The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 259. The Elusive Son

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00:00:16.100 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

00:00:21.500 Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.

00:00:27.260 We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.

00:00:35.180 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.

00:00:42.960 He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.

00:00:50.360 If you're suffering, please know you are not alone.

00:00:53.520 There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.

00:00:56.200 Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.

00:01:02.480 Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.

00:01:09.120 Welcome to episode 259 of the JBP podcast.

00:01:13.620 I'm Mikayla Peterson.

00:01:15.020 This is a fun episode.

00:01:16.860 After years spent in hiding, shirking in darkness, he emerges.

00:01:20.940 The elusive Julian Peterson, my little brother.

00:01:23.460 I actually interviewed him and Dad to have a discussion about Julian's new writing app, Essay, which he's been developing and testing with Dad for years, and a more casual conversation with Julian about family and music and his aspirations.

00:01:37.300 Dad had really interesting things to say, as usual, about the connections between writing and trauma, neuroplasticity, and effective communication up and down a chain of command.

00:01:46.300 If you want to check out Essay and learn how to write more effectively, check out Essay.app or check the links in the description.

00:02:10.580 Julian and Dad, it's good to have you guys here.

00:02:13.400 Hey, we're pretty happy to be here in Nashville talking about this.

00:02:17.380 Yeah, pleasure.

00:02:18.640 Julian.

00:02:19.480 Hello.

00:02:19.860 The elusive Peterson finally cornered into a podcast.

00:02:24.040 I know, Ed.

00:02:25.640 It's been a while.

00:02:26.400 It takes a lot of work to corner him.

00:02:28.100 A lot of work.

00:02:28.820 I think, yeah.

00:02:29.400 I don't know if this was cornering, I think.

00:02:30.840 Yeah, the least cornerable Peterson.

00:02:32.900 Yeah.

00:02:33.420 Yeah.

00:02:34.040 And that might be saying something.

00:02:36.760 Who's the most cornerable Peterson?

00:02:41.900 Elliot.

00:02:42.260 Elliot.

00:02:42.580 Yeah.

00:02:43.400 For now.

00:02:47.200 For now.

00:02:47.660 For now.

00:02:47.840 For now.

00:02:48.120 For now.

00:02:48.620 Yeah.

00:02:49.540 Good one.

00:02:51.380 Definitely.

00:02:52.200 Yeah.

00:02:53.100 Okay.

00:02:53.500 So, today.

00:02:55.260 Yeah, it's not my dad.

00:02:56.860 It's not your dad.

00:02:57.740 No.

00:02:58.300 No.

00:02:59.160 Yeah.

00:03:00.180 Okay, Elliot.

00:03:00.620 It's not Scarlett.

00:03:01.600 No.

00:03:02.500 It's Elliot for now.

00:03:03.760 For now.

00:03:04.300 For now.

00:03:05.800 So, today we're going to talk about Essay, mainly.

00:03:09.160 And then I'm also going to throw in some questions because I think people are dying to know everything

00:03:14.640 about you.

00:03:15.880 Oh, good luck.

00:03:16.800 Well, here's the fuck.

00:03:18.000 Yeah.

00:03:19.080 Well, here's the interest.

00:03:20.320 You know.

00:03:22.040 Okay.

00:03:22.900 Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

00:03:23.960 But for now, we're here to talk about Essay.

00:03:28.480 So, let's start off with what is Essay?

00:03:33.820 A wee wee blush.

00:03:35.600 Yeah.

00:03:37.300 What is Essay?

00:03:39.540 Julian?

00:03:40.700 Essay is a writing platform that I've been working on for the last couple years that basically

00:03:47.820 turns dad's writing philosophy that he used to teach to his students and continues to

00:03:55.880 talk about into a web app that's usable for the average writer and makes it easier to follow

00:04:03.240 the philosophy and learn to write.

00:04:06.660 So, where did this come from?

00:04:08.200 You said dad's philosophy.

00:04:09.300 Where did Essay come from?

00:04:10.620 Yeah.

00:04:10.900 So, there was this document that dad produced for his university students a long time ago.

00:04:18.400 I don't know exactly when it was.

00:04:19.900 Fifteen years.

00:04:20.720 Yeah, 15 years ago.

00:04:22.040 And he would give this to first year and second year students to help them structure their essays

00:04:27.280 because most first and second year university students don't really know how to write very

00:04:31.860 well.

00:04:32.700 And they've never been taught by someone who knew how to write.

00:04:36.120 So, maybe they were taught grammar in an artificial manner.

00:04:39.180 But I looked at how I was grading essays and then formalized it.

00:04:45.060 And I realized I was grading word choice, phrase choice, phrase organization within sentences,

00:04:52.500 sentence organization within paragraphs, paragraph organization within chapters, and then the

00:04:58.400 impact of the whole.

00:05:00.300 I thought, well, that's also how I edit.

00:05:02.900 And so, I wanted to write a practical writing guide, not one that focused specifically on grammar.

00:05:09.180 And so, when Julian and I started talking about this, first we were going to just publish

00:05:13.900 the essay guide, which we did.

00:05:15.720 We made that available freely online.

00:05:17.620 But then we were thinking through the problem of how to teach people to write.

00:05:22.020 And the hard thing about that is that usually people write and then submit it for grading.

00:05:27.780 And that's extremely expensive and cost and time intensive.

00:05:31.420 So, yeah.

00:05:33.520 So, basically, we were attempting to turn this document into something that people could use

00:05:38.880 and they could improve their writing in a more structured manner.

00:05:42.320 But that it would be more natural than reading a document and trying to do it in that way and

00:05:49.780 taking bits out of the document and trying to integrate that philosophy into their writing.

00:05:54.020 And so, we did a number of iterations trying to turn it into, instead of kind of a step-by-step

00:05:59.860 guide, a more kind of contained application that would integrate the philosophy and the tools

00:06:07.100 that were written in the document into something that you could just use and it felt natural.

00:06:13.320 And as you were writing, you could kind of integrate these practical tools and it would

00:06:18.000 just come together and improve.

00:06:19.340 Yeah.

00:06:19.800 Instead of writing in a word processor and referring to this document, we just integrated the two

00:06:25.620 so that you can write and focus at different levels of analysis with each tool.

00:06:32.940 And so, there's a tool that is optimized for producing a first draft where you just read

00:06:40.140 what you need to read and take your notes, watching what you think and maybe thinking

00:06:44.500 out loud and trying to capture that loosely as rapidly as possible.

00:06:48.660 And then there are other tools that follow on from that.

00:06:52.200 Yeah.

00:06:52.500 Yeah.

00:06:52.700 So, basically, we split it out into the produce tool, the outline tool, the rewrite tool, and

00:07:00.340 reorder.

00:07:00.960 And basically, the structure that someone's supposed to follow when they're using this

00:07:06.420 app is they outline their essays, they decide what they're going to write about.

00:07:10.040 And it doesn't have to be an essay, it could be a document, it could be an email to somebody.

00:07:14.640 And so, you basically come up with your main idea and then you break it down into subtopics.

00:07:20.700 And then you go to the produce tool.

00:07:23.360 And that's where you're supposed to kind of fill in your ideas in a rough way, which is what

00:07:27.260 dad was talking about.

00:07:28.420 He's kind of right.

00:07:29.120 And you're not supposed to edit.

00:07:30.000 You're not supposed to do anything.

00:07:31.320 You're just supposed to get your ideas on paper, try to use the research that you've

00:07:35.760 done and produce whatever you're able to produce.

00:07:39.540 A loose first draft.

00:07:41.560 People often try to write a good word and a good phrase and a good sentence in a good

00:07:46.200 paragraph right during the first draft so that when they're done drafting it once, they're

00:07:51.000 finished.

00:07:51.380 And the problem with that is it's actually way more work because you can't do all of

00:07:56.320 that at once.

00:07:56.960 And trying to just makes it almost impossible for you to think what you want to do is, well,

00:08:02.720 first, you want to ask yourself a question that you really want to have the answer to.

00:08:06.960 So, you have to be motivated.

00:08:08.000 And that's an important first choice.

00:08:10.240 Even if you're writing a document that someone wants you to write, you have to find a handle

00:08:14.940 on it that you're compelled by.

00:08:16.920 And that should be statable in the form of a question.

00:08:19.460 What question are you essaying, which means attempting, to answer?

00:08:24.180 It should be one.

00:08:24.940 You have a reason to answer.

00:08:26.120 And then you break it down, as Julian said, by the outline.

00:08:30.180 Well, what topics are you, subtopics are you going to hit?

00:08:33.160 Outline topics are you going to hit while walking through this?

00:08:36.120 That's a preliminary plan, you know, because you're going to reorganize at the level of

00:08:40.860 the outline too.

00:08:42.220 And then maybe you go do your reading or your thinking.

00:08:45.540 And while you're doing that, note what you're thinking and write it down.

00:08:49.420 Say it out loud.

00:08:50.280 Capture it.

00:08:51.080 Don't edit.

00:08:52.300 Capture.

00:08:52.740 And so maybe you're aiming to produce one and a half or times or two times as much written

00:08:58.120 material as you'll need in the final analysis.

00:09:01.060 Now, people don't like doing that because they fall in love with what they write and it's

00:09:05.060 hard to do it, they think.

00:09:06.440 But it's way easier to just give yourself the freedom to jot down and note everything you're

00:09:11.760 thinking.

00:09:12.800 And then, well, then you go into the, well, the next tools.

00:09:16.040 Yeah.

00:09:16.660 Basically, the next tools are editing tools.

00:09:18.740 And so the idea that we made or that we tried to capture in this tool is to allow people

00:09:26.280 to produce variations of their writing and to quickly restructure it.

00:09:30.220 So like variations of sentences or paragraphs?

00:09:32.780 Yeah.

00:09:32.960 Variations of sentences first.

00:09:34.540 And so what you do if you were writing a relatively long piece in this is you'd go through it sentence

00:09:40.100 by sentence.

00:09:40.660 And we have a tool that shows you your full documents on one side and then a broken down

00:09:46.120 version of it sentence by sentence on the other side.

00:09:48.840 And basically, you can go one by one through your sentences, produce as many variants as

00:09:54.300 you want, and then see them in context to your document.

00:09:58.100 Okay.

00:09:58.300 So that's a Darwinian approach to creative thinking.

00:10:01.260 So because in the Darwinian evolutionary process, creatures generate variants, that's mutation

00:10:07.300 and sexual recombination.

00:10:10.020 And then the environment selects from among those variants for the most fit, the particulars

00:10:17.240 that are most fit at that time.

00:10:19.400 So this tool, it'll show you your sentence.

00:10:22.900 Correct me if I get this technically wrong.

00:10:24.940 It'll show your sentence.

00:10:25.940 You click on it.

00:10:26.540 It'll duplicate the sentence.

00:10:28.360 Then you can write a variant of that sentence.

00:10:30.100 You can do that indefinitely.

00:10:31.100 And then what you want to do, write shorter sentences, longer sentences.

00:10:35.760 Shorter is usually better.

00:10:37.320 People can improve their essays radically, usually by cutting the sentence length by 15%.

00:10:41.980 That's a good first pass attempt.

00:10:44.000 But you look at all these variants, choose the variant that's better and substitute it.

00:10:48.680 You do that with every sentence.

00:10:50.540 That's fine-grained editing, not as fine-grained as word choice, but you'd be doing some of

00:10:55.140 that at that point as well.

00:10:56.560 How much can you put into this?

00:10:58.680 Like, could you edit a book?

00:10:59.780 Theoretically, you could edit a book.

00:11:02.940 It would help in some ways because we have the outline tool, which allows you to quickly

00:11:07.680 jump through your document.

00:11:10.580 We've had some...

00:11:11.420 So what do you mean?

00:11:12.740 Well, in the outline tool, you have written your subtopics.

00:11:17.120 And then what it shows under each subtopic is a truncated version of each paragraph that

00:11:21.580 you have within the subtopic.

00:11:23.320 And so it'll show like, I don't know, a five or six sentence or not even, probably a four

00:11:28.980 four sentence version.

00:11:30.580 So you can quickly toggle through your essay.

00:11:33.700 And so it'll...

00:11:34.200 Get an overview of it.

00:11:35.040 Get an overview and you can click to scroll.

00:11:37.080 And it really allows you to navigate a relatively long document pretty quickly.

00:11:41.100 Yeah.

00:11:41.300 Likely what would happen is if you're writing a book, you'd use it for each chapter and

00:11:45.940 then rewrite the chapters and then maybe use a standard word processor to move the chapters

00:11:50.440 around.

00:11:51.000 Depends on how long the book is.

00:11:52.320 But for lengthy essays, even multi-part essays with multiple subtopics, it'll work just fine.

00:11:58.440 Yeah.

00:11:58.860 So.

00:11:59.660 Wow.

00:12:00.140 Yeah.

00:12:00.940 Yeah.

00:12:01.460 Yeah.

00:12:01.700 Well, we can return to the original, let's call it principles of writing.

00:12:06.800 You remember when you're thinking about a document, you think you build it word up, but that's...

00:12:13.860 Or do you build it letter up?

00:12:16.620 I hope not.

00:12:17.420 Right.

00:12:17.620 Yeah.

00:12:17.920 Right.

00:12:18.240 Exactly.

00:12:18.820 Well, by the time you write, you've already automated the letter typing process, right?

00:12:23.300 So, but then you have to think about the word and the phrase and the sentence and the paragraph

00:12:28.580 and the paragraph sequence and the subtopic sequence.

00:12:32.260 And the tool is designed to help you learn to think like that at multiple levels of analysis.

00:12:37.480 Well, and so you don't have to think like that.

00:12:39.540 That's kind of the point of it, right?

00:12:40.740 Is to break the thinking out into software so that you naturally think that way when you're

00:12:45.760 writing.

00:12:46.160 Yeah.

00:12:46.700 And so that's...

00:12:47.360 And that's how you thought writing.

00:12:49.020 That's how you write, right?

00:12:49.920 Well, it was an iterative process because while I was grading and then trying to teach

00:12:57.320 people to write, I was thinking about, well, what am I doing when I'm grading?

00:13:01.500 Now, I'd already written a lot by then, but it wasn't until I wrote this document that

00:13:06.420 I really started to understand this idea of multi-level, simultaneous multi-level processing,

00:13:12.300 which has been very useful for other things I've been thinking through.

00:13:15.520 It's like, well, where's the meaning when you read?

00:13:18.080 Well, is it in the words, the phrases, the sentences, the sentence organization, the

00:13:23.240 paragraphs, et cetera?

00:13:24.600 I don't walk through that again.

00:13:26.120 But the answer is it's all of those simultaneously.

00:13:29.000 And it's even broader than that because you might think, well, the essay as a whole, that's

00:13:32.720 a level of analysis.

00:13:33.980 But there's the broadest possible level of analysis.

00:13:36.480 But it's not.

00:13:37.560 The question you're asking is broader level because the essay for it to be a real product,

00:13:44.000 a product of your imagination and thought that will be useful to you practically and

00:13:48.200 also psychologically, let's say, it has to address something that you regard as important

00:13:53.700 or the whole bloody exercise is a lie.

00:13:56.020 And I would recommend if you're bored by what you're writing, then you haven't, you're not

00:14:00.760 trying to write it the right.

00:14:02.280 You're not trying to answer the right question or you haven't formulated the right question.

00:14:05.840 What do you do though?

00:14:07.200 This is just a side note.

00:14:08.520 What do you do if you're in high school or university and you're assigned a topic?

00:14:12.440 You find an angle that makes you interested in it.

00:14:16.320 You have to wrestle with yourself to begin with.

00:14:18.940 Maybe you write something critical.

00:14:21.020 Well, I think it's a rare teacher that if you suggest something that's similar that you

00:14:26.060 are interested in, they'll say no.

00:14:28.100 You know, I think.

00:14:28.420 Okay, so that's a try that maybe.

00:14:29.860 I think generally try to write something, you know, approach your teacher and say, you

00:14:33.080 know, I'm actually interested in exploring this topic.

00:14:35.700 If the teacher says you're not allowed to explore a topic you're interested in, then they're

00:14:40.420 probably not a very good writing teacher and maybe you don't care about how they feel about

00:14:45.700 your writing.

00:14:46.460 Well, yeah, and that's an important point.

00:14:48.020 Oh, that's a good point.

00:14:48.800 It is a good point, man.

00:14:50.200 It's like, don't let people mess with your words.

00:14:53.440 And you don't, you don't lose the, you know, if you do enjoy writing, you don't want to

00:14:57.380 have that taken away from you by someone who's going to put you in a box that you don't

00:15:00.180 want to be in.

00:15:00.960 Yeah.

00:15:01.160 And so if you really hate the topic, write something that's subtly satirical or over the top.

00:15:06.780 Like you have, look, man, writing is hard work.

00:15:10.100 It's hard, just like thinking, but it's not as hard as doing neither because then you're

00:15:14.480 a mess.

00:15:15.100 You're anxious and you're, and you're without purpose and goal and you're inarticulate and

00:15:20.020 you're weak.

00:15:20.740 You lose.

00:15:22.100 And I don't mean in this, you win and someone else loses manner.

00:15:25.280 I mean, in an everyone loses manner.

00:15:27.480 And so when you sit down to write or think you have to be motivated.

00:15:31.100 And if you're not, you're not doing it right.

00:15:33.660 And that's writing teachers should stress that above all else.

00:15:37.300 You know, they should help their students identify something that they can hardly wait

00:15:41.900 to write about because it's so important to them.

00:15:44.840 Well, then you've got the motivation and each word starts to matter because your life depends

00:15:50.260 on it.

00:15:50.920 And if you think your life doesn't depend on your words, you just don't know anything

00:15:54.040 about words.

00:15:54.760 And so it is definitely the case.

00:15:57.000 Let's take a business example.

00:15:58.280 If you're constantly being forced, forced to write things that grate against your conscience

00:16:04.620 or that you find yourself bored to death by, then it's either time to stand up and say

00:16:09.720 something.

00:16:10.300 And then you should use the writing program to figure out what you're going to say, or

00:16:14.440 it's time to get a new job.

00:16:15.880 In which case you should use the writing program to put your CV and your resume together and

00:16:20.740 maybe write yourself something like a statement of purpose.

00:16:23.720 Like this is no game.

00:16:24.820 If writing is thinking, which it is, and thinking sets your life in order or not, then you don't

00:16:30.820 let people mess with your words.

00:16:32.260 You want to get them on order like soldiers.

00:16:34.320 And that's partly what this writing program is designed to help people do.

00:16:38.380 Now, it's not so much we're trying to teach people to write.

00:16:40.980 We're trying to facilitate their thought and their clarity of communication.

00:16:46.180 And writing, this is another thing that isn't taught well to students.

00:16:50.120 Well, why should I learn to write?

00:16:52.100 Well, how else are you going to communicate with people as you ascend up a hierarchy of

00:16:57.220 competence?

00:16:58.320 Like some of the toughest guys I know, Jocko Willink, for example, lays tremendous stress

00:17:04.080 on literacy.

00:17:04.840 Even as a soldier, he had to communicate orders, let's say, to the people that he was in command

00:17:12.420 of.

00:17:12.640 But he also had to communicate up the chain of command.

00:17:14.820 And if your words are well-structured and inspired and properly motivated and aimed like

00:17:22.560 an arrow, you're unstoppable.

00:17:25.140 And I don't understand.

00:17:26.400 Well, this is so many people are taught to write by people who don't know how to write

00:17:29.900 or why to write or how to think.

00:17:31.660 And that's partly what we're trying to address here.

00:17:34.200 So we hope people will find it extremely useful.

00:17:36.760 It's also like knowing how to write a good email too, even if you're not interested in

00:17:41.440 essays specifically, knowing how to write a good email can change how a company is run.

00:17:46.780 Absolutely.

00:17:47.580 Well, it can change people's lives, right?

00:17:48.920 You need to write an email to someone you want to get a job from or a landlord to try

00:17:55.400 to get them to not increase your rent.

00:17:57.420 Or a city councilman to try to get them to do something that needs doing in your neighborhood

00:18:01.900 or a politician to get them to change a law.

00:18:05.260 You're going to be making your case in front of people badly or well your entire life.

00:18:12.160 Yeah.

00:18:12.640 And so I don't know why we don't teach people that this arms them.

00:18:16.660 Well, we won't use that language, right?

00:18:18.240 Because we think everyone should be cooperative.

00:18:19.900 And yeah, it's a complete bloody mess.

00:18:24.260 But we did decide, though, we've been trying to crack the problem of scaling education.

00:18:30.120 And we have a bunch of ideas about that.

00:18:33.600 And Julian and I were working on a broader online university project when I got extremely

00:18:38.100 ill and it folded back into this writing program, which turned out in some ways to be an okay

00:18:43.060 thing because this is actually, hopefully it will address a very serious issue.

00:18:49.160 And we could do it instead of the other one, which...

00:18:51.660 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:18:52.440 The other one was pretty broad.

00:18:53.720 It was.

00:18:54.140 Too broad.

00:18:55.260 Yeah.

00:18:55.400 Better break it down.

00:18:55.880 Which is why it failed, probably.

00:18:57.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:18:57.820 Well, part of the reason.

00:18:59.000 It hasn't failed yet.

00:19:00.720 It's just being sequenced differently.

00:19:03.000 Fair enough.

00:19:03.780 So...

00:19:04.380 Pearson Academy is coming.

00:19:06.180 Yes.

00:19:06.780 Yes.

00:19:07.420 Yes.

00:19:07.820 And we have online courses and we're working with people in the broader educational sphere.

00:19:12.180 So who knows what'll happen.

00:19:13.640 Should talk about the design a little bit because it's quite elegant.

00:19:16.560 Yeah, sure.

00:19:17.460 Yeah.

00:19:17.680 So we spend a ton of time building the design out.

00:19:20.960 I mean, we did a number of iterations at the beginning that were very, very different.

00:19:25.560 And my wife's a product designer and I'm a front-end developer.

00:19:31.700 And so we're both very concerned with UX and making things that people can use naturally

00:19:37.460 and that feel good to use.

00:19:38.800 And so, you know, a lot of people don't like to write.

00:19:43.480 And that's an issue, right?

00:19:44.620 Is if we want people to write and we want people to learn to write better and think better,

00:19:49.160 then when you go into a new application that you have to learn, it has to be very comfortable.

00:19:53.660 And so we wanted to make the design very modern, very clean, very intuitive.

00:19:59.160 Yeah.

00:19:59.360 Self-explanatory, right?

00:20:00.720 Because a hallmark of good design is that you don't have to refer to a manual to figure out how to use,

00:20:06.100 let's say, the tools.

00:20:07.160 Well, and these are different things, right?

00:20:08.860 We're trying to teach people to interact with a word processor differently,

00:20:12.640 which is a big ask in a way to the user, right?

00:20:14.860 And because, well, because almost everyone writes using something, right?

00:20:18.820 People use Word or Google Docs or whatever they use.

00:20:22.320 To make it easier for them to write using this, at least easier.

00:20:28.100 Well, the payoff has to be there.

00:20:29.420 Well, that's the payoff also has to be there.

00:20:31.260 Because there's a bit more work.

00:20:32.460 It's not just a blank sheet.

00:20:34.080 Right.

00:20:34.320 There's more work to it.

00:20:34.940 You actually do have to learn to use it.

00:20:37.000 Yeah.

00:20:37.320 Yeah.

00:20:37.960 Yeah, but theoretically and from our experience, the tools are worth the learning curve.

00:20:43.480 And we've tried to make the learning curve as minimal as possible using good design.

00:20:46.640 Well, right.

00:20:47.140 The other thing we did, and this is a design element too,

00:20:50.260 is that while you're using, while you're learning to use the tools,

00:20:55.180 you're also learning how to go about thinking at the same time.

00:20:59.720 So you're not only learning how to use the writing program,

00:21:02.720 you're learning how to think about thinking.

00:21:05.580 And that's extremely important.

00:21:07.620 Just knowing, for example, that you do multi-level processing

00:21:10.740 and that you can edit and reconceptualize at all those levels.

00:21:13.960 That's extremely useful formally to know about how you think and why you think.

00:21:18.060 Yeah, what's a nice thing about the tools in general is that they're not specific tools to the app, right?

00:21:23.660 Like you can use them in context of the app, but if you're writing an email in, you know,

00:21:27.760 just in your, in Gmail or whatever, then you can still go through it and improve the sentences

00:21:33.120 and improve the structure of the paragraphs.

00:21:34.540 And you can use the tools that you've built and practiced using the application.

00:21:39.060 And now internalize.

00:21:39.520 And you can use them wherever and you can use them, yeah, when you're thinking or talking as well,

00:21:43.340 you know, in a sort of faster way, but they're, they're generally useful things to understand and, and, and...

00:21:48.940 Right.

00:21:49.140 So my impression going through, I kind of had to learn to use this app in the last few months,

00:21:54.060 because although I was involved in the design to begin with, when I got sick,

00:21:57.620 I, I forgot a lot of what the app did and why it was produced the way it was.

00:22:01.900 And so I've had to relearn it, learn how to use it over the last couple of months.

00:22:05.740 And it was very straightforward to learn, but what was, what I was even happier about

00:22:10.480 was the fact that learning to use it does not waste effort.

00:22:14.780 You know, if you learn a program like Photoshop, you can use Photoshop,

00:22:19.760 the Photoshop skills you've learned on Illustrator and other Adobe product products,

00:22:25.040 but doesn't really generalize outside of that domain because, because this commands are so specific.

00:22:31.900 With this, you could use essay for a year and then hypothetically never use it again,

00:22:37.800 because you could, you, you could do what it does in the word processor.

00:22:40.480 Well, I know, he does this only by the person he test once.

00:22:44.080 I'll say it, never use it again.

00:22:45.820 Learn it, internalize it, throw it away.

00:22:48.200 I wouldn't recommend that because I think that, I think that once you use it.

00:22:53.360 This guy's not in our marketing team.

00:22:55.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:57.440 You'll also find it a good place to keep track of your essays and all of that,

00:23:01.780 to build an essay bank.

00:23:03.500 And we're going to build.

00:23:04.220 Oh, that's cool.

00:23:04.820 That's a good idea.

00:23:05.840 Yeah.

00:23:06.240 So, so we, we've thought about the, well, the problem of what do you do with what you've written?

00:23:12.960 And that's also relevant to something mentioned earlier.

00:23:15.800 If you write an essay and your first draft is twice as long as it needs to be,

00:23:20.320 and you cut a bunch of it out, keep what you've cut in another document,

00:23:24.220 because I've almost never written anything that was wasted.

00:23:30.440 It might not have been useful precisely in the context that I wanted it for at that moment,

00:23:36.620 but keeping a log or a collection of written material,

00:23:41.380 especially by topic is extremely useful as you progress through your life.

00:23:45.880 And you'll find a use for it, man.

00:23:47.220 Oh, okay.

00:23:47.760 It's useful for writers.

00:23:49.040 It's also, you know, I play music and I've done that with songs too, right?

00:23:52.760 You can write song lyrics and just write poetry or whatever you're writing.

00:23:56.460 And then you can, you know, that's how a lot of great songs have been written.

00:23:59.860 Little pieces here and there of different, you know, thrown away songs that people still,

00:24:03.800 yeah, the Beatles do that all the time.

00:24:05.280 But yeah, so it's not just, it's not just for writing, but for artistic things as well.

00:24:09.820 It's been my experience that no genuine work is wasted.

00:24:14.300 It just doesn't fit necessarily with exactly what you're doing at the moment.

00:24:18.180 But, but first of all, the skills you learn while you're genuinely working,

00:24:22.020 generalize, and also the products, if you keep them.

00:24:24.720 I had some poems I wrote, horrible poems about children, 15 years ago.

00:24:30.960 We don't need context for that.

00:24:32.020 That's okay.

00:24:33.340 They're funny.

00:24:34.120 So, they're funny.

00:24:35.680 Yeah, I was, it was when I was doing my clinical work and I needed to blow off some steam about

00:24:39.580 all the awful things I was seeing.

00:24:40.920 So, thank you very much.

00:24:42.080 In any case, I wrote those 15 years ago.

00:24:44.960 It wasn't till this year that we started working on having them illustrated and a whole creative,

00:24:49.260 a whole sequence of creative projects emerged from that.

00:24:52.080 So, you have to realize that when you're writing, you are literally changing your brain.

00:24:57.600 So, be careful about what you write about as well?

00:25:01.660 That's for sure, man.

00:25:03.060 Like, truth all the way.

00:25:04.420 Well, it depends.

00:25:05.120 You want your, do you want a program in garbage?

00:25:07.960 Because you're actually producing automated circuits in your brain when you write.

00:25:12.340 And so, if you write something you don't agree with, you can do that as an exercise to stretch

00:25:17.560 out your intellectual imagination, right?

00:25:19.540 And to develop your argument, let's say, and the contrary argument as part of thinking.

00:25:25.520 But if you write a bunch of lies for someone that you don't trust to do something you don't like,

00:25:30.680 that will change you in that direction.

00:25:32.860 If you do that a hundred times, you'll be way different than the person you were.

00:25:36.940 And you may be bored, miserable, angry, unhappy, resentful, amotivated, tendentious, inarticulate.

00:25:44.520 But otherwise, Farn.

00:25:45.500 Yeah.

00:25:46.660 Don't mess with your words, man.

00:25:49.460 Yeah.

00:25:49.760 So, how does that work for running out trauma then?

00:25:52.140 Isn't it?

00:25:52.720 Because it's supposed to be therapeutic, but how is it not strengthening memories associated

00:25:58.500 with trauma?

00:25:59.220 That's an excellent question.

00:26:01.160 And there's actually a whole research literature on that, which we drew on when we formulated

00:26:06.320 the self-authoring program, especially the past authoring program.

00:26:09.980 Well, James Pennebaker tested that.

00:26:12.740 So, imagine two theories.

00:26:14.160 One is, just write down everything that you can remember about the trauma.

00:26:17.920 And cry and be miserable and depressed while you do that.

00:26:21.500 Yeah.

00:26:21.540 And that's cathartic.

00:26:23.260 Okay.

00:26:24.060 But then imagine that you write down everything you remember around the trauma.

00:26:27.380 And then you go through a process like you would go through with our writing tool.

00:26:32.720 Where you organize it, and you reduce it, and you make it clear and comprehensible, and

00:26:38.720 you weave it into a narrative, and you strip the emotion out of it while you're doing that

00:26:42.760 because you start to understand what happened.

00:26:46.060 And it isn't catharsis.

00:26:47.100 James Pennebaker tested this.

00:26:49.180 So, he had people write about their traumatic experiences.

00:26:52.380 It usually made them feel worse for a two-week period afterwards.

00:26:55.820 Yeah.

00:26:55.980 But six months later, they had visited the physicians far less frequently.

00:27:00.060 So, it's out of tyranny, into the desert, and then into the promised land, right?

00:27:06.080 So, there's a cost that you pay when you first confront things that you'd rather avoid.

00:27:12.200 And that's obviously, because why would people avoid them if there was no cost?

00:27:16.200 And you might say, well, that's dangerous.

00:27:17.840 And ruminating involuntarily on traumatic experiences doesn't help get rid of them.

00:27:24.380 You have to confront them voluntarily.

00:27:28.820 And then it isn't expression of emotion that cures you.

00:27:31.640 It's organization of the memories into a narrative that specifies the causal pathway.

00:27:38.580 Why did this happen when it happened?

00:27:41.940 Why did it happen to me?

00:27:43.460 And then is associated with rectification of that vulnerability.

00:27:48.600 And so, Pennebaker tested.

00:27:49.780 Did people use more words indicative of expressed emotion?

00:27:55.460 Or did they use more words that were indicative of cognition and comprehension?

00:28:00.440 And which of those predicted the best outcome?

00:28:03.600 So, like what?

00:28:04.840 Understand, comprehend, came to know.

00:28:07.160 Yeah, okay.

00:28:08.260 Angry, sad, hurt, upset on the other side.

00:28:11.000 But the more their written product revealed the cognitive processing, the better the effect of the traumatic narration.

00:28:23.240 And you see this when you talk to people who have had a traumatic experience.

00:28:28.340 If you talk to them carefully and listen carefully as they work through it.

00:28:31.920 So, they want to know exactly what happened in detail.

00:28:38.460 So that maybe they can set up their life so that won't happen again.

00:28:42.820 So, you know, you were traumatized as a child.

00:28:44.960 But you're a lot easier to take advantage of if you're a child.

00:28:48.120 Now you have all those memories about being hurt.

00:28:50.960 Okay.

00:28:51.480 As the person comes to understand their trauma, the time it takes to recount it shrinks dramatically.

00:29:00.340 Yeah.

00:29:00.580 And that means they've pulled out the gist.

00:29:04.580 Right?

00:29:05.080 The central issues from the experience.

00:29:08.160 And they can use that as a practical guide to the future.

00:29:10.580 That is exactly what you're doing, by the way, when you're writing an essay.

00:29:13.780 You think, well, it's not a trauma.

00:29:15.580 It's like, well, if you pick a question that's interesting to you, it's interesting because the fact that you don't know it is a problem.

00:29:24.780 And so, one of the great ways to figure out what to write about is, well, what bugs you?

00:29:29.520 Notice that.

00:29:31.620 That's that involuntary rumination.

00:29:33.820 That's the manifestation of underlying complexes from a psychoanalytic perspective.

00:29:38.460 So, something's on your mind poking you, bugging you.

00:29:41.920 It's like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio.

00:29:44.480 That is really annoying.

00:29:46.180 Yeah.

00:29:47.540 That's why I did it, man.

00:29:49.020 I knew that would bug you.

00:29:50.680 So, it was supposed to.

00:29:52.220 You know, it was.

00:29:52.800 So, anyways, you find something that bugs you.

00:29:55.900 That's your problem.

00:29:56.960 You might say, well, why should I have a problem?

00:29:58.820 It's like, hey, it picked you.

00:30:00.800 It's your problem.

00:30:02.260 It's your destiny.

00:30:03.140 It's something that would compel you to solve.

00:30:07.740 It's your adventure.

00:30:09.520 Your adventure can be found in what bothers you and won't go away.

00:30:12.900 Well, that's your topic, man.

00:30:15.240 That's your life.

00:30:16.440 Delve into that and use this program because it'll help you figure that out.

00:30:21.060 It'll help you figure that out.

00:30:22.540 Write about things that matter.

00:30:24.280 You say, well, my life has no meaning.

00:30:28.460 Nothing I write is meaningful.

00:30:31.100 Well, you're not writing about something that matters to you.

00:30:33.600 And that first step that we talked about, when you specify the question,

00:30:36.560 the program says this quite clearly.

00:30:39.540 Specify the question you're trying to answer.

00:30:42.080 You have to want the answer.

00:30:44.080 You want to be motivated to write.

00:30:45.500 It's like, this is a hot question for me, man.

00:30:47.400 I'm going to go read some things about it because I need to know.

00:30:50.340 Well, that's what you want to write about.

00:30:51.860 That's where you find your passion, to use an overworked cliche.

00:30:57.700 Okay, Julian.

00:31:00.120 Yes.

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00:33:46.840 Why did it take you so long to agree to talk to me over the interweb?

00:33:58.220 Well, I like my privacy.

00:34:02.620 I've always liked my privacy, but I think that's most of it.

00:34:05.060 I don't really have a lot of interest in being a public person.

00:34:07.460 Um, if I am public in any way, then I generally, well, I'm quite sure that I prefer it to be about something that I've done.

00:34:20.760 And I didn't really feel like I had done anything that was particularly, you know, useful, let's say, to talk about to other people.

00:34:29.980 Um, and so, you know, I, I have a really nice life and I like my little family and my, um, you know, the fact that it's relatively contained from, from the world.

00:34:42.360 And, you know, I don't really ever want to give that up, but I do have interest in sharing things that I've done that I feel like are going to be meaningful for, for other people.

00:34:50.880 Whether that is, well, this application, which I'm really proud of, or, um, well, the album that I released last year, although I didn't really talk about that.

00:35:01.300 Um.

00:35:01.620 We're going to talk about that.

00:35:03.560 But I think that's why mostly is, is I, I'm.

00:35:06.840 You wanted to wait till you had something to say.

00:35:08.500 Yeah.

00:35:09.440 Yeah.

00:35:09.860 Well, the problem in your position is that people would be interested in you in some sense for peripheral reasons.

00:35:16.740 For sure.

00:35:17.160 Yeah.

00:35:17.300 You could certainly.

00:35:18.700 Yeah, for sure.

00:35:19.520 And, and you could sate that demand if you felt like it, but it seems to me that waiting until you have something.

00:35:29.240 I don't feel like it.

00:35:29.980 Yeah.

00:35:30.540 Yeah.

00:35:33.400 Yeah.

00:35:34.000 Yeah.

00:35:34.360 Yeah.

00:35:34.600 No kidding.

00:35:35.760 Yeah.

00:35:35.900 And it's been good to see that your life has been protected from all the storms that have gathered around us.

00:35:41.780 And that, that was a good decision, I think.

00:35:44.640 So, and this is a good thing to talk about because this app is.

00:35:47.660 Yeah.

00:35:49.520 It could help a lot of people.

00:35:51.180 Well, and then we should talk a little bit about testing too.

00:35:54.080 One of the things I realized years ago and, and had.

00:35:57.540 Drummed into my head as well by people who have built successful software programs and marketed them is that you should be in dialogue with your audience, your customer base, let's say, while you're building it.

00:36:10.320 You don't build something and then launch it and hope everyone buys it.

00:36:13.260 You have to be testing it step by step with the market, with the environment to see if not only do you have the ideas right, but you have them right at the right time in a way that can be communicated to people that they will want to purchase and will purchase.

00:36:29.560 And so, you tested this with Acton Academy, for example.

00:36:33.440 Yeah.

00:36:34.000 So, we tested this with like a number of different groups over the last couple years, with private groups on Reddit, with people who signed up to test it, with students, MBA students at the Acton Academy, using usertesting.com groups.

00:36:53.040 You know, we tested it constantly as we were, as we were building it to make sure that our design was consistent, that people understood what it was for, and many times they didn't, which is, well, often what you find when you test software.

00:37:07.160 Yeah, well, you get familiar with it and then you think it's obvious because it's now obvious to you, but it's interesting watching people often use a piece of software that you've designed and see where they don't get it.

00:37:23.040 Yeah, isn't that what they did with one of the first Macintosh computers, right?

00:37:27.060 They would bring grandmothers, I think, people over 60, to come in and they would just put them in front of an Apple computer.

00:37:33.860 Right.

00:37:35.160 And, you know, not tell them anything.

00:37:37.400 They would just say, use this thing.

00:37:38.640 Yeah.

00:37:38.880 And, you know, they'd pick up the keyboard and like do all sorts of stuff with it.

00:37:41.980 Could they figure it out?

00:37:42.920 They'd try to find the indie key.

00:37:44.820 Right?

00:37:45.120 They do all sorts of things, right?

00:37:47.060 But that was how they did the testing, right?

00:37:49.680 Either you're supposed to give people a task or you just want to see how they naturally interact with it.

00:37:54.820 And we did both of those things and made a lot of improvements based on them.

00:37:59.340 You have to be aware of the assumption that people should be smart enough to know how to use this.

00:38:04.900 It's like, no, if they can't use it, it's because it's a stupid design.

00:38:08.320 Yeah, for sure.

00:38:08.960 If people were just a little smarter, they could figure this out.

00:38:11.640 It's like, yeah, good luck.

00:38:12.860 That's how you make no money.

00:38:13.720 That's how you fail.

00:38:14.620 Yeah.

00:38:14.820 That's how you sell your product to three software engineers.

00:38:17.060 Yeah, they want to use it just because they want to show how smart they are.

00:38:22.960 No, that's a very bad design philosophy.

00:38:25.180 If someone can't use it, it's your fault.

00:38:28.280 It's the right attitude in business.

00:38:30.840 That's why it's not so much.

00:38:32.680 It's like websites when every single website has a formula and looks the same.

00:38:36.860 And one other website is, oh, no, no, that logo or that button should go in this other corner.

00:38:41.920 Yeah.

00:38:42.340 One, that's the modern internet, right?

00:38:43.680 Like, is that everything looks the same because, well, then people can use it.

00:38:48.100 Right.

00:38:48.340 You build in redundancy.

00:38:49.660 Yeah.

00:38:50.040 And, yeah, and you violate conventions at your peril.

00:38:53.480 You know, we could have insisted that everybody use a Dvorak keyboard for this writing program.

00:38:57.940 And that's a way more efficient keyboard because the letters, the alphabet letters are spaced for optimal speed when you type.

00:39:06.160 But you don't see people using Dvorak keyboard.

00:39:08.860 Well, one of our developers did.

00:39:10.460 Yeah.

00:39:10.740 What?

00:39:11.540 What is this type of?

00:39:12.500 I was nodding along.

00:39:13.500 Like, I knew what you were talking about, but I don't.

00:39:15.460 There's a keyboard that's more effective.

00:39:17.040 Oh, much more.

00:39:17.300 Oh, way more effective.

00:39:18.140 Yeah.

00:39:18.540 Well, yeah, because at least theoretically.

00:39:20.780 What?

00:39:20.800 No, we're not telling you about it because you have to keep using QWERTY.

00:39:23.640 No, I'm Googling it right after this.

00:39:24.700 The QWERTY keyboard was developed, at least in part, to slow you down when you type.

00:39:29.800 Yeah, for typewriters, right?

00:39:30.860 With the old mechanical typewriters, before electric typewriters, the keys would jam if people got too fast.

00:39:36.180 So, they slowed them down.

00:39:37.400 So, now we use a keyboard that artificially makes typing difficult.

00:39:40.480 So, what's the other one look like?

00:39:42.080 The most common letters are together.

00:39:44.080 Or where they should be.

00:39:45.160 Yeah, like on a QWERTY keyboard, the most common letters are spaced out as much as they can be.

00:39:48.680 Because I can type really fast.

00:39:49.920 I'm very proud of my typing.

00:39:50.940 I can type really fast.

00:39:52.160 Yeah.

00:39:52.640 Do you think it would be worth a thought?

00:39:54.220 Well, it doesn't look like it because people have it switched.

00:39:57.060 There'd be a struggle at the beginning.

00:39:58.500 Yeah, that's right.

00:39:59.420 You'd have to re-automatize your typing.

00:40:01.100 But yeah, yes, yes, it would be faster eventually.

00:40:03.240 Would it save me time if you add up all the time you spent learning and then I'm doing it?

00:40:07.460 Yeah, I think it would.

00:40:08.280 But can you buy computers like that, like MacBooks?

00:40:10.200 You can buy keyboards like that.

00:40:11.640 You can't buy that.

00:40:12.680 You'd have to have a separate keyboard.

00:40:14.220 What's this called?

00:40:15.960 Dvorak is one.

00:40:16.800 D-V-O-R-A-K.

00:40:20.040 Yeah, it just rings off the tongue, you know.

00:40:21.660 Yeah, Dvorak.

00:40:22.780 It's like the composer.

00:40:24.220 The point you made earlier, I hadn't actually thought about this.

00:40:28.980 I've got an issue storing way too many Google Docs and Sheets and Google has like terrible

00:40:34.860 storage, Google Drive.

00:40:36.460 Yeah.

00:40:36.700 Right.

00:40:37.300 So, the fact that you can actually store focused pieces of writing, that's pretty interesting.

00:40:44.740 Instead of putting all your spreadsheets and everything in one area, you could put everything

00:40:49.440 that you focus on in one area and then look back on it.

00:40:52.200 Yeah, well, Google Drive is obviously great, but it's because everything is there.

00:40:55.800 And that, you know, that comes with the cost.

00:40:58.300 With the cost, for sure.

00:40:59.080 Yeah, you lose things all the time there.

00:41:00.040 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:01.060 And that's not something that we've solved completely with this program, but it is a good place

00:41:05.620 to store the things that you've endeavored to write.

00:41:09.180 So.

00:41:09.760 Hmm.

00:41:10.980 Cool.

00:41:11.980 There's, we have what, three patents pending?

00:41:15.500 Yes.

00:41:15.740 On it?

00:41:16.540 Yes.

00:41:16.960 So, that's fun.

00:41:18.260 You know, it's, it's a, it's a.

00:41:21.340 So, it's still stealable.

00:41:23.260 That's what we're saying.

00:41:24.480 It's still stealable, yes.

00:41:25.520 Well, you know, on that, you know, virtually everything is stealable.

00:41:29.260 And the way you succeed in the marketplace is becoming, getting there fairly early and

00:41:34.660 then making a product that's better than everyone else's and then keeping it better.

00:41:38.820 If you want to rely on legal protection, even patents, it'll just wear you to a frazzle.

00:41:43.060 It's not the, I mean, look, you have to keep people from stealing your intellectual property

00:41:47.840 and patent protection and legal protection can help.

00:41:50.540 But in the final analysis, the way that you remain competitive in the marketplace is to

00:41:55.100 stay not only ahead of your competitors, but ahead of your previous product.

00:42:00.280 And so, otherwise you get into this defensive mode where you're fending everyone else off

00:42:04.520 trying to protect your thing.

00:42:06.420 It's like your thing, the thing you developed in all likelihood is alive and you should stay

00:42:11.140 on the cutting edge of its development.

00:42:13.060 But it's still nice to have the patents.

00:42:14.540 Yeah, for sure.

00:42:15.220 So, they're hard to enforce.

00:42:17.280 You have to take them out in all sorts of different countries.

00:42:19.820 You know, you get tangled up with lawyers, but it's still nice to have that.

00:42:23.200 No one wants that.

00:42:24.580 Yeah.

00:42:24.980 No lawyers can use our program.

00:42:27.500 No, I don't mean that.

00:42:28.740 Lawyers are very useful in their proper place.

00:42:34.480 Which is definitely not everywhere.

00:42:36.600 Yeah.

00:42:37.060 Yeah.

00:42:38.140 So, you mentioned this album.

00:42:39.740 You put out an album last year.

00:42:41.640 Yes.

00:42:42.500 So, what is this?

00:42:43.600 It's called Sight.

00:42:44.960 It's a very short album.

00:42:46.480 Technically, it's actually a single, which I was disappointed about when I read the definition

00:42:50.400 of single.

00:42:51.220 What?

00:42:51.480 Apparently, a single is, I think you can have four songs in a single because the definitions

00:42:56.700 came from when you'd put out records and a single was just, well, anyway, it was a certain

00:43:02.820 length of record, basically.

00:43:04.500 What?

00:43:04.820 Yeah.

00:43:05.580 And so, I have three songs and I think you have to have five songs or a certain length.

00:43:10.040 I can't remember the number of minutes to make it an EP.

00:43:12.000 So, it's not.

00:43:12.700 But it's a single and it's a three-song single.

00:43:16.060 And they were songs that I've written over the last, well, that I had written between four

00:43:21.100 years ago up to a couple years ago.

00:43:23.440 And I'd been meaning to record them.

00:43:25.680 And yeah, eventually, I went to the recording studio and hired some session musicians.

00:43:33.760 And yeah, it was great.

00:43:35.260 It was a really, really positive experience.

00:43:36.880 And it's, well, it was fun to put music out into the world that, you know, were a piece

00:43:41.580 of me and that were a piece of my history because that was really meaningful.

00:43:46.060 And I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

00:43:47.480 Yeah, it's called Sight.

00:43:48.200 It's on Spotify.

00:43:49.420 I'll link it.

00:43:51.000 Probably do some music in the background over your talk.

00:43:53.700 The three of us have been working on a musical project too.

00:43:57.440 Well, and with Tammy.

00:43:58.920 So, that's been fun as well.

00:44:01.460 So, more on that later.

00:44:02.660 Yeah.

00:44:04.100 Yeah.

00:44:05.120 Okay.

00:44:05.620 I'm going to ask some fun questions too.

00:44:08.080 Are you ready?

00:44:08.640 It's going to involve Julian talking a bunch.

00:44:11.000 Hopefully.

00:44:12.020 Okay.

00:44:13.760 Shifts uncomfortably in his season.

00:44:16.780 How do you make me shift uncomfortably?

00:44:18.940 Well, I'm waiting to see what happens.

00:44:20.420 Well, it shouldn't make you shift uncomfortably.

00:44:21.900 Well, you might say something embarrassing.

00:44:23.700 What will I do?

00:44:25.400 I'm actually not that worried about that.

00:44:27.100 Hopefully, you'll do that on purpose if it happens.

00:44:29.020 Oh, yeah.

00:44:29.260 With any luck.

00:44:30.240 Yeah.

00:44:31.020 What has been the biggest challenge of having dad shoot to fame?

00:44:38.180 Yeah.

00:44:38.660 Well, there have been a ton of challenges, benefits and challenges.

00:44:42.760 I think mostly, there's a couple of things, you know, it gets you involved in a battle

00:44:52.280 that isn't your own, which is interesting, right?

00:44:54.420 Because of the way that you became popular, which was about, you know, political topics

00:44:59.980 and philosophical topics that were contentious generally.

00:45:02.600 Um, and so, then people start to assume that, you know, you hold the same opinions as your

00:45:11.240 father, which to a certain extent, I do, obviously, right?

00:45:15.280 Like, I mean, there's some things that, uh, and plenty of things that were aligned on and,

00:45:19.880 but there's always, you know, you never have the same views as your father.

00:45:23.040 I mean, if you do, then you need to think more probably because, well, you're generationally

00:45:27.980 different and all sorts of things.

00:45:29.100 You have my opinions?

00:45:31.020 Yeah.

00:45:31.400 That's what every father thinks.

00:45:33.060 This is an essay program.

00:45:34.820 Essay program.

00:45:35.580 Yeah.

00:45:36.160 Yeah.

00:45:38.260 So, that was one of the challenges and, and, well, just being, being public to a certain

00:45:45.620 extent, you know, people know who I am, even if I have maintained relatively private.

00:45:50.400 Um, I've been asked for selfies before, which is very strange because I'm just a regular

00:45:55.480 dude.

00:45:55.880 But those assies, that's, that's a selfie.

00:45:58.660 An assie.

00:45:59.200 Yeah.

00:46:00.580 Oh.

00:46:01.480 Yeah.

00:46:01.620 Well, your approach to that, I think, has been interesting.

00:46:03.920 You know, people, people get involved.

00:46:05.740 Random, like, free guy reference, I think.

00:46:08.800 Yeah.

00:46:09.060 That's right.

00:46:09.700 Where did that come from?

00:46:10.740 It took me a second.

00:46:11.460 Assie was like.

00:46:12.760 Well, keep up, man.

00:46:13.980 This is a quick moving conversation.

00:46:15.500 Jeez.

00:46:16.060 So, you know, one of the things that's been, that your situation has really, um, highlighted

00:46:21.340 for me is the danger that's posed to people's mental health and maybe even to social stability

00:46:28.560 when people get fixated on things that are too abstract.

00:46:31.640 You know, you say, well, we should only pay attention to the important issues.

00:46:35.000 Climate change, for example.

00:46:36.720 People, which is about everything.

00:46:38.540 Why aren't you worried about everything all the time?

00:46:41.060 And that's what you would be worried about if you were a good person.

00:46:43.400 It's like, well, no.

00:46:45.520 You need to parcel off a part of your life that's private, that consists of the specific

00:46:50.100 things that you're involved in.

00:46:51.500 Your specific wife, your specific children, the specific projects like this essay.

00:46:56.500 Wives always like to be referred to that way.

00:46:58.600 This is my specific wife.

00:47:00.040 Yeah.

00:47:00.580 Yeah.

00:47:01.980 Generic wives are a good idea.

00:47:03.060 Don't ask me any more questions.

00:47:04.520 Yeah.

00:47:05.140 Well, but it's a strange thing because you could be more concerned with generic wives

00:47:08.860 than actually having one, you know?

00:47:10.580 Yeah.

00:47:11.000 So, and you, you've, you've maintained that specificity and that's made your life comparably

00:47:18.380 much more peaceful and productive.

00:47:20.240 Yes, for sure.

00:47:20.940 Yeah.

00:47:21.180 So, it's easy to get dragged out into the general fray and it's hard to predict.

00:47:26.500 It's hard to predict yourself once that's happened.

00:47:28.600 So.

00:47:29.240 Okay.

00:47:29.960 Here's another one.

00:47:30.980 So, when, how old were you when you got married to Jill?

00:47:35.860 25.

00:47:36.960 And then when did you have Elliot?

00:47:39.800 26, I guess.

00:47:41.320 Yeah.

00:47:41.460 26, yeah.

00:47:42.140 Okay.

00:47:42.460 So, I'd say compared to the general debaucherous population.

00:47:47.680 Yes.

00:47:47.920 You've, even compared to me, definitely compared to me, you've had your, you've organized your

00:47:55.840 life so, from the outside anyway, so well that it's hard, it's hard to believe.

00:48:05.800 Well, thank you.

00:48:06.680 That's a really nice compliment.

00:48:08.100 You went to university, you got a bunch of educators.

00:48:11.100 What was your, what did you do in university?

00:48:12.780 I did a bachelor of arts, which everyone thinks is the best thing to do.

00:48:16.700 Yeah.

00:48:17.140 That's a, no, but I did a, I did a cool one.

00:48:19.340 And it was, I went to the University of King's College in Nova Scotia.

00:48:22.760 Highly recommended place, by the way.

00:48:24.480 Yeah, great university and did a great books program called the Foundation Year Program.

00:48:29.180 It's a one-year program where you read kind of the history of great Western thought.

00:48:33.640 Yeah.

00:48:34.640 And so, I did that to begin with, and then I did my general degree in philosophy and music.

00:48:40.480 And you wrote your thesis on Heidegger and the psychedelic experience, right?

00:48:45.080 Yeah, that's right.

00:48:45.940 Yeah.

00:48:46.260 But that was a common topic amongst students.

00:48:48.340 Yeah, of course.

00:48:49.180 That interface.

00:48:51.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:48:51.460 Yeah.

00:48:51.740 Well, and the, you know, one of the things that's interesting, I worked with a lot of

00:48:56.960 high-performing lawyers, and this was especially true of the women.

00:49:00.300 They were hyper-conscientious, and they were overachievers, which is a horrible word, in

00:49:05.960 junior high and in high school.

00:49:07.720 I think that's two words.

00:49:08.540 No, it's one word.

00:49:10.340 It can be.

00:49:10.720 It can be hyphenated.

00:49:11.940 Anyways, they were the top of their high school class, then they were the top of their

00:49:16.280 undergraduate class, then they went to law school, and they were the top of their class,

00:49:19.220 and then they got picked up by a big law firm, and they shot up through the ranks and became

00:49:23.920 senior partners.

00:49:25.040 It's one word.

00:49:26.060 Often.

00:49:26.940 No, wait, no.

00:49:28.040 Yeah, not at all.

00:49:29.340 They need to think more like me.

00:49:31.240 Yeah.

00:49:32.460 And then when they got to be senior partners, they generally concluded that they didn't want

00:49:36.660 to work 60 hours a week, like all these other guys, and although they were women, and they

00:49:42.160 wanted a more balanced life, but they had never really stepped outside of this single-minded

00:49:46.700 track, you know?

00:49:48.180 And it wasn't until they hit the pinnacle of what they were aiming at that they sort of

00:49:52.360 woke up and realized, well, maybe this isn't what I wanted to be doing all along.

00:49:56.440 And the interesting difference with you, I think, is that while you've been organizing

00:50:03.280 your life in a pretty consistent manner, and in a traditional manner, I would say, you've

00:50:08.700 also pursued your artistic pursuits simultaneously, and that makes it different, because that's

00:50:16.220 a place where you can have freedom within the context of discipline, and where those things

00:50:21.620 actually work very well together.

00:50:23.040 You told me that we were walking the dog in the park, like, a couple of months ago,

00:50:27.180 and you were like, what, you know, what do you want for yourself in five years?

00:50:31.160 And I was like, well, I want to have, you know, a good family life, and I want to have

00:50:35.800 a career that's meaningful, and, you know, good generic answers.

00:50:40.480 But you were like, oh, so you have feminine goals.

00:50:45.580 I was like, I guess.

00:50:48.700 Yeah, well, that's it.

00:50:52.740 That fits very well with the story I just told.

00:50:55.020 I'm a high-achieving woman.

00:50:56.520 Yeah.

00:50:58.280 Yeah, well, that could be worse.

00:50:59.960 Could be worse.

00:51:00.340 Yeah, I know.

00:51:00.780 I'm happy about that.

00:51:01.960 I wasn't offended.

00:51:02.700 I just was a little surprising.

00:51:04.880 Well, I mean, time will tell.

00:51:07.520 Well, if you do, please keep that private.

00:51:10.940 Well, yeah.

00:51:12.120 I won't be keeping that private.

00:51:13.540 Oh, that's funny.

00:51:16.540 Anyway, my point was, I guess, do you have advice for younger people about how to, like,

00:51:26.080 are you happy that you're settled down now with a kid?

00:51:28.600 Yeah, for sure.

00:51:29.880 There's, well, I wouldn't really have it.

00:51:32.040 Has it limited freedoms or anything?

00:51:32.920 Well, yeah.

00:51:33.380 Obviously, in some ways, it's limited freedoms.

00:51:36.400 But, well, I feel like when you get into your late 20s or even mid-20s, you've probably

00:51:42.320 been partying and doing random stuff and living with roommates for quite a few years already.

00:51:49.160 You know, I mean, it doesn't, I don't think it remains interesting for that long.

00:51:54.440 And even with, you know, people I know that are around the same age, everyone at around

00:51:59.420 this age, or not everyone, but a lot of people end up settling down to a certain extent.

00:52:04.320 And whether that's, you know, it's needing a change of some kind, whether it's deciding

00:52:09.080 to travel the world or switch careers or go back to school or something, you can't just

00:52:14.740 stay on the same kind of young person schedule forever.

00:52:17.880 And, well, I found someone who I fell in love with, and I always was attracted to women

00:52:26.540 who wanted a family, and I always wanted a family.

00:52:28.940 And so, it fit in well for me, and I think that's fairly uncommon with young men.

00:52:32.760 Well, do you think, do you, I mean, one of my observations of you, and now you were

00:52:36.680 very private, so I don't know all the details, thank God, is that you tended to mostly have

00:52:43.100 long-term, pretty committed relationships.

00:52:46.700 Yeah.

00:52:46.900 Yeah.

00:52:47.880 And, you know, that was the case with me, too, generally speaking.

00:52:52.160 Do you think that was associated with this conscious desire to have a family?

00:52:57.100 I don't even know if it was.

00:53:01.320 I think that, well, I normally just chose women, girls that I liked.

00:53:07.920 What, do you want to go out with a girl who's like, I hate children?

00:53:10.540 That's super attractive.

00:53:11.880 Well, I never want to be like, I'm just, that just shouts infertile.

00:53:15.420 Yeah, well, it's not so bad if you don't want children and if you only regard them as an

00:53:20.940 impediment.

00:53:21.260 But if you're shouting it, that's definitely a problem.

00:53:22.980 Yeah, that's a problem.

00:53:24.020 Yeah, yeah.

00:53:24.460 If you're shouting that on the street, probably you should be best avoided.

00:53:27.300 But I don't know.

00:53:27.740 It was just, it's just kind of how it worked out for me.

00:53:29.540 And, well, I was really lucky.

00:53:32.260 You know, I met someone who I was extremely compatible with very young, and our relationship

00:53:37.600 has only improved with time.

00:53:39.660 How did you know, how did you know that that was going to work out?

00:53:43.220 Well, I didn't.

00:53:43.880 And we had ups and downs, right?

00:53:45.280 Like, we, well, yeah, we had our ups and downs.

00:53:50.280 And I didn't, yeah, I didn't know until, really until we were married, I guess.

00:53:56.460 Weirdly enough, like.

00:53:57.700 Maybe not.

00:53:58.940 Well, maybe, yeah, maybe that's fairly normal.

00:54:00.500 But even when we were engaged, you know, I feel like we were still kind of feeling each

00:54:05.580 other out to see if it was really the right path.

00:54:10.560 And, you know, we went through growing pains and all sorts of things that all couples go

00:54:15.580 through.

00:54:15.840 We fought a lot at times.

00:54:17.140 And, but the thing that, I guess, made me realize that it was, you know, a relationship

00:54:23.500 that was built to last was that every time we did, our relationship improved.

00:54:28.000 Right?

00:54:28.440 And then it was happening less and less.

00:54:29.820 Whether you fight, it's whether you reconcile.

00:54:32.120 Yeah, for sure.

00:54:32.760 That's what it's all about, right?

00:54:33.740 It's all about finding someone that is willing to put in the effort to improve the relationship,

00:54:39.780 you know, over the years.

00:54:42.040 Because people change and their needs change and their interests change.

00:54:45.580 And you have to have a partner that's willing to listen and keep up with you, right?

00:54:52.520 Are you good at negotiating?

00:54:55.180 Yeah, I'd say so.

00:54:55.900 I mean, that's one of the things that we practiced a lot as kids, right?

00:54:59.480 And that was one of the things that made our childhood somewhat unique, I would say, was

00:55:03.260 that we spent a lot of time being taught to negotiate.

00:55:06.060 And so, yeah, it's definitely one of my, one of the skills that I'm, that's very useful

00:55:10.720 in relationships, I guess, that I have.

00:55:12.880 And useful in other ways?

00:55:14.980 Nope.

00:55:15.160 We did, I've got a question.

00:55:23.700 A curse leaps to mind.

00:55:30.020 When you have arguments and negotiate, we had a podcast last year with an FBI negotiator.

00:55:38.380 Mm-hmm.

00:55:38.920 And his take was that you either agree to something and the other person kind of meets

00:55:46.020 you there, but you don't meet in the middle.

00:55:50.320 What's your take on that?

00:55:51.700 Like, when you guys have disagreements, are there things where you're like, okay, I'll

00:55:54.440 give a little and she'll give a little and then-

00:55:56.620 Yeah, I think eventually that's what happens.

00:55:58.820 But I think that when you-

00:55:59.880 I think it's a Hegelian synthesis.

00:56:02.600 Yeah, I also don't know what that means.

00:56:04.540 Well-

00:56:05.160 How did you know?

00:56:06.660 Antithesis?

00:56:07.140 Antithesis?

00:56:07.940 Right.

00:56:08.760 Synthesis.

00:56:09.580 Okay.

00:56:10.000 Not negotiated middle.

00:56:12.020 Yeah, okay, okay.

00:56:13.020 Yeah, and that's what I was going to say.

00:56:14.820 Obviously.

00:56:15.180 I was going to use exactly the same words too.

00:56:17.360 Were you?

00:56:17.720 Yeah.

00:56:18.100 Hegelian synthesis?

00:56:18.820 And there's no way of knowing that I wasn't going to.

00:56:22.700 But yeah, basically, you know, I feel like one person has to basically give in a little

00:56:28.320 bit at the beginning.

00:56:29.860 And then the other person will meet you somewhere along the way, eventually, once the negativity

00:56:35.120 or the emotion goes out of the situation.

00:56:37.140 Right.

00:56:37.800 I think it's very uncommon that people reconcile at exactly the same time.

00:56:42.080 Right.

00:56:42.460 It's almost always one person decides that it's, you know, either understands what they've

00:56:46.660 done to contribute or is willing to put that aside in order for, you know, to have a real

00:56:53.180 communication with the other person.

00:56:54.640 And then, you know, and then once the emotion calms down and people can see more clearly,

00:57:00.840 then you meet somewhere down the road, I guess.

00:57:03.320 Down the road.

00:57:03.920 Yeah.

00:57:04.100 Well, I think that initial willingness to give in isn't that.

00:57:08.960 It's, I'm willing to change as a consequence of this conflict.

00:57:14.360 Now, that means I haven't specified the direction of change, but you would do that hoping that

00:57:19.860 you could both attain something better as a consequence of the negotiation.

00:57:22.740 And you can, almost inevitably.

00:57:25.560 And that's what you can aim for.

00:57:27.300 It's like, let's make this better.

00:57:29.420 Not average, not, you know, miserable in the middle, but better for both of us.

00:57:34.700 That's the point of a successful negotiation.

00:57:36.620 It's also means that the negotiated agreement will be stable because if you have to give

00:57:43.240 in, let's say, and compromise, well, then you're not really pursuing what you want to

00:57:48.380 pursue.

00:57:49.060 And so you're going to work at a counter position to that subtly and maybe not so subtly.

00:57:54.320 But if you see, oh, this is this solution that we both generate is way better than either

00:57:58.380 of the things we were doing before.

00:58:00.820 That'll just sustain itself.

00:58:02.260 When one person has to trust that the other person is going to do the same thing, right?

00:58:06.560 I think that's where it is.

00:58:07.460 Because people fight, like an actual fight in a relationship, when the trust disappears

00:58:11.280 about something, right?

00:58:12.660 Yeah.

00:58:12.960 Either, you know, you assume that the other person isn't going to be able to move past

00:58:17.000 it in some way or isn't going to be able to apologize in a meaningful way or whatever

00:58:20.180 it is.

00:58:20.620 Or they were motivated in a way that wasn't.

00:58:22.460 Right.

00:58:22.800 It was untrustworthy in some way.

00:58:24.120 Yeah, that's right.

00:58:24.800 That's right.

00:58:25.220 And then, you know, one person at least has to decide that there's a, you know, a spark of trust

00:58:32.000 that will come back, right?

00:58:33.120 Yeah, that's kind of a turn the other cheek thing.

00:58:34.840 Yeah, exactly.

00:58:35.600 And you don't have to think that the other person's right or anything.

00:58:37.940 You just have to think that they are willing to actually come to a compromise of some kind.

00:58:42.660 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:58:43.480 A solution.

00:58:44.220 And to go, yeah, certainly.

00:58:45.320 I mean, one of the things that your mom and I have going for us is that fundamentally,

00:58:50.100 we trust each other.

00:58:51.320 Like, I really trust her to do her best to do the right thing, you know, and that can

00:58:57.140 be rocky on the road there.

00:58:59.300 But I know she's working, man.

00:59:02.820 She's working.

00:59:03.980 And hopefully she feels the same about me.

00:59:07.280 And so, you know, we decided when we got together, I had already decided that I was going

00:59:12.280 to try to not live by lies, let's say, at that point.

00:59:16.380 And I'd made a concerted effort to do that for a number of years.

00:59:19.120 And when we first got together, that was part of our agreements.

00:59:21.840 Like, no lies.

00:59:24.840 And I don't, I don't, I don't think your mother's ever lied to me.

00:59:33.960 So she really stuck to it, man.

00:59:35.720 Once she said that was what she was going to do, she.

00:59:40.140 It was impressive.

00:59:41.380 Yeah, yeah, it really is.

00:59:42.800 It's when she commits to something, she's committed.

00:59:45.220 And that was so useful, especially when things got really rocky in our lives, when you were

00:59:50.240 sick and when I was sick and when she was sick, because, because we could trust each

00:59:55.100 other.

00:59:55.860 You weren't sick.

00:59:56.580 I was just off to the side.

00:59:57.380 What the hell is wrong with you?

00:59:58.880 It's like, I'm not sick.

01:00:00.560 Look at me over here.

01:00:01.680 We don't have time to look at you.

01:00:06.440 That sounds about right.

01:00:07.680 Yeah.

01:00:08.380 No, I told you that when you were, I don't know how old you were, 10, something like that.

01:00:13.160 And when Michaela got so sick, I, I remember talking to you and saying, look, kiddo, we're

01:00:19.540 up to our neck here and you're going to have to be sensible.

01:00:24.540 And you were, it was cool.

01:00:27.440 We almost got a tear.

01:00:34.220 Wow.

01:00:34.620 It wouldn't be me if you got a tear.

01:00:37.820 Me and my feminine temperament.

01:00:40.160 My feminine goals, your feminine temperament.

01:00:42.500 Yeah.

01:00:43.100 I know.

01:00:43.700 Yeah.

01:00:45.260 Yep.

01:00:46.420 Wow.

01:00:47.180 I'm glad I'm sitting out of the, out of the pokes for this podcast.

01:00:50.900 I'll sit here quietly.

01:00:51.960 Uh, I guess we, I think you were too hard on yourself about relationships there, kiddo

01:00:56.840 earlier, comparing yourself with Julian.

01:01:01.580 That seems like a backhanded compliment.

01:01:06.720 Torn too.

01:01:07.980 I feel like I just, I, I just meant in comparison to me, I didn't, I'm not hard on my, I don't

01:01:13.640 think I did something necessarily.

01:01:17.000 I think I did my best.

01:01:18.780 Yeah.

01:01:19.000 We're in, there were some extenuating circumstances over here.

01:01:21.880 Yeah.

01:01:22.120 So I'm like, it just didn't turn out.

01:01:24.480 Yeah.

01:01:24.840 Well, you also had good relationships in the past.

01:01:27.140 It's not like you've had terrible relationships.

01:01:29.960 That's not how it's going.

01:01:30.940 No.

01:01:31.100 Yeah.

01:01:31.480 No, no.

01:01:32.240 It was hard.

01:01:33.600 So.

01:01:33.920 It has been hard.

01:01:34.680 Yes.

01:01:35.480 I think we should wrap up.

01:01:37.180 So I've just got one more question and I'm going to post all the like relevant links

01:01:40.920 and things below.

01:01:42.000 So that'll, anything you're interested in.

01:01:43.340 Oh, I have another question too, though, before we close.

01:01:47.080 Okay.

01:01:47.240 You go first.

01:01:48.000 Well, you did the most protracted writing you did was your thesis.

01:01:53.540 So why did you pick the topic and what did it do for you to write that?

01:01:59.080 And what did it teach you about writing?

01:02:00.740 And yeah, well, when I was in my fourth year of university, I was pursuing a music minor

01:02:05.880 and, and writing my thesis.

01:02:08.340 I was actually taking, I think I was taking six courses, working two jobs and writing my

01:02:13.200 thesis.

01:02:13.480 That was too much.

01:02:15.600 But it was interesting.

01:02:16.700 Right.

01:02:16.920 I mean, and one of the things that, you know, one of the things that you always say to people,

01:02:22.220 but you said to us as kids was, you know, it's useful to see how far you can, you know,

01:02:26.560 see how much you can work.

01:02:27.620 Right.

01:02:28.620 And see where your limits are to a certain extent.

01:02:30.720 And that was one of the things that it did to me that, or for me that year was that I

01:02:34.700 was, I was really going at full, full capacity, uh, doing all those things.

01:02:38.980 Um, and it, well, it was great.

01:02:41.600 It was writing a thesis was definitely the most meaningful part of my university experience.

01:02:47.320 Um, and I chose the thing that I did partly because it was very interesting to me, you

01:02:52.080 know, to go back to, uh, what we were talking about earlier, about finding a topic that compels

01:02:55.420 you.

01:02:55.720 It's, I thought it was, um, I'd been reading a lot of Heidegger because that was part of

01:03:02.120 the degree that I was doing was focused on kind of that era of philosophers.

01:03:05.900 And I found his philosophy extremely interesting.

01:03:09.260 Uh, and then I was also reading Terrence McKenna, uh, at that time, you would give me a few books

01:03:16.260 that were, uh, about the psychedelic experience and like fathers do.

01:03:20.520 Yeah.

01:03:21.140 That's a normal thing that people, uh, and I kept seeing parallels and maybe that was the

01:03:26.220 psychedelics, but, uh, but in any case, uh, I decided they were really good.

01:03:35.900 And, um, and so I just wanted to explore that because I didn't feel like it had ever been

01:03:42.620 explored properly, uh, that relationship between, you know, a fairly mainstream, I suppose.

01:03:48.240 Well, yeah, mainstream philosopher and, and kind of out there thinkers like Terrence McKenna

01:03:51.620 or like, um, yeah, the other, the other thinkers that I integrated into that paper.

01:03:56.560 Um, and it was just, you know, we're going to do something unique.

01:03:59.020 We have a psychedelic reading list pretty soon.

01:04:00.240 We are, yeah.

01:04:00.600 We've got about 50 books on that.

01:04:02.620 Is that paper, like, could that paper be put up online so people could read it?

01:04:06.860 It could, I'll put it in the essay app.

01:04:09.740 Yeah, I think you should put it in the essay app.

01:04:11.140 Didn't we decide that you were going to put it in the essay app?

01:04:13.080 Yeah, that probably needs to be edited.

01:04:14.480 Oh, God.

01:04:14.980 Well, use the essay app.

01:04:16.000 Use essay app.

01:04:17.000 Use essay app.

01:04:17.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:18.320 It's pretty good.

01:04:19.660 Yeah, it turned out quite well.

01:04:21.500 I was, I was proud of it.

01:04:22.480 And, uh, and yeah, for sure.

01:04:25.120 I could put it up so people could read it.

01:04:26.500 Yeah, so what does the act of writing that, a thesis is a capstone, right?

01:04:31.440 So you move from your undergraduate degree to masteries, mastery.

01:04:34.620 Right.

01:04:35.340 What did the thesis do for you psychologically?

01:04:38.440 The fact that you went through it?

01:04:40.240 Well, it was my greatest accomplishment at that time, right?

01:04:43.440 I mean, it, it was, wasn't, it was just a, the ability to complete something that.

01:04:50.400 Major.

01:04:50.660 That's major, just a major project in anything, but especially one that is unique and you put

01:04:56.580 a lot of thought into it, a lot of yourself into, um, well, that's why they put it at the

01:05:00.940 end of the degree, right?

01:05:01.960 And so you can use everything that you've captured while you've been learning and put it into

01:05:07.040 something that's, that's creative and new and, and hopefully teaches yourself what you've

01:05:12.780 learned and can teach other people as well.

01:05:14.960 So if you do a PhD thesis, it's usually something approximating the length of a book.

01:05:20.660 And then you go for your defense.

01:05:22.920 Mine was like the length of a Dr. Seuss book.

01:05:25.580 A long Dr. Seuss book though.

01:05:27.640 So how long was it?

01:05:29.140 I was, I think it was 29, maybe 30 pages.

01:05:32.540 Right, right, right.

01:05:33.760 And so a PhD thesis.

01:05:35.660 Which is a normal, like philosophy, undergrad philosophy thesis.

01:05:38.180 Right.

01:05:38.380 History thesis are generally like 70, 80 pages.

01:05:40.940 Right, right.

01:05:41.580 So a PhD thesis would be written for a research scientist would be 150 pages or something like

01:05:47.500 that.

01:05:48.880 And then you go for your defense and there's a few people on the committee, maybe five,

01:05:53.860 your, your supervisor and an outside reader and a couple of people from the department.

01:05:58.540 And they're really the only people that read it.

01:06:01.760 Now, sometimes if your thesis is particularly good, it's a research thesis, you can break

01:06:06.860 it up into papers and they're published and far more people will read it, but often not

01:06:10.280 even that many then.

01:06:11.620 And you might think, well, why write it if no one will read it?

01:06:15.480 Because it's a lot of work, three years of work.

01:06:17.880 But the answer is, well, you wrote it.

01:06:22.000 Yeah, that's the whole point for sure.

01:06:23.480 Yeah, and that trains you.

01:06:24.880 And plus, like you said, it's a capstone.

01:06:27.340 You know, one of the reasons it's really useful to finish something that you started is because

01:06:32.380 then you see someone, then you see yourself as someone who can finish what they started.

01:06:38.160 And you might think, well, what if I change my mind halfway through?

01:06:41.540 That's a good question.

01:06:42.800 But the answer to that should be, don't switch courses halfway through unless what you've

01:06:49.460 switched to is somewhat more difficult because you want to check yourself against the tendency

01:06:55.980 just to bail out and rationalize when things get difficult, when you're moving forward.

01:07:01.300 And you do have to reward yourself with completion for your effort because it's really punishing

01:07:07.640 to not finish something.

01:07:09.460 Yeah, for sure.

01:07:10.040 Because you don't attain the goal.

01:07:11.740 You don't move to consummation of the experience.

01:07:15.840 But it's not if what you move to is harder.

01:07:18.340 Well, that's a good check against your own internal tendency to rationalize.

01:07:24.220 It's like, okay, I'm going to aim at this.

01:07:26.520 I'm going to work towards completion.

01:07:29.580 But what if I find out along the way that I'm wrong?

01:07:32.440 Well, yeah, what if you find out along the way that it's difficult and you're not very

01:07:37.140 disciplined and you're pretty whiny and you turn away in the face of difficulties, right?

01:07:41.860 Because that's the opposite of that.

01:07:43.100 Well, one check against that is don't switch courses unless you're sure that what you switch

01:07:48.200 to is more challenging.

01:07:49.320 And then you're acting as your own check against the potential that your weakness, your moral

01:07:58.700 weakness fundamentally, will compromise your move forward.

01:08:01.600 I would also say, too, that another aspect of moving towards completion that's useful

01:08:07.280 is that you really learn at the end what it is that you've just done.

