Episode 886 Scott Adams： Swaddle up to Your Screen. It's Time for Positive Thoughts Before Bed.
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the President's decision to move the military against the Fentanyl trade from Venezuela, the drug trade in China, and the possibility of a serious reckoning with the Chinese government. We also talk about the upcoming election, and we answer some listener questions.
Transcript
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum hey everybody come on in
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it's time for positive thoughts while swaddling in a soft blanket trying to feel good about things
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i have not watched the tiger king but i'm feeling like i just sort of have to
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everybody's talking about it maybe i'll have to wade into that um so yesterday i tweeted and i quote
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it's too quiet today something big is coming now i don't know if this was it but today the
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president announced that he's moving the military against the drug trade from venezuela this is soon
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after he said that i think they put a price on madura venezuela and it looks like they're trying
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pretty hard to get him out of there now this is sort of a twofer because number one it could
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maybe slow down some drugs and deny some drug money to the madura regime
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um because their oil revenues down but the interesting thing is so here's the good news
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here's the good news uh venezuela and china were kind of big uh trading partners until all the all the
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stuff went down i guess so to the extent that china could be pushed out of this part of the world
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by by getting rid of their uh toehold uh in venezuela that could be kind of good in the long run
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could be kind of good so i've got a feeling something is going to happen militarily that might
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be bigger than just going moving against the uh the drug trade i've got a feeling that maybe this
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is all about putting pressure on maduro and getting some military assets a little bit too close if you
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know what i mean because i think we're negotiating with them it's always easier to negotiate if you
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have your entire military within shooting distance we're just in the neighborhood it's about the drugs
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you know you don't have anything to do with the drugs do we're just after the drugs yeah we do have
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a lot of warships here but it's just about the drugs
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so it seems that it's now considered a fact you always have to be careful about these things but
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i think the news on both sides is now correct me if i'm wrong considering it a fact that china lied
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about their death toll which misled our experts about how severe it was which caused them not to
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raise the alarm as loudly as they might have if they had accurate information and it looks like
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that's maybe the explanation for why we got a late start now you can always argue we should have had
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more ventilators and stuff like that and that's a conversation worth having but now that we know
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that china absolutely screwed the world on this by lying about how bad it was and they haven't even
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stopped the fentanyl trade how long has it been how long ago was it that they promised oh yeah we'll
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take care of that fentanyl stuff so you know it took me a long time to come around to the the idea that
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china's government was intentionally doing things to kill americans
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but i don't know what they're thinking but the effect of it is a lot of dead americans
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so i'm pretty sure that at the end of this there's going to be a serious reckoning
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i think the president's smart and you know downplaying it at the moment because he wants to sell some food
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sell some foreign products to china so you know president's in a tough place but i think in the
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long run china's got a lot to answer for now i promise you i would answer some questions and i will
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david angel asks do you think joe do you think joe biden will get to the finish line
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in october or november and the answer is um i don't think so but you know you can only put the
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odds on these things so anybody says yes or no is is just kidding you but if i had to put the odds on
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it of joe biden actually being a candidate and being the candidate and still being in the race
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on election day 25 maybe that's a healthy odds maybe 40 i'll give it 40 that he's still in the race
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for any variety of reasons that could change all right um everything we knew as normal is over well
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that's not true uh government i don't know about that i think that uh there will be some things that
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change a lot and other things that improve a lot some things get worse it'll be different but i you
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know 85 percent of life is going to be exactly the same um rebecca says tell us some more stories
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stories during our nighttime swaddling story time well i'm glad you asked rebecca because i'm full of
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stories what kind of stories would you like the funny kind the embarrassing kind all right here's a
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story um that a friend told me um now this requires you to know what a oh i probably told this i think
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i've told this before i don't want to give you the same stories so let me let me tell you one of my
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first jobs i was working on my uncle's farm so my uncle had a dairy farm and it was sort of walking
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distance if if he didn't mind a long walk and so my my siblings and i would would work there mostly my
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brother and i and we would do every like bad farm job you could do i mean literally shoveling manure and
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you know getting the hay out of the fields and piling hay bales and milking cows and cleaning the
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you know cleaning everything basically so i had all these terrible terrible jobs but one of the jobs
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was that you had to get the cows that's what we called it it was just called getting the cows
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and what it meant was that during the day the cows would be left at let out of the barn
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and there was uh i don't know several hundred acres that my uncle had and it was you know forest and
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open parts and swamp and stuff it was pretty big and so the 40 or so cows i think probably around 40
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would go out into the uh into the forest and they would mostly hang around within sight of each other
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because they're cows cows sort of have a herd instinct so they they tend to be not too far away
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from each other and so the process of going and getting them and gathering them up and herding
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them back to the barn and across the street was something that everybody who worked in the farm had to
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learn it was it would be your turn eventually to to go get the cows now this was easier than you think
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because there would be a trained cow dog and the dog would actually do all the work so the dog would
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learn from other dogs that's how you teach a cow dog the way you teach a cow dog how to herd dogs and
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get them back at night and stuff is you just introduce a puppy you i think some breeds are better than
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others but you just introduce a puppy to a situation where there's already a trained dog and the older
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dog just teaches it to herd cows it's kind of an amazing process so anyway we had a trained
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trained cow dog and it was my turn for 25 cents which was the payment for this task i had to take
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my trained dog and a stick because you had to hit the cows often to get their attention it's not as bad
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as it sounds usually the sticks were sort of switches you know little bendy bendy ones and cows
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are literally made of leather so you you can hit them pretty hard before they'll even look at you
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like you you can hit a cow like really hard and the cow will just be eating grass it'll be like
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i i feel like there's a fly on my back or something so so i'd have my little stick and my cow dog and my 25
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cents and i went out to get the cows and you have to know that it was like before a little bit before
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uh dark so i go out there and i i'm trying to sort of get around behind the you know the cows and the
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dog goes the other way and pretty soon i've lost the dog so now not only have i not found the cows
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you know i haven't gotten any cows back and they seem to be like dispersing like they've lost all of
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their cow instincts suddenly instead of herding up and just sort of automatically going back to the
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barn as they've done every day of their life they decided when they saw me to just sort of
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separate and they just started dissolving into different parts of the the swamp and the forest
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and so i'm like oh my god yeah i've lost the dog i'm losing all the cows so i'm like going deeper and
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deeper into the swamp to try to sort of get around them because i think well if i get a few cows moving
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usually that's how it works you get a few cows moving in the right direction and then the other
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cows their herd instinct kicks in they're like cows go in that direction i guess i'm going that way
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they'll just start going but i couldn't get behind the cows and then it's getting dark and now i'm lost
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and i don't even know which direction is the cows so now i'm in the middle of the swamp
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i have no cow dog i've lost all 40 cows and it's dark and i don't know which direction is home
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this is before cell phones as you can imagine and so i'm like well i guess i'm going to be sleeping
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in the swamp or i'm dead or something so eventually i hear scott scott and it was my uncle who ran the
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farm and maybe my brother who was somebody else who was with him and they called out to me and i
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called back and they they found me with their flashlights and took me back to safety but they're
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taking me back and i'm feeling really bad because i didn't get any cows and i lost the dog in the
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forest so i'm like ah i you we can't go back yet i don't know what to do i've lost all the cows and
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i've even lost the dog too and my uncle said oh no the the dog took the cows back to the barn an hour
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ago i got completely lost in the swamp and the dog just took care of it so the dog just went and
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rounded up all the cows took him back to the barn because that's what the dog does that was the dog's
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job the dog wasn't it wasn't the dog's job to follow me around the dog had a had a job description
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so uh what here's some more stories oh i got lots of stories you know i do
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one day my my grandfather who was my uncle's father in that same farm was working in the field
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and he thought he heard something he turns around this is an upstate new york on a dairy farm he turns
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around and there's an elephant standing behind him it was like an actual live elephant standing behind
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him in his own field on the farm now as it turns out that a few a few farms down the road was a
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a company that would train elephants so they trained elephants for various circuses and their their main
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elephant had some name i forget some circusy name uh got away it just like went for a stroll
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so so my my grandfather was just like you know working on the farm and turns around there's an
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elephant so it wasn't wasn't much of a punchline to that story but uh but you know your standards are
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low let's let's face it if you're listening to this you have low standards oh shrooms you you so you
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want to hear my taking mushrooms story i know you do all right so i've told this story before
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only once have i ever done a hallucinogen and it was mushrooms it was i when i just got out of
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college and came to san francisco and there was somebody i knew from college i won't give you too
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many details but she and i um decided to try some mushrooms now normally of course i wouldn't do that
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because i wouldn't know you know how much do you take and do you go crazy and you know it was dangerous
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but she had done some from the same bag the day before with some other people so she knew how much
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to do and she knew that this you know this particular bag was really what it was supposed to be
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so some of the main questions of risk were answered just because it was a known quantity so she talked
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me into it and so um and so i gagged a few down and my god they taste terrible i mean they really
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taste terrible and we decided that we would just take a the streetcar the j church streetcar
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to the beach and we would just watch the sunset and that was our plan
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and pretty much my whole life changed that night and the reason that my life changed is it was my first
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distinct um experience of a different reality that still worked and it's the the fact that it still
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worked is the part that changes you forever because you would you would see your reality like you'd never
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seen it before like it was brand new so every part of it from your your hand to the cars to the trees
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were just brand new like you were visiting another planet and seeing things for the first time
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but you still knew what they were and how to use them so you could navigate your world just perfectly
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now you know you wouldn't want to drive a car or something like that but in terms of you're just
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you know existing and going and having a snack and walking around the block and stuff
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you could do all that stuff but you were in a completely different world and and what you get from that that
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you keep forever is the idea that your reality there may be some base objective reality but it's not
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it's not available to you if there is an objective real base reality the odds that you can perceive it
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are low because we know that people could have completely different movies in their minds and
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they all work you can believe that trump is a monster somebody else can believe he's the savior
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and you can both buy toilet paper on a good day but maybe not lately so um we went to the beach and
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every time somebody got on the streetcar i remember thinking it was the most entertaining thing i'd ever
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seen because people's faces are so different you know from from one to the other that everyone was
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just like a marvel and like i i just couldn't stop looking at them just the way their faces look went to
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the beach and it may have been the best sunset of all time or it could have been an average sunset and
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i was really in the mood for it but the the other thing i learned is just how good you can feel
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because i had never felt that good before or even close the the amount of good you feel
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um under those conditions is so good it doesn't map to any other experience it's a it's a sort of a
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multiple of the best thing you've ever felt um but i've had only a passing interest in doing it again
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because it does feel like the sort of thing that once you've done it you don't need to do it if you
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know what i mean so what once you've seen behind the door you're behind the curtain let's say you
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know once once you've looked behind the curtain you don't need to look a second time because you've
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already seen what's back there and what's back there is that reality is far more subjective
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than our normal experience would suggest so there's that let's see what other questions you got
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uh thoughts about what the general said today well he the general was very persuasive if you saw the
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uh press conference um i thought he was good at being the general you know who knows what's going
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to happen there it's so early that nobody knows really what's going to happen uh did you ever
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finish watching a star is born i did not and and for those of you know the the newish version of a
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star is born with lady gaga and bradley cooper the reason i didn't watch it the rest of it is that the
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first part of the movie was so perfect i didn't want to ruin it the movie was that good that i couldn't
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watch the second part because the first part was just too perfect i mean i liked it that much i've
