something, no one's ever done a cost-benefit analysis that's come from, uh, y- 80% of the population giving up smoking.

David McIntosh Jr 15:51 Well, you're on the vapes now. Do you-

Rory Sutherland 15:52 No, no, no.

David McIntosh Jr 15:53 Were you previous-

Rory Sutherland 15:54 Well, well-

David McIntosh Jr 15:54 Were you a previous smoker?

Rory Sutherland 15:54 Okay, I will make the case, okay, that there are some people who are kind of natural smokers, okay? By which I mean they are, they find their relationship with the modern world, which is not a natural evolutionary environment, uh, is happily mediated through the ingestion of some form of nicotine, okay? And no one's asked... Well, okay, if you ask in reverse, okay, the arrival of nicotine probably, but not necessarily coincidentally, kind of coincided with the Enlightenment. [laughs] Okay. You know, if you think about it, you know, there are a load of people going, "Oh dear, Jethro, the pig has died." Suddenly you get tobacco and it's, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" There was quite a sudden flourishing in, uh, human culture and, uh, intellectual development that mysteriously seemed to coincide with the arrival of nicotine from the New World. It could've been tea. It could've been coffee. It could've been a combination of the three. It could've been the fact, by the way, that simply that regardless of the drug effects, they encourage people to sit down and chat about things. But I have asked the question, which I think should be asked, you know, bef- you know, before we start regulating vapes away, um, it's highly unlikely that

Rory Sutherland 17:10 any recreational drug, what we tend to do, and this is, by the way, not me, this is Paul Dolan, and it's also Professor Paul Dolan, also David Nutt, who is the government's health advisor. Recreational drugs are not i- we, we, what we tend to do is we do a cost-benefit analysis. Uh, sorry, we do a cost analysis on a lot of drugs. We don't do a cost-benefit analysis. Now famously, Churchill said, "I've t- I've taken more out of alcohol than it's taken out of me." Okay? That was Churchill's cost-benefit analysis of alcohol, that net-net, he was up on the deal.

David McIntosh Jr 17:42 Is that a true Churchill quote or is it part of that Churchillian drift?

Rory Sutherland 17:47 I think, I think that is true. I mean, he was certainly, certainly a prodigious drinker. I mean, if you had a prime minister, uh, today who drank that much, it would be, uh, the front page, front page news and a fairly major scandal. I mean, he was an absolutely prodigious drinker. Um, uh, but it is, it is fair to ask, okay, uh, with any drug, um, you know, uh, often drugs are discovered recreationally before their pharmacological use in medicine or psychology or, or psychiatry is properly, properly evaluated. There are some f- strange findings. I think if I'm right, there was always a finding that something like 95% of schizophrenics smoked, okay? And there was an argument that effectively this, they were self-medicating, that it somehow helped. Um, and I think I, I, you know, I did make the mischievous comment, "Why is vaping banned on planes when you're allowed to take on an emotional support animal?"

David McIntosh Jr 18:40 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 18:41 Right? Okay. If I-

David McIntosh Jr 18:43 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 18:43 Why can't I make the case, "This is my emotional support nicotine. I find flights extremely boring."

David McIntosh Jr 18:48 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 18:48 "I don't like being in close proximity with other people, but the ingestion of nicotine helps me get through this flight." Okay?

David McIntosh Jr 18:54 R- Rory, what flavor is it? Please tell me that.

Rory Sutherland 18:56 No, this one's Banana Volcano, I think. Um-

David McIntosh Jr 18:58 I thought it would've been, like, Bisto gravy or something as a trippy trip. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 19:01 I'm, I'm waiting, I'm waiting for that to come out. Yeah, yeah. Actually, why haven't KFC done a range of vape flavors?

David McIntosh Jr 19:05 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 19:05 That'd be fantastic. Come on, what are you thinking, guys? But actually, you know, I mean, if you think about it, who's more likely to kick off on a plane, someone who just likes the handy nootropic effects of consuming a bit of nicotine to help them relax, or someone who's so uptight they can't leave their house without taking a tortoise with them?

David McIntosh Jr 19:23 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 19:23 Right? I mean, I always thought the second person is much more likely to, you know, uh, to kick off on a, on, on, you know, on a crowded flight than the first.

David McIntosh Jr 19:31 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 19:31 But for some reason, for some reason we've created this world where it's totally okay to bring along an emotional support peacock on a crowded flight-

David McIntosh Jr 19:38 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 19:38 ... but vaping is banned.

David McIntosh Jr 19:42 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 19:42 Was vaping, was, was smoking allowed on Hooters Air? Do you remember that? Do you ...

David McIntosh Jr 19:46 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 19:47 It re- it really was a case that Hooters launched an airline. The, the, um, uh, I think it only went to Vegas and tended to go from fairly dubious places. I always wondered whether you were allowed to smoke on it or not.

David McIntosh Jr 19:56 Rory, what a great start to this podcast. I've heard you describe about the career that you chose was a way that you could monetize your ADHD. I feel like we've just diagnosed you for the last [laughs] 30 minutes. Do you feel like you have ADHD? Have you went through a diagnosis? What's your relationship with that label?

Rory Sutherland 20:13 Uh, I never ... We, we never, we never had the diagnosis. I'd never even heard of it until about eight or 10 years ago, so certainly when I was at school you never had it. Um, I am wary about the medication of it because it strikes me as something, uh, which ... By the way, I mean, this is not to say that it's necessarily easy to have it as an individual, but there's a very, very good academic whose name, I can't remember her name, but I should remember it, who I think is at King's College London, who makes the interesting case that a lot of these spectrum disorders are not disorders in a social species. Okay? So the argument here is this is what you might call, that in any group of 150 people, okay, whatever the cost or benefit to the individual, it is advantageous ... Now, you've gotta get into group selection here, so I'm gonna get hardcore Darwinists literally, okay. Um, I do believe in group selection to a degree, as did Darwin incidentally. Okay? Um, because there patently would be in the evolutionary environment competition between groups, okay, which would then select for c- for cooperation. Okay? Now, my question would be, and her, her assertion is that having a few people, you know, variously on some sort of spectrum or other within a group of 150 people is undoubtedly beneficial to the group because it gives the group collectively what you might call an equivalent of stereo or equivalent of, you know, uh, uh ... I- i- in other words, having three or four people, or 10 people even, in a group who look at something differently, who fundamentally, you know, have a slightly different way of perceiving the world, is a kind of 3D vision, ironically. It, you know, in other words, it gives a completely new perspective on something, and therefore any group which was neurodiverse would actually do better than a group where everybody's neurotypical. That, that seems to me entirely plausible as a line of argument.

David McIntosh Jr 22:10 I can't remember if this is a sentiment from a evolutionary psychologist or Theo Vaughan. I, I mean, there's a big gap in gain between both of those people, but I'm sure I heard somewhere that those with ADHD-

Rory Sutherland 22:21 By the way, that's why we should cherish comedians and indulge them-

David McIntosh Jr 22:24 Yeah

Rory Sutherland 22:24 ... because they are, uh, you know, uh, you know, along with other artistic and creative types, wi- you know, within reason, um, uh, they contribute effectively to our collective vision of the world.

David McIntosh Jr 22:38 I think what I heard was that those with ADHD were typically on lookout for our tribe from an evolutionary point of view because they were easily distracted by oncoming threat.

Rory Sutherland 22:48 And actually, within our own brains, if you follow Iain McGilchrist. Have you ever interviewed your fellow Scot, Iain McGilchrist?

David McIntosh Jr 22:54 No. I'm in contact with him, but he's not come on yet.

Rory Sutherland 22:56 Right. I'll, I will, I will nudge him. He's a wonderful man, and it's an idea that, uh, once, once absorbed, fundamentally changes the way you look at the world, which is even within our own brains there is what you might call, uh, one hemisphere dedicated to narrow, uh, vision and one, uh, devoted to broad. Okay? One is asking what is and the other one's asking what if, to an extent. And of course you can see in an evolutionary context, his argument is that a bird will peck at, will use its right eye, i.e. the left hemisphere, when it's pecking at specific grains of corn, but it's using the opposite hemisphere and the other eye, in this case the left eye 'cause the optic nerve crosses over, the left eye is connected sort of more to the right hemisphere, to look out for predators or to consider other possibilities. And you, you even see, by the way, this same duality in algorithm design where there's a thing called the explore/exploit trade-off.

David McIntosh Jr 23:51 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 23:52 There's a famous one sexistly called the, uh, the secretary problem. In other words, what, what part of your available resources do you spend in search and evaluation, and what part do you spend in exploiting what you already know? And it isn't really ... By the way, the interesting thing is we call it a trade-off. The explore,

Rory Sutherland 24:10 the exploit/explore trade-off, the explore/exploit trade-off isn't a trade-off. It's two complementary parts of the same holistic system, which is there's no ... You can't afford to explore if you have, if you don't exploit effectively, but if you don't explore effectively, you don't know what to exploit. So the idea that there's a trade-off, I think reflects a Western probably left hemisphere mindset, which- You know, you, you might argue that Eastern religions with things like yin and yang and the union of opposites and so forth might have a better grasp of the fact that, uh, this should be looked at as a whole beneficial system, not as an unfortunate trade-off.

David McIntosh Jr 24:48 Rory, I find you such a, a, a wonderful thinker, and your book, Alchemy, that I have, uh, sat on the table there, it allowed me to see society and the people that I interact with and the brands that I consume very differently. When writing this or coming to the conclusions that are in this book, was it almost like a coming out story for you as a graduate?

Rory Sutherland 25:06 Well, um-

David McIntosh Jr 25:06 When did you be- when did you-

Rory Sutherland 25:07 [sighs]

David McIntosh Jr 25:07 When did you come out as irrational?

Rory Sutherland 25:10 I, I'm not, I'm not irrational. I, uh, by the way, um, and, uh, Ian McGilchrist, uh, quotes A.N. Whitehead on this, that rationality should be used rather like cavalry charges in battle, i.e., there are decisive moments where it is absolutely right and appropriate to be completely rational or to use rationality to evaluate different proposed courses of action. What you shouldn't do is make rationality your first port of call. And this is the, what I call ... Ver- okay, this is ... I, I'm gonna translate what I was just talking about into very, very, very simple English.

David McIntosh Jr 25:42 A lot, yeah, a lot of my l- audience is Scottish.

Rory Sutherland 25:45 If you've got, if you've got problem-solving, you can go broad or you can go narrow. Now, one of the groups I occasionally get to talk to, 'cause I'm invited to speak to them, and I absolutely love talking to them, is cops, okay? And, um, in a minute I'll tell you a very funny story about this, okay? Uh, but, um, if you look at a police investigation, it's actually ... Let's assume it's not blind. There are times where, by the way, it's blindingly obvious who did it, okay? You go and arrest them as quickly as you can. You then assemble evidence. You send them to jail.

David McIntosh Jr 26:17 It's always someone with a white van.

Rory Sutherland 26:18 Uh, it is basically. And, and by the way, the body's always found by someone out walking their dog.

David McIntosh Jr 26:22 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 26:23 So I've always thought if you get someone going missing, you just encourage dog walking.

David McIntosh Jr 26:27 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 26:27 Um, but you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's a white van.

David McIntosh Jr 26:28 And the purchase of a Transit.

Rory Sutherland 26:29 Yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 26:30 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 26:30 That was actually one of yours, wasn't it? Uh, was it Black, the serial killer? He was a, he was actually-

David McIntosh Jr 26:34 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 26:34 ... a postal delivery man that ... And of course he was very, very difficult to catch because his work took him all over the country.

David McIntosh Jr 26:40 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 26:41 Um, uh, and, um, but, but the serial ... If, if you're trying to solve a mysterious crime, you have two f- you have the investigative phase, and then you have the evidential phase. The investigative phase, you're very, very open-minded. You'll go to the neighbors and you'll say, "Did you notice anything unusual?" Incredibly open, open question when you think about it, you know. The answer to that question, did you notice anything unusual, could be really, really anything, you know. The dog didn't bark in the night. There was a man in a white van who drove past-

David McIntosh Jr 27:09 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 27:09 ... in a funny way. And then that information is actually anecdotal. It has no real robust evidential value. You can't imprison someone for driving a white van in a funny way. But it tells you where to go next, what to investigate next, where to direct your attention. Given that you have limited attention, it tells you what to explore. And I think we've often developed ... I noticed this during COVID when people started talking about the science. Now, the science is like saying to a cop, "Unless the information has evidential value, you can't use it." Okay? Oh, that's just anecdotal. You can't, you know ... Until we've actually got a kind of peer-reviewed bloody paper, you can't use that. Now, that's bonkers, okay? Because in detective work, you use any information that might be of significance. Now, it doesn't have evidential value. I mean, Peter Sutcliffe was partly caught because he parked his car in a funny way.

David McIntosh Jr 28:01 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 28:02 Okay? Uh, in the ... He had false plates, which they noticed, but that wasn't that suspicious 'cause he's in the red-light district of, um, uh, Bradford or Leeds. I can't remember where he was at the time. But cops noticed that most people patronizing that red-light district park with the windscreen facing the wall so nobody can see what's happening in the back seat, okay? Sutcliffe had parked the other way around as if he was sort of planning to make a quick getaway. And after the cops had arrested him, Sutcliffe went and asked to have a pee in the corner, went and had a pee. They arrested him, let the girl go, probably saving her life through this bit of inspired observation, okay? They take him in, and then one of the cops goes, basically, "Did you notice he parked in a funny way?" Which that, which, uh, is an inspired bit of highly specialist observation, by the way. I'll explain that in a second. Um, and, um, they said, "Yeah, and, and, and when we arrested him, he went, uh, asked to go and have a piss in the nettles around the corner." Obviously you don't go and stare at the man's penis. It just feels a bit weird.

David McIntosh Jr 29:01 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 29:01 So he'd been out of sight while he'd been having a pee. The cops, and this is genius, they go back to the place where Sutcliffe had a pee. They discover he's dropped basically a hammer and a, a screwdriver at the place where he'd gone and had a pee before they took him in, okay? So the girl who they'd freed through their noticing his number plate and weird way of parking. I then shared this with a cop who said, "Yeah, yeah, we'd all noticed that." I go, "What, how you park?" He said, "Yeah. If you join the police, the first thing you're taught as a cop is you always park a cop car facing outwards so you can make a quick getaway," okay?

David McIntosh Jr 29:34 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 29:34 If you need to go somewhere fast. Also, if you think about a police station car park, you don't want some emergency to happen with a load of people going, "You're blocking me in, mate."

David McIntosh Jr 29:41 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 29:41 "Can, can, can you just, can you just go over there so I can ..." So all the cop- So and he said cops generally carry that into their own personal lives. They'll always park by reversing into the space. And so a cop would be more highly attuned to how you park, okay, than a normal member of the public would. But what I mean by this is that there is a large number of problems which can't be solved unless you go broad first, and what we're trying to do through rationality is to start with a premise, you know, some axiom which may or may not be even valid in the first place, proceed through a, a, a perfectly logical, defensible series of, uh, uh, steps to arrive at a conclusion, uh, which is then defensible in argument. But that may not be the best solution to the problem. It's merely a s- it, it's a solution which has a very, very nice logical path by which you can put a PowerPoint deck together if you're McKinsey, which makes complete sense But what you're doing when you're being rational is there's an implicit... To- actually, we all assume if someone rationally argues something, not only is that an interesting idea or worth inquiring or worth a look, we assume that because it's arrived at rationally, therefore it's the only right answer, like a high school maths question. And that's what I don't like about rationality, that when people are rational, what they're doing is not saying, which I think is a perfectly healthy thing to do, "This is an interesting line of inquiry." They're implicitly saying that anybody who disagrees with me is wrong.

David McIntosh Jr 31:14 And, and I, I think there's a super layer added to that. Not only-

Rory Sutherland 31:18 Mm

David McIntosh Jr 31:18 ... rationality garners that effect, but so does this kind of super layer of now AI, which is rules-based, um, open source, and what, what-

Rory Sutherland 31:27 Plagiaristic.

David McIntosh Jr 31:28 Yes.

Rory Sutherland 31:28 I, I mean, I, I mean, by the way, it is pr- interestingly, AI is probabilistic, so it, it, there's so- I mean, AI will undoubtedly come up with things that wholly rational people might not, in fairness. I, I mean, I regard it a bit like satnav, okay? In the sense that, uh, don't always obey your satnav, but do look at what it's telling you to do.

David McIntosh Jr 31:50 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 31:51 Do you see what I mean? Which is if you slavishly obey your satnav, particularly if, if-

David McIntosh Jr 31:55 [laughs] Oh, no.

Rory Sutherland 31:57 Yeah. Particularly if the input's wrong. Uh, which reminds me of a friend of a friend who literally spent, uh, four hours driving from Edinburgh to Cambridge, uh, in a party with some... and ended up in Cambridge, Gloucestershire-

David McIntosh Jr 32:09 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 32:09 ... not Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. Okay. So but the satnav might have an interesting take on which way you should go. You don't entirely know what the thinking behind your satnav's decision is. I mean, it baffles me. There's a part of London I go to where it always tells me to go one way when I go there and a different way back, which to me, I, I, I, I, I can't quiz my satnav, "W- why are you doing this? Why, why don't, why don't I go back the same way I came?"

David McIntosh Jr 32:36 Because it won't quiz itself either.

Rory Sutherland 32:37 Well, it, it, it probably-

David McIntosh Jr 32:39 It'll take, okay

Rory Sutherland 32:39 ... probably satnav is, uh, you could actually ask a satnav to reveal its working out. Uh, by the way, it, it's a complicated mixture of speed and distance, 'cause some people get really pissed off if the satnav makes them go three miles in the wrong direction to join a motorway. So satnav has to be kind. But, but I mean, occasionally satnav can be very creative. I, I was, uh, trying to get to Luton for a meeting. I live in Kent, so it's... And the satnav told me to go the wrong way around the M25, which I have to confess, that wouldn't have occurred to me, okay? But it did turn out to be faster. It can be creative, actually, and it's c- as I said, it's, uh, undoubtedly satnav should be tr- sorry, satnav and to some extent, I suppose AI, should be treated as a kind of peculiarly neurodiverse member of the team-

David McIntosh Jr 33:21 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 33:21 ... who may well have a valuable contribution to make.

David McIntosh Jr 33:24 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 33:24 But we shouldn't actually, uh, you know, just, just as by the way, you know, I totally believe in the contribution to decision-making of comedians.

David McIntosh Jr 33:32 Let's hope it's not dyslexic ones.

Rory Sutherland 33:33 I'm not sure they should rule the world, okay? You know, I'll be absolutely honest with you. I, you know, I, I make the same comment about creative people in advertising. Uh, you emphatically want them kicking around, and you want to give them space to go broad, okay? That's what's happened, is that by being eager to win an argument rather than to solve a problem, we go narrow too soon. Uh, and I, you know, that would apply to, you know, political decisions, uh, all kinds of decisions where there's a better idea out there, but no one has time to actually explore it. Uh, one, [chuckles] one of the most obvious things I've said for ages is, uh, tax cuts, okay? Uh,

Rory Sutherland 34:10 don- don't give people a tax cut. Give them an annual rebate of income tax, okay? It'll have vastly more... There are huge psychological advantages so that at the end of the year, you, you know, a load of people get a couple of thousand pounds back. If you then have a crisis like COVID, you can withhold the rebate, which is much less controversial than putting tax rates up.

David McIntosh Jr 34:30 Is it the same psychology behind why people impulse buy but never impulse save?

Rory Sutherland 34:34 Yeah, and partly that's just difficulty, partly it's social norm. I, I think companies like Monzo will get people into impulse saving, actually. Um, but no, you're right. I mean, the, the, the, uh, I mean, we, uh, what, what's undoubtedly true is we perceive money differently. Uh, the, the whole assumption of economics is that money is completely fungible, but one of the insights of behavioral economics, people like Richard Thaler, was what they called cookie jar economics, where people would... Pe- people mentally, for example, have a budget for essentials, and they have a budget for fun. And, you know, so discretionary money is spent in a different way fundamentally to the way in which you might pay your gas bill or something of that kind. And so, you know, one of the interesting things that a lot of these fintech companies are doing is they literally allow you to create savings pots so that you can, you can, s- sometimes it's by rounding up on any credit card payment, so you round up to the nearest pound, for example, and that goes into a savings pot. But, um, although logically humans should look at money as being, uh, effectively, you know, a pound is a pound is a pound, we don't do that in all kinds of weird ways. I mean, you may have seen the series on YouTube called, rather incorrectly, Girl Math.

David McIntosh Jr 35:50 Oh, yes.

Rory Sutherland 35:50 Which is, you know, in other words, it, you know, someone who's saved 50 pounds at a sale actually feels they've almost earned 50 pounds.

David McIntosh Jr 35:58 Yeah. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 35:58 And that we can reframe money in all kinds of very perverse and weird ways.

David McIntosh Jr 36:01 You also say price is a feeling.

