You have a cognitive bias. Everyone does. [The Zero Dot Podcast #18]

Biases are your brain helping you save time.

If you eat a thing and it looks purple and it looks spiky and you go, ow, this is poison,
I shouldn't eat this.

You stop eating those things.

That's a great idea.

It's a super helpful time-saving trick.

The problem is your brain isn't really good at making those assumptions.

Occasionally it'll make a very helpful one and be like, this is in fact dangerous.

And other times it'll be like, that's dangerous.

And it's like, no, that's uh actually quite lovely if we get a little more exposure to it.

and it can make huge skipping leaps.

Okay, so I have no authority to talk about this, so if you happen to be a wrestler who
watches this show and you want to correct me, feel free.

But I don't think you are, so here we go.

I was a wrestler for very brief time.

The problem is have to wrestle people.

Yeah.

hold on, don't...

You have a story.

You were a wrestler?

Amateur wrestler, right?

No, because people don't like you unless you do sports, is what I learned.

It's not true.

So if you only watch that part of the episode, colossal missing there.

But no, no, no.

I tried to do a lot of sports.

I was kind of OK at a couple of them.

I was not OK at wrestling, but I've never lost in wrestling.

I'm 1 and 0.

I pinned a kid from Mattoon and said, fuck this.

And I quit.

And I bled a knee injury that wasn't real.

But the reason I bring it up is because in wrestling, occasionally you come across these
dudes.

I did the whole preseason.

I did all the training and shit and I just was like, no I wanna do this.

Did you like way stronger than you?

And those that bulldog you?

And you're like, my God.

And you kinda have to just like ride the rodeo ride a little bit.

And then they gas themselves and you go, and you take a deep breath.

You have one second here to kind of catch things and go on before you have to like exert
yourself and move.

This is that.

This is that.

It's nice out.

People are happy.

We're being nice.

There's less.

obnoxious narrative wells running about.

Obviously there's more to do for fighting the good fight, but it feels good when you can
tell that you guys made some momentum, some progress.

And the narrative in the office is where I work, office really, uh is a lot of people
saying like, you know, I'm feeling connected to the community.

I'm knowing, I'm glad knowing that people understand what's going on.

I don't feel like we're just this weird, like terrible thing happening in the dark.

People understand it now.

People are supporting it now.

Eyes are on this now.

and the tone is shifting.

The people here are very hearty.

I get a little emotional whenever I talk about it.

I'm an adopted son of Minnesota, I'm not from here.

And it's just, it is an easier, better week.

I don't know, I feel good.

I feel good, fellas.

Honestly, for the first time in a while, have I felt like the tide is turning, so.

Feels good to say it.

We'll take absolutely no credit for it, but I will just say zeroing in on the issues as we
do right here and letting us know what are the actions we can possibly do.

I'm sure is a contributing factor, not just to that, but to everything else.

So thanks, John, for sharing and I appreciate that.

And I know I felt the same way and similar factors, even though your problem is coming in
toward my neck of the woods here in Philadelphia, but it's we they're going to find out

what happens when you fuck around and find out.

that's P.H.

U.C.K.

for those that want to censor that fuck around and find out.

That's our phrase.

We'll see what happens.

I'll let you all know.

I thinking about that um because I feel like the way Minnesota handled it ah was pretty
cool.

There's a lot of peaceful, very active, insistent, aggressive, but never like threatening
protest.

And they were like, okay, well, we can't handle these guys.

Let's go mess with Philadelphia.

And it's like, no, you didn't learn the right lesson.

That's not what you should do next.

You should stop doing this because you're gonna get embarrassed if you go there.

Don't do it.

yeah.

Speaking of, this is unrelated to anything, but you brought it up and now I'm thinking
about it.

Hold on.

I just read about this, I'm like, I gotta bring this up to John.

Hold on.

Okay.

So I apologize in advance, I'm not taking responsibility for this, but apparently, this
just came up a couple days ago.

This is a press release from the public of Office Affairs.

I'm gonna share my screen so we can all see what we're talking about right here.

Give me a moment.

uh Fraud tourists plead guilty to Minneapolis Medicaid fraud.

So.

two Pennsylvania men, specifically from Philadelphia, uh pleaded guilty yesterday to
repeatedly traveling from Philly to Minneapolis, your neck of woods, to defraud

Minnesota's Housing Stabilization Services, HSS program of approximately $3.5 million and
concealing the scheme by using artificial intelligence to create fake records when

questioned by insurance companies.

And there's more stuff right here.

But basically what these gentlemen did...

Apparently the HSS is not a super highly regulated space for Minnesota that they don't
police it super often It's more like a please don't steal it from us kind of thing and

these two criminal people found a way through it and defrauded people 3.5 million dollars
uh I'm sad about that because it's Philadelphia versus uh Minnesota, but I am happy

justice is being served So I just wanted to bring that to your attention John.

I'm sorry I'm really sorry

I do run the HSS and you did send those guys.

So I'm glad we're finally mending this bridge, because it did feel a bit like a weird one
we'd have to address, but I can get past it if you can.

In general, I do want to highlight a little passage in this article here, which if you're
just skimming along, you may have missed over the part where it says, these two dipshits

tried to use AI to hide things.

And if you're at home and you're a little dipshit and you're like, I'm going to hide
things and be sneaky with AI, you're not going to do it.

It doesn't work.

You can go on Etsy and type in like cool boy cool poster and try to sell that for $15 and
maybe you'll get a bite or two, but If it's money people will know and they won't like it.

So I don't know.

I don't know people are silly

John, I need some good news, buddy.

Give me some good news.

I got good news.

It's specific news and it's actually in the same vein.

sort of, we here at the Zeed we're talking and there's a level of like, we don't...

Zeed.

The Zeed.

The Zeed.

If we had a zine, it be the Zeed zine and everyone would hate it.

So let's not do that.

game by Sega called Shinobi and the bad guy in that game was Zeed or Neo Zeed later on, so
we are the bad guy in this story.

But continue, I like it.

I will be the oldest age I'll ever be, like on my dying year.

And someone might say Sega, and I was to hear, Like every time, I'll never not hear that.

That is just grounding in my brain.

Anyway, the good news is as follows.

It's about tow trucks and ice.

Two things everyone likes that we all think are good that are probably gonna be a good
story.

It is.

There's a fella named by the name of Juan Leon.

who became the proud owner of Minnesota's newest tow truck service recently.

And what he had been doing is taking these tows in uh per ICE bullshit.

And what I'm...

I'm gonna cut the story short because it's a lot of lore, but he's just given all the cars
back for free.

He just...

So, I'm gonna read the title.

Minnesota tow truck driver returns abandoned vehicles to family after ICE arrest.

He got told, go get these cars, take them away.

And he's like, I'll just take them to the fucking families.

So, there you go.

Just doing it for free.

ah It has been, I get emotional every time, like the people in this state have just been
like, no, we're gonna be team human again and again and again.

This person is going against his profits by doing this.

He's doing a counterproductive thing for his newish business, but I'll tell you what, he
is beloved pretty much immediately.

If my car needs a tow, I know who I'll reach out to.

Wow, that is lovely.

It is.

This doesn't compare at all, but I remember the last time I got my car towed, was parking
in the city here in Philadelphia.

Who knew?

And I thought I parked on the right side of the sign, but apparently the sign was so
confusing enough, I was parking on the wrong side of the sign and you're on the wrong side

of the sign, your car gets towed.

Whatever, that's not the important part of story.

The important part of the story is it gets towed.

The next, I have to take a taxi back home.

I have to go to the Department of Transportation DOT office and try to...

plead my claim, whatever.

And this lady had absolutely no heart whatsoever.

She's like, you are a dumb person for having not read this very, very confusing sign.

And clearly the way that the sign was pointed, the arrows were going this way and you were
going that way.

And yes, the sign was tilted specifically in a direction that only you'd be able to see
it.

But I mean, she went through a diagram of showing you're an idiot, pay the goddamn fine,
pay the toll and then you'll get your car.

And I was like, it's not worth my brain space.

I made the mistake and now I almost never park in the city unless I'm going into a lot or
something of that nature.

That's my lesson for me.

uh So when I hear this story, John, you're sharing, that just makes me really happy.

just good people doing good stuff saying, you know what, we're team human.

We don't have to be dicks about this.

Let's just return it back to where it belongs.

No charge, just do it.

I'd give Mr.

I didn't take his parents lay on early owner, but one more shout out.

He's done it approximately 250 times Yeah, this dude fucking rules super duper hard, so I
think I think it's Leo's towing in Minneapolis so shout out to him

is f-

That's fucking awesome.

That's it.

the ponderance on the on the F and being like am I doing it?

I'm gonna let it rip.

I'm gonna let rip.

It's worth it.

That's good.

but that's a fucking awesome thing.

No pH.

That's an F.

That's an F, by the way.

Yeah.

That's good.

I don't know.

I'll beat this drum, Jill, as everyone's fucking annoyed with it, but I don't care.

It's a really good drum.

Like, people are so easy to fracture into groups uh as a fan of my football team.

And so and so is a fan of his football team.

can be like, you're bad and I don't like you on a Sunday.

But like, there is a spirit here of just like, and I don't even mean just like
Minneapolis.

I mean, like in the world of just like help your neighbor.

And it's pretty cool to see and you see it a lot.

It doesn't get the same traction because you don't click on links like that all the time.

But that's part of the show, man.

That's why I want to do this to help just put a little positivity back out there as we're
all fighting the good fight.

When you zoom out and go, does this shit really matter?

Let me help that person.

That's the good stuff.

That's what I live for.

That's a great story, John.

I love that story.

So as a result of that, it gives me absolutely no pleasure then to bring the mood down
just a smidge.

And a different change of events, I'm actually gonna talk about something that's not good
happening to Zero Dot right now, us specifically.

I'm gonna bring up, our folks, give our folks kind of a...

a peel behind the curtain for just a little bit in the business of Zero Dot.

On Zero Dot, as you know, we are a podcast that's available basically everywhere.

We try to be available wherever we can.

And whenever we think it's possible and feasible, we do some slight promotions.

And by promotions, I mean, you know what?

We'll pay for a little bit to kind of throw our videos or our clips or some of our
podcasts to folks so that they can see more of it, try to beat the algorithm at its game,

right?

We've done that a couple of times now.

We'll probably do it a couple more times.

And...

We try to do it again for our latest episode, which is the two episodes prior to the one
you're listening to right now.

We did it for the episode called Beautiful Music on Broken Instruments.

And when we try to throw a promotion at this particular podcast, which we're gonna throw
on YouTube, on the good old Google overlords, Google ads, well, they had something to say

about that.

What they had to say was, well, I'm gonna share my screen in a moment, but I'll go ahead
and explain it to my listeners as well so they can get a good idea of this.

They said

the YouTube promotion has been disapproved because it violates a policy regarding to the
election advertising in the United States.

There's a certificate required when any kind of video is going to have election
advertising in the United States attached to it.

And as a result, you can see in the screenshot here, it was disapproved.

We were not able to promote it.

Now, let me pause here for a moment because John's laughing hysterically, but let me just
walk people through this in case you didn't listen to our wonderful episode called

Beautiful Music on Broken Instruments.

Not once do we use the word election in that video.

Not once do we promote elections of any kind in that particular video.

This was a decision that Google Ads made that said, you know what would be best for this
video is if we go ahead and use election advertising for this video for certain users.

But because, for some reason, the content of this video violates that, we now have to
disapprove your promotional pitch for us to able to promote this for you.

Now you might think, okay, that's fine.

There's a process in place.

We can veto this.

We can try to fix this, right?

Well, we got an email saying, advertiser, looks like one or more of your ads and assets
are disapproved due to Google Ads election advertising in United States policy.

The campaigns with the highest number of impacted ads and assets are listed below.

It listed absolutely nothing, but it said, hey, click on this link to fix ads.

It took us to the Google Ads page.

And you know what it said, John?

You don't have any policy issues.

There was nothing for us to fix.

There was a violation, something had been disapproved, but there was nothing for us to
fix.

So why do I bring this up?

I don't have a screenshot of this part because I couldn't relocate it afterwards, but when
I went through all the deep dives of all the wikis and all the FAQs, John and Daniel, what

they recommended was, just change the video and see if that goes through.

That was their solution.

That was the solution.

Now, there's a good news to this story, and the numbers will change once this gets

published, but

Once I did change the video and change to one of our shorter clips, not the full podcast,
we went from having 23 views on one of our clips to having 2.5 thousand.

And then in the span of 45 minutes, we went from 2.5, sorry, 1.4 to 2.5, over 3,000 views
right now on that clip, which means people liked the video enough to click on it, like it,

watch it, it meant something.

There was value to it.

Now, if I was a cynical man, John and Daniel, I would say this is censorship.

I'm not gonna say that though.

Here's what I.

I'm gonna say, but John, go for it.

No, no, no, please, please finish your thought.

I want you to finish your thought.

I can wait.

Yeah.

What I am going to finish with is, okay, what can we do about this?

Because again, it's our business, it's our job not to say, hey, here's the bad, there's
nothing you can do about it.

And let's also make it really clear to our listeners and our watchers, do not feel bad for
us.

We are a business.

Whatever happens to us, it's not a big deal.

I'm only thinking about everyone else in this ecosphere, in this space of just trying to
get their word out and so forth.

And what I have to share with you is this.

John, Daniel, and myself made a decision a couple of weeks ago that we are no longer going
to be on TikTok.

If you watch prior episodes, we have talked about, we have a TikTok page.

We don't have that anymore.

We got rid of it.

We got rid of it because we vehemently believe that the TikTokification, the algorithmic
uh feeding of information to everyone is doing a much larger disservice than anything

else.

And we believe in giving people the power to search for the things that they want to do.

So to me, this is a larger systemic problem of YouTube trying to deal with this idea of
who we're going to feed this information to.

How are we gonna make our advertisers happier?

And yes, you could make the cynical view that it is censorship.

Daniel was saying before how you click on one thing, you search up one thing, and then
suddenly it gives you 10 million different views on that particular one thing you searched

up that one time.

Well, there is a solution.

It involves a couple of clicks.

But the one solution that I provide that I suggest to everyone, and I know it's going to
be a little annoying, I apologize.

But it's this.

Let me make sure it's going to pull up.

Hold on.

Incognito mode or

some kind of mode that doesn't track your information and searching up YouTube each time
and using this lovely search bar literally typing in whatever you want and searching for

the content that you want.

So I'm going to recommend to every single person on this planet use the search bar more.

Don't, you know, if you want to go ahead and have your stuff curated for you via the
algorithm.

If that's what you enjoy, that's fine.

But I'm empowering all of us zero daughters search your stuff up more.

If you're afraid of what it's going to be feeding to you.

Go ahead and use incognito mode because here's the truth and this is the unfortunate
thing.

Everybody's listening to you.

Google ads blocked us because they listened to our episode and thought what we had to say
was problematic and we didn't want to advertise to it.

That's the end of the day.

And I'm not here to say that's wrong or right, but that's what they're doing.

I would, the one thing that we talked about here at Zero Dial is making sure that we don't
throw away the choices that we didn't know we had.

You always have a choice.

You can always do the searching on your own and that's one way of facing it.

But John,

You had something you wanted to say, I don't want to interrupt you.

no, man, I'm glad you got to finish your piece there because it does end on a positive and
empowering note.

My bit isn't cynical, it may be a little cynical, but it's just like.

Dear viewer slash listener, I'm doing that thing where I look at the camera so you know
that I'm being serious and sincere.

It's a little dehumanizing on my part, