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Origin Story w/ David McIntosh JrOrigin Story w/ David McIntosh Jr

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

Rory Sutherland is back and he's as hilariously unconventional as ever. I genuinely think this might be the best we've ever gotten him. As the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK and a pioneer in behavioral science, Rory has spent decades unraveling the quirks of human behavior and the illogical decisions that drive us. In this episode, we dive into everything from the economics of nicotine to the psychology behind airport lounges, and even the unexpected lessons gleaned from serial killer investigations. It's a whirlwind tour through the irrationalities that shape our world, all delivered with Rory's signature wit, humor and undiagnosed ADHD. Some highlights for me included: Emotional support vapes and the peculiar concept of "Hooters Air" The psychology behind "girl math" and why price is just a feeling The unexpected brilliance of Chaiwala's hidden improvements The history and psychology of run clubs and jogging Club Penguin’s wild side and internet chaos in the UK The infamous "dogging not jogging" joke Rory’s love for Heathrow’s parking pods The idea of drone ambulances and future rescue tech What Rory would do if he wasn’t Rory Sutherland And of course his Origin Story inclusive of his journey with depression, anxiety, and the utility of his fame Whether you're a fan of behavioral science, marketing or just looking for a good laugh, this will be an instant favourite. Timestamps: 00:00 – Introduction 10:00 – Why Apple Vision Pro Failed 17:10 – Emotional Support Vapes & Hooters Air 24:10 – How Irrationality Helps Solve Crimes 34:10 – "Girl Math" & Private Members Clubs 42:57 – Psychology of Run Clubs & Jogging 48:10 – Club Penguin’s Wild Side 55:10 – Rory’s Love for Heathrow’s Parking Pods 1:02:10 – How Good Markets Kill Bad Products 1:10:10 – Has Anyone Ever Been Killed by a Drone? 1:20:10 – JP Morgan and the Cost of Commitment 1:26:10 – Rory on Depression and Anxiety 1:31:10 – Rory’s Testimony on David - Sponsors: Fireflies.AI Fireflies.ai is an AI-powered meeting assistant that transcribes, summarizes, and analyzes your conversations, making it easier to focus on what truly matters. Whether you're recording a podcast, leading a team meeting, or brainstorming your next big idea, Fireflies ensures you never miss a detail. It's like having a personal assistant who never sleeps. Beyond Baseline and BetterMan by Ross Anderson Beyond Baseline and BetterMan, founded by Ross Anderson, offer transformative experiences aimed at helping men optimize their minds and bodies for peak performance. Through retreats, coaching, and a supportive community, they provide the tools and insights needed to become the best version of yourself.​ I'm incredibly grateful for their support and the value they bring to our listeners.​ Get in touch: David@davidmcintoshjr.com Instagram: instagram.com/davidmcintoshjr Buy Merch: originstoryclub.co.uk 📍 Follow me – https://www.instagram.com/davidmcintoshjr 💌 Support on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/davidmcintoshjr 🛒 Origin Story merch – https://originstoryclub.co.uk

David McIntosh JrhostRory Sutherlandguest
May 5, 20251h 35mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 10:00

    Introduction

    1. DJ

      Rory Sutherland, what do you secretly struggle with that no one knows about?

    2. RS

      Bloody hell. Let's be candid about this. I've, I, I've had-

    3. DJ

      I feel like we've just diagnosed you for the last 13 minutes [laughs]

    4. RS

      ... 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?

    5. DJ

      [laughs]

    6. RS

      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.

    7. DJ

      [laughs]

    8. RS

      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-

    9. DJ

      [laughs]

    10. RS

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

    11. DJ

      Rory Sutherland, welcome to Origin Story.

    12. RS

      It's a pleasure. Delight to be here. Yeah.

    13. DJ

      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]

    14. RS

      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.

    15. DJ

      [laughs]

    16. RS

      Yeah. Mm.

    17. DJ

      I wanna start with a sentimental thank you, Rory. You believed in my sh-

    18. RS

      Well, the more polite one, by the way, is Andy Serkis is great.

    19. DJ

      [laughs]

    20. RS

      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.

    21. DJ

      [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.

    22. RS

      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?

    23. DJ

      No, no, no. [laughs]

    24. RS

      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.

    25. DJ

      Hmm.

    26. RS

      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.

    27. DJ

      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."

    28. RS

      Yes.

    29. DJ

      "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-

    30. RS

      Yes

  2. 10:00 – 17:10

    Why Apple Vision Pro Failed

    1. RS

      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.

    2. DJ

      Why is that?

    3. RS

      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-

    4. DJ

      [laughs]

    5. RS

      ... if you think about it. There are drugs that make people feel great.

    6. DJ

      Have you taken a pill in Ibiza? Is that what you're telling me?

    7. RS

      No, no, no, no, no.

    8. DJ

      [laughs]

    9. RS

      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-

    10. DJ

      [laughs]

    11. RS

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

    12. DJ

      [laughs]

    13. RS

      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.

    14. DJ

      Why is that?

    15. RS

      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.

    16. DJ

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

    17. RS

      Mm.

    18. DJ

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

    19. RS

      But I, I, I understand it's from Mr. Chris Williamson, isn't it?

    20. DJ

      Yes.

    21. RS

      It's one of his nootropic, uh, drinks.

    22. DJ

      Yes. Um-

    23. RS

      Uh, by the way, um, nobody has ever considered, this is straying into dangerous territory.

    24. DJ

      [laughs]

    25. RS

      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.

    26. DJ

      Well, you're on the vapes now. Do you-

    27. RS

      No, no, no.

    28. DJ

      Were you previous-

    29. RS

      Well, well-

    30. DJ

      Were you a previous smoker?

  3. 17:10 – 24:10

    Emotional Support Vapes & Hooters Air

    1. RS

      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.

    2. DJ

      Is that a true Churchill quote or is it part of that Churchillian drift?

    3. RS

      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?"

    4. DJ

      [laughs]

    5. RS

      Right? Okay. If I-

    6. DJ

      [laughs]

    7. RS

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

    8. DJ

      [laughs]

    9. RS

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

    10. DJ

      R- Rory, what flavor is it? Please tell me that.

    11. RS

      No, this one's Banana Volcano, I think. Um-

    12. DJ

      I thought it would've been, like, Bisto gravy or something as a trippy trip. [laughs]

    13. RS

      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?

    14. DJ

      [laughs]

    15. RS

      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?

    16. DJ

      [laughs]

    17. RS

      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.

    18. DJ

      [laughs]

    19. RS

      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-

    20. DJ

      [laughs]

    21. RS

      ... but vaping is banned.

    22. DJ

      [laughs]

    23. RS

      Was vaping, was, was smoking allowed on Hooters Air? Do you remember that? Do you ...

    24. DJ

      [laughs]

    25. RS

      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.

    26. DJ

      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?

    27. RS

      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.

    28. DJ

      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-

    29. RS

      By the way, that's why we should cherish comedians and indulge them-

    30. DJ

      Yeah

  4. 24:10 – 34:10

    How Irrationality Helps Solve Crimes

    1. RS

      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.

    2. DJ

      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?

    3. RS

      Well, um-

    4. DJ

      When did you be- when did you-

    5. RS

      [sighs]

    6. DJ

      When did you come out as irrational?

    7. RS

      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.

    8. DJ

      A lot, yeah, a lot of my l- audience is Scottish.

    9. RS

      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.

    10. DJ

      It's always someone with a white van.

    11. RS

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

    12. DJ

      [laughs]

    13. RS

      So I've always thought if you get someone going missing, you just encourage dog walking.

    14. DJ

      [laughs]

    15. RS

      Um, but you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's a white van.

    16. DJ

      And the purchase of a Transit.

    17. RS

      Yeah.

    18. DJ

      [laughs]

    19. RS

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

    20. DJ

      [laughs]

    21. RS

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

    22. DJ

      [laughs]

    23. RS

      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-

    24. DJ

      [laughs]

    25. RS

      ... 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.

    26. DJ

      [laughs]

    27. RS

      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.

    28. DJ

      [laughs]

    29. RS

      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?

    30. DJ

      Mm.

  5. 34:10 – 42:57

    "Girl Math" & Private Members Clubs

    1. RS

      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.

    2. DJ

      Is it the same psychology behind why people impulse buy but never impulse save?

    3. RS

      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.

    4. DJ

      Oh, yes.

    5. RS

      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.

    6. DJ

      Yeah. [laughs]

    7. RS

      And that we can reframe money in all kinds of very perverse and weird ways.

    8. DJ

      You also say price is a feeling.

    9. RS

      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."

    10. DJ

      RAC club, what does that mean?

    11. RS

      So it's a club on Pall Mall. You can stay there overnight.

    12. DJ

      Oh, okay.

    13. RS

      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."

    14. DJ

      [laughs]

    15. RS

      "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.

    16. DJ

      You can leave a bag.

    17. RS

      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.

    18. DJ

      As at Al-Qaeda, you gotta complete, pay 25 pence. [laughs]

    19. RS

      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.

    20. DJ

      [laughs]

    21. RS

      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.

    22. DJ

      [laughs]

    23. RS

      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.

    24. DJ

      There is one, yeah.