Rory Sutherland 36:02 Yeah, no, no. No, to economists, price is a number. To, uh, consumers, price is a feeling. Something can feel expensive or feel cheap, uh, entirely depending on what you compare it to, how you frame it. Uh, a f- friend of a, um, uh, actually the, uh, a friend of my brother's joined the RAC club, which is, it's like 2,500 pounds to join, and it's 1,500, 2,000 pounds a year, okay, to join. And he said a very interesting thing. He said, weirdly, he said, "Most people go, 'Ooh, that's expensive.'" He says, "It is the single check I'm happiest to write all year. There's not a single payment that I make more happily." Why is that? He said, "Because my alternative to doing that is to rent or buy a flat in London, and compared to the cost of buying or renting a flat in London, the RAC club membership is absolutely trivial."

David McIntosh Jr 36:55 RAC club, what does that mean?

Rory Sutherland 36:56 So it's a club on Pall Mall. You can stay there overnight.

David McIntosh Jr 36:59 Oh, okay.

Rory Sutherland 36:59 Uh, they even have dormitories, so you can stay there overnight inexpensively, and you're staying on Pall Mall. I mean, that's five-star hotel territory, okay? Um, it has a post office, squash courts, Turkish baths, a swimming pool. Effectively, it has all the facilities. You have to share them, but it has all the facilities of a, an Edwardian aristocrat of spectacular wealth. You know, servants, restaurants, uh, you know, everything you want to do can be done for you there, which, you know, you don't, you don't enjoy any of those services if you, you know, rent a small flat in Clerkenwell or whatever, okay? And he arg- the reason it's, of course, that inexpensive is because it's collective expenditure. You know, it's funded by its thousands of members, and so it can afford to provide that level of kind of service and utility. And so because he frames his RAC membership as the alternative to buying a flat, um, he regards it as a complete bargain. And now, if you think about it, the other advantage is no one rings you up at 3:00 in the morning from, uh, the RAC club and says, "The immersion tank's sprung a leak."

David McIntosh Jr 38:02 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 38:02 "You need to come over and fix it." There are lots and lots of advantages to joining a club. Very interesting things, clubs, by the way. Um, the psychology, I think, is much more interesting than we realize, and I've also applied this to airline lounges, which is often an airline lounge isn't really much better than the surrounding airport, okay? It's not that great. Okay, you get free drink and a bit of free food. But there's a fundamental difference to an airline lounge which makes it different from the rest of the airport, which is because it's excludable, uh, you can leave your laptop on the table and go and have a piss, okay, in an airline lounge. You can't do that in the rest of the airport.

David McIntosh Jr 38:44 You can leave a bag.

Rory Sutherland 38:44 You, you can leave a bag there. You can leave a bag on a chair. You can even leave a bag on a chair and go shopping, right? Okay.

David McIntosh Jr 38:50 As at Al-Qaeda, you gotta complete, pay 25 pence. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 38:52 So the airline lounge is, a lot of the value of an airline lounge is weirdly kind of almost something we feel ra- If you researched airline lounges, no one... I mean, I'm always interested in this stuff, by, by the way, which is tacit knowledge, which is what's the difference between a cafe and a restaurant? And I'll tell you a lovely story here. So, um, I think the difference is in a, a restaurant, you're obliged to eat something. In a cafe, you can eat, but you're not obliged to.

David McIntosh Jr 39:18 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 39:19 So if you think of something as a cafe, you can go in, you can order a coffee, and then if you feel a bit hungry, you can order some food, okay? And in a restaurant, I, I've actually made this mistake in Spain because you can't quite tell. A table linen is outside is a clue it's a restaurant, not a cafe, okay? But occasionally, you sit in a place that's a restaurant, you say, "Can I have a coffee, please?" And they get all sniffy with you, and they go, "Monsieur, you're expected to eat a three-course meal here." Uh, basically, fuck off.

David McIntosh Jr 39:47 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 39:48 Um, I, I can generally read, I can generally read the runes in Britain, but not in, not in Spain. Now, here's, h- h- this is where marketing genius comes in. There's a guy called Mark McCullough, who I would k- well, he's j- I, I regard him as ab- utterly brilliant in every respect, actually. But his particular specialism is quick service restaurants, cafes, catering, the hospitality business. And I'm on a phone call with Mark to a rather brilliant chain called Chaiwala. I don't know if you know it. There's one not far away actually in Holborn.

David McIntosh Jr 40:16 There is one, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 40:17 And, uh, we were talking about the fact that if you call yourself Chaiwala, there's a danger that people think you only serve chai, whereas actually they serve a whole range of very appetizing and very good Indian street food. And we said, "You know, you need to make explicit on the outside that you're a food and drink place, not just a chai place." And the client, very excellent, bright guy, says, "Well, we're actually, we're thinking of writing on all the windows of our 100 branches, Indian Street Food Cafe." And Mark McCullough, this is where, this is one of those moments where you go, okay, anybody, uh, starting a restaurant or cafe needs to talk to Mark McCullough. [laughs] Okay, child, pay him what he asks, right? Because Mark McCullough said, "Actually," he said, "Don't do that. Put Indian Street Food and Cafe." And I paused for a second. Oh. Uh, and then, then, then you go epiphany, because if you say Indian Street Food Cafe, s- it's, uh, y- people might think, "Well, I don't like Indian street food. I'm not going in there." If you say Indian Street Food and Cafe, you're two things. People who want Indian street food can get Indian street food. People who want a coffee can get a coffee. Okay? And that single syllable word, that's an example of what I might call... In marketing, I think marketing is full of dogs that don't bark in the night. They're the things we measure and we look for that are kind of obvious. And then there's the marketing insight of spotting something which isn't there. You know, spotting the absence of something. And so Mark saying, "No, no, Indian Street Food and Cafe," you just go, "Whoa, okay." There is no chance in hell I am ever gonna start any kind of restaurant or cafe business without ladling out some money to M- He's actually working at Pret so at the moment. Uh, um, so I, I foresee great things for them. But that's the kind of thing which I regard as, you know, that, that's what you might call the sort of, you know, that, that's sort of the, the marketing equivalent of the hand of God, okay? That kind of insight.

David McIntosh Jr 42:16 To take a few steps back, you were talking about the psychology of clubs.

Rory Sutherland 42:21 Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 42:21 And one thing I've realized recently-

Rory Sutherland 42:23 Big business, by the way. It, I, I, I was talking to, um-

David McIntosh Jr 42:26 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 42:27 I was talking to club people. It's very, it, it, it's becoming bigger and bigger, and part of it's that trust thing, okay? Also, I can go to a club and just order a coffee because I've paid the dues. I don't feel like a dickhead just having a coffee and using a laptop for a bit. Um, there, apparently it's quite difficult to open them in the United States 'cause you come across all kinds of weird legislation about is this effectively, you know, discriminatory Which is ironic because Americans actually have properties, whole apartment blocks where you have

Rory Sutherland 42:57 to apply to live there, which as far as I know, doesn't exist in London. I mean, has anybody come across this?

David McIntosh Jr 43:02 No. Maybe some student halls. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 43:03 If you, if you move into what I think is called a co-op, if I'm right, I may be wrong about this, uh, the people who run the co-op board will ask to see like six month or, or, or possibly two years of your bank statements. I mean, literally they will be, they will be a l- they will, they will demand to see information about you that the IRS couldn't ask for.

David McIntosh Jr 43:24 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 43:25 And that's required just to move into a, a, a particular apartment block, and they'll kick you out if you break the rules. Now, you know, now you could a- is that a good thing, a bad thing? I have no clue. I, uh, but, but, but I mean, it's weird that the Americans are really, really pi- iffy about clubs. Um, uh, there is a brilliant one, if you've ever seen the film Trading Places, uh, the club where the two brothers, the two millionaire banker brothers go, is the Union Club of Philadelphia, and I had a friend who went there and said it's genuinely extraordinary. I mean, he, yeah, he had guest visiting rights from another club he belonged to. But they do have them in America, but apparently it's, it's harder and harder to start them in some way.

David McIntosh Jr 44:05 I've seen a, a replication of that in Glasgow as a young person. I've seen an influx in exclusive clubs-

Rory Sutherland 44:11 Mm

David McIntosh Jr 44:12 ... in the form of run clubs, Rory. These have really taken off, uh, for young people, typically in the UK, and running as a exercise has really picked up because of it, because there are these exclusive run clubs, and I'm thinking, would Rory Sutherland join a run club? I'm guessing the last time you did a marathon was before-

Rory Sutherland 44:30 I'm not, you know-

David McIntosh Jr 44:30 ... you ran into Snickers. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 44:31 I, I won't be joining Jamie Laing on a series of ultramarathons soon. And by the way, I'm a bit uncertain about, but very, very interesting problem-

David McIntosh Jr 44:36 But what's the psychology of them?

Rory Sutherland 44:38 It's... So one really interesting thing to do is always to take back things which we think are obvious and dig out their history, 'cause things we just assume are universal and obvious, there was a time when they weren't. Now, I'm old enough to remember seeing my first jogger, and I didn't know what they were.

David McIntosh Jr 44:57 Not to be confused with dogger. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 44:58 No, no, no. That, that, that was, that was much more distressing in later experience when I crossed the Surrey border. No, um, uh, interesting fact, by the way, s- uh, dogging was invented in Surrey, uh-

David McIntosh Jr 45:08 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 45:08 ... uh, to give them... So I live in Kent, so we're convinced that once you've crossed the Surrey border, basi- but I, my theory is that dogging was invented in Surrey to give them something to do when it was too dark to play golf.

David McIntosh Jr 45:19 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 45:19 That's my theory. That's my theory. Um, and I'm sticking to it. Um, but no, um, the first jogger, I'm a kid, I'm about seven, my brother's about nine, and I'm driving through Raglan, where I grew up, which is a Welsh village in the Welsh borders, and there's a man running down the street.

David McIntosh Jr 45:36 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 45:36 Okay? My first assumption, I'm not making this up, okay? 'Cause, you know, I've read sort of Rich and Scary books. If you saw someone running in the street in what would've been 1972, you assume they're being chased by the police. I, I, I genuinely am not making that up, okay? And I, what's that man doing? He's running. And you, you either assumed that there was Godzilla or some... You know, in other words, there had to be a reason to run in 1970.

David McIntosh Jr 45:59 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 46:00 I said, "Look, what's that man doing? Why, who's he running away from?" And my brother said, "He's a jogger." And I said, "What's that?"

David McIntosh Jr 46:06 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 46:07 Okay. Now, it turns out, I did delve into this a bit, it started in New Zealand, I think, and there was a guy, it wasn't Phil Knight, but there might've been a guy at Nike who basically discovered this whole running culture, which I think started in New Zealand, which shouldn't surprise us. Uh, I think small islands rather, you know, I'm a bit of a Darwinist here, rather like the Galápagos. If you get those smaller, more isolated places, they often, just as they spawn really weird bird life, they often spawn, you know, um, uh, really interesting, you know, movements. You know, I, I, I would always recommend that, you know, anybody... I, I've never been to New Zealand, but I would like to go there and just have a shufti, 'cause I reckon there are ideas there you can nick.

