When Pop Fandom Becomes a Force for Good with AJR’s Adam Met | A Bit of Optimism

Adam Met 0:00 Two albums ago, we didn't release a track list. Instead, we took our track list, we cut it up into 36 jigsaw puzzle pieces, and shot the jigsaw puzzle pieces out across the internet. Our fans had to work together across the world in order to put together this jigsaw puzzle. They posted it, and that post got more pickup than pretty much anything that we ever posted.

Simon Sinek 0:22 And it wasn't even your post, it was their post.

Adam Met 0:24 It was their post.

Simon Sinek 0:25 That, that-

Adam Met 0:25 It gave them ownership over the music-

Simon Sinek 0:27 So your fans-

Adam Met 0:28 ... over the album

Simon Sinek 0:28 ... posted the set list to all the other fans?

Adam Met 0:30 Correct.

Simon Sinek 0:31 That is beautiful. It's good to be back in New York City. There's something about this place, the rhythm, the chaos, bagels that actually taste the way bagels are supposed to taste, and the chance to hang out with cool New York City kids, like my guest, Adam Met. Then we skip to the good part. Ah. Adam is the A of indie-pop band AJR. Here we go. So put your best face on. Everybody raise their hands. He's also a climate activist, founder of the nonprofit Planet Reimagined, an adjunct professor at Columbia University-

Adam Met 1:06 When writing this book

Simon Sinek 1:07 ... and the author of bestselling book Amplify

Adam Met 1:09 ... people become fans.

Simon Sinek 1:10 There's no doubt that Adam is a very busy person. He's also very educated. He has a PhD, after all. But it's the education he got from inside the music industry that's particularly fascinating. More specifically, how he's applying what he's learned from making pop music to develop strategies for effective social and environmental change. It's true, pop music could actually save the world. This is A Bit of Optimism. Did you go to Broadway as a kid?

Adam Met 1:51 Yeah, I went to a lot of Broadways as a kid. Yeah. My first Broadway show was Music Man.

Simon Sinek 1:57 I don't think I ever saw Music Man.

Adam Met 1:59 Oh. But have you seen the movie?

Simon Sinek 2:01 No.

Adam Met 2:01 Oh. It's worth it. It's absolutely worth it.

Simon Sinek 2:03 Is it a musical?

Adam Met 2:04 Yes.

Simon Sinek 2:04 Mm.

Adam Met 2:06 Right, you're not a musical person.

Simon Sinek 2:08 Mm.

Adam Met 2:08 You're more of a play person?

Simon Sinek 2:09 I mean, I, I like them. I mean, I'll-

Adam Met 2:11 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 2:11 ... I have an opinion about musicals, which I'm gonna get people writing in with angry letters, but it's, it's m- more of a business. Broadway is more of a business than anything else. It's kinda like TV news.

Adam Met 2:24 It's not a good business.

Simon Sinek 2:25 No, but, uh, it's not a good business, but it's a business. It's entertainment-

Adam Met 2:28 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 2:29 ... and occasionally it's art.

Adam Met 2:31 It is also a-

Simon Sinek 2:33 You know, it's-

Adam Met 2:33 ... way for rich philanthropists to try and one-up each other-

Simon Sinek 2:37 [laughs]

Adam Met 2:37 ... in New York by being producers of Broadway shows.

Simon Sinek 2:40 Is that what it is?

Adam Met 2:40 It's about clout-

Simon Sinek 2:41 To make money and become-

Adam Met 2:42 ... in New York City

Simon Sinek 2:42 ... become a Broadway producer?

Adam Met 2:43 Exactly. That's what it, that's what it is on the other side-

Simon Sinek 2:46 I got it

Adam Met 2:47 ... in New York.

Simon Sinek 2:47 Okay, yeah.

Adam Met 2:47 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 2:47 But I mean, look, there's a lot of, there's a lot of musicals that I love.

Adam Met 2:50 Mm-hmm. Like?

Simon Sinek 2:51 I, I mean, I do like Hamilton.

Adam Met 2:53 Name nine. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 2:54 Nine?

Adam Met 2:55 Yes.

Simon Sinek 2:55 I mean, I can't name nine that I like-

Adam Met 2:57 Okay

Simon Sinek 2:57 ... but it would be just a trick to see if I could name nine. Okay, let me try.

Adam Met 3:00 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 3:00 Hold on.

Adam Met 3:00 Great. Hamilton.

Simon Sinek 3:01 Okay.

Adam Met 3:01 I get Hamilton.

Simon Sinek 3:01 Time, I get Hamilton.

Adam Met 3:02 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 3:02 Okay. Annie.

Adam Met 3:03 Okay, that's a good one.

Simon Sinek 3:04 By the way, I like Annie.

Adam Met 3:06 Okay.

Simon Sinek 3:06 I thought the movie was great. I don't... Have I ever seen it live? But, you know-

Adam Met 3:09 I haven't seen it live

Simon Sinek 3:10 ... but it's a great movie.

Adam Met 3:12 Great movie.

Simon Sinek 3:12 And the music's great.

Adam Met 3:13 Yes, agreed.

Simon Sinek 3:13 Like Annie, Producers.

Adam Met 3:15 Okay.

Simon Sinek 3:16 Cabaret.

Adam Met 3:16 But the movie, you saw Producers?

Simon Sinek 3:17 No, I saw the p- I saw-

Adam Met 3:18 Oh, you saw the show? Okay, good.

Simon Sinek 3:19 Just saw the show.

Adam Met 3:19 All right.

Simon Sinek 3:20 And, and Cabaret-

Adam Met 3:22 Great

Simon Sinek 3:22 ... which I loved. I'm cheating, 'cause my friend was in those two, so.

Adam Met 3:25 Oh, okay.

Simon Sinek 3:25 But that's okay.

Adam Met 3:26 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 3:26 I, so I saw-

Adam Met 3:26 We're almost halfway

Simon Sinek 3:27 ... so I saw Cabaret m- many times, 'cause my friend is in it.

Adam Met 3:30 Sure. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 3:30 And, and it's good. Also, great music.

Adam Met 3:33 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 3:33 Money, money, money, money.

Adam Met 3:34 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 3:34 Da-na-na na-na-na. N- I like anything in the minor key.

Adam Met 3:37 Oh.

Simon Sinek 3:37 I, and now I'm gonna dig into things that I probably don't like or wanna see, but, like, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Adam Met 3:43 Okay. That is absolutely a show.

Simon Sinek 3:44 Uh, Wicked.

Adam Met 3:46 Great.

Simon Sinek 3:46 Uh, Cats.

Adam Met 3:48 Okay.

Simon Sinek 3:48 I, I saw it. Starlight Express.

Adam Met 3:50 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 3:51 Jesus Christ Superstar.

Adam Met 3:52 Wow.

Simon Sinek 3:52 I mean, they're all Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Adam Met 3:53 We've gotten to nine-

Simon Sinek 3:54 So that's nine

Adam Met 3:55 ... so quickly.

Simon Sinek 3:55 See, I mean, granted, I don't, I couldn't name a new one.

Adam Met 3:58 Mm.

Simon Sinek 3:58 They're all very old. Some of them are even older than me.

Adam Met 4:01 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 4:02 Jesus Christ Superstar I think is older than me.

Adam Met 4:04 Sure. What do you not like about musicals, though?

Simon Sinek 4:09 In general, I find the music f- for American musicals-

Adam Met 4:12 Uh-huh

Simon Sinek 4:12 ... sounds the same.

Adam Met 4:14 Like, Les Mis is my favorite show-

Simon Sinek 4:15 Oh, Les Mis

Adam Met 4:16 ... of all time.

Simon Sinek 4:16 I've seen that.

Adam Met 4:17 Okay.

Simon Sinek 4:17 Seen that a few times.

Adam Met 4:17 Do you like Les Mis?

Simon Sinek 4:18 Very much.

Adam Met 4:18 Okay.

Simon Sinek 4:19 Very much.

Adam Met 4:19 So Les Mis-

Simon Sinek 4:20 Like Les Mis a lot

Adam Met 4:21 ... but to your point-

Simon Sinek 4:23 Great music

Adam Met 4:23 ... every song sounds the same because it uses the same motif over and over and over again. It's almost like-

Simon Sinek 4:30 Wait

Adam Met 4:30 ... an opera rather than a show.

Simon Sinek 4:32 But I'm not complaining about the music having themes in a show.

Adam Met 4:35 Okay.

Simon Sinek 4:35 I'm complaining about all musicals sounding the same.

Adam Met 4:38 Oh, musicals sounding like each other.

Simon Sinek 4:40 Yes. There's a-

Adam Met 4:40 Oh

Simon Sinek 4:40 ... there's a, there's an American musical v- like, like, it's kinda like heavy metal has a heavy metal-ness to it.

Adam Met 4:49 Got it. So you don't like the genre-

Simon Sinek 4:51 I don't like the genre-

Adam Met 4:52 ... of Broadway musical theater music

Simon Sinek 4:53 ... of Broadway musical, right.

Adam Met 4:53 Got it, okay.

Simon Sinek 4:54 That's it. So it's not like I hate the shows.

Adam Met 4:56 All right.

Simon Sinek 4:56 Plenty of exceptions. Javert's theme-

Adam Met 4:58 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 4:59 ... again, minor key, love the minor key.

Adam Met 5:00 Yep.

Simon Sinek 5:01 Javert's theme in Les Mis, I can't sing.

Adam Met 5:03 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 5:04 Javert's theme is the only s- thing that I can sing, and it sounds like what it's supposed to sound like. The on-

Adam Met 5:09 Ah, okay.

Simon Sinek 5:09 And no, I'm, and no, I'm not going to.

Adam Met 5:11 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 5:11 But-

Adam Met 5:12 You knew where I was going, too

Simon Sinek 5:13 ... no, I know, I know, exactly. I have to, we have to say it. Uh, I know you first, before I met you, because I was actually a fan of your music.

Adam Met 5:22 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 5:22 You are the A of AJR-

Adam Met 5:25 Yes

Simon Sinek 5:26 ... the hot pop band.

Adam Met 5:27 Pop band?

Simon Sinek 5:28 Ooh.