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never had that experience before where i didn't want to ruin the movie by watching the rest of it
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because let's face it movies movies do sort of peter out after a while you know they're a little
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i wanted you to see this it must be an old comic from oh yeah from way back interesting all right
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how would you make writing a book into a system it seems very goal oriented well that's a very good
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question roly-poly and here's your answer if you try to do something as big as write a book
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take it from someone who has written i don't know 11 books or whatever it is i've lost count
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every time it seems impossible every time i'm ready to write a book that you know on day one you
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think how many words on a page how many pages do i have to write how many times am i going to rewrite
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this how many chapters am i going to throw away completely and just start over and if you if you
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play with the enormity of it you just can't start it will just stun you into submission but there's this
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weird thing that happens when you start just working on it in little chunks you know if you can get
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going that they suddenly start adding up because you know time flies which is bad when you're trying
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to enjoy yourself but it's good when you're doing something unpleasant like trying to finish writing
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a book so you can get to the end of that nine months or however long it's going to take you to do it
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it's just the way of the world now everything goes fast so what i would say is the main thing is
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to take the smallest smallest increment and then just do that and for me the smallest increment in
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the way i always start is i just open a blank page and i start writing titles you know this title this
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title this title this title you know a bunch of titles that'll delete the ones i don't like you know
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and then i'll get down to what i'll call a working title and the working title is what i need to make
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sure that everything i write can be tied back to that in some logical way so that i'm not restraining
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to make the title make sense but i almost always change the title so it's um i don't know how many
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times well i don't know if it's always but often i'll have a working title for quite a long time
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and then i'll change it at some point then my maybe my publisher and editor looked at it and
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they say let's run this by the salespeople then the salespeople say you know this word would be
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better than that word so it tends to be an iterative process so start start with the title and then start
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writing your first sentence and your first sentence should be the sentence you rewrite the most
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so there'll be lots of sentences in your book that you write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite
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that's normal but the first sentence if you're doing if you're doing it right will be the one you
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rewrite the most if you write a good first sentence and you just look at it and that's the one that you
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you end up with when you're done with the book you probably have a bad book i realize that's harsh
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but that first sentence has to just do a lot of work because it's the first impression the first
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sentence tells people how they're going to feel for the rest of the book and you can kind of tell
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you know if you spend any time writing reading books pick up any book read the first sentence
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you kind of know how it's going to go don't you i mean it's that important you can be a little sloppy
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later on when people have a sense of what the book is and they've decided if they liked it but that
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first sentence you got to rewrite that a lot so roly-poly i would say try for a working title
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open up a document try writing a few opening sentences and think in terms of rewriting the
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opening sentence 20 to 50 times and and you might actually have one you like write several chapters
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and then still go back and change it 12 15 more times that's very typical for me anyway now everybody
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has a different process so that that has more to do with my specific process now you know i've told
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you that i studied persuasion for decades as as part of honing my writing talent and that's a perfect
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example because what a uh a writer would maybe not obsess about as much is that first sentence
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but i would obsess about it because i know the importance of the first impression it's something
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you learn with persuasion that you might not learn with writing so much
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um hypnotize you okay um i'm going to hypnotize you but i'm not going to put you in a trance
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and it goes like this i know you're wondering if i can but part of the reason that you watch these
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periscopes is you think that i can do some things that other people can't do and as you're listening
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to me you're wondering can he actually do that can he put a suggestion in my mind that will actually
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change my programming and the answer is yes i'm actually trained to do that i've been doing it
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for decades it's easy and all it really requires is that you be open to it so if i were to suggest
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something that you didn't want it wouldn't work at all because you wouldn't be open to it and that's
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the most important requirement but suppose i suggested that you had an unusually good night's
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sleep tonight how many of you would object to the idea no strings attached to simply having
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a really good sleep tonight how would you feel if as you're drifting off tonight you remember that i told
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you that you would and it starts making you even sleepier because you're thinking is it working
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i can't tell if i'm sleepy because i was sleepy or i'm sleepy because the cartoonist who was also a
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hypnotist told me that i was and then you're going to be starting to think am i doing this on my own
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or is it because he suggested it and then you're going to remember my voice exactly the way you hear
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it right now and you're going to hear my voice and you're going to hear my confidence and you're going
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to hear me tell you the suggestions when you're open to them always work and you are open to them
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because you like to have a good night's sleep you always feel better when you do and you associate
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that good night's sleep now with my voice and the suggestion that you're going to have an amazing
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amazing night of sleep one of your best and if you don't have the best sleep tonight you might notice
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that it happens tomorrow could be the night after and you might notice that it's just the average that
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starts to improve so some of you will start right away with an incredible night's sleep the really
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refreshing kind with either no dreams that you remember or the good kind and you're going to feel
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refreshed and relaxed when you wake up and you're going to wake up and you're going to think to
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yourself man i feel good today better than normal and then you're going to think about the suggestion
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that i'm giving you and you're going to say damn it is that why and the more you think about the fact
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that i suggested it and the more you realize that it could be a coincidence but you would notice that
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you can sleep better in the future is that a coincidence and as you associate your ability
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to sleep better with your memory of my voice as you hear it right now you'll be able to replay my voice
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in your mind almost perfectly and in fact if you wanted to feel it right now in a way that you could
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remember i'm going to count to 20 and when i reach 20 only if you want to those of you who don't want
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to experience this can just observe but if you wanted to you could close your eyes right now and
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just listen and you can listen to me count to 20 and you would find that there's something about my
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voice something about my cadence the way i talk that makes you more relaxed as i count up from one
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to 20 and as i count you'll find yourself getting deeper and deeper and more relaxed
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and with each count you'll go deeper but if i were to reverse the count from 20 back toward one
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temporarily or permanently you would start to feel less sleepy more awake but if i were to reverse it
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again and count back to 20 it would be much more profound and you would go deeper more quickly
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and so now you can feel yourself relaxed make sure that your feet are flat in the ground or you're
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propped up so you can you can support yourself without using any muscles and listen to my voice as you go deeper
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one going deeper two going deeper three four five going deeper now more relaxed feel your arms
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heavy heavy your legs heavy all your muscles one at a time as you think about them around your body
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each of them relaxing think of a muscle and it relaxes think of your neck muscles and they relax seven
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doesn't matter if i skip a number nine getting deeper ten going deeper and more relaxed listen to my voice
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and play it back when you want to relax in the future eleven twelve going deeper
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and now i'm going back the other way you'll be a little bit more awake ten nine eight seven you feel
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oh it feels better to go this way doesn't it seven more relaxed much deeper this time each time you go
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toward 20 you get deeper than the last time nine going deeper ten eleven going deeper
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13 13 deeper now twice as deep 15 twice as deep again 16 17 18 now very deep very relaxed feeling very good
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20 now completely relaxed and going even further 21 and now very very relaxed
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22 and you'll be able to count yourself into this relaxed state just by listening to my voice
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in your head and playing it back and if you want to take yourself out of this state well you could just
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wake up anytime you wanted feeling refreshed or you could hear me counting you back
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as i will do now so from your totally relaxed state
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20 19 18 starting to get a little bit more awake now 16 15 starting to wake up
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12 9 8 starting to wake up 6 7 it's going to feel great when you when you come out of it 5
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4 almost completely awake now 3 2 shake your muscles 1 totally awake and feeling better than you thought
00:31:58.460
you could feel surprisingly better in such a short amount of time and now tonight
00:32:06.780
when you go to relax and you close your eyes and all the weight of the day is off of you
00:32:12.620
you you'll hear my voice and you'll count to 20 in my voice and you will drift off to sleep
00:32:22.940
and that is my little gift for you today and i will see you in the morning you know when 10 a.m.
00:32:31.820
eastern 7 a.m. pacific for the simultaneous sip good night