David McIntosh Jr 46:49 I wouldn't say a jog is a weird movement, Rory. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 46:51 No, no, no, no. You've gotta remember, it was. It seriously was. There was a famous case where a senator got arrested for jogging.

David McIntosh Jr 46:59 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 46:59 So in the early days... No, no, no. Because the police, not unreasonably, thought, "What the fuck are you doing?"

David McIntosh Jr 47:04 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 47:05 Now, so I, I've gotta make this point 'cause I'm old, right? I used a mo- I always make this point. Sorry to people who've heard this before. I used a mobile phone on Oxford Street in 1989. It wasn't my mobile phone. The company had a pool of mobile phones which you signed out. Someone rang me on Oxford Street, I answered the phone, and two people shouted abuse at me from passing taxis.

David McIntosh Jr 47:22 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 47:23 So I was there with this brick mobile phone, Oxford-

David McIntosh Jr 47:25 Mm

Rory Sutherland 47:25 ... on Oxford Street, making a phone call. Someone in a black cab pulled down the back window and shouted, "Wanker."

David McIntosh Jr 47:32 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 47:33 Okay?

David McIntosh Jr 47:34 I don't think it's 'cause of the phone, Rory. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 47:36 When I first got a mobile phone, which would've been about 1990, 1991, the phone rang.

David McIntosh Jr 47:42 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 47:42 I was on the top of a London bus. The phone rang, it was my friend in America, and I said something like, "What time is it over there?" Or something. I then realized that I'd revealed to the other people on the bus not only was I on a mobile phone, but I was talking to someone in a different country, and I was actually mildly concerned at the threat of physical violence against me. And we forget, we forget all this 'cause we're... Okay, the backstory, we concertina the past, okay, down. And the backstory is there weren't mobile

Rory Sutherland 48:10 phones, then someone invented the mobile phone, and we all got one. Everything requires marketing because everything significant requires behavioral change. Humans find behavioral change difficult. The biggest mistake you can make, I think, in a business is to think, "I've got a big idea, therefore it doesn't require marketing." Because the bigger your idea is, the more behavioral change is required, therefore the more marketing it will need. I literally, I made a really nice living in an ad agency for about nine years working on the BT account, persuading people to get broadband instead of dial-up. I, I, I promise I'm not making this up, okay? You had to write to people. You sent them a letter and you said, "It's worth paying a bit extra to have, to have Uh, faster internet access rather than plugging into the phone line and ringing a number.

David McIntosh Jr 48:57 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 48:57 I'm not m- And so, uh, the, the... Okay, old people will all recognize this period of their past when, uh, uh, you get really cross because you were on the internet, and some twat would pick up the extension-

David McIntosh Jr 49:08 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 49:08 ... and it would fuck up your connection. And I'm not making this stuff up.

David McIntosh Jr 49:10 No, I, I used to play-

Rory Sutherland 49:11 There was no Wi-Fi.

David McIntosh Jr 49:12 I was young. I used to play Club Penguin at the time, and the s- same thing would happen.

Rory Sutherland 49:16 So someone would pick up the phone when you were on Club Penguin, and you were doing one of those riddles.

David McIntosh Jr 49:20 I'd be like, "Mum, fuck off, I'm speaking to a pedophile on the internet." [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 49:25 [laughs] Actually, funnily enough, um, my, my own children did have to report, um, uh, uh, some d- slightly pervy penguin behavior at one time.

David McIntosh Jr 49:34 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 49:35 Um, uh, b- actually, I think they should bring back Club Penguin.

David McIntosh Jr 49:39 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 49:39 I thought it was actually wonderful, to be honest. I thought it was lov- How many puffles did you have?

David McIntosh Jr 49:44 Uh.

Rory Sutherland 49:45 You must have collected those puffles, those little furry things which were like the pets, they-

David McIntosh Jr 49:48 Uh, yeah, a few. I can't remember, Rory. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 49:50 'Cause I had a daught- my daughter, it was tragic because she lent, she lent something like her Club Penguin account to a cousin, who then failed to feed the puffles, and they all fed aw- uh, all ran away.

David McIntosh Jr 50:03 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 50:03 Uh, this was literally like having a pet die.

David McIntosh Jr 50:05 Well, well, I, I experienced my first experience of grief through a Tamagotchi.

Rory Sutherland 50:09 Mm. Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 50:10 So it must've been something similar for your daughters.

Rory Sutherland 50:12 Yeah, the... If your puffles all ran away, that was total misery, yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 50:15 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 50:16 But actually, a lot of it was really good. Disney bought it, didn't they? And then for some reason it closed down.

David McIntosh Jr 50:21 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 50:21 But, but some of the puzzles you had to do were really, really good brain exercises. You had to earn whatever it, it was you earned. Was it fish? Was it-

David McIntosh Jr 50:28 Yeah

Rory Sutherland 50:28 ... raw carrots?

David McIntosh Jr 50:29 I think so, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 50:29 It might've been fish. But, but occasionally my kids, annoyingly, would make me go and earn them fish.

David McIntosh Jr 50:35 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 50:35 Not great, you know. And so I'd be sitting there. But the puzzles were gr- Some of the little things you had to solve required real ingenuity. I thought it was educationally fantastic. You know, really, I, I miss it.

David McIntosh Jr 50:46 This episode is brought to you by Fireflies. Do you ever leave a meeting thinking, "That was brilliant"? That's exactly why I use Fireflies, an AI notetaker that joins your calls, listens quietly in the background, and then hands you bullet point notes, whether you're discussing a pitch, crafting a story arc, or just riffing a wild, creative idea. Fireflies make sure that you never lose the magic. It's like having a silent teammate who remembers everything, so you don't have to. If you work in storytelling and marketing or any space where ideas come fast and flow freely, Fireflies make sure that none of it ever gets lost. What I love is that it just doesn't record and transcribe like some of these other platforms, it actually generates notes in outline format organized by themes. I could use it for this podcast. And when you need to find something later, just search a word or phrase and boom, it's there. It helps me find insights that I don't even realize that I had. They're easily shareable in the form of sound bites and clips. I honestly don't know what I would do without it. Check out Fireflies AI and try the AI notetaker for your next call, because the best ideas aren't the ones you want to forget. Capture them in Fireflies. This is a message from our sponsor, Beyond Baseline, the organization dedicated s- to individuals and teams and helping them unlock their full potential. Founded by Ross Anderson, my good friend in Glasgow, a neuroscientist specializing in positive psychology. Beyond Baseline, his program, works with Fortune 500 companies, all the big names that you might recognize, athletes and entrepreneurs, with a focus on mental and physical wellbeing. Ross has transformed personally hundreds if not thousands of lives through his innovative program that blends science and personal growth. His latest venture, BetterMan, is designed to elevate modern men across their biology, physiology, psychology, spirituality, and their finances. Don't miss the upcoming BetterMan retreat taking place in Marbella between 10th and 13th of June, featuring amazing speakers and immersive experiences with people such as Paul Craig, the UFC fighter, and the former CEO of Gymshark, Paul Richardson. Ross is a dear friend of mine. I've seen his transformative journey, and this retreat and his Beyond Baseline service is immaculate. It's one of its kind, and I'm so grateful that he sponsored this show. Ross, thank you for backing this, and I'll see you on the podcast real soon. We're speaking about broadband and the psychology of run clubs.

Rory Sutherland 53:15 Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 53:16 I won-

Rory Sutherland 53:16 So what happened is Nike, basically some people in Seattle, uh, probably not a coincidence that it was the West Coast of the United States, discovered this thing going on in New Zealand and started it in, in the Pacific Northwest. Um, and so, yeah, I mean, uh, it, it's, it's often attributed to a guy called Fixx, F-I-double X, who invent- who claims to have been the sort of inventor of jogging. But I think there was a New Zealand thing first. And of course, there wasn't really an athletic shoe m- I mean, running was a very niche sports activity at the time.

David McIntosh Jr 53:49 Yeah. I, uh-

Rory Sutherland 53:50 Um

David McIntosh Jr 53:50 ... I interviewed a-

Rory Sutherland 53:51 Deservedly so, 'cause it's fucking boring.

David McIntosh Jr 53:53 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 53:53 I mean, for crying out loud, right?

David McIntosh Jr 53:55 Rory, that's what I've got planned for after this.

Rory Sutherland 53:57 What?

David McIntosh Jr 53:57 We're doing, we're doing a lap of Fleet Street.

Rory Sutherland 53:58 Can we not do paintball or something?

David McIntosh Jr 53:59 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 54:00 Or paddle?

David McIntosh Jr 54:02 Go-karting.

Rory Sutherland 54:03 I, I'm genuinely... And b- by the way, I, I think a lot of people just find it really boring. I'm n- I'm never gonna enjoy it. I mean, sorry. Doesn't matter, I can lose weight or whatever. I'm never gonna really fundamentally enjoy running through the streets. I j-

David McIntosh Jr 54:13 So dogging over-

Rory Sutherland 54:14 I like w- walking

David McIntosh Jr 54:14 ... dogging over jogging.

Rory Sutherland 54:15 Uh, uh, if I had to choose.

David McIntosh Jr 54:17 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 54:17 Yeah, frankly. Um, yeah. Um, I, I, I mean, actually, um, walking I think, uh... This is a really interesting... Okay, this is just a really interesting story I like to tell because I fundamentally believe that sometimes the solution is to do the opposite of what seems immediately logical. So I met someone, really nice person, who is, like, the government's walking tsar.

David McIntosh Jr 54:38 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 54:38 Can't remember where the hell I was. Um, uh, and, um, uh, I, um, uh... I said, "What, what, what do you do?" They said, "Well, basically we encourage walking by campaigning for more footpaths, campaigning for more, um-" Uh, campaigning for more, uh, you know, uh, rights of way. Uh, you know, uh, the built environment needs to have, uh, more opportunities to walk, so on and so forth, to basically campaign for places where people can walk. Now, this

Rory Sutherland 55:10 is why you employ someone with ADHD from an ad agency occasionally to have a chat with, 'cause I said, "Yep, that's good. But you need to do the opposite." "What the hell is that?" I said, "You need to campaign for more places to sit down."

David McIntosh Jr 55:22 [chuckles]

Rory Sutherland 55:23 Now, the odd thing about that, if you think about it, okay, if you go to the seafront, you will see there's a park bench every 10 feet, and that's because of the weird phenomenon of memorial benches. So people take some- a place where people like to sit, and they add another chair. Now, the stupid thing about this is the fact that, you know, to my Uncle Jack, in memory of my Uncle Jack, who always loved sitting here. Well, if he always loved sitting here, there was already a fucking bench, right?

David McIntosh Jr 55:48 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 55:49 Why do we need another one? What you want is loads and loads of benches on London Bridge Station on the platform where it says, "In memory of Rory Sutherland, who could never find anywhere to fucking sit down in this place," right?

David McIntosh Jr 56:00 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 56:00 But unfortunately, we put memorial benches where there are already benches. It's a fundamental feedback loop, and someone needs to stop it. But one effect of this is loads and loads of old people, not particularly athletic people, walk a long way along the seafront because they know they'll always be able to sit down. If you want to encourage walking, you don't need to encourage walking among professional walkers, right? You need to encourage walking among people who don't walk very much or find it difficult to walk or, you know, are on the cusp of walking but don't much. And the thing that stops me g- I, I had sciatica at the time, so I had a little bit of additional, um, insight, and I said, "The problem is I go for long walks in Deal," um, uh, the, uh, um, my, my favorite place, one of my... outside Wales. Um, and, um, uh, go for long walks partly 'cause I know there will always be somewhere to sit. So I'm not- I'm totally ambitious. I go and walk as far as I like because I get sick of walking or my back plays up. I can sit down. Okay? I suddenly discover when you go to London, okay, you walk 200 yards from Charing Cross station and it-- and if, if you need to sit down, that might just be to look at your mobile phone or to, you c- you know, all, all manner of reasons. The problem with walking is there's nowhere to sit.

David McIntosh Jr 57:11 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 57:12 So you then find yourself buying a cup of coffee or something. And so I said, "If you want to encourage walking, the logical thing to do is more places to walk." But actually, Britain is not short of horizontal surfaces. You know, there isn't this great crisis where, oh God, if only there were more horizontal surfaces, right? What there is a shortage of is places where people who find it difficult to walk, the elderly in particular. Having sciatica is quite interesting 'cause it's a kind of premonition of what it's like to be 20 years older than you really are. And so having back trouble, I've, I've, I've only had it two periods in my life, but it's quite useful 'cause it's a premonition of what it's like to be disabled, which I think is, in a weird kind of way, healthy for everybody. And, um, so my argument was, you know, okay, you should spend 50% of your time as the walking tsar making sure the built environment respects the rights of pedestrians. But you spend 60% or 50% of your time basically campaigning for benches. Because old-- I mean, just to give an example, uh, they put some new trains, uh, on the slow stopping service from Seven Oaks into Charing Cross. They don't have toilets on. The whole of the bloody Elizabeth line doesn't, the tr- the trains don't have toilets, okay? Now, I think probably there's a solution to that 'cause a lot of the new Elizabeth line stations have toilets, and the tr- service is frequent enough. You could theoretically get off, have a pee, and then just get on the next train. But the extent to which we've created this thing where there's disability, which is a defined state, which is often linked to being in a wheelchair, okay? And the provision for those people is not always perfect, but they're, they are at least defined as a group. People who are on the margin, in other words, people who aren't in a wheelchair, uh, my father-in-law's 90, 90 years old, okay? People who find walking quite difficult, I think the built environment is monstrously unkind to those people. So if you go to an airport, okay, there's the wheelchair service where you're actually wheeled to the gate and taken through everything else. That's one, one set of services. Then, then if you're not in that category, you're assumed to be a 23-year-old, you know, who, um, uh, who's hale and hearty and can carry luggage, you know, down a corridor sort of sev- you know, 700 yards long. And so, you know, one of the things I think will be important is y- if you want more people to walk, they're-- do we get people who already walk a lot to walk more? That's not really your job. Your job is to get people who don't walk very much or at all to start walking. And quite often, if you want to get people to change their behavior, the, um, the idea you need is actually counterintuitive. It's not get people to do more of what they're already doing. That's the logical. That will lead you to a logical idea. If you want to get people to stop doing one thing and start doing something else, and that's where I get to that idea of reverse benchmarking, which is what Will Guidara did when he was, um, at Eleven Madison Park. Don't take the thing the brilliant restaurant does really well and copy it or try and do it even better. Take the two things that restaurant's doing that they're doing badly and then do it amazingly well. And I th- I think that exercise of reverse benchmarking, you know, we could steal that from Will. There's also a paper on exactly the same subject by a brilliant writer called Roger L. Martin, where he-- It, it's a Medium post called "Benchmarking Is For Losers," and he effectively proposes the same thing. Most major innovations don't take an existing thing and optimize it along the same metrics as everybody else. They actually take a metric that everybody else has neglected, and they basically double down on that. And I've got a problem, by the way, which is I think, I think one of the reasons there's an obstacle to innovation-

David McIntosh Jr 1:00:47 Could you pop that back on or is it-

Rory Sutherland 1:00:48 Pop, pop what?

David McIntosh Jr 1:00:49 Just the, uh, mic muffler.

Rory Sutherland 1:00:51 Oh, is it fallen off?

David McIntosh Jr 1:00:52 A little bit. There we go.

Rory Sutherland 1:00:53 There we are. That's back. There we are. Wonderful. Um- There's a brilliant form of transport which is called the Heathrow Pod. Uh, have you ever used Heathrow pod parking? Has anybody used it here?

David McIntosh Jr 1:01:04 No, no.

Rory Sutherland 1:01:05 So you park about a mile from Terminal 5, you park your car, and then you go to this little... There are two bays, one at either end of the car park, bay A and bay B, and you press a button, and there's either a pod there already which will open its doors for you or a little pod comes around the corner and scuttles into the gap, and it opens its doors. You get in on your own or with your family, you don't have to share with the, you know, the general public, and then it says, "Would you..." You know, you say, "I would like to go to Heathrow Terminal 5." I mean, if you're totally indulgent, you can just go to the other end of the car park and back and ride it all day.

David McIntosh Jr 1:01:38 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:01:38 Now, you're like to go to Heathrow Bay, and then after about four seconds, the door closes, and it says, "I'm on my way," and on its own it just scuttles along the little elevated driveway and deposits you at Terminal 5. It's brilliant. I think it's the solution to quite a lot of urban transport, okay? Uh, and I ask the question... By the way, it's unbelievably popular because the price of the Heathrow pod parking is often not unadjacent to the price of the short-stay car park where you d- you, you're right next to the bloody terminal, okay? And the reason is, though nobody will admit

Rory Sutherland 1:02:10 it, is people really enjoy riding on the pod.

David McIntosh Jr 1:02:12 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:02:12 Okay? Um, I had a friend, serious businessman, he was European creative director for Ogilvy, and he used to turn up, and occasionally they'd say, "I'm terribly sorry, sir, the pod parking's full. We've upgraded you at no extra cost to the short stay." And he'd go-

David McIntosh Jr 1:02:25 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:02:26 ... "But I wanted a ride on the pod."

David McIntosh Jr 1:02:27 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:02:28 His whole day was ruined. I mean, I literally flew back first class from somewhere once, and actually the most enjoyable bit of the whole journey was probably the pod. It's that enjoyable. Like, uh, okay, if you're ever at Heathrow and you've got an hour to kill, follow the signs for Heathrow pod parking and give this a go. And my question was, why is it that this hasn't taken off more? There are loads of applications. For example, if you've got a railway station, you could build a car park a mile and a half away and just create a pod transit between the two places. Uh, there should be a pod system, okay? Someone should have built an elevated podway that goes Liverpool Street, King's Cross, St. Pancras, Marylebone... I've missed one, haven't I? Marylebone, Paddington, okay? Someone should have built a podway that connects all those London stations that are basically in a straight line. So, you know, it, you, you... It, it's halfway between a taxi and a bus, okay? You could charge a fiver for that journey in a pod, make a lot of money. Why is it not happening? And I suddenly realized that all the people who put out a procurement tender for a new transport solution are evaluating it according to the metrics of existing transport solutions. Now, we're gonna, and we're gonna have to be all really honest here, okay? Basically, people don't like public transport. We'd rather travel on our own, wouldn't we? Okay? Right?

David McIntosh Jr 1:03:50 Yep.

Rory Sutherland 1:03:50 You know, um, uh, and yeah, I, I mean, to be honest, I, you know, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm not massively claustrophobic. I don't, I don't hate my fellow man. I'm a bit introverted. I, you know, I, I, I like that business where you finally get out it, out of an airport and you get into your own car. It's the best bit of the day, isn't it? When you get out of something and you just climb into your own car, you basically, "Oh, thank fuck for that, I'm home." You know what I mean? It's why I always fly British Airways as well, 'cause you get home eight hours earlier, 'cause once you get onto a British Airways plane, you kind of go, "Oh, I'm home now."

David McIntosh Jr 1:04:21 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:04:21 Right? Even if you're in Seattle or Austin, Texas. Whereas if you get onto a foreign plane, it's gonna be another eight hours.

David McIntosh Jr 1:04:27 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:04:27 Okay? But, but the, um, the interesting thing about that psychologically, I think, is that it would be hugely popular. Now, if you evaluate it against a bus, a minibus, a tram, whatever it is, it probably doesn't score very well, okay? But the point is, its job is not to be a better tram, it's to be a different kind of transport altogether, to be a different kind... Sorry, I've boarded an airplane. Okay.

David McIntosh Jr 1:04:52 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:04:52 No, no, but its job is... Okay, so innovation generally is worse than the existing technology on some measures, but vastly better on different measures that nobody cares about. So when you have a procurement function, it's very difficult to innovate because all they want is six tram manufacturers. I mean, have you got a tram in Glasgow or not?

David McIntosh Jr 1:05:10 No, we have a subway system.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:11 You've got a subway system. What's it like? Is it all right?

David McIntosh Jr 1:05:13 It's, uh, it's, I think it's the only other one outside of London in the UK, and it's just a complete circle, so one goes one way, the other goes the other.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:20 Pretty good actually.

David McIntosh Jr 1:05:21 Clockwise, counterclockwise. It's great. It's called, it's named The Clockwork Orange.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:25 Oh, nice. It's good for Glasgow. [laughs]

David McIntosh Jr 1:05:28 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:05:28 It's... But, but the, um, uh, so it's actually underground. It's 'cause, 'cause Edinburgh has this tram system which seems to drive everybody apoplectic. I've never quite understood it.

David McIntosh Jr 1:05:36 I've never used it.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:37 No, I haven't used it either.

David McIntosh Jr 1:05:39 Never.