    25. RS

      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.

    26. DJ

      To take a few steps back, you were talking about the psychology of clubs.

    27. RS

      Mm.

    28. DJ

      And one thing I've realized recently-

    29. RS

      Big business, by the way. It, I, I, I was talking to, um-

    30. DJ

      [laughs]

  6. 42:57 – 48:10

    Psychology of Run Clubs & Jogging

    1. RS

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

    2. DJ

      No. Maybe some student halls. [laughs]

    3. RS

      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.

    4. DJ

      Mm.

    5. RS

      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.

    6. DJ

      I've seen a, a replication of that in Glasgow as a young person. I've seen an influx in exclusive clubs-

    7. RS

      Mm

    8. DJ

      ... 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-

    9. RS

      I'm not, you know-

    10. DJ

      ... you ran into Snickers. [laughs]

    11. RS

      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-

    12. DJ

      But what's the psychology of them?

    13. RS

      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.

    14. DJ

      Not to be confused with dogger. [laughs]

    15. RS

      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-

    16. DJ

      [laughs]

    17. RS

      ... 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.

    18. DJ

      [laughs]

    19. RS

      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.

    20. DJ

      [laughs]

    21. RS

      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.

    22. DJ

      [laughs]

    23. RS

      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?"

    24. DJ

      [laughs]

    25. RS

      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.

    26. DJ

      I wouldn't say a jog is a weird movement, Rory. [laughs]

    27. RS

      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.

    28. DJ

      [laughs]

    29. RS

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

    30. DJ

      [laughs]

  7. 48:10 – 55:10

    Club Penguin’s Wild Side

    1. RS

      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.

    2. DJ

      [laughs]

    3. RS

      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-

    4. DJ

      [laughs]

    5. RS

      ... and it would fuck up your connection. And I'm not making this stuff up.

    6. DJ

      No, I, I used to play-

    7. RS

      There was no Wi-Fi.

    8. DJ

      I was young. I used to play Club Penguin at the time, and the s- same thing would happen.

    9. RS

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

    10. DJ

      I'd be like, "Mum, fuck off, I'm speaking to a pedophile on the internet." [laughs]

    11. RS

      [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.

    12. DJ

      [laughs]

    13. RS

      Um, uh, b- actually, I think they should bring back Club Penguin.

    14. DJ

      [laughs]

    15. RS

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

    16. DJ

      Uh.

    17. RS

      You must have collected those puffles, those little furry things which were like the pets, they-

    18. DJ

      Uh, yeah, a few. I can't remember, Rory. [laughs]

    19. RS

      '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.

    20. DJ

      Mm.

    21. RS

      Uh, this was literally like having a pet die.

    22. DJ

      Well, well, I, I experienced my first experience of grief through a Tamagotchi.

    23. RS

      Mm. Mm.

    24. DJ

      So it must've been something similar for your daughters.

    25. RS

      Yeah, the... If your puffles all ran away, that was total misery, yeah.

    26. DJ

      [laughs]

    27. RS

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

    28. DJ

      Yeah.

    29. RS

      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-

    30. DJ

      Yeah

  8. 55:10 – 1:02:10

    Rory’s Love for Heathrow’s Parking Pods

    1. RS

      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."

    2. DJ

      [chuckles]

    3. RS

      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?

    4. DJ

      [laughs]

    5. RS

      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?

    6. DJ

      [laughs]

    7. RS

      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.

    8. DJ

      Mm.

    9. RS

      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-

    10. DJ

      Could you pop that back on or is it-

    11. RS

      Pop, pop what?

    12. DJ

      Just the, uh, mic muffler.

    13. RS

      Oh, is it fallen off?

    14. DJ

      A little bit. There we go.

    15. RS

      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?

    16. DJ

      No, no.

    17. RS

      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.

    18. DJ

      Mm-hmm.

    19. RS

      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

  9. 1:02:10 – 1:10:10

    How Good Markets Kill Bad Products

    1. RS

      it, is people really enjoy riding on the pod.

    2. DJ

      [laughs]

    3. RS

      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-

    4. DJ

      [laughs]

    5. RS

      ... "But I wanted a ride on the pod."

    6. DJ

      [laughs]

    7. RS

      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?

    8. DJ

      Yep.

    9. RS

      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."

    10. DJ

      [laughs]

    11. RS

      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.

    12. DJ

      [laughs]

    13. RS

      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.

    14. DJ

      [laughs]

    15. RS

      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?

    16. DJ

      No, we have a subway system.

    17. RS

      You've got a subway system. What's it like? Is it all right?

    18. DJ

      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.

    19. RS

      Pretty good actually.