01:08:12.840 And then you can use that information to retool your next goal because you could say, well,

01:08:18.400 when you finished your philosophy degree, what did you do?

01:08:21.980 I worked at a bar.

01:08:23.500 And you worked at a bar and then and then you went to a boot camp.

01:08:27.920 Yeah.

01:08:28.200 So how did that come about?

01:08:29.440 Why did you work in a bar and why was that useful or not?

01:08:32.440 And then why did you move to the boot camp and how did that work?

01:08:35.940 Yeah.

01:08:36.160 So when I first started my undergrad degree, I was I was actually going to do computer science

01:08:40.820 science at UFT.

01:08:42.200 That's my plan.

01:08:43.240 I was going to do this great books program that I was going to it.

01:08:46.900 People often do this program as a one year program and then they go off and do something

01:08:49.980 else.

01:08:51.040 It's online.

01:08:52.680 Do you have a syllabus anywhere?

01:08:54.660 The syllabus is probably online.

01:08:55.820 The reading list.

01:08:56.680 Yeah.

01:08:57.340 It would be online.

01:08:58.340 Yeah.

01:08:58.560 You could.

01:08:59.000 I'm not exactly sure, but we could probably find a link to it.

01:09:01.160 Sounds like a Peterson Academy project.

01:09:03.320 Yeah.

01:09:05.380 And anyway, so I was planning to do that.

01:09:07.840 I was going to go to UFT or somewhere else, do computer science.

01:09:10.440 And because I was always a computer nerd and it turns out that I was, well, I met a lot

01:09:16.060 of good people, including my wife.

01:09:17.900 And so I did the degree and, and that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.

01:09:24.140 But at the end of it, I, you know, with a bachelor of arts, I mean, how many people have

01:09:29.000 bachelors of arts and don't exactly know what to do when they're done?

01:09:31.900 Pretty much all of them.

01:09:32.680 Um, and so I spent a little bit of time working, um, and figuring out what I was going to do.

01:09:38.400 Um, and while there were software bootcamps, which was an extremely straightforward way of

01:09:44.960 getting into that industry.

01:09:45.920 Uh, and so I went to light house labs and learned to program in a more standard way.

01:09:53.460 Um, and came out of that and started building user interfaces for racing yachts.

01:10:00.400 Nice.

01:10:02.440 Cause that, that always happens.

01:10:07.880 And that, when was it that we started talking about the online education project in relationship

01:10:13.040 to your programming was while you were working, designing the user interface for these navigation

01:10:18.540 systems.

01:10:18.940 Yeah, for sure.

01:10:19.560 These were for like high-end carbon fiber racing yachts.

01:10:22.380 Yes.

01:10:23.380 Yes.

01:10:23.880 So it's a rather niche market.

01:10:25.400 It's about as niche as it gets.

01:10:26.880 Yeah.

01:10:27.200 They, they race and no one watches.

01:10:29.160 Yeah.

01:10:32.400 And you worked in the bar for how long?

01:10:34.400 Oh, I worked, I worked in a bar all the way through my undergrad pretty much, uh, from

01:10:37.660 second year until, uh, you know, about 10 months after I'd completely agree.

01:10:42.100 And why did you do that?

01:10:43.020 And why was it useful apart from the money?

01:10:45.420 Well, the money was great.

01:10:46.320 Uh, that was obviously why it was a great job for, uh, to have as an undergraduate.

01:10:51.760 Um, you know, you get, it's a social job, you get to work in a restaurant, which it's

01:10:57.560 kind of, in, from my perspective, it's the best job in a restaurant because you get to,

01:11:02.400 uh, have a social life while you're doing it.

01:11:05.400 You get to communicate with people at the bar.

01:11:06.840 Um, people want to talk to you.

01:11:08.880 Um, you have a lot of responsibility.

01:11:11.420 You can also serve tables.

01:11:13.260 Um, why did you like the responsibility?

01:11:15.180 Well, I think in a, when you're working in a restaurant, it's nice to have a position

01:11:21.460 of some authority, I guess.

01:11:23.860 Right.

01:11:24.260 When, and, and the bar that I ended up working at, it was a, it was a bar at a Best Western.

01:11:29.200 Um, and they were just opening the bar.

01:11:31.100 So I was the first bartender there.

01:11:32.280 So I got to, uh, kind of organize the way it ran.

01:11:36.340 And so that was a, that was a useful, that was a useful thing to do.

01:11:39.460 Adopting that responsibility gives you decision-making power and freedom as a consequence of that.

01:11:43.540 Although I worked 14 hour shifts for the first three months because they were like, we're

01:11:48.740 going to have an 11 a.m.

01:11:49.960 to 11 p.m.

01:11:51.120 Bartender.

01:11:53.540 What?

01:11:54.320 And so that's what I did.

01:11:55.240 But then it took like two hours to, cause people would stay late, obviously, cause it's

01:11:59.060 the bar and then you'd have to clean up.

01:12:00.780 And so, yeah, 14 hours.

01:12:02.180 That was, that was a little much.

01:12:03.560 Did you get overtime?

01:12:04.520 Oh, yeah.

01:12:04.980 Yeah.

01:12:05.220 If, you know, if you got, if you went over for your weekly, uh, yeah, I did.

01:12:09.120 I got overtime sometimes.

01:12:09.880 Why didn't they just hire more people?

01:12:11.240 They did eventually, but they didn't know what they were doing.

01:12:14.180 Figure out.

01:12:14.800 Yeah.

01:12:14.980 Yeah.

01:12:15.240 And they didn't know how busy it was going to be or anything.

01:12:16.720 And, and so, yeah.

01:12:18.020 So did you, you ended up doing something practical.

01:12:23.720 Yes.

01:12:24.220 Engineering, essentially practical engineering.

01:12:25.980 What do you think was the utility of having the great books context?

01:12:32.680 And because you look back on that, you think it was worthwhile.

01:12:36.440 Why was it worthwhile?

01:12:38.540 Well, I mean, the biggest thing was that you are in a community of people who are reading

01:12:45.620 things that they would never otherwise read that are extremely valuable, right?

01:12:50.160 I mean, you're never going to read the Epic of Gilgamesh out of the context of that

01:12:55.940 sort of program.

01:12:56.900 If you're, well, you just won't.

01:12:59.060 Uh, and so, and it was cool.

01:13:00.760 It was kind of a bootcamp of its own, right?

01:13:02.440 You have, you know, a couple hundred people all reading the same book and writing papers

01:13:09.320 at the same time, living in the same, uh, uh, residence area.

01:13:14.260 And so it was a real, a real community of, yeah, for sure.

01:13:17.120 Well, that's British too.

01:13:18.220 It is.

01:13:18.540 And it was designed after Oxford.

01:13:20.160 Yeah.

01:13:20.560 And that's designed on the monastery tradition.

01:13:22.500 Yeah.

01:13:22.820 So it is a monastery.

01:13:23.960 It essentially is.

01:13:24.860 Yeah.

01:13:25.040 And so that, well, it was a fantastic community and, um, gave you the opportunity to do something

01:13:31.240 that you'd never otherwise get to do.

01:13:32.860 And, and, you know, in terms of the value that it gave me, I mean, there was the value

01:13:37.000 of completing a degree that's, that, that's valuable essentially, no matter it's, it's

01:13:41.960 personally valuable, no matter what degree you complete.

01:13:45.720 Uh, and then it taught me to write because you wrote a research paper about these books

01:13:51.440 every couple of weeks.

01:13:52.340 It's pretty much the most intensive writing program that you can do at an undergrad.

01:13:56.060 It's also related to this issue of the structure of essay that we started this conversation

01:14:02.060 with, because, you know, while you're programming, you're typing and you're moving your fingers.

01:14:07.760 This is how I program.

01:14:08.600 Yeah.

01:14:08.800 It's like this sort of randomly.

01:14:10.760 It's very concrete and you're actually building something, but it's nested inside an entire

01:14:16.560 value structure because there's a reason for what you're doing.

01:14:19.660 And there's a reason for the reason that you're doing that and et cetera, all the way

01:14:24.680 up to the highest level of analysis.

01:14:26.340 And if you study philosophy, you study the great books, tradition, the Canon, then it

01:14:33.100 allows you the opportunity to organize your goals and your values at the highest and broadest

01:14:38.980 sense.

01:14:39.720 And that means that you can orient the practicalities towards a high end.

01:14:44.540 And for us, the practicalities of your profession are oriented towards facilitating people's use

01:14:51.940 of words and there isn't a higher purpose than that.

01:14:55.420 And so you get organized the advantage of doing an undergraduate.

01:15:00.280 I would say in, in, in conjunction with a practical apprenticeship is that you get good at what

01:15:06.540 you're doing at every level, all the way up to the, to the highest level.

01:15:10.240 So what about, would you describe yourself as religious or not?

01:15:17.880 Not, not particularly.

01:15:19.760 No.

01:15:20.240 I mean, I think that I have a lot of appreciation for religious tradition and I've read a lot

01:15:26.840 of religious texts because of the degree I did.

01:15:30.640 Um, well, I don't know.

01:15:32.700 It's a complicated question to answer it like you do.

01:15:35.580 Yeah.

01:15:35.780 But I usually say more than that.

01:15:39.020 Well, sometimes.

01:15:40.780 Well, you studied these great traditions and the great books.

01:15:43.860 Yeah.

01:15:44.080 I don't think that I've fully, I guess.

01:15:46.380 Yeah.

01:15:46.560 I don't think that I've fully, uh, I don't think I have a complete understanding of my

01:15:52.100 own, uh, religiosity, I guess.

01:15:55.500 I don't think that I do.

01:15:56.280 I think that that's a work in progress for me and for my family.

01:15:59.380 You know, it's something we talk about fairly often.

01:16:01.000 It's like, how, how do you, I mean, we live in downtown Toronto and, uh,

01:16:05.780 you know, there's not a, there's not an excellent religious tradition among young people in,

01:16:10.140 in downtown.

01:16:10.900 So, that's just not something.

01:16:12.220 So, the community aspect isn't there.

01:16:14.220 Um, the traditions aren't like obvious.

01:16:17.000 And so, how do you integrate that, the value that comes out of that, right?

01:16:21.100 Like the community and the tradition.

01:16:22.380 So, it's missing the monastery element.

01:16:24.080 Yeah.

01:16:24.320 It's missing that.

01:16:24.980 And so, and so, trying to figure out how to incorporate that into your family as a,

01:16:29.540 as a young person is, takes a lot of effort.

01:16:33.360 And it's something my wife and I do talk about fairly often.

01:16:35.880 And we've talked to our friends about it.

01:16:37.480 And I feel like a lot of people struggle with, with how to incorporate the positive elements

01:16:43.600 of, of religion, of, of that tradition into their lives.

01:16:47.300 It's.

01:16:47.620 And what do you make of the fact that these religious, more religious ideas that I've

01:16:51.900 been discussing, let's say, primarily from a psychological perspective, what do you make

01:16:56.740 of the fact that they've been of interest to young people?

01:16:59.480 Well, I think it's exactly the sort of thing that I just described.

01:17:02.520 And people have a yearning for tradition and for, uh, meaning.

01:17:07.800 And, you know, I think that I obviously was privy to a lot of these thoughts growing up.

01:17:13.500 And so, it, you know, I was already asking these questions and, and, and it was already

01:17:17.560 interesting to me, but I think you just opened a lot of people's eyes about the sorts of value

01:17:22.300 that they can get from old ideas, right?

01:17:26.200 Old, old and meaningful ideas, but, but ideas that are very abstract.

01:17:30.560 And so, you know, you were able to turn them into less abstract ideas.

01:17:34.760 Like we did with the essay app.

01:17:36.120 Yes, exactly.

01:17:37.540 Um, so I think it made a lot of sense.

01:17:40.060 I wasn't particularly, I mean, I was surprised on the scale of it, but I wasn't.

01:17:43.500 I wasn't surprised that people were interested in that.

01:17:45.440 That's what people have always been interested in.

01:17:48.120 People who can articulate religious ideas out of abstraction.

01:17:52.440 Mm-hmm.

01:17:53.060 Mm-hmm.

01:17:53.780 And what do you think, what ideals and values do you think guide you?

01:17:58.120 If you had to make it explicit, what do you aim at at the highest level?

01:18:02.360 You think, I mean, and you, you, you talked about trust in your relationship.

01:18:05.780 What, what do you aim at in your, in your day-to-day life?

01:18:09.220 And, well, I think I try to, I try to do the things that make me feel, well, it's, I mean,

01:18:21.580 it's a complicated thing to answer, right?

01:18:22.940 You, you, you follow the things that make you feel strong, I guess.

01:18:28.160 Or, I mean, but I don't really even feel like strong is the right word necessarily, but.

01:18:33.800 Well, strong is not a bad word.

01:18:34.860 Things that make you feel positively about yourself in the long run, I guess.

01:18:40.520 And, and I don't know, I've always, I've always struggled with setting

01:18:44.060 long-term goals, I guess, right?

01:18:48.160 I don't think that's ever been one of my strong suits.

01:18:50.020 It's like, you know, when I'm going to, I was always interested in being all sorts of things.

01:18:54.020 And I was, well, I wanted to be a professional hockey player, but I was like, I was this close,

01:18:58.860 you know?

01:19:05.220 Yeah.

01:19:05.540 Well, that's a problem of being interested in many things too.

01:19:07.840 For sure.

01:19:08.300 And, but that's worked in my favor because I do get to do a lot of things now.

01:19:11.720 Um, and so I think that, I guess that's my long-term goal is to do a lot of interesting

01:19:15.860 things and have a varied life where I have a feminine goal thing.

01:19:21.960 Yeah.

01:19:22.240 Well, I think I actually was like, yeah, that sounds about right.

01:19:26.200 Men, men aimed at perfection and women aimed at completeness.

01:19:29.620 Right.

01:19:30.180 Or wholeness.

01:19:30.940 Yeah.

01:19:31.160 And, and I think there's truth in that, that instead of becoming absolutely perfect at one

01:19:37.240 thing, which is, which is a really useful practice.

01:19:40.200 If you want to move up a given competence hierarchy in the broader context of your

01:19:44.640 life, I mean, I certainly wouldn't have sacrificed my family for my career.

01:19:50.280 In fact, I, if push came to shove, I would have done the opposite, even though I really

01:19:55.140 love my, loved my career and love my career now.

01:19:58.060 And so it is necessary to arrange an optimal balance.

01:20:03.820 And that optimal balance is the highest unity towards which people can strive, right?

01:20:09.720 You have to wander around through those diverse areas to figure out how to integrate them.

01:20:13.880 But yeah, you, you, you aren't everything you could be unless you flesh out your life.

01:20:19.440 One, I've also been fortunate in a lot of ways to be able to explore all these things

01:20:23.940 that I like to be able to go to an undergrad and do that and be feel like, feel free to

01:20:31.120 explore producing an album.

01:20:33.380 That's your privilege.

01:20:34.340 Well, I think it is.

01:20:35.400 Absolutely.

01:20:35.900 Yeah.

01:20:36.000 Okay.

01:20:36.220 So I have a question for you related to that.

01:20:39.040 So you had privileges that other people don't have.

01:20:42.320 How do you think you best atone for your privileges?

01:20:45.380 Well, by taking advantage of them in a way that benefits other people as well as yourself,

01:20:52.840 right?

01:20:53.020 I mean, that's the only way you can do it.

01:20:54.360 You can't, you have to use your opportunities in a positive way.

01:20:59.240 I think that's, yeah, because people are going to have different levels of privilege.

01:21:03.540 But it's either that or feel guilty about it.

01:21:04.600 Yeah.

01:21:04.860 It's not very helpful.

01:21:06.200 Yeah.

01:21:06.480 And when guilt might be a decent motivator for some people, but.

01:21:09.500 Yeah.

01:21:09.760 And it's necessary, but it's easy to be overwhelmed by it, you know, because.

01:21:13.000 Yeah.

01:21:13.220 And it isn't necessary.

01:21:14.840 That's the Heideggerian throneness.

01:21:16.440 Yeah.

01:21:16.740 Yeah.

01:21:16.880 Exactly.

01:21:17.620 And I do think the answer to that isn't to feel so guilty and terrible about the fact

01:21:21.900 that you have some gifts and other people don't.

01:21:24.200 You have some burdens and other people don't too.

01:21:26.020 Yeah.

01:21:26.040 So it's hard to judge that.

01:21:27.140 Well, it's just not, I mean, it's not useful.

01:21:29.820 It's not like you can, you can't really throw away your privilege, right?

01:21:32.780 I mean, Bruce Wayne doesn't like, stop being Bruce Wayne when he goes off and, and stop

01:21:39.120 and, you know, becomes Batman eventually.

01:21:41.260 He's always the same guy.

01:21:42.800 He can't, you can't get rid of your past and your opportunities very easily.

01:21:46.100 Yeah.

01:21:46.380 And it's foolish to throw them away.

01:21:47.640 Right.

01:21:47.920 Exactly.

01:21:48.380 So it's, you know, I mean, the goal is.

01:21:50.260 Is that benefiting?

01:21:51.560 That's a good question.

01:21:53.560 Yeah.

01:21:53.800 Agents of mayhem and chaos fundamentally and hopelessness.

01:21:57.860 Yeah.

01:21:58.000 No, you have to atone for your privilege and that, that doesn't mean to.

01:22:01.740 What's by taking advantage of your opportunities in a positive way.

01:22:04.200 And that's, yeah.

01:22:05.600 And so that's what I, that's what I try to do as much as I can.

01:22:08.660 By making the most of them.

01:22:09.700 Yeah.

01:22:09.860 And I think, I think that idea of doing that in a way that benefits you and everyone else

01:22:15.280 simultaneously, that's, that's sustainable in the highest possible sense.

01:22:21.880 Okay.

01:22:23.400 So I think we should wrap it up.

01:22:26.220 Although I'm definitely going to convince you to talk to me again when we're, yeah, it's

01:22:31.080 going to happen.

01:22:31.800 But what's the piece of advice dad gave you that's really stuck with you?

01:22:37.460 Do you have one?

01:22:41.780 Well, the one I always liked best was the don't follow stupid rules one.

01:22:45.880 Yeah.

01:22:46.460 That's, that's, that's a, that's a great piece of advice that comes in handy, you know,

01:22:52.300 all the time.

01:22:53.680 Yeah.

01:22:53.840 Well, I remember, I think when we discussed that to begin with was in the context of your

01:22:58.340 school's no snowball policy.

01:23:00.120 Oh yeah.

01:23:00.420 So Julian and Michaela went to a school very nearby that was run by a benevolent fascist

01:23:06.420 and.

01:23:07.500 She was horrible.

01:23:08.460 She was evil.

01:23:09.180 She was quite the creature.

01:23:10.280 Anyways, anyways.

01:23:11.920 Yeah.

01:23:12.320 She was quite the creature.

01:23:13.420 Anyways, they had a no snowball.

01:23:15.320 No, no.

01:23:15.780 It was actually, it was worse than that.

01:23:16.820 I know.

01:23:17.020 It was no picking up snow.

01:23:18.500 Right.

01:23:18.680 You couldn't even pick it up.

01:23:19.520 Yeah.

01:23:20.340 Well, you might throw a snowball at it.

01:23:21.180 And so of course, none of the children did.

01:23:23.220 Yeah.

01:23:23.420 Of course.

01:23:24.200 Of course.

01:23:24.640 So that made all of them instantly criminals by pursuing their own.

01:23:28.380 Anyways, I told them they could pick up snow if they wanted to and even make a snowball.

01:23:32.440 And if they wanted to hit the odd teacher who might deserve it in the head of the snowball,

01:23:36.980 that'd probably be okay too.

01:23:38.680 But that you have to pay.

01:23:40.400 Yeah.

01:23:40.880 The PTA loved this guy.

01:23:43.480 You had to be willing to pay for your crime.

01:23:45.820 Right.

01:23:45.920 Yeah.

01:23:46.220 Yeah.

01:23:46.500 Yeah.

01:23:47.920 Yeah.

01:23:48.360 And so there's that one.

01:23:49.000 And then, and then probably the advice that stuck with me most of all is, is one from mom

01:23:55.760 though, because she told me when I was caught smoking weed in like middle school, and she

01:24:04.000 said, she basically said that you can, you know, you can explore the world, but you have

01:24:11.380 to do it carefully and, and, you know, in a, in a cautious way and not go too far.

01:24:20.140 And that one always really stuck with me because I always told me that you were there.

01:24:25.120 You just, you just weren't listening.

01:24:27.780 Well, the way that your mother and I formulated, cause we talked about this, we'd, we'd lived

01:24:33.620 through the, just say no to drugs push from the Reagans.

01:24:37.040 And it was, no, it just didn't work for a while.

01:24:39.700 It just doesn't work.

01:24:40.580 And I also knew from the psych literature that kids who never explored and experimented

01:24:46.440 were actually as bad off as those who did too much.

01:24:49.980 Right.

01:24:50.580 And so then the question is, it's like this compromise ideal in some sense.

01:24:54.020 Well, is there a golden mean?

01:24:55.720 And part of what your mom and I worked out was, and I think we told you this explicitly

01:25:02.500 too, if you were going to smoke pot, for example, we didn't want to be able to see that

01:25:07.820 you were stoned.

01:25:08.640 Right.

01:25:08.860 So like, if you couldn't handle it, you were doing too much.

01:25:13.160 Yeah.

01:25:13.340 And I think that's, I can't see how you can come up with a doctrine that's better than

01:25:19.740 that.

01:25:20.080 It's like, well, if it's interfering with your life, your social function, that's diagnostic

01:25:26.300 criteria for abuse.

01:25:27.680 Yeah, exactly.

01:25:28.620 And yeah, that one always stuck with me.

01:25:29.980 I don't know.

01:25:30.320 And well, that's, I feel like it's a philosophical, I guess, idea that works in pretty much every

01:25:38.520 area of someone's life.

01:25:39.660 And I think that's part of the reason why I do have the goals that I have is because I

01:25:43.960 feel, I do feel like, you know, the best sort of life is one that is complete in, you know,

01:25:51.760 a variety of areas.

01:25:52.660 And that's the same thing as not going too far, right?

01:25:58.160 Well, in the self-authoring suite, in the future authoring program, we have people write about

01:26:02.680 desired career or job.

01:26:05.720 Like, you're lucky if you have a career, but at least you could have a job.

01:26:08.420 That can be a career if you do it properly.

01:26:10.560 So I like working in bars and restaurants, you know, because those are way more complicated

01:26:15.080 jobs than people think.

01:26:16.240 Like, so are you as educated as your intelligence might require, right?

01:26:21.500 Do you have friends, at least one friend that you actually see now and then?

01:26:26.780 Do you have an intimate relationship?

01:26:28.360 Are you working towards it?

01:26:29.880 Can you govern your alcohol and drug intake?

01:26:33.260 What do you do to optimize your mental and physical health?

01:26:35.820 And do you use your time outside of your obligations productively and meaningfully?

01:26:39.700 And that's sort of seven dimensions.

01:26:42.040 And, you know, maybe you can't function optimally on all seven, but zero.

01:26:46.320 Is the wrong number and four might be enough.

01:26:49.020 And one person might pick one set of four and another, another set of four, but it's

01:26:54.080 good practical place to start.

01:26:55.800 And I think you're much less likely to be miserable and resentful and unhappy and anxious

01:27:00.540 and hopeless.

01:27:01.800 If you're firing on all seven.

01:27:05.420 That's what they say, right?

01:27:06.500 Yeah.

01:27:09.780 What about with regards to your son?

01:27:11.740 What principles do you use?

01:27:13.480 Disciplinary principles and how do you negotiate that with?

01:27:16.340 Julian?

01:27:17.720 Well, we talk about it a lot.

01:27:19.480 That's the main thing, um, is making sure you're on the same page as your partner.

01:27:24.360 Um, when it comes to discipline, otherwise you end up disciplining each other instead of

01:27:29.520 the kid and the kid gets nothing.

01:27:33.080 Um, and so that's been the main thing.

01:27:34.840 Um, but you know, the, the idea that's, that you want to make sure at every level that your

01:27:42.620 kid is being the kid who, um, will turn into the adults that you want them to be, right?

01:27:49.160 I mean, that's, that's the idea.

01:27:50.120 You want to watch for behaviors that aren't going to serve them well.

01:27:52.480 And then, you know, in a, in as careful and productive way as you can, you discipline, whether

01:28:01.600 that's just taking them aside and talking to them or, yeah, discipline doesn't mean punish.

01:28:05.460 No, it just means, it means paying attention and, and, you know, uh, it basically means

01:28:11.020 paying attention and then acting on it.

01:28:12.340 Um, so that's what we try to do.

01:28:14.920 And, you know, he's one and a half, so he listens perfectly.

01:28:18.400 Yeah.

01:28:19.700 Yeah.

01:28:20.100 He's doing all right.

01:28:21.160 Yeah.

01:28:21.880 He's doing all right.

01:28:23.680 Okay.

01:28:24.120 Well, cheers guys.

01:28:25.600 That was fun.

01:28:26.560 You bet.

01:28:27.320 Cheers.

01:28:27.840 And here's to finally having this conversation.

01:28:30.860 Yeah.

01:28:31.140 And being able to have it.

01:28:32.480 Yeah.

01:28:33.080 Thank God.

01:28:33.860 Thank God.

01:28:42.340 Cheers.

01:28:48.560 Cheers.

01:28:51.400 Cheers.

01:28:56.840 Cheers.

01:28:58.800 Cheers.

01:28:58.960 Cheers.

01:29:00.220 Cheers.

01:29:07.120 Cheers.

01:29:07.980 Cheers.

01:29:09.300 Cheers.

01:29:09.900 Cheers.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 06, 2022

259. The Elusive Son ｜ Julian Peterson

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