Rory Sutherland 1:05:39 Well, the, the, I mean, a lot of the problem with these tr- transit systems, by the way, you know, I always say the future's already here, it's just badly marketed. And they build these fucking tram systems, but at no point do they actually tell someone visiting Edinburgh how you use the tram. So, okay, I've seen all these trams going around Edinburgh-

David McIntosh Jr 1:05:56 Mm

Rory Sutherland 1:05:56 ... but my, the initial hurdle of usage is how... I, I haven't got a clue how you pay. I don't know where it goes. Does it go to the airport?

David McIntosh Jr 1:06:02 Yeah, it does. Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 1:06:02 Possibly. It does go to the airport, okay. I didn't know that it went to the fucking airport.

David McIntosh Jr 1:06:05 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:06:05 Now, you know, I mean, n- what is insane is people will spend literally hundreds of millions on infrastructure and nothing on fucking marketing.

David McIntosh Jr 1:06:14 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:06:15 Okay? Literally. And so, a- you know, I would actually... If, if you actually helped me out and said, "Here are the places the tram goes. This is how you pay," you know, "This is how it works. This is how late it runs," I would have been an enthusiastic adopter of the Edinburgh tram system. But I look at it, I see three taxis and a tram, I go, "Too fucking difficult. I'll get one of those." You know. And so, you know, this is, this is so endemic that people think that an invention creates its own demand, okay? You know, if we improve things, it will... Now, it does eventually, but very, very slowly.

David McIntosh Jr 1:06:50 Is it easier to market a poor product than it is to-

Rory Sutherland 1:06:53 Uh, well-

David McIntosh Jr 1:06:54 ... productize a poor marketing campaign?

Rory Sutherland 1:06:56 This is... That's a false dichotomy. Uh, there's a famous phrase in advertising which is, "There's no faster way to kill a bad product than good advertising." 'Cause if you do good advertising for a bad product, you're making a promise which you're failing to deliver. If you do that, no one will ever come back. The f- the fastest way to disappoint a customer is high promise, low delivery. Uh, and so Ryanair actually makes a fortune on low promise, we... Well, okay, Ryanair is actually always, every time I've flown Ryanair, I've been perfectly happy because the experience is slightly better than I expected.

David McIntosh Jr 1:07:31 And they're great on Twitter. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:07:32 And they're funny. They're very funny on social media. And they're entirely, they're entirely honest about what it is they do. Okay, so you can't, you can't accuse Ryanair of false advertising because they never claim it's that great in the first place.

David McIntosh Jr 1:07:45 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:07:45 And the joke I always made in my book is that, you know, every time I get off a Ryanair flight, I go, "Well, since I wasn't pistol-whipped by Serbian mercenaries, I'll chalk that up as a win." You know?

David McIntosh Jr 1:07:53 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:07:54 The flight wasn't really that bad, you know? And, and actually generally, although, Jesus, the bright yellow seat backs, I mean, crying out loud.

David McIntosh Jr 1:08:03 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:08:03 You know, tone it down a bit. Can we have a, you k- you know, "Michael, can we just have a few pastels, for fuck's sake?"

David McIntosh Jr 1:08:09 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:08:09 You know, that's the only plea I'd have with Ryanair. Can we just have a few pastel colors because, you know, I, you know... It's like walking into Jackie Treehorn's house in bloody, you know, The Big Lebowski. Everything's, like, bright and hideous. But, but so, no, o- o- one of the things I've gotta be really careful of here, okay, is that the way marketing works is that it i- you cannot do good marketing for a shit product. It won't help, okay? What you can do is good marketing for a different product. You can encourage people to look at something that's different about the product, notice it, attach more attention to it, therefore attach more value to it, and therefore you can revise someone's appreciation of something which is differently good. But you can't change someone's mind about some- I mean-

David McIntosh Jr 1:08:53 Do you have any examples of that, Rory?

Rory Sutherland 1:08:55 Yeah. Okay, so an example-

David McIntosh Jr 1:08:56 I think, I think about the Apple Watch when they started rebranding towards, um, OAPs and those who are vulnerable because it had the, uh, was it SOS function or some sort of, like, heart rate detection. And I saw an uptick in people buying it for, instead of themselves who are interested in fitness-

Rory Sutherland 1:09:10 Buying it as a present for other people. Th- that, that's a really, really interesting... By the, by the, by the, there's a whole interesting subject there which I'd like to get into, which is that quite a lot of commercial businesses are also a social service, and we tend to have this bifurcated view which is it's either a for-profit business, in which case it's just a greedy business, or it's the government, in which case it's full of love and, uh, sweetness. But if you take, for example, my father died last year. You know, the last five years of his life, a significant part of his happiness and enjoyment actually came from Ocado and YouTube, okay? Both of which are commercial businesses, but which in a way are also a social service to a degree, okay? Delivering food to people who can't go to... Okay, Ocado makes a lot of its money delivering food to kind of high-earning busy people who can't af- you know, can't afford to go to the shops or are too busy or whatever. Fine, okay? But that is also funding what you might call an upmarket version of Meals on Wheels. It's not fair to say that, you know, I always joke pubs shouldn't pay

Rory Sutherland 1:10:10 tax because actually they're community centers, right?

David McIntosh Jr 1:10:13 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:10:13 They're funded by the sale of beer, but they actually create a social space every bit as much as a leisure center or a library does. You know, we don't suggest taxing libraries heavily, okay? So why should you tax a pub? Okay, yes, ostensibly it's a profit-making organization, but it has very major positive benefits. And I'm trying to get into this idea with drone delivery, which is can you get people to accept drone delivery? 'Cause it will involve things flying over your garden at some point. If you say you, you will be licensed to deliver goods by drone within a five-mile radius, but the condition is that if ever there's an urgent need for the drone, we can requisition it to deliver a defibrillator, or we can requisition it to deliver an EpiPen, or we can... Do you see what I mean? Um, someone told me, I was talking about this, my argument here is, you see, that if there's, if, if people just see drone delivery as something for wankers who can't be bothered to make a cup of coffee, there will be hostility to the low-altitude economy.

David McIntosh Jr 1:11:16 W-

Rory Sutherland 1:11:16 Whereas if you say, look, um... I'll, I'll give you an example. I- in, if you watch old films, there's this weird trope where a cop needs to chase someone, jumps into a taxi, and says, "Follow that car."

David McIntosh Jr 1:11:28 Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:11:28 Right? Now, I think that, and I may be wrong about this, I need to research it, there was a kind of agreement in London when most policemen didn't have cars or motor vehicles that the police could requisition taxis in order to, to perform their duties. I think if you... Now, the taxis are a commercial service that's being repurposed at short notice to perform a social service, okay? Now, in the same way a drone... Now, on the other hand, the existence of taxis, you can't have loads of cars driving around empty just in case a policeman needs one, right? That would be ridiculous, okay? So what you have is this symbiotic relationship between a social service and a, and a private sector business, where it's a pri- i- i- it's supported and its existence, its continued existence is guaranteed through its pursuit of profit, but it's there if you need it for any other purpose. Now, to give an example of this, apparently s- there's a very, very high rate of mortality among people who have a heart attack on a golf course 'cause it's difficult to get help to them, okay, uh, quickly, and also, you know, sometimes it may be undiscovered. I don't know. But also it's difficult to get their body back to a place where they can be treated. There's this high rate, ve- um, in Sweden there's an experiment I think with drone delivery of defibrillators, okay?

David McIntosh Jr 1:12:45 Wow.

Rory Sutherland 1:12:46 Is that what they're called? Is it defibrillator or defibrillator? Anyway, okay, I'm not quite sure. It's the thing where you go, you know, "Stand clear." Bang. You know, um, uh, you put the two paddles on someone's chest and then-

David McIntosh Jr 1:12:58 Mm. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:12:58 ... you know, give them a massive electric shock. Um, and, um, uh, the, the interesting thing there is I, you know, I would support drone delivery because my argument is if genuinely you can save quite a lot of lives through, you know, essential drugs being delivered to the elderly, the, you know, the delivery... Uh, in other words, you're, you're a public service where a public service, but it's funded by people who want a cup of coffee, that seems to me a perfectly good kind of ecosystem to create, okay?

David McIntosh Jr 1:13:29 I, I agree, but my biggest fear, like any great innovation like that, is that the illicit trade will hijack it, and then you'll see in Glasgow, heroin and the likes being delivered by drone, and then there's no culprit.

Rory Sutherland 1:13:42 Uh, that's a very interesting one, which is, uh, I mean, one thing it will, it would take drug dealing off the streets.

David McIntosh Jr 1:13:49 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:13:49 There is, there is that small advantage, I guess, which is, you know... And also it would remove temptation, I suppose.

David McIntosh Jr 1:13:56 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:13:56 Um, uh, but, um, uh, my guess is that's happening already, actually. I, I, I mean, I-

David McIntosh Jr 1:14:05 It's happening at prisons, I think.

Rory Sutherland 1:14:06 Well, uh, there's a massive problem with prisons, with drones coming in and dropping things off. Uh, I've also got a friend, who I obviously won't name-

David McIntosh Jr 1:14:12 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:14:13 ... who is a massive drone enthusiast-

David McIntosh Jr 1:14:15 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:14:16 ... who apparently literally produces these things which basically fly all over Kent, and nobody's aware of them. Um, and, um, I don't know what the legality is. Fascinating fact, by the way, on the safety of them. Um, I checked this 'cause I thought it was a dog that didn't bark in the night. I actually asked, "Has anybody been killed accidentally by a drone?" Okay? And the answer's no, app- which when you think about the pr- proliferation of them worldwide, okay, you've got these things, some of which are quite heavy. Obviously, the, the consumer versions are, what, 249 grams, okay, for which you don't need a license. But if you, if you consider the death rate from helicopters, which are inordinately rarer than drones are, okay? Obviously, a pe- there'd be a lot of people who've been intentionally killed by drones. But, you know, I'm not talking about-

David McIntosh Jr 1:15:05 And helicopters

Rory Sutherland 1:15:05 ... Reaper drones. And, and, and Glasgow, you had that helicopter crash on a nightclub-

David McIntosh Jr 1:15:09 Yeah

Rory Sutherland 1:15:10 ... didn't you? Yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 1:15:10 Very unfortunate.

Rory Sutherland 1:15:11 Okay. But there's something there which suggests that this technology could be much safer than the imagination suggests it could be because when you think about it, the fact that there hasn't been a single accidental death due to a drone accident, accident, as I said, Reaper drones are a different kettle of fish, is kind of weird, isn't it? I mean, that is genuinely surprising 'cause you would've expected just, you know... I mean, the early days of motoring, okay, I mean, literally, and the early days of the railways, the fatality rate was massive, okay? You know, new forms of technology usually bring, um... And, and one of the advantages of the 1930s was you just had World War I, so people weren't all that sensitive about the odd accidental death, you know? So you could, um, you could really kick off and, and, um... But I mean, you know, motor- motoring fatalities were extraordinarily high given the number of cars in the early days of motoring. I mean, the, the, the da- before safety glass, seat belts, et cetera, extraordinarily dangerous practice relative to today, despite the fact there were vastly fewer cars around. But that drone thing, w- well, um, I, I, I think it's, I th- the Chinese call it the low altitude economy, and I think there's a whole scope for a low altitude economy of things being effectively delivered and, and, uh, you know. It also revi- in a sense, it also helps suburbia, doesn't it? In other words, it gives suburbia some of the advantages that people enjoy in living in a more densely populated area. So I mean, i- i- it's, I mean, the te- this is the weird thing. The technology's only there. The, the, the obstacle is psychological, not technological.

David McIntosh Jr 1:16:40 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 1:16:41 This is my point. So we're talking about good advertising, bad product, bad advertising, good product, which happens. Um, you know, bad branding, good product. You know, nuclear energy could have been the best example of that, okay? Which is if they'd called it something different, okay, which didn't, you know, wasn't the same name given to a bomb, okay?

David McIntosh Jr 1:17:00 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:17:00 Uh, I can't... I think 20% of Germany's potential electricity could be generated by nuclear power stations, which are all closed down because of protests.

David McIntosh Jr 1:17:10 Wow.

Rory Sutherland 1:17:11 Okay? Um, uh, you know, that, that's undoubtedly a case of interesting product, bad marketing. Now, what you can do in marketing, I don't think you can be thoroughgoingly shit and market your way to success. There are probably exceptions to that, but for the most part, you can't. What you can do is do what I call a reverse benchmark combined with spotlight. So you do incredibly well what most your competitors do badly, and then you focus a lot of attention on the thing that you're doing disproportionately well, okay? Now, an example of that which I regard, you know, if you... Okay, Apple, okay? Let's be honest, okay? Apple is a perfect case of reve- reverse benchmarking. Everybody is competing to produce be- more and more powerful computers, okay? And a load of nerds are basically competing for clock speed, RAM, et cetera, okay? And then Apple comes along and produces something which is probably marginally inferior on all those measures, but vastly superior on aesthetics, okay? So the one thing the nerds haven't spotted is we've all been busy fighting this battle to improve one thing, and yet we've produced computers that are so ugly, um, uh-

David McIntosh Jr 1:18:24 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:18:25 If, if you put a computer in any room at home, it automatically became the office, right?

David McIntosh Jr 1:18:31 Yes.

Rory Sutherland 1:18:31 It was beige. It was gray. As I said yesterday, if you put a computer in your sitting room, you might as well go the whole hog and put a fucking filing cabinet and a photocopier in there.

David McIntosh Jr 1:18:40 [laughs] And a secretary.

Rory Sutherland 1:18:40 Because th- th- that's how they looked in 1989, you know, until Apple came along with the, uh, iMac.

David McIntosh Jr 1:18:46 But th- th- this is furniture.

Rory Sutherland 1:18:47 That's furniture. That's an attractive piece of furniture, okay?

David McIntosh Jr 1:18:50 And a status symbol.

Rory Sutherland 1:18:50 And, and it's a status symbol, and it's, um, it's an ornament. It's a, you know, it's jewelry, I mean, in the case of iPods, okay? The, uh, the Apple Watch, jewelry, okay? And the point is, if I look at the Moxy hotel chain, which I'm a big fan of, I've probably talked about this, if you've ever got to stay anywhere for two nights, maybe three, may- certainly one, just go and stay in a Moxy hotel, okay? Because the location's great generally The room is small. The room is probably smaller than the room you get in a Premier Inn or a Travelodge. Uh, there's no room service, there's no laundry. There's a very good TV in your room, and there's... It, it's a modern TV, and there's good Wi-Fi throughout the place, and the bed's comfy, okay? So objectively, it is inferior to nearly all hotels on the measures of things like room size, okay? And, and ancillary services. On the other hand, the ground floor of a Moxy hotel is kind of like a funkier WeWork. There are people making pizza. There's a barista who's on, um, uh, on call 24... You know, barista's there 24 hours a day. Um, also, after you've checked out of a Moxy at 11:00 so they can make up your room, you don't feel weird hanging around on the ground floor for the next five hours before your train goes, getting on with some work or having a Zoom call in the little office room. So there's basically a space there

Rory Sutherland 1:20:10 where you can hang out on your own or hang out with other people 24 hours a day, which most hotels don't really have, okay? And, and so fundamentally, what the Moxy does, it, the... To be honest, they probably stole it from CitizenM, 'cause when I, when I first praised the, the, uh-

David McIntosh Jr 1:20:25 Love that place.

Rory Sutherland 1:20:26 You, you, you're a CitizenM fan, are you?

David McIntosh Jr 1:20:28 Yeah, yeah.

Rory Sutherland 1:20:28 Yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 1:20:28 I went there from the very opening.

Rory Sutherland 1:20:29 When I, when I first praised the Moxy, I got loads of really angry Dutch people, um, on my case saying, "Ugh, CitizenM did it first," which is true, but there are more Moxys, uh, for people to try.

David McIntosh Jr 1:20:39 But the... I think what's wrong with CitizenM is that, at least through my generation, it's m- where most initial couples who have just got together go for their first getaway. So it's quite... There's a seedy vibe almost to the nature of the type of people that go to that hotel because it's usually where, um, couples go to stay. Because of the nature of the... If you think about the, uh, the layout of the room-

Rory Sutherland 1:20:59 Oh, so people in a flat share or people who want to have-

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:03 So, so essentially couples who have just gotten together-

Rory Sutherland 1:21:05 You know there's a problem with that with Waymo in San Francisco, which is the driverless cabs. People are having sex in them.

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:10 Oh, my God. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:21:12 So, you know, I mean, that, that question you made about drone delivery of, of, of heroin is undoubtedly, uh, uh, gonna be an issue. My point is you license it-

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:19 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:21:20 ... you sell the license, okay? What you need is people who are fri- uh, now what could happen is someone could start delivering heroin on the back of, um, uh, of coffee deliveries. Now, this happened.

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:32 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:21:32 Can I tell a story? You'll love this story. So, um, Tim Horton's.

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:35 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:21:36 There was a branch of Tim Horton's in, I think, St. John's, Newfoundland.

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:40 Mm.

Rory Sutherland 1:21:41 And the woman in charge of the Tim Horton's, the guy who ran the drive-through, uh, was ill, okay? He got ill for a few days with flu. So the woman who normally ran the Tim Horton's had to step into the drive-through window to do the work. Now, if, have you ever been to Tim Horton's?

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:55 Yeah.

Rory Sutherland 1:21:55 They have these wonderful things called Timbits.

David McIntosh Jr 1:21:57 Amazing.

Rory Sutherland 1:21:57 Brilliant bit of branding. They are not, of course, the holes from the donuts, which are separately made. Th- that's purely n- uh, that's, that's very much Will Storr territory of narrative, okay? But they're these little bits of, of donut and, and you can buy them in... Anybody here Canadian? 'Cause they're the... It's like 6, 12, 20, okay? Anyway, this woman's there, uh, at the drive-through window, and these people keep driving up, going, "Can I have, uh, you know, 14 Timbits, please?" "No, we sell 6 or 12 or 20." "Oh." And they'd look a bit disappointed, and they'd buy six and drive off, okay? And this happened about 25 times, [laughs] okay? And she's going, "Okay, you know, this is, this is not a tourist area. Everybody knows Tim Horton's. Everybody who's Canadian knows how many Timbits you can order. Why are these people coming in and are ordering Timbits in, like, prime numbers or whatever? Weird combination." So she does an investigation. It turns out the guy who's running the drive-through window is actually dealing drugs-

David McIntosh Jr 1:22:53 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:22:53 ... and it's a code. So if you think about it, it's the most brilliant, brilliant undercover way of selling drugs. You get a job in a drive-through window.

David McIntosh Jr 1:23:00 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:23:01 Perfect excuse for people to drive... You're not standing on the street corner looking obvious, okay? And then there's simply a code, which is if people ask for 17 Timbits, okay, uh, it basically means so many grams of whatever it is. But you're right. What you need to do is license the drone operators, make it unbelievably strict so if you... This is why cab drivers are so reliable. They can't r- afford to lose their badge, okay? I could put my... So what you need is a commitment device. So if you think about how weird this is, with a black cab, I would put my 12-year-old daughter into the back of a... And I, I know there was one cab driver who went bad, but it's incredibly rare, right? I'd put my 12-year-old daughter into the back of a black taxi driver driven by a total stranger, tell him where to take her, and I'd then not really worry.

David McIntosh Jr 1:23:46 Because the onboarding process is so well rehearsed.

Rory Sutherland 1:23:47 Because the onboarding process is so difficult, you can't afford to lose your badge. That's why, by the way, if you, if you ever... I shouldn't even tell this. Taxi drivers are gonna fucking hate me for this. Uh, if you ever want to cross a zebra crossing, just wait for a taxi to come along. If you step onto that zebra crossing, the black cab will stop, 'cause they can't afford traffic infractions. They can't afford speeding tickets. They can't afford to lose their badge 'cause they've sunk so much into... That's how guilds work. That's why you had a guild of silversmiths, a guild of goldsmiths, et cetera. It's because the onboarding process was so tough, there's no way I'm gonna fuck this one over, okay? Probably true of clubs to an extent as well, that's really difficult to get into. You know, that's why I think a lot of companies make the, um, m- make, make it really difficult to get a job, right? Because if it's taken me seven interviews to get a job at JP Morgan, I'm not gonna turn up on day one and start photocopying my arse and nicking the staplers, am I, right?

David McIntosh Jr 1:24:36 Or moving to Goldman Sachs. [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:24:38 You know... Exactly. Exactly, or moving to Goldman Sachs. And that, you know... So, so life is full of these commitment devices, if you like.

David McIntosh Jr 1:24:44 Rory, I don't have much longer with you.

Rory Sutherland 1:24:46 Oh, oh, sorry, sorry. No, no, no. No, no. Um-

David McIntosh Jr 1:24:47 Our film team need to fly back to Glasgow, and my initial kind of strategy-

Rory Sutherland 1:24:52 But that, that's what we need. What we need for drones is we need the equivalent of the black taxi. We need the equivalent of the black taxi where it's really, really difficult to qualify as a drone pilot. It's really, really skillful. Uh, you don't start dealing crack or heroin, although I think soft drugs would be okay, you know? Um-

David McIntosh Jr 1:25:09 Some nootropics.

Rory Sutherland 1:25:10 Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 1:25:11 I had planned to talk about you and your origin story and the power of origin stories, and then have, like, a c- quick fire round talking about the things that we did towards the end.