    20. DJ

      Clockwise, counterclockwise. It's great. It's called, it's named The Clockwork Orange.

    21. RS

      Oh, nice. It's good for Glasgow. [laughs]

    22. DJ

      [laughs]

    23. RS

      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.

    24. DJ

      I've never used it.

    25. RS

      No, I haven't used it either.

    26. DJ

      Never.

    27. RS

      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-

    28. DJ

      Mm

    29. RS

      ... 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?

    30. DJ

      Yeah, it does. Yeah.

  10. 1:10:10 – 1:20:10

    Has Anyone Ever Been Killed by a Drone?

    1. RS

      tax because actually they're community centers, right?

    2. DJ

      [laughs]

    3. RS

      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.

    4. DJ

      W-

    5. RS

      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."

    6. DJ

      Mm-hmm.

    7. RS

      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?

    8. DJ

      Wow.

    9. RS

      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-

    10. DJ

      Mm. [laughs]

    11. RS

      ... 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?

    12. DJ

      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.

    13. RS

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

    14. DJ

      [laughs]

    15. RS

      There is, there is that small advantage, I guess, which is, you know... And also it would remove temptation, I suppose.

    16. DJ

      [laughs]

    17. RS

      Um, uh, but, um, uh, my guess is that's happening already, actually. I, I, I mean, I-

    18. DJ

      It's happening at prisons, I think.

    19. RS

      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-

    20. DJ

      [laughs]

    21. RS

      ... who is a massive drone enthusiast-

    22. DJ

      [laughs]

    23. RS

      ... 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-

    24. DJ

      And helicopters

    25. RS

      ... Reaper drones. And, and, and Glasgow, you had that helicopter crash on a nightclub-

    26. DJ

      Yeah

    27. RS

      ... didn't you? Yeah.

    28. DJ

      Very unfortunate.

    29. RS

      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.

    30. DJ

      Yeah.

  11. 1:20:10 – 1:26:10

    JP Morgan and the Cost of Commitment

    1. RS

      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-

    2. DJ

      Love that place.

    3. RS

      You, you, you're a CitizenM fan, are you?

    4. DJ

      Yeah, yeah.

    5. RS

      Yeah.

    6. DJ

      I went there from the very opening.

    7. RS

      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.

    8. DJ

      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-

    9. RS

      Oh, so people in a flat share or people who want to have-

    10. DJ

      So, so essentially couples who have just gotten together-

    11. RS

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

    12. DJ

      Oh, my God. [laughs]

    13. RS

      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-

    14. DJ

      [laughs]

    15. RS

      ... 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.

    16. DJ

      [laughs]

    17. RS

      Can I tell a story? You'll love this story. So, um, Tim Horton's.

    18. DJ

      [laughs]

    19. RS

      There was a branch of Tim Horton's in, I think, St. John's, Newfoundland.

    20. DJ

      Mm.

    21. RS

      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?

    22. DJ

      Yeah.

    23. RS

      They have these wonderful things called Timbits.

    24. DJ

      Amazing.

    25. RS

      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-

    26. DJ

      [laughs]

    27. RS

      ... 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.

    28. DJ

      [laughs]

    29. RS

      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.

    30. DJ

      Because the onboarding process is so well rehearsed.

  12. 1:26:10 – 1:31:10

    Rory on Depression and Anxiety

    1. RS

      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."

    2. DJ

      [laughs]

    3. RS

      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.

    4. DJ

      What do you secretly struggle with that no one knows about?

    5. RS

      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.

    6. DJ

      You were almost inconsequentially and accidentally thrust into fame.

    7. RS

      Mm.

    8. DJ

      If you could reverse it, would you?

    9. RS

      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

  13. 1:31:10 – 1:35:27

    Rory’s Testimony on David

    1. RS

      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?

    2. DJ

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    3. RS

      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.

    4. DJ

      You can get, like, a pasty at a BP garage.

    5. RS

      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.

    6. DJ

      [laughs]

    7. RS

      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]

    8. DJ

      [laughs]

    9. RS

      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-

    10. DJ

      Yeah

    11. RS

      ... '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-

    12. DJ

      [laughs]

    13. RS

      ... 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?

    14. DJ

      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.

    15. RS

      What have you got now?

    16. DJ

      So much so. So I, I live in the West End of Glasgow now. Um, and-

    17. RS

      Is that really swanky, is it?

    18. DJ

      Swanker than where I grew up, that's for sure-

    19. RS

      Hmm

    20. DJ

      ... 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.

    21. RS

      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.

    22. DJ

      [laughs]

    23. RS

      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.

    24. DJ

      Well, thank you for your generosity. Everyone, that's been Rory Sutherland.

Episode duration: 1:35:28

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