Adam Met 5:28 Is that what you call it?

Simon Sinek 5:28 Sure.

Adam Met 5:29 Pop.

Simon Sinek 5:29 Pop genre?

Adam Met 5:30 Sure.

Simon Sinek 5:30 Sure. And it was my nephew who introduced me to your work.

Adam Met 5:34 Well-

Simon Sinek 5:34 Like so many, Bang was my introduction to AJR.

Adam Met 5:37 Well, thank you to your nephew. I really appreciate it.

Simon Sinek 5:39 Yeah.

Adam Met 5:39 Without him, I would not be here today.

Simon Sinek 5:41 That is-

Adam Met 5:41 So

Simon Sinek 5:42 ... partially true

Adam Met 5:43 ... probably, yeah. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 5:46 You, I mean, you've played huge arenas, uh, as AJR, in AJR.

Adam Met 5:49 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 5:51 And yet it is fair to say that your music career may be the least impressive thing about you.

Adam Met 5:56 [laughs] Thank you?

Simon Sinek 5:57 Yes. You are, you are one of the s- hardest driving, smartest, entrepreneurial sort of do-gooders I've ever met.

Adam Met 6:07 Wow.Coming from you, that means so much. I, I really appreciate that.

Simon Sinek 6:12 But it's true. How did you... So were you always driven to be a part of having a positive change in the world, or did that come later in life? G- give me a little history on it.

Adam Met 6:22 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 6:22 I don't... And by the way, I'm asking you questions that I, I, it's not-

Adam Met 6:25 Yeah

Simon Sinek 6:25 ... I don't know any of the things I'm asking you. [laughs]

Adam Met 6:26 Great. Excellent.

Simon Sinek 6:29 I'm gonna assume, uh, that you're three musical kids and like-

Adam Met 6:34 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 6:34 ... you, you know, play for all the parents' friends and-

Adam Met 6:37 Yeah

Simon Sinek 6:38 ... you know, took music lessons and, you know.

Adam Met 6:40 Yeah. So our start was we were, because we grew up in New York City, we were street performing in New York City, as one does.

Simon Sinek 6:47 Buskers.

Adam Met 6:48 Literally.

Simon Sinek 6:48 [laughs]

Adam Met 6:48 We put out a hat for money. We a- we didn't grow up well off. We all shared one room. So the three of us were living in one room. We had triple bunk beds, and we raised enough money on the street to buy Pro Tools, a computer, to buy a ukulele, to buy, like, the setup to actually make music. And for me, yes, it was about the music, and I loved storytelling, and I loved art, but really, once I think back and reflect on it, the core of it for me, and I'm not speaking for my brothers in this instance, for me it was about, how do you effectively move people? What are the strategies to get people from one place to another? And I'm not saying physically, I'm saying emotionally.

Simon Sinek 7:27 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 7:28 So whether it's through the songwriting or what the live show experience is or anything from the merchandise to the storytelling of the whole narrative of how we went from three guys street performing in New York to playing Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl, it has been all about how to tell those effective stories in order to move people. And every single thing that I learned from music I've applied to everything else that I do in my life.

Simon Sinek 7:57 So one thing I do know about you, which is you, I would argue that you are on the cutting edge of understanding how the music business has changed and what it has become, right?

Adam Met 8:06 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 8:06 Because there's a lot of artists who complain that they're not getting money from their music, from Spotify-

Adam Met 8:10 Yeah

Simon Sinek 8:10 ... and the rest of it, and you recognize that, that you can't really make the money from the music anymore. The music is the marketing tool to-

Adam Met 8:18 Yeah

Simon Sinek 8:19 ... create an experience that people will pay money to come see in a show, which-

Adam Met 8:23 Absolutely

Simon Sinek 8:23 ... you know, Taylor Swift and others have figured that out, too.

Adam Met 8:26 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 8:26 When people think of concert, they think pay, buy your ticket, show up at venue-

Adam Met 8:30 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 8:31 ... wait, maybe there's an opening act.

Adam Met 8:33 Yep.

Simon Sinek 8:33 That's your, like, lucky strike extra. Band performs.

Adam Met 8:36 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 8:36 Leave, maybe buy merch.

Adam Met 8:37 Yep.

Simon Sinek 8:37 That's, that's it.

Adam Met 8:39 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 8:39 That's not what your concerts are.

Adam Met 8:41 No. So because-

Simon Sinek 8:44 You design them.

Adam Met 8:45 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 8:45 You make shows.

Adam Met 8:47 We do, and I think it has to do with the fact that we did grow up in New York City going to... Oh, we're circling back already.

Simon Sinek 8:52 Musicals.

Adam Met 8:53 Going to see musicals.

Simon Sinek 8:56 Ugh. [laughs]

Adam Met 8:57 Um, if you're listening to this and you've ever been to one of our shows, they're very much Broadway shows that we take on the road. We take the album, and as the album is being written, and to be abundantly clear, both of my brothers write the music. So I'm not involved in the writing process of the music. But as they are writing the music, the show is being developed. It's not, let's write the album and put it out, and then we'll build a show around it. It's, let's figure out what the narrative is through the album so we can create this

Adam Met 9:30 show.

Simon Sinek 9:30 So you think of it right from the... It's all-

Adam Met 9:32 Yeah

Simon Sinek 9:32 ... conceived of at the same time.

Adam Met 9:33 Yep.

Simon Sinek 9:34 Which is kind of astonishing.

Adam Met 9:35 And there are some songs that are built around what is this gonna sound like and look like on stage-

Simon Sinek 9:40 Mm-hmm

Adam Met 9:40 ... just as much as what is this gonna sound like when people are listening through their headphones.

Simon Sinek 9:43 So it's really, your albums are really the pre-release soundtracks of the show.

Adam Met 9:47 That's exactly what it is. And so we have an album called Neo Theater, which, I mean, and a couple of our albums have overtures on them, literally a song called Overture, which takes pieces of all the other songs on the album and does a modern version of an overture and mashes them up. So it's very theatrical.

Simon Sinek 10:03 I love that. So okay, so now-

Adam Met 10:05 No, do you love that or do you not? [laughs]

Simon Sinek 10:06 No, as an, as an, as an artist? That... But it, it, I mean, it is the most customer service, uh, orientation. You're like, "What can we give to the human beings who are gonna be consuming our work?"

Adam Met 10:18 Totally.

Simon Sinek 10:18 And how do we make it the most magical experience for them? What if we design the show and the album and all of the merch and the experiences at the same time?

Adam Met 10:26 Yeah. A fan-first approach has always been our strategy. Even... So when we first started out, we would always have a $10 ticket available. Even today, we have a 30 or $40 ticket available, even in arenas. We wanna make sure that our shows continue to be accessible to people. But our shows, like I was saying, don't just encompass the music and the storytelling and the live experience. There are all of these ways for fans to participate online, continue to take the show home with them, learn about it before. You look at some of these Discord groups and these Reddit threads, they're, the engagement in there is insane. They're noticing details that we thought nobody would notice. And honestly, Taylor Swift pioneered this, right?

Simon Sinek 11:10 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 11:10 To be able to take something like a fan base and move it to use them for good, which we can talk about in a bit-

Simon Sinek 11:18 Mm-hmm

Adam Met 11:18 ... but also to play into the games that they like to play, play into that culture. We embed things in our albums, and I'll give you an example.

Simon Sinek 11:27 Yeah, yeah.

Adam Met 11:27 In one of our albums, in every single song, there was a very small snippet of another song on the album. So people had to go on a hunt through the album itself to try and find the pieces of the other songs.

Simon Sinek 11:42 For no other reason than the fun of looking.

Adam Met 11:44 The fun, the fun of it.

Adam Met 11:45 Yeah. But it was also-

Simon Sinek 11:46 You don't win a prize. It's just the fun.

Adam Met 11:47 Yeah, just the fun. It was also... It was like Les Mis. Les Mis has little pieces of other songs playing their way throughout, but then we would do something even more intentional that would have a winner. So when you think about games, when you think about people playing games, generally there are a couple of different strategies, right? One strategy is competition. You put people in competition with each other. There's gonna be a winner and a loser. There's also a world-building game, you know, like Minecraft, where people are just building the worlds. Twenty One Pilots uses this strategy. They build this world with this lore and all of these stories, and it keeps expanding with their albums. We said, "Okay-What if we used a different strategy? Not, uh, competition, not world building. What if we forced our fans to collaborate on something? So we created this experience. Two albums ago, we didn't release a track list. Instead, we took our track list, we cut it up into 36 jigsaw puzzle pieces, and shot the jigsaw puzzle pieces out across the internet. We put one piece on Twitter, one to our email list, one to our text list, one on Discord, Reddit. Over the next three hours, our fans had to work together across the world in order to put together this jigsaw puzzle. They posted it, and that post got more pickup than pretty much anything that we ever posted.

Simon Sinek 13:03 And it wasn't even your post, it was their post.

Adam Met 13:05 It was their post.

Simon Sinek 13:06 That, that-

Adam Met 13:06 It gave them ownership over the music-

Simon Sinek 13:08 So your fans-

Adam Met 13:09 ... over the album

Simon Sinek 13:09 ... posted the set list, the, the, the track list to everybo- to all the other fans.

Adam Met 13:13 Correct.

Simon Sinek 13:14 That is beautiful.

Adam Met 13:16 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 13:16 And how did you even come up with that?

Adam Met 13:17 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 13:18 'Cause I'm, by the way, absolutely gonna steal it.

Adam Met 13:21 Go for it.

Simon Sinek 13:21 It's a genius

Simon Sinek 13:22 idea.

Adam Met 13:22 Please. Oh, when, when I do work in climate and movement building, I take that strategy and work with nonprofits to do the same thing. Because if you think about it, it gives them ownership over the product, over the in- over the idea in a way that you could never do if you were forcing it. That is just a beautiful way of redefining what ownership looks like, and it makes them-

Simon Sinek 13:42 Oh

Adam Met 13:42 ... you know, really focus on it.

Simon Sinek 13:43 That is so inspiring. Okay, so, so now I understand how your brain works.

Adam Met 13:46 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 13:47 Right? Why not just be a, a pop star for the rest of your life and, you know, travel on the road and do concerts and make music? I mean, that, that's joyful.

Adam Met 13:55 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 13:56 And you're, and you're giving people a, a better experience than, than a traditional, you know, artist experience. Why the, all of the, all the other stuff? And you don't do one other thing, you do, like, 10 other things. You wrote a book-

Adam Met 14:10 Yeah

Simon Sinek 14:11 ... you called Amplify, which we'll get into-

Adam Met 14:12 Yeah

Simon Sinek 14:12 ... because I'm curious.

Adam Met 14:14 So why am I unsatisfied? Um, it might be my Jewish genealogy [laughs]

Simon Sinek 14:20 [laughs]

Adam Met 14:20 As being perpetually unsatisfied. But really, when we were kids, we had one goal with the band, which was to sell out Madison Square Garden. That was the goal. And a year and three months ago, we sold out two back-to-back nights at Madison Square Garden.

Simon Sinek 14:39 Amazing.

Adam Met 14:40 And when you achieve something that you've been working on for so long-

Simon Sinek 14:45 A finite goal, yeah

Adam Met 14:46 ... yeah, of course there's more to do. We could go and sell out stadiums.

Simon Sinek 14:51 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 14:51 We can go and be, try and be bigger and bigger and bigger. We could try to be the biggest artist in the world. I have always been inspired by the music industry, and I've always been inspired by so many different things because of what I mentioned before, that there are so many different ways to move people. There are so many different ways to figure out how to use emotion effectively to succeed in things. And so music was my first love, and it was my first step in this journey.

Simon Sinek 15:21 And seeing how something that you made made people feel.

Adam Met 15:26 Yeah. Yep. And now, as much as I love it and as much as I wanna keep doing it-

Simon Sinek 15:32 Mm-hmm

Adam Met 15:32 ... looking at how we can use all of these strategies in different movements to make the world a better place is my next goal. And so I'm not doing as much music as I have been before. This past summer, I didn't do all the shows with my brothers. I did New York and LA and a handful of other, other markets, and I really enjoy performing and being on stage. And I'll even, when I'm at home, I'll stay up till 3:00 in the morning playing piano. My neighbors are very unhappy with me.

Simon Sinek 16:00 [laughs]

Adam Met 16:00 Um, I play mostly Broadway songs.

Simon Sinek 16:03 [laughs] I'm w- I'm one of your neighbors.

Adam Met 16:05 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 16:06 [laughs]

Adam Met 16:07 Um, I always felt like I had to be doing many things because I, I argue with the premise because it's not one thing or another, because fundamentally it's all the same thing for me. So when I'm doing-

Simon Sinek 16:21 Different, different m-m-media, different mediums-

Adam Met 16:24 Yes

Simon Sinek 16:24 ... for the same-

Adam Met 16:25 For the same ultimate goal

Simon Sinek 16:26 ... for the same ultimate goal.

Adam Met 16:26 Exactly. Exactly. So when I was doing my PhD, the creativity behind it, the way I was coming up with ideas, is the exact same part of my brain that I used when I was working out new touring strategies or models for the music industry or this puzzle idea.

Simon Sinek 16:41 What's your PhD in?

Adam Met 16:43 Human rights law and sustainable development.

Simon Sinek 16:45 Are you an attorney also?

Adam Met 16:47 I mean, I do not, I'm not passed the bar in the US, but my background is in human rights law, so.

Simon Sinek 16:53 Oh.

Adam Met 16:53 Sure. So-

Simon Sinek 16:55 I mean, you have a PhD-

Adam Met 16:56 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 16:56 ... in human rights law.

Adam Met 16:58 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 16:59 Okay. [laughs]

Adam Met 17:01 [laughs] Don't look so sad, Simon.

Simon Sinek 17:03 No, I just... Like, you're such an overachiever.

Adam Met 17:05 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 17:05 I, I find you, you're so creative, and I love how, you know, fan focus now becomes sort of, like, do-gooder focus.

Adam Met 17:11 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 17:12 You know? So first of all, what is the movement that is occupying most of your time right now?

Adam Met 17:15 Yeah.

Adam Met 17:16 Um, right now it is the climate movement, but I h-hate calling it that because I fundamentally do not believe the climate movement should exist.

Simon Sinek 17:24 Hmm.

Adam Met 17:25 I believe that, I mean, we're getting deep into it now, but I believe we as the climate movement have completely failed over the last bunch of years. There ha- there has been some legislation that's been successful, but nobody can connect to climate change. Nobody knows what 1.5 degrees is. Nobody knows what net zero is. It's a big problem. If we take the whole movement and divide it up into things like farming and transportation and energy and water and, um, how we build things, how we grow things, how we get from place to place, that's so much easier for people to engage with than, "I wanna fight for the climate movement."

Simon Sinek 18:01 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 18:01 The era of Greta and fear and anger around climate is over.

Simon Sinek 18:07 So you and I met at a party-

Adam Met 18:08 Yeah

Simon Sinek 18:09 ... uh, in London of all places.

Adam Met 18:10 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 18:11 And I think I, when I heard that you worked on climate, I think I went on a tirade-

Adam Met 18:16 Uh-huh

Simon Sinek 18:16 ... uh, because I can't help myself.

Adam Met 18:18 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 18:19 And at the end of my tirade, you go, "Did you read my op-ed?"

Adam Met 18:22 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 18:23 "'Cause that's, that's what I wrote."

Adam Met 18:24 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 18:25 And that's when we bonded. My tirade is, is very similar as, as you-

Adam Met 18:28 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 18:30 Don't let scientists run social movements.

Adam Met 18:32 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 18:33 Right? Because scientists are about uncertainty, and science are about things that are vague, and they're terrible communicators.

Adam Met 18:40 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 18:40 The fact that we debate, you know, climate change is funny to me.

Adam Met 18:44 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 18:44 You know? Uh, like, we debate whether it's a natural, uh, climate cycle-

Adam Met 18:49 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 18:50 ... or whether it's, uh, caused by, by human beings.

Adam Met 18:53 Yep.

Simon Sinek 18:54 And who cares?

Adam Met 18:55 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 18:56 It's like if there was an asteroid heading towards the Earth-

Adam Met 18:59 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 18:59 ... we wouldn't debate if we should let the asteroid hit because it's just the way the natural un- world works, or whether we should intervene and push it out of the way.

Adam Met 19:06 I don't know.

Simon Sinek 19:06 Of course we would intervene and push it out of the way.

Adam Met 19:08 Would we, though?

Simon Sinek 19:08 Would we? I think we would.

Adam Met 19:09 In this day and age, I don't know. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 19:10 I'm pretty sure we would. We could all ag-

Adam Met 19:12 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 19:12 The problem is would we all agree that the asteroid's heading towards us.

Adam Met 19:14 It's true.

Simon Sinek 19:14 But w- of course we would intervene.

Adam Met 19:16 Yeah, of course.

Simon Sinek 19:16 So there's nothing wrong with human intervention-

Adam Met 19:17 Yep

Simon Sinek 19:18 ... to make something better if something is tending towards worse.

Adam Met 19:21 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 19:22 And who cares where it came from? Who cares if it's a natural cycle? Who cares if we did it-

Adam Met 19:26 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 19:26 ... through industrialization? Doesn't matter. We are where we are.

Adam Met 19:29 Yep. Yep.

Simon Sinek 19:29 And I wish, wish people would stop saying we're killing the planet.

Adam Met 19:32 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 19:32 The planet's fine.

Adam Met 19:33 The planet is gonna be fine long after we're gone.

Simon Sinek 19:36 The planet... Like, w- exa- the problem is we're killing ourselves.

Adam Met 19:39 We are.

Simon Sinek 19:39 We're creating conditions, or d- conditions are being created-

Adam Met 19:42 Yeah

Simon Sinek 19:42 ... either one-

Adam Met 19:43 Yeah

Simon Sinek 19:43 ... that will make life unsustainable for the human animal to survive on this planet. We will die, and new species will replace us, and life will be f- the planet's fine.

Adam Met 19:51 Planet might even be better.

Simon Sinek 19:51 Planet might even be better.

Adam Met 19:52 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 19:53 Exactly. So this is where you and I bonded. We agree.

Adam Met 19:55 Yes.

Simon Sinek 19:56 So how do you take this cynical, uh, point of view and turn it into an action and movement so that you actually can positively affect the world in which we live so that the species is more likely to survive, and hurricanes won't be as bad-

Adam Met 20:12 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 20:13 ... you know, tornadoes won't be... It's like-

Adam Met 20:14 Forest fires, all of them. Yeah

Simon Sinek 20:15 ... like forest fires, whatever your local, you know-

Adam Met 20:16 Totally

Simon Sinek 20:16 ... disaster is.

Adam Met 20:17 But the other things that most people don't recognize is that immigration, big- climate is a big cause of immigration because people's places are, uh, becoming uninhabitable.

Simon Sinek 20:27 Oh, if there's no water, they move.

Adam Met 20:28 If there's no water-

Simon Sinek 20:29 If there's no farming

Adam Met 20:30 ... if it gets too h- it gets too hot, there's no farming ability.

Simon Sinek 20:32 Then they move.

Adam Met 20:33 Healthcare issues, massive relation to climate change. As-

Simon Sinek 20:37 How is that one related?

Adam Met 20:37 ... it gets hotter and hotter-

Simon Sinek 20:38 Yeah

Adam Met 20:38 ... further and further north and further and s- further and further south, the insects that carry diseases that are traditionally living in places like the Caribbean, chikungunya, malaria, pla- things like that, they expand further north and further south.

Simon Sinek 20:51 Because the conditions are favorable for the-

Adam Met 20:52 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 20:53 Wow.

Adam Met 20:53 For mosquitoes. So you're moving into hospital areas that are not used to treating those diseases. So healthcare, immigration, these issues that we talk about as if they're their own thing are deeply related to climate. So-

Simon Sinek 21:06 Wow

Adam Met 21:06 ... I like to say climate is everything, and that's one of the reasons why we haven't been successful. It's because climate is everything and is related to everything.

Simon Sinek 21:14 Which is, uh-

Adam Met 21:15 Yeah

Simon Sinek 21:15 ... which is part of the problem, right.

Adam Met 21:16 Totally. But your question is how do we take this and turn it into something actionable.

Simon Sinek 21:21 Right.

Adam Met 21:21 And in this day and age where... It's funny 'cause we have two things that are kind of converging, right? We have, in the US, we have a Republican party that's saying we shouldn't be addressing climate change. We shouldn't be talking about climate change. And you have me, as somebody on the left, who's saying we shouldn't be talking about climate change. Climate change is the wrong approach to be using to address these underlying issues. My response here, just for people who are listening, is not in response to the Trump administration.

Simon Sinek 21:48 It's not political.

Adam Met 21:49 No, it's not political at all.

Simon Sinek 21:49 You, you, you agree we shouldn't be talking about climate change.

Adam Met 21:51 I agree we shouldn't be talking about climate change.

Simon Sinek 21:53 Right.

Adam Met 21:54 Let me put it this way. I firmly believe that you are only going to get people engaged on this issue if you focus on the hyperlocal level. So at the national level, sure, you can do things, create incentives for more solar and more wind and water and all of these different things. At the hyperlocal level, community boards, state legislators, l- town councils, they decide what transportation looks like in your town, what zoning looks like in your town, how waste is removed and moved around, what water policy looks like in your town. All of that happens at the hyperlocal level. You voting at the local level has thousands if not tens of thousands times more power than your vote in the presidential election. There's an election that happened in Texas last year where a community board, this woman won her seat by 12 votes, and she was the deciding vote on this community board about all of these different climate policies around zoning, around construction, around transportation. 12 votes. Literally 12 votes.

Simon Sinek 22:55 Wow.

Adam Met 22:57 That is where most of the change happens in the United States on climate. And so my belief system, it's, it's rather complicated, so I'm going to kind of narrow it down. I believe that we need to redefine what the town square looks like. We need to relook at what town halls look like. This idea has not been reexamined since the 1800s when presidents were going to campaign, when, uh, elected officials were, were going to campaign. Understanding how you bring people together effectively for civic engagement just as much as entertainment, because those are the same thing. So one of the things that I work on a lot, and both in my nonprofit and I talk about in the book, is how to create these kind of environments where people are gathering, whether it's for music or sports or comedy or really anything, and use that space to get people civically engaged. Not having them be rallies.

Simon Sinek 23:56 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 23:56 I mean, AOC and Bernie do all this thing, this, they have thousands of people come out, and they say, "We need to vote," and it's true, but people aren't really taking any sort of action. They don't go home and say, "Okay, now I need to do this in my life."

Simon Sinek 24:08 Right. It's just a big ri- it's just a big rah-rah.

Adam Met 24:09 Right. It's a big rah-rah. This is why my focus is on getting people engaged around the issues that are deeply important to them.

Simon Sinek 24:18 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 24:18 Not about the politician-

Simon Sinek 24:19 Mm-hmm

Adam Met 24:19 ... but about the policy.

Simon Sinek 24:21 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 24:21 And we've moved away from the policy, and it's not as much about the pol- it's about the celebrity of the politician.

Simon Sinek 24:26 Right.

Adam Met 24:26 And so when we built out our tour last summer, and we've done this with a bunch of other artists now-In each city, we create a way for fans to engage around a policy that's hyper-local to that city, and I'll give you an example.

Simon Sinek 24:39 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 24:40 Last year, we pulled into Phoenix. It was 109 degrees out, literally 109 degrees when we pulled into Phoenix. The action that we had people taking on-site at our show was to sign a petition to get FEMA to designate extreme heat as an emergency so that funds could be unlocked. We didn't phrase it in the way that I just phrased it to you. It was, "Isn't it too hot out? Your friends and family are feeling it. Sign this petition so we can get more money in order to protect you all from the heat." You know, something very simple and easy. That kind of thing resonated with people.

Simon Sinek 25:14 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 25:14 We did this in every single city with an issue that made sense for that city. In Salt Lake City, it was about preserving the level of the Great Salt Lake. Everything was hyper-local.

Simon Sinek 25:23 It's stuff that people do recognize and care about-

Adam Met 25:25 Exactly

Simon Sinek 25:26 ... like hurricanes-

Adam Met 25:27 Exactly

Simon Sinek 25:27 ... tornadoes, floods, the things, forest fires, the things that are affecting-

Adam Met 25:31 That person

Simon Sinek 25:31 ... whatever where I live.

Adam Met 25:32 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 25:33 'Cause I live in LA now. I don't think-

Adam Met 25:34 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 25:34 ... of hurricanes at all.

Adam Met 25:35 No, you think of fires.

Simon Sinek 25:36 I think of fires.

Adam Met 25:37 Absolutely. So we just-- We, we did this on Billie Eilish's UK tour. We did this on a couple shows on Tyler Childers' tour, who's a country artist. Um, and on Tyler Childers' tour, we did this, uh, partnership with a group called Appalachian Voices, which was about coal mining and protecting the coal mining communities from the effects of coal, right?

Simon Sinek 25:57 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 25:58 But that is about a health issue. That is about a jobs issue. We're not framing it in terms of climate change. Sure, coal is a climate change issue, but to that community-

Simon Sinek 26:06 Yeah

Adam Met 26:06 ... it's about health, and it's about jobs.

Simon Sinek 26:08 And I think that's what people misunderstand. When you take it down to that level, like, the people in these coal mining, uh, communities aren't anti-climate change. They're just like, "I was a coal miner. My father was a coal miner. My father's father was a coal miner."

Adam Met 26:19 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 26:20 It's like, "This is how I provide for my family," and then you lefties come in and be like, "We're shutting down your coal mine for the environment." Like, I can't think of the environment if you're telling me you're taking away my paycheck.

Adam Met 26:29 Of course.

Simon Sinek 26:30 And so I'm not anti-climate change-

Adam Met 26:34 Yeah

Simon Sinek 26:34 ... or anti that movement. I'm anti you taking away my paycheck without setting me up with anything new.

Adam Met 26:39 Exactly. Audience is key. So I teach climate policy and campaigning at Columbia. The first thing I always teach my students is that when you're developing a campaign, you need to understand who your audience is. My brain is an academic o- one just as much it is, as it is one that's emotionally driven.

Simon Sinek 26:56 Yeah.

Adam Met 26:56 And so in order to do this work that I was just talking about on tour, we did a really big study with Ticketmaster and with another organization called Reverb, and all of us together, we did this poll that we put out into the field. It went out to about 350,000 recent ticket purchasers to understand from the audience-

Simon Sinek 27:14 Mm

Adam Met 27:14 ... the actions they were willing to take, the areas that they cared about in terms of causes.

Simon Sinek 27:19 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 27:19 And we did this across a variety of different artists, not just us. We looked at Taylor Swift fans, Dave Matthews fans, Beyonce fans, and this is how we built it. We listened to the audience first before we built anything.

Simon Sinek 27:31 Brilliant.

Adam Met 27:31 So that is key. What are we calling climate change? Within the movement itself, for people who are listening who are in the climate movement already, fine, we can call it climate change. We can call it environmental justice. We can call it net zero, whatever. I don't care. A friend of mine is a farmer out of Michigan, and he was telling me this story, this idea that he does soil science work. The way that the language of the soil scientists gets published, the data that gets published, the people who work in farming science and atmospheric science and all these related fields, they don't understand that language. They can't use the same data because it's published on a platform that they cannot use. This idea of having a new lexicon that is more, uh, universal is something that has been really important to me. Outside of the climate movement, we should call it how we're getting from place to place. We should call it how we're growing things, how we're making things, how we're building things, how we're powering things. Those are the things that people care about.

Simon Sinek 28:38 Mm.

Adam Met 28:38 And even if nobody else that I ever come across says, "I'm joining the climate movement," I'm fine with that.

Simon Sinek 28:44 Mm.

Adam Met 28:44 If somebody tells me they're really passionate about water, great. Go be a water advocate. Water is gonna be one of our biggest issues in the next 10 years. I think that moving away from words that we're stuck in. Al Gore made this kind of fear of climate change big and existential and part of the zeitgeist and in popular media, and one of the things that I love about this new world that we're living in is that there are so many places for people to get together, and I had a fight with Al Gore about this. Not, not a fight. I get this... Mini disagreement.

Simon Sinek 29:18 He's a lot bigger than you.

Adam Met 29:20 [laughs] Ugh, but I'm more spry. [laughs] So a year ago, Al Gore and I were at a dinner, and he says, "Adam, like, I need some help thinking about how we can build better digital advocacy strategies." And I said, "No, that's the wrong question. It's how do we use the digital space to move people in person?" Because I promise you that in the next two, three years, in-person connection is going to be the most valuable currency, and we're already seeing that.

Simon Sinek 29:52 Yeah.

Adam Met 29:52 We're already seeing with the growth of AI-created content that people are having more and more mistrust of what they're seeing online with misinformation and disinformation. Same thing. People are craving personal connection with other people. We're seeing a huge rise in things like book clubs, running clubs across the country.

Simon Sinek 30:09 Yeah.

Adam Met 30:10 Live Nation and Ticketmaster in 2024 sold 250 million tickets in the US. That's a huge number of tickets-

Simon Sinek 30:19 Wow

Adam Met 30:19 ... of people going in person.

Simon Sinek 30:21 Wanting to see something.

Adam Met 30:22 In June, they announced a new billion-dollar investment in new venues because they see this demand for people having this connection to other people. So I said this to Al Gore, and I said, "You should be creating these digital platforms as an off-ramp, as a way to move people in person. It's a gathering space to then move them somewhere else."

Simon Sinek 30:40 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 30:40 It's a wave-

Simon Sinek 30:41 It's a, it's a halfway point.

Adam Met 30:41 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 30:42 It's a wave point.

Adam Met 30:42 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 30:43 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 30:43 And so, uh, he didn't necessarily believe me.But, you know, I will prove him, prove to him that I am correct with time.

Simon Sinek 30:51 I, I, I mean, I think you're right, and the, uh, the data shows it and, and my work reflects that as well.

Adam Met 30:55 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 30:56 I mean, we can see it. We see young people becoming-

Adam Met 30:58 Yeah

Simon Sinek 30:58 ... disillusioned with social media, and they are the ones raising their hand saying, "Can we get off this stuff, and how do we find ways to go do things?"

Adam Met 31:04 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 31:05 I, I, and one of the things I think that goes with in-person and, and you, and all of the things that we're seeing in the world, none of them are to blame by themselves, but they all contribute. Social media, clearly. Cell phones, clearly. AI and not knowing what to trust, clearly.

Adam Met 31:16 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 31:17 V- highly polarized media, clearly. Highly polarized politicians serving themselves, not us, clearly.

Adam Met 31:22 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 31:23 Like, all of these things are contributing to this, that, this idea, and the net result is not just that we don't know what to believe, but we don't feel like we belong-

Adam Met 31:30 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 31:31 ... and we crave that.

Adam Met 31:33 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 31:33 And there's a decline in optimism-

Adam Met 31:35 Yeah, absolutely

Simon Sinek 31:35 ... because when you don't have a sense of connection with people and a sense of belonging, you know, at, at, at the minimum it's, "I don't feel very optimistic."

Adam Met 31:42 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 31:42 At the maximum is like, "I'm full-on depressed."

Adam Met 31:44 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 31:45 Right?

Adam Met 31:45 Absolutely.

Simon Sinek 31:46 But all of those things are cured, um, with human connection.

Adam Met 31:49 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 31:49 And with human connection comes trust.

Adam Met 31:51 Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna tell you a quick story. So at my organization, Planet Reimagined, we do a lot of kind of cl- creative climate-related things. One of the projects we do is about putting renewable energy on top of oil and gas land, which has never been allowed before in the United States. I spent about three years going into Congress, working with senators, working with members of the House, and figuring out how to get them to a place where they could agree on this. I would work with equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, and I would just use slightly different language to get to the same space. And it was really only the fact that I did this in person with them-

Simon Sinek 32:30 Mm, mm

Adam Met 32:30 ... in order to build this trust, that now we have a bill that has been introduced in both the House and the Senate that has Republican and Democrat support-

Simon Sinek 32:39 Mm

Adam Met 32:39 ... that opens up 18 million acres of land across the West that's oil and gas land to put renewables on top of it. And then at a show about, I don't know, four years ago, let's say, we were in Dallas, did this show. I got offstage, I looked at my phone, and then I saw I had a tweet, and this tweet said, you know, "I love AJR, so excited to be at their show." You know who this tweet was from? Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck came to our show, and then for those of you who are listening who don't know Glenn Beck-

Simon Sinek 33:12 Right-wing

Adam Met 33:12 ... right-wing-

Simon Sinek 33:13 Yep

Adam Met 33:13 ... like, Fox commentator-

Simon Sinek 33:15 Yep

Adam Met 33:15 ... um, precursor to Tucker Carlson.

Simon Sinek 33:17 Yep.

Adam Met 33:18 And the end of his tweet was, "This show and the AJR's music really helps me connect with my son." So I started to think about that. This was an in-person event, and when I was writing this book, Amplify, it's like, "Okay, I'm gonna have a chapter that's about how to bring people together who disagree with each other-

Simon Sinek 33:36 Mm-hmm

Adam Met 33:36 ... using this in person, using this specific language." So I wrote to Glenn, and I said, "Can I come down to Texas and talk to you?" And so I sat in person with Glenn for four hours interviewing him, and my secret goal that he didn't know was to find one thing we could agree on.

Simon Sinek 33:54 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 33:54 Because we fundamentally disagree on pretty much every social issue.

Simon Sinek 33:58 Mm-hmm.

Adam Met 33:59 We spent four hours talking about gay rights, about religion, about immigration, about healthcare, about literally everything you could possibly imagine, and he knows that I'm pretty far on the left in terms of climate. We started to have a conversation about the different places that he lives, and he has a house in the Intermountain West. I forget where it is, I think Idaho. And he goes, "Adam, you're gonna be so happy. My house is completely clean. You know, I use, uh, solar on the roof, and we use natural gas." And I said, "Oh, you, that's great that you use solar. Um, natural gas?" You know, he said, "Yeah, it's completely clean." And I said, "Who told you that?" And he said, "Everybody knows. It's natural." And I say, "Oh, well, just so you know, natural gas is made up mostly of methane, which is about 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide in terms of warming the planet." He's like, "You're trying to take my stove."

Simon Sinek 34:52 [laughs]

Adam Met 34:52 And I said, "No, no, no. One of the biggest contributors to climate change is leaks from methane gas pipelines. They're literally pipelines that are sending this gas from place to place, and they're leaking. If we-"

Simon Sinek 35:06 Which is not well taken care of.

Adam Met 35:07 Correct.

Simon Sinek 35:07 If they were perfect, then it would have a different conversation.

Adam Met 35:09 Correct. So the one thing-

Simon Sinek 35:11 So it's not the gas, it's the taking care of the gas.

Adam Met 35:13 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 35:14 Oh.

Adam Met 35:15 So the one thing in four hours we were able to agree on-

Simon Sinek 35:18 Yeah

Adam Met 35:18 ... is creating incentives to plug leaks-

Simon Sinek 35:21 Yeah

Adam Met 35:21 ... in methane gas pipelines. And so Glenn Beck, so fundamentally different from me, took four hours to get there, but if he took that forward with his followers and influencing politicians, that would have huge impact.

Simon Sinek 35:33 But that's so, but again, this goes back to human responsibility, right?

Adam Met 35:36 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 35:36 Which is it's not the gas-

Adam Met 35:38 Yeah

Simon Sinek 35:38 ... it's the negligence of the companies-

Adam Met 35:41 Correct

Simon Sinek 35:41 ... that don't really have much of an incentive to plug the holes 'cause there's a cost associated with that.

Adam Met 35:45 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 35:45 And they're not gonna get that cost back they, when they sell you the gas.

Adam Met 35:48 No.

Simon Sinek 35:48 It's just a cost of doing business.

Adam Met 35:50 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 35:50 So if you don't have to, and nobody really puts any pressure on you to plug the leak, screw it.

Adam Met 35:54 Exactly.

Simon Sinek 35:55 I mean, literally.

Adam Met 35:56 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 35:56 It's not taking somebody's stove away, it's agreeing let's get the, the, the oil companies and the gas companies to just look after their property.

Adam Met 36:02 Yeah. I, I had a fight with somebody yester- I feel like I'm having, saying I'm having a lot of fights with people.

Simon Sinek 36:06 [laughs]

Adam Met 36:07 I had a, um, constructive disagreement-

Simon Sinek 36:09 [laughs]

Adam Met 36:09 ... with somebody who was like, "I'm, you know, impacting climate change 'cause I'm choosing not to fly." And for me, making the choices about what you eat, how you're going from place to place, you as an individual, for me, that does nothing. That means you've become victim to a massive campaign-

Simon Sinek 36:28 Yeah. They are

Adam Met 36:28 ... perpetrated by the oil and gas companies.

Simon Sinek 36:29 And it's vir- it's vir- it's virtue signaling. It's virtue signaling.

Adam Met 36:31 It is absolutely.

Simon Sinek 36:31 A, a friend of mine who never flew-

Adam Met 36:33 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 36:33 ... for this reason-

Adam Met 36:34 Yeah

Simon Sinek 36:34 ... he actually came to the conclusion that the plane's going with me or without me.

Adam Met 36:37 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 36:38 And so it actually makes more sense to put a person in the seat-

Adam Met 36:41 Yeah

Simon Sinek 36:41 ... than have it fly empty.

Adam Met 36:42 Absolutely.

Simon Sinek 36:43 You know?

Adam Met 36:43 Absolutely.

Simon Sinek 36:43 So like, if it's gonna fly, fly it full 'cause at least-

Adam Met 36:46 And if you're gonna take even the time to think about it-

Simon Sinek 36:48 Yeah

Adam Met 36:48 ... there's so much advocacy you can do to advocate for more sustainable aviation fuel, electric vehicles, all of these things.

Simon Sinek 36:55 And what I have learned is, I, I, and you probably actually know the real numbers, so correct me. Aviation-... uh, pollution accounts for something like 2%?

Adam Met 37:02 Yeah, 2 to 3%.

Simon Sinek 37:03 2, 2 to 3%. Uh, construction is 30%.

Adam Met 37:07 Yeah, construction and, and building things like cement and concrete.

Simon Sinek 37:10 Yeah.

Adam Met 37:10 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 37:10 So construction and all the, the, the, the things around construction.

Adam Met 37:13 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 37:13 So people think they're saving the planet by not taking a plane.

Adam Met 37:16 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 37:17 It's minor impact.

Adam Met 37:18 It's minor impact. Also, think about the number of planes that are out there.

Simon Sinek 37:21 Yeah.

Adam Met 37:21 A lot, most of them are, don't have humans on them.

Simon Sinek 37:24 Right.

Adam Met 37:24 It's getting packages and, uh, food and all of these other things-

Simon Sinek 37:27 Yeah

Adam Met 37:27 ... from place to place.

Simon Sinek 37:28 You know, I was just reading this article about AI accountability.

Adam Met 37:31 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 37:31 And, you know, the computer companies want no accountability. Like, Twitter wants no accountability.

Adam Met 37:37 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 37:37 You know, Microsoft wants no accountability. V- v- Facebook and n- and any, and Anthropic or, or, or OpenAI, any of these companies want no accountability for what happens on their platform.

Adam Met 37:46 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 37:46 If somebody, you know, tells somebody else to murder somebody on their platform, there's no liability.

Adam Met 37:50 Sure.

Simon Sinek 37:51 Or, or if they kill themselves, worse, right, which we're starting to see-

Adam Met 37:53 Yeah

Simon Sinek 37:53 ... from AI, uh, AI. This article was saying, "We believe in product liability." Like, the reason our products are really, really good in this country-

Adam Met 38:00 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 38:01 ... is because we hold the car company liable-

Adam Met 38:03 Yeah

Simon Sinek 38:03 ... when the brakes don't work.

Adam Met 38:04 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 38:04 And we hold the drug companies liable when their drugs are poisoned and kill somebody, and we hold food companies liable if their food equipment is not clean and somebody gets salmonella or E. coli or something.

Adam Met 38:15 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 38:15 We hold the manufacturer responsible for the product. Why then wouldn't we hold the manufacturer of AI responsible for everything that happens on their platform, just like taking, uh, a poisoned, uh, a foodstuff, you know, a contaminated foodstuff?

Adam Met 38:30 Yeah. So is the AI company's argument that they are not the manufacturer because they're taking in all of this data?

Simon Sinek 38:35 The, their, their argument is we're, it's like the old Napster. It's like, "We're just-

Adam Met 38:39 Hmm

Simon Sinek 38:39 ... we're just intermediary."

Adam Met 38:40 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 38:40 "We can't be responsible for what people do on our platform."

Adam Met 38:43 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 38:43 Right? But, but if you held an AI company accountable for a teenager killing themselves 'cause the AI told you to kill themselves, and you held them a, a, a, a-

Adam Met 38:52 Yeah

Simon Sinek 38:52 ... accountable, I guarantee you-

Adam Met 38:54 Of course

Simon Sinek 38:54 ... they'd put, they'd put the fixes in place because they're accountable.

Adam Met 38:57 Of course.

Simon Sinek 38:57 So now it raises the question, "Well, why can't we be better-

Adam Met 39:00 Right

Simon Sinek 39:00 ... about holding pipeline companies accountable?" If nobody's accountable-

Adam Met 39:04 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 39:04 ... then what gets done?

Adam Met 39:05 Nothing.

Simon Sinek 39:05 If you make someone accountable-

Adam Met 39:06 Yeah

Simon Sinek 39:07 ... things get done. What I find interesting about the way you talk is you're, you, you said it right here, which is, "I'm probably further left than most. I'm pretty far left on the climate stuff." You openly talk about your politics, and yet your position on a lot of these things is pretty apolitical.

Adam Met 39:24 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 39:25 You, uh, have found ways to work with both, both parties. You find both parties equally infuriating for different reasons.

Adam Met 39:33 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 39:34 It seems to me counterproductive for you to even declare your politics-

Adam Met 39:38 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 39:38 ... when the work you're doing is apolitical and-

Adam Met 39:41 Sure

Simon Sinek 39:41 ... affects people regardless of their poli- political persuasions. And your fans are all kinds of-

Adam Met 39:48 Across the political spectrum

Simon Sinek 39:48 ... all kinds of people.

Adam Met 39:49 Yeah. It's funny, I've been asked to run for office a couple of times. And I don't think I've talked about this publicly before. I've been asked to run for office a couple times.

Simon Sinek 39:57 Are you announcing your candidacy right here?

Adam Met 39:58 I am definitely not.

Simon Sinek 39:59 [laughs]

Adam Met 39:59 I'm announcing the opposite of my candidacy.

Simon Sinek 40:02 [laughs]

Adam Met 40:02 Which is, I think in the moment, the work that I can do in bringing people together across the political spectrum is more valuable than me being in office representing a district.

Simon Sinek 40:15 Great. So why talk about your politics at all?

Adam Met 40:19 Because I think-

Simon Sinek 40:19 'Cause who you vote for is your business. Who I vote for is my business.

Adam Met 40:21 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 40:22 But, like, it doesn't really matter what your views on various social policies are.

Adam Met 40:28 I think that's fair, except I have a platform with fans who are listening to me, and I firmly believed that the world would have been in a better place had Kamala Harris been president. And so I was out on the road campaigning for Kamala Harris, and I felt like it was my responsibility to tell people, "This is what I believe." And it just-

Simon Sinek 40:52 Does that damage your movement in climate?

Adam Met 40:56 But here's the thing. I also helped out a Republican senator that was running in Utah, and I also helped out a Democrat that was running in this race, and a Republican that was running in this race.

Simon Sinek 41:07 Ah.

Adam Met 41:08 So-

Simon Sinek 41:08 So you have endorsed both sides of the house.

Adam Met 41:11 Yeah, exactly.

Simon Sinek 41:12 Interesting.

Adam Met 41:13 So there's this, um, senator out of Utah. His name is John Curtis, and he's great. He's one of the people who sponsored this bill that I worked on, the Colocation Energy Act, and I just went in, and in his office I did a whole training, or with his entire office, around movement building. I will do that for Republicans, and I will do that for Democrats. I am agnostic on that because I believe it's about people and helping people that are their constituents. He has millions of constituents in the state of Utah. I wanna help those people. I am not to the left on everything. There are some things that I'm further to the right on. But I think because of the platform that I have, it's my responsibility to use it in order to move things forward.

Simon Sinek 41:57 You know, I have a different point of view.

Adam Met 41:58 Great.

Simon Sinek 41:58 Which is I think people like you and people who put out messages that are good for everyone, uh, when they start to steer into politics, for all the reasons that we're angry about-

Adam Met 42:07 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 42:07 ... and the polarization of the country, and people don't listen, and they judge too quickly-

Adam Met 42:10 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 42:10 ... and sound bites, et cetera-

Adam Met 42:12 Yeah

Simon Sinek 42:12 ... large portions of the population will not listen to you or discount everything you're saying simply because you announced your politics.

Adam Met 42:20 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 42:20 Whereas if you kept your politics to yourself, those people who should be listening will listen.

Adam Met 42:26 So we talked about trust earlier. Don't you think people would trust me more if I'm honest that I agree with this part of politics for this issue and this part of politics for this issue?

Simon Sinek 42:36 I don't, you c- Yes, you can talk about that. That's agreeing with this side or that side-

Adam Met 42:40 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 42:40 ... or this policy or that policy, but it's not declaring yourself part, one party or another. Like-

Adam Met 42:46 Hmm

Simon Sinek 42:46 ... you know, I, I'm a registered independent for a reason.

Adam Met 42:49 Hmm.

Simon Sinek 42:49 Which is I find them, I find people on both sides, some of them quite inspiring and some of them quite infuriating.

Adam Met 42:55 Yeah. Okay.

Simon Sinek 42:56 And anybody who goes to the polls, the polls meaning the, the, the extreme sides-

Adam Met 42:59 Yeah

Simon Sinek 43:00 ... on either party-

Adam Met 43:00 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 43:01 ... I don't think they should hold power.You know, because I, you know, I, uh, it's not that extremes don't have voices.

Adam Met 43:07 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 43:07 The, the politics should look like what the country actually is, which is a bell curve.

Adam Met 43:11 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 43:11 Which is the small percentages of extreme, and most of us are moderates.

Adam Met 43:16 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 43:16 Like, you know, on, on various sides of the bell. And our politicians look like an, a U-

Adam Met 43:21 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 43:21 ... rather than a bell curve because, for various reasons, and gerrymandering and all the rest of it.

Adam Met 43:26 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 43:26 And I wish our politicians looked like us, which is mostly down the middle. Like, most Americans-

Adam Met 43:31 Yeah

Simon Sinek 43:31 ... on slightly to the left and slightly to the right-

Adam Met 43:33 Sure

Simon Sinek 43:34 ... are pretty moderate. We're a pretty moderate nation.

Adam Met 43:36 Yeah, except the ones that have the loudest voices.

Simon Sinek 43:39 That's the problem.

Adam Met 43:40 Yeah, exactly. It's-

Simon Sinek 43:41 So this is my point, which is-

Adam Met 43:42 That's fair

Simon Sinek 43:42 ... shouldn't we... It's, and I will happily say I agree with some things to the sl- to the left and some things to the right, but I'll talk on a policy level.

Adam Met 43:49 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 43:50 But I, but m- but I'm keenly aware that I want to represent what the country looks like because I believe that the message that I'm trying to promote is good for everybody, and your politics come second to me.

Adam Met 44:01 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 44:02 You know, taking care of each other is apolitical. Like, ensuring-

Adam Met 44:05 Oh, absolutely

Simon Sinek 44:05 ... that you, that you, that you feel safe wherever you are, that you can, uh, get a good job and provide for your family, feel like you matter, feel like your work matters-

Adam Met 44:13 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 44:13 ... and trust that you can go to work every day and your kids can go to school every day in relative safety, and you're able to provide, that's pretty much all anybody wants.

Adam Met 44:20 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 44:20 And that's kind of everybody's responsibility, to not only provide for each other, take care of each other, and our politicians to pass policy that ensures that that happens for many people as possible.

Adam Met 44:29 Yeah. I c- I, if you want, I can actually answer your question. I skirted your question a little bit.

Simon Sinek 44:35 Why you talk about politics?

Adam Met 44:37 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 44:37 Why you, why you labeled yourself?

Adam Met 44:38 I think I feel this responsibility, not just to the fans, but to participate in a conversation that happens online that I don't really like that I feel a pull towards. I think that the conversation that's happening online, which is mostly happening between the two poles-

Simon Sinek 44:59 Right

Adam Met 44:59 ... as we were talking about-

Simon Sinek 45:00 Right

Adam Met 45:00 ... is something that people look to me to jump in on, and I think that is inevitably lined up with my politics.

Simon Sinek 45:14 Hmm.

Adam Met 45:14 And I know you're saying that I don't have to. I could, you know, stand back, but I'll give you an example. In, in a couple weeks, I'm doing this thing for this very far left climate organization. Very far left, the kind of organization that disrupts things and throws things and blocks streets and all that stuff. And I've done stuff for them before, and I'll literally say to their audience, like, "I don't agree with your tactics, but I understand why they exist." So I was at the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act at the White House, and Kamala gives this speech about the only reason that this law passed is because we had people who were moderate and even on the center right, and we had people who were throwing soup at paintings. She said we needed that entire spectrum of people engaged in order to get this-

Simon Sinek 46:02 So would you go to a very right-leaning organization, uh, of hunters who wanna preserve-

Adam Met 46:10 Absolutely

Simon Sinek 46:10 ... preserve the foods in the forest so that they can hunt?

Adam Met 46:13 I do that relatively often.

Simon Sinek 46:14 Oh, good.

Adam Met 46:15 Absolutely.

Simon Sinek 46:16 Yeah.