Rory Sutherland 1:25:18 Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 1:25:18 I feel like we've done the inverse, so I'm gonna-

Rory Sutherland 1:25:20 We've done the, we've done, we've done it backwards. Don't worry. Yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 1:25:21 Which I'm totally happy with, Rory. It's such a delight to have you on. So I'm gonna get to know you at the end, in true fashion of, uh, Origin Story and this podcast. So I'm gonna do a quick fire round, if you don't mind. Would you be okay with that?

Rory Sutherland 1:25:33 Yeah, go. Absolutely love it, yeah.

David McIntosh Jr 1:25:35 If not advertising, what else would Rory Sutherland do?

Rory Sutherland 1:25:39 I did think of that recently. Actually, I re- I, I, I, to be honest, I'd quite like to be an Am- uh, if it were, if money were no object, I'd quite like to be an American truck driver. I, I, I love driving. I absolutely love motoring. I, you know, uh, that, that sounds like a really r- a strange answer. But, um, uh, uh, that would be one of the things, because there's loads of time to, you know... I mean, now, now they've invented podcasts, I think, uh, being a truck driver would be fantastic.

David McIntosh Jr 1:26:07 When do you feel most like Rory Sutherland?

Rory Sutherland 1:26:13 Um, that's interesting because we've all got a persona, and we're never our complete true selves. At least I am... This is the weirdest thing, 'cause I, you know, I do, I do talks in front of large audiences. I do a whole load of podcast stuff. I'm actually an introvert. That's the strange thing, which is it's not that I don't like socializing. I find it tiring. Um, and, um, one of the things I like about clubs, we were talking about clubs, is that the clever clubs, you know, the, um, uh, who is it? It's Robin Birley and Carling are, are basically the two people who seem to control that market. They very cleverly designed them so you've got, you've got highly social spaces, and you've got little lurky rooms where you can go and sit on your own. And, um, I'm most myself when I'm with, um, a group of people between three and nine. This is a good tip, by the way. Old, really old guy, um, lived in Monmouth, uh, called Wilson Plant, knew everybody. It was extraordinary. So a friend, a friend of my father's once got into [chuckles] an argument with him about something and said, "Well, how do you know that D.H. Lawrence made a lot of money from so-and-so, so-and-so?" And the chap just replied, "Because he told me so."

David McIntosh Jr 1:27:21 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:27:21 This is extraordinary. This is back in the '80s. He was in his 80s. He just literally knew everybody. And one of his bits of advice was that the perfect table in a pub is between the Graces and the Muses. It's between, there are three Graces and there are nine Muses. And he said the perfect size for a pub conversation is between three and nine people. That's when I'm most myself. I, that, that is the perfect size of a, of, of, of a group. I don't, I hate drinks parties. They're, they're like m- bloody sensory overload.

David McIntosh Jr 1:27:49 What do you secretly struggle with that no one knows about?

Rory Sutherland 1:27:54 Um, bloody hell. Uh, yeah, actually, I've had, um... Let, let's be candid about this. I've, I, I've had two bouts of anxiety and depression. I still have low-level anxiety quite a lot of the time. Uh, uh, it's not all the time. I'm not, I don't want to claim. Uh, um, uh, but, um, uh, uh, I don't wish that on anybody, having had j- uh, it's, you know, and I, I lucked out by basically, through a minimal intervention, managed to get out of it, uh, slowly. And you probably-- By the way, to anybody suffering with that, you probably will, okay? But my God, that's d- you know. One of the things I would say, and you know, there are various people who've made this point, is the, uh, you know, whenever we talk about wokeness, people being too fragile, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all, all of which is, is, by the way, an, an interesting line of debate and, and may often be true. Because actually, some of the most, some evidence suggests that the most successful, um, uh, analysts or, or, uh, or s- um, the, the, the best people to have as a, as, as a kind of, um, for psychi- psychiatric treatment is someone who gives you a bit of tough love, okay? So, so we gotta be careful here. But, uh, the fact that we spent far too much money on physical health relative to mental health. And Paul Dolan, LSE guy, I've mentioned him before, wonderful guy, he made the point that, uh, some physical conditions are not attention-seeking. In other words, it hurts when I do this, okay? The point about things like depression and anxiety is there's nothing you can do to make it go away. There's nothing you can avoid to make it go away. It will creep up on you at an unexpected moment, okay? And consequently, Dolan's point was that the measure of how bad is this is slightly artificial. Because how bad is my knee when it hurts, people think how bad is my knee when it is actually hurting, which is not all the time necessarily, okay? So that measure might be a nine in terms of unpleasantness relative to something like depression, where, of course, you have no control over whether it stays or whether it goes away. You lose autonomy over your, any kind of autonomy over your own mood, which is a terrifying thing to happen to anybody. So I have wrestled with that. I've, I've, mercifully for 15 years, uh, I've had no significant sort of, uh, return. Don't, don't wish that on anybody.

David McIntosh Jr 1:30:13 You were almost inconsequentially and accidentally thrust into fame.

Rory Sutherland 1:30:18 Mm.

David McIntosh Jr 1:30:19 If you could reverse it, would you?

Rory Sutherland 1:30:23 Uh, no, because I'm 59. Um, uh, it, uh, uh, the one thing I've said to quite a few people is that when you hear people aged 20 who are like rock stars or whatever complain about it, most of us go, "Yeah, right. No, I'd give anything to have your problems." Actually, no. Uh, I've had f- you know, I've had, you know, 30 years, 40 years of relative adult anonymity, okay? Uh, being a bit famous at 50, 59 I can kind of cope with, okay? However, those people who are famous all their lives, oddly, uh, I now understand your p- I feel your pain. Because, you know, I've had enough anonymity to ac- and, and by the way, I ma- I ought to make the point, uh, the level of fame

Rory Sutherland 1:31:10 I have is at a highly agreeable level. Uh, whereas where if I walk through a railway station, someone will say hello, ask for a selfie. One person, maybe two, okay? That's totally manageable. I don't need an entourage, okay? You know, I don't need security. I don't [chuckles] okay, that would be totally delusional, okay?

David McIntosh Jr 1:31:27 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rory Sutherland 1:31:27 And so it's at a very, very manageable level where it do- you know, it's not that Elvis level where, you know, effectively, you know, you, you, you can't live a normal life anymore.

David McIntosh Jr 1:31:37 You can get, like, a pasty at a BP garage.

Rory Sutherland 1:31:39 Uh, and, um, a very interesting one, by the way, is, uh, Jeremy Clarkson There was a fantastic... I had a friend who went on holiday with Jeremy, brilliant advertising guy who lived near him in Oxfordshire. Jeremy Clarkson has to go on holiday in France 'cause it's the only place where they didn't broadcast Top Gear. Okay? And so it- what's weird is he can go through France basically as just this random English guy. And then my friend who drove down, I think, they got to Pau with Jeremy Clarkson, and suddenly there was a coach load of Dutch school children, and of course he's totally mobbed.

David McIntosh Jr 1:32:11 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:32:11 Uh, but I can, I, I, I, I sympathize completely in the sense that I've had enough anonymity. I can cope with a little bit of recognition. The, oh, the big downside is you can't behave like a total cunt. [laughs]

David McIntosh Jr 1:32:23 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:32:23 Because it'll get back to somebody. That is, that is, by the way, an interesting, an interesting component, which is you can't, you know, you couldn't lose your rag with someone in a, you know, in a restaurant, on a plane, or anything like that. So in a weird way, that argument I have, which is that fame makes brands nicer businesses because they have reputational skin in the game, and the consequences of bad behavior are amplified. Okay? You know, if you think about it, if you're cheated by a bloke, a random bloke you met on the street who sells you a secondhand car, there's a limit to the reputational damage you can do, whereas if the Mercedes Corporation sells you a dodgy car, you can embarrass them into doing something about it, okay-

David McIntosh Jr 1:33:03 Yeah

Rory Sutherland 1:33:04 ... 'cause they've got reputational sunk cost investment. That does apply at the individual level as well. You, in other words, the, you know, the likelihood that it would get into Popbitch, I guess, if I did something absolutely atrocious. I did have a friend who was invited to go on, um, uh, on, um-

David McIntosh Jr 1:33:21 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:33:22 ... uh, what's it called? Uh, Gogglebox. And I did say two warnings, okay? If you do that, don't have an extramarital affair and don't lose your license. You know, don't, don't get caught drunk driving, okay?

David McIntosh Jr 1:33:34 And what a piece of advice to end on, Rory. You've been a great friend and one of the first people to believe in me and my podcast. Like I said, you dialed in when I was in my dad's council estate with 98 subscribers, and we had a great chat.

Rory Sutherland 1:33:45 What have you got now?

David McIntosh Jr 1:33:45 So much so. So I, I live in the West End of Glasgow now. Um, and-

Rory Sutherland 1:33:49 Is that really swanky, is it?

David McIntosh Jr 1:33:51 Swanker than where I grew up, that's for sure-

Rory Sutherland 1:33:53 Hmm

David McIntosh Jr 1:33:53 ... Rory. Uh, I just wanna thank you. You're an icon for me. I've got four of your books here, and I'm glad that we can make this happen.

Rory Sutherland 1:33:58 Well, no, no, just to say, by the way, j- just to, you know, uh, be mutually grateful, which is sa- same with Chris Williamson. When I first went on Chris Williamson podcast, didn't, didn't know who he was 'cause I wa- you know, uh, they turned me down for the second season of Love Island, so I, I never got to meet him in, in real life.

David McIntosh Jr 1:34:13 [laughs]

Rory Sutherland 1:34:14 Um, uh, but, um, the, uh, the fascinating thing in both cases, I went on absolutely not knowing what to expect, and within about two minutes went, "Shit, this guy's brilliant." Okay? And I think Jimmy Carr had the same reaction to you as well. So, uh, I think, I think, I, I... If I can play any part of that... By the way, I mean, actually, one thing you can do with a bit of fame, which I recommend everybody, is you can be really generous with it, okay? You know, uh, ge- genuinely. I- it- it's not a zero-sum game. Uh, if you can, you know, if you can help other people, you know, I don't lo- I don't become less famous by conferring fame on somebody else. So the mentality you should have with any kind of thing, particularly given that it's mostly luck, okay? You know, uh, uh, let's be honest about it all. You know, we, you know, it ti- not, not because you're a lucky bastard who doesn't deserve to be where you are, but if you'd done exactly the same thing a year earlier or a year later, it wouldn't have happened. Timing is a huge part of any of that stuff. But, you know, generally having a, um, what you might call a mentality of abundance and generosity around that i- is, is a good thing.

David McIntosh Jr 1:35:24 Well, thank you for your generosity. Everyone, that's been Rory Sutherland.