Adam Met 46:16 They are-

Simon Sinek 46:16 They care about the environment a lot.

Adam Met 46:18 They care a lot about the environment.

Simon Sinek 46:20 Yeah.

Adam Met 46:20 And that's a great way into a group that I wouldn't necessarily be welcomed into-

Simon Sinek 46:26 Right

Adam Met 46:26 ... because I'm not a hunter.

Simon Sinek 46:27 Right.

Adam Met 46:29 At this moment. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 46:31 At this moment. I, I, I'm so enamored by your customer first, fan first-

Adam Met 46:35 Yeah

Simon Sinek 46:35 ... point of view, and it's your own interests that drive how you, um, uh, apply it.

Adam Met 46:40 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 46:40 Whether it's through, um, fan experience for your music or helping, uh, the climate movement, that, that happens to be your interest, but you can apply it anywhere.

Adam Met 46:49 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 46:50 What are w- three or four ways that we can be customer focused when we think about whatever it is we do, whether we're a teacher, whether we're an entrepreneur, whether we're, you know-

Adam Met 46:58 Yeah

Simon Sinek 46:58 ... working in a large corporation, or whether it's a social movement, you know-

Adam Met 47:02 Yeah

Simon Sinek 47:02 ... h- or, or a, or an artist

Simon Sinek 47:03 or a musician?

Adam Met 47:03 It's funny. These are each chapters in the book. So, um, one of them is about how to really drill down and figure out who your audience is and then tell stories that work for your audience. And there's a big difference between a good story and an effective story. A good story is one that you'll tell to people, and they'll tell their friends and family about it, but an effective story is one that will make people get up off their ass and do something about it.

Simon Sinek 47:28 Give me an example.

Adam Met 47:29 When, when we told this story in Phoenix, the example that I gave you before.

Simon Sinek 47:33 Yeah.

Adam Met 47:33 When we told the story about what was happening in Phoenix of people dying of the heat and provided that space for them to actually do something right there after hearing the story, the num- We got 1,000 signatures in the moment because there was the ability to tell this story, people related to it emotionally, and there was ability for them to take action directly on it. Yeah.

Simon Sinek 47:53 So there's a beginning, middle, and end.

Adam Met 47:55 There's a beginning, mill- and, middle, and end, and it is personally relatable.

Simon Sinek 47:59 Got it.

Adam Met 47:59 So but a good story would be is if I was in Chicago and saying, "In Phoenix, it's 109 degrees out."

Simon Sinek 48:06 Ah, right, right, right, right.

Adam Met 48:07 Right? In Phoenix, it's 30 degrees out. They can't really relate to the problem as much.

Simon Sinek 48:12 Right.

Adam Met 48:12 So it's a good story, and they'll tell their friends, "Oh my God, did you hear in Phoenix? It's 109 degrees out."

Simon Sinek 48:16 And nothing happens.

Adam Met 48:16 Great, what are they gonna do about it?

Simon Sinek 48:17 Right.

Adam Met 48:18 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 48:18 It's like people on the East Coast supporting legislation for forest fires, wildfires-

Adam Met 48:22 Totally

Simon Sinek 48:23 ... and people on the West Coast signing up for legislation to s- to help hurricane victims. It's like-

Adam Met 48:26 Exactly. Exactly

Simon Sinek 48:28 ... eh.

Adam Met 48:28 So who is your audience?

Simon Sinek 48:29 Right.

Adam Met 48:29 And your audience is not gonna be homogenous.

Simon Sinek 48:31 Right.

Adam Met 48:31 There's gonna be audiences within audiences within audience, and fine. And even if you wanna target a hyper-narrow segment of that audience-

Simon Sinek 48:39 Okay

Adam Met 48:39 ... who is that audience? What is the story want, they wanna hear, and what is the thing that's gonna get them to get up and do something?

Simon Sinek 48:44 Got it. Okay.

Adam Met 48:45 So this kind of storytelling is key to it.

Simon Sinek 48:47 Okay.

Adam Met 48:48 Gamifying action, like we talked about before, huge opportunity. Creating these forms of collaborative gaming, like the jigsaw puzzle.

Simon Sinek 48:55 Right.

Adam Met 48:56 Great opportunity for people in any kind of social movement to create this form of collaboration.

Simon Sinek 49:02 A- and I think what's really important here is usually when people talk about gamification, it's about badges, and it's like how many times did you do this, you get a badge. How many times consecutively did... That's not what we're talking about.

Adam Met 49:12 No.

Simon Sinek 49:12 We're not talking about little medals for stupid stuff.

Adam Met 49:14 No.

Simon Sinek 49:14 When, when you talk about gamification, you're talking about getting off your ass, doing something-

Adam Met 49:18 Yeah

Simon Sinek 49:18 ... and seeing the... The gamification of it is, is the ability to tangibly see what you've done.

Adam Met 49:22 Yep, exactly.

Simon Sinek 49:23 That's the gamification.

Adam Met 49:24 That's the win.

Simon Sinek 49:24 That's the win.

Adam Met 49:25 Right.

Simon Sinek 49:25 Okay.

Adam Met 49:26 This idea of bringing people together that disagree with each other-

Simon Sinek 49:29 Yeah

Adam Met 49:30 ... but going down to the underlying first principles-

Simon Sinek 49:33 Yeah

Adam Met 49:33 ... of things-

Simon Sinek 49:34 Yeah

Adam Met 49:34 ... allows them to actually connect with each other. So this is how-I fundamentally build movements. Even within my own organization, there are people that disagree with each other. We're, we're an incubator, so we'll have a project that is on this side of the political spectrum, and we'll have a project that's on this side of the political spectrum. And somebody from my team is like, "Wait, if we do this, it's gonna prevent our donors from getting excited about this." And I say, "No, we need 1,000 shots on goal in order to be successful here."

Simon Sinek 50:02 Yeah.

Adam Met 50:02 And the audience for this project is gonna look very different from the audience for this project. But if you can get them both at first principle levels to understand why we're doing it... This is why I love having conversations, because to get to the underlying why-

Simon Sinek 50:17 Yeah

Adam Met 50:17 ... is so,

Adam Met 50:19 so key. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 50:20 You are a magical blend of left brain, right brain, of highly academic, uh, and also an artist. What, um, about being an artist and the-

Adam Met 50:31 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 50:31 ... love of art makes you a better thinker?

Adam Met 50:35 Wow. It's funny. When I'm sitting at the piano and playing or thinking about anything having to do with music creativity, that creativity lives in exactly the same spot in my brain as me coming up with a policy idea that has never been invented before. I don't see these as two different things. There is a flow state, and I know that's, like, you know, woo-woo to talk like, "Oh, get into a flow state." There's a flow state [laughs] when I am creative, when I'm playing piano, or when I have a policy hat on that feels physically exactly the same to me.

Simon Sinek 51:21 But do you feel that you are better capable of achieving flow state for, for thought-

Adam Met 51:28 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 51:28 ... because you're an artist?

Adam Met 51:30 I feel like being an artist taught me how to open that gate, and I can't really describe what that is except it feels like a gate, like I just... It feels like drugs, honestly.

Simon Sinek 51:48 Mm.

Adam Met 51:48 It feels like... I don't know if we're allowed to talk about that. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 51:51 You can talk about whatever you want.

Adam Met 51:52 I guess. [laughs] But it feels like if... You probably know what I'm talking about. If, if I'm doing a certain kind of drug that puts you into a state that opens your mind and you feel connected with nature and, you know, that kind of drug.

Simon Sinek 52:05 I, I don't know whether to be complimented or offended when you said, "You know what I'm talking about."

Adam Met 52:10 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 52:11 Uh, and for the record, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Adam Met 52:13 Oh, okay.

Simon Sinek 52:14 [laughs]

Adam Met 52:14 All right. Thanks for throwing me under the bus there.

Simon Sinek 52:17 [laughs]

Adam Met 52:18 Really appreciate that. There's something that happens with drugs like that that is very similar for me when I'm in a policy mindset-

Simon Sinek 52:29 Yeah

Adam Met 52:29 ... or when I'm in a music-playing mindset.

Simon Sinek 52:32 Yeah.

Adam Met 52:32 But the music, 'cause when I was a kid, that's when it started, it taught me what it feels like to be in that state.

Simon Sinek 52:37 When people ask me, like, "Where do you get your ideas?" What they, what I've learned a long time ago is when, when you study the thing you're trying to solve, you will not come up with the idea.

Adam Met 52:47 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 52:48 The thing you're trying to solve, the question has to be asked, and then you want to go explore and meander.

Adam Met 52:53 Yes.

Simon Sinek 52:54 And-

Adam Met 52:54 Yes

Simon Sinek 52:54 ... and what I do to get ideas, and I, and, is I, I'll go for a walk in a museum.

Adam Met 53:00 100%.

Simon Sinek 53:01 Or, uh, I'll watch a documentary.

Adam Met 53:03 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 53:04 Or, um, or I'll watch a movie. It doesn't even have to be a documentary. I'll go watch a Disney film, you know?

Adam Met 53:08 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 53:08 A Pixar film or something. Um, or I'll go for a walk. And the problem is, is I don't know when it's gonna strike.

Adam Met 53:15 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 53:16 But it always strikes in one of those places-

Adam Met 53:17 Yeah

Simon Sinek 53:17 ... where I'm watching a documentary and all of a sudden I'm like, "Oh my God." That, that triggered something.

Adam Met 53:23 Oh.

Simon Sinek 53:23 Or a painting or a piece of music or... And, and this is why I think the arts and creativity and distraction and boredom are really important, not just studying, not just thinking, not just work ethic, and getting off the phone because the mind turns off when you're on the phone. They did a study many years ago. It was related to television, when television, where people were afraid that television was rotting kids' minds.

Adam Met 53:43 Uh-huh.

Simon Sinek 53:43 And it's even worse now for social media.

Adam Met 53:45 Sure.

Simon Sinek 53:45 And they did a study where a kid sitting in a room doing nothing has a faster metabolism rate than a child watching television.

Adam Met 53:53 Wow. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 53:54 Right? Because your brain eats calories.

Adam Met 53:56 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 53:56 And being bored and your mind wandering-

Adam Met 53:59 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 53:59 ... and looking around the room and just, like, wondering about people... And I was on a, I was, I just got off a plane this morning, and, like, we've pulled in. We're just waiting. We're... Like, half of us are standing up in the aisle, half of us are sitting down because we can't stand up on the aisle, and we're just waiting to get off the plane, and I just decided to look around. And everybody was on their phone, but they weren't just checking their emails that were like ping, ping, ping. Like, I was looking, and, like, people were just flipping through Instagram.

Adam Met 54:23 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 54:23 Like, like, you're about to... Like, you have 30 seconds to, like-

Adam Met 54:26 Yeah

Simon Sinek 54:27 ... just do nothing.

Adam Met 54:28 To be.

Simon Sinek 54:29 And just to be. And the reason I hi, I, I have ideas-

Adam Met 54:32 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 54:33 ... is because sometimes I leave my phone at home.

Adam Met 54:35 Mm.

Simon Sinek 54:35 And sometimes I just turn it off, or sometimes I put it in a pocket and yeah, I'm bored.

Adam Met 54:40 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 54:40 And I'm, like, sitting there going... And if I had my phone, I'd be on it.

Adam Met 54:45 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 54:45 100%.

Adam Met 54:45 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 54:47 And that's where my ideas come from, is the acceptance of not thinking or the choice not to think.

Adam Met 54:56 I'm so glad we're friends 'cause I have 200 things to say. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 54:59 You have six, five minutes. You have a hard out.

Adam Met 55:01 Oh, geez. Okay.

Simon Sinek 55:02 'Cause you have to go teach.

Adam Met 55:03 Yeah, I do have to go teach.

Simon Sinek 55:04 So I can't prevent you from being late for your class.

Adam Met 55:07 Uh, yeah, that's true. I think I am only able to have the kinds of ideas around policymaking and climate and all of these other-

Simon Sinek 55:15 And jigsaw puzzles-

Adam Met 55:16 And yeah

Simon Sinek 55:17 ... to get people to, you know, put together playlists.

Adam Met 55:19 Because creativity, especially around music, was a thing that was in my childhood, that was instilled in me from a young age. And it was not just the making music of itse- itself, but it was theater. It was, you know, putting on little plays for my parents, doing all of these different things that were creative expression. And now when I'm playing piano at 3:00 in the morning, that's when I have my best ideas. And the thing I loved that you said-... was that you can never research and study your way into an idea.

Simon Sinek 55:50 No.

Adam Met 55:50 Ever.

Simon Sinek 55:51 Ever.

Adam Met 55:51 And that is so right.

Simon Sinek 55:52 No, no brainstorming session will give you the ideas.

Adam Met 55:54 Never.

Simon Sinek 55:55 Never.

Adam Met 55:55 Never. And all of these ideas about renewables on oil and gas land, all this AI work that we're doing, all of these different things that we're doing around big policy changes that are actually having some impact right now are some random thing that I-

Simon Sinek 56:08 Yeah

Adam Met 56:08 ... thought of while I was literally walking through a museum, or playing piano, or on a walk, or anything that was not focused on that idea. Then I had the idea itself, and then that's when I do all of the research and the deep learning-

Simon Sinek 56:23 Exactly. It comes later

Adam Met 56:24 ... and the work to... It, uh, it all comes later.

Simon Sinek 56:25 It comes... That's what people don't understand. For me, too, my research comes second.

Adam Met 56:28 Yeah, 100%.

Simon Sinek 56:29 You and I have to do another episode only on creativity.

Adam Met 56:32 Great.

Simon Sinek 56:32 Because I think creativity is this elusive thing that some people think they have it and some people don't, and I think everybody's creative.

Adam Met 56:38 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 56:38 I also think everybody's an artist. You just don't know your medium.

Adam Met 56:40 Oh, completely agree.

Simon Sinek 56:41 You know, I can't draw, but I can take photographs, right?

Adam Met 56:44 Complet- I talk about this with my friends all the time, that, uh, I have a friend [laughs] who's, who's a consultant right now, and he's leaving his job in a few weeks to take a full year off because he feels so creative and he feels like he's not allowed to, uh, to express it. And he's literally taking a full year to try every different creative pursuit he possibly can to try and find the thing that he wants to do.

Simon Sinek 57:05 Extreme.

Adam Met 57:06 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 57:07 Uh, you can just do it on nights and weekends. But the-

Adam Met 57:09 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 57:09 ... but, uh, [laughs]

Adam Met 57:09 I'll tell him that. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 57:10 You know? It's like you don't have to throw the baby out with the bath waters. I had a private tour of the Met the other day, uh, by this wonderful... She's actually a comedian. Uh, Liza Banks Compagna is her name.

Adam Met 57:20 Okay.

Simon Sinek 57:20 And just on a whim, I decided... You know, I saw her, literally, I saw her on Instagram. To him, like, "I want a private tour of the, of the Met." Never done anything like that before.

Adam Met 57:28 Did you DM her and it just happened?

Simon Sinek 57:30 Yeah, yeah.

Adam Met 57:30 Oh my God. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 57:30 Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what happened. Me and my friend, she took us on a private tour of the Met.

Adam Met 57:34 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 57:34 And you have to understand, I'm, I lived in New York my entire adult life. Like, when I had an hour to kill, I'd go to the Met. When I was running early for something, I'd go to the Met.

Adam Met 57:41 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 57:41 Like, I've gone to the Met a million times. I know my way around the Met. I know... I go to the places I like. I know what's there.

Adam Met 57:47 It's my favorite statue in the world is at the Met.

Simon Sinek 57:48 Uh, I mean, third-best armor collection in the world, next to the Tower of London and the Wallace Collection, right?

Adam Met 57:54 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 57:54 And she asked me for some framing.

Adam Met 57:55 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 57:56 But I, it was... I went on her tour.

Adam Met 57:58 Sure.

Simon Sinek 57:58 And she showed me stuff that I was like, "Eh, okay," and she told me the history of it.

Adam Met 58:04 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 58:04 And she told me the story behind it.

Adam Met 58:05 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 58:06 And I still didn't like the piece, but I had an appreciation for the piece that I didn't have before.

Adam Met 58:09 Of course.

Simon Sinek 58:09 And then there are other pieces that I'm like, I don't like the subject matter, so I just walk past it.

Adam Met 58:13 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 58:14 And again, she told me the history. And then, then one, she took me to this one piece. It was this, um, it was a Monet that's... Like, I like some Monets.

Adam Met 58:21 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 58:21 I don't like all Monets. And it was, eh, it's a boring Monet, you know?

Adam Met 58:25 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 58:25 Just, just gray. She said, "Come here." And I'm like, "Uh, okay." And she goes, "Close your eyes. Close your eyes for 10 seconds." I went, "Okay." Closed my eyes for 10 seconds, and she says, "Now open them." And I opened my eyes, and the painting's moving, and she just came up with this herself. And I got to see the Met, a place I know well, with many pieces of art that I walk right past 'cause the, quote-unquote, "subject doesn't interest me"-

Adam Met 58:50 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 58:51 ... or I don't like the style. But because I let somebody else tell me how they perceive art, and she's a, she's a, she studied history-

Adam Met 58:59 Mm

Simon Sinek 58:59 ... so she know- she loves the history of things.

Adam Met 59:01 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 59:01 Where I don't remember the history of anything.

Adam Met 59:03 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 59:03 And, and, and she came at it with, with this completely different way of seeing the world, and I walked away with new love, new appreciation for a piece I didn't... And, and I was having ideas like crazy because they weren't through my lens.

Adam Met 59:17 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 59:18 And so not only go to museums, not only go to, ugh, Broadway shows, you know? But go with somebody who wants to take you.

Adam Met 59:26 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 59:27 Let somebody say, like, "I want you to take me to something, and I wanna take you to something, and I want to sh-" I have so m- I have more excitement sharing music or a movie or something I'm excited about with somebody who's never seen it. Like, the joy I get with friends who are, like, really into music, I'm like, "Let me play you 1,000 songs." I, uh, one of my, like, I like, "Ah," like I've done it, like, is when a f- when I'm playing music with a friend and they Shazam it. I'm like, "Yes."

Adam Met 59:52 Mm.

Simon Sinek 59:52 Like, like I have one that they wanna keep this song that I introduced to them that they'd never heard before.

Adam Met 59:56 So you did this with me less than 24 hours after we met.

Simon Sinek 1:00:00 What?

Adam Met 1:00:00 You took me to a dance rehearsal.

Simon Sinek 1:00:03 I did take you to a dance rehearsal.

Adam Met 1:00:03 Because you wanted to share with me an piece of art-

Simon Sinek 1:00:07 It's weird

Adam Met 1:00:07 ... and a form of art that you loved, and we-

Simon Sinek 1:00:09 I took you to Rambert Dance in London.

Adam Met 1:00:11 Yes. And we can leave this on a cliffhanger if we want, but that kind of really evoked my past life as a dancer, which I never talk about, but it is such a creative pursuit of mine that was happening at the same time as music. And so there's other, other things in this world that we have not talked about that will feed into our creativity conversation when it happens.

Simon Sinek 1:00:33 Adam, I could talk to you forever and ever and ever.

Adam Met 1:00:35 Yes.

Simon Sinek 1:00:35 And, uh, I, this time has whizzed by-

Adam Met 1:00:38 I know. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 1:00:38 ... and I wish I didn't have to end. Uh, y- d- you, you can just cancel class.

Adam Met 1:00:41 Okay.

Simon Sinek 1:00:42 Let's just-

Adam Met 1:00:42 Done. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 1:00:43 Let's just stay here for another three hours. Please come back?

Adam Met 1:00:45 Please. I would love that.

Simon Sinek 1:00:46 Oh, you're the best.

Adam Met 1:00:47 No, you're the best.

Simon Sinek 1:00:48 I didn't get to, like, half the things I needed to get to, but whatever.

Adam Met 1:00:51 We'll do it sometime.

Simon Sinek 1:00:52 So good.

Adam Met 1:00:53 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 1:00:53 So good. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbinus, Phoebe Bradford, and Devon Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts, and if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsinek.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself, take care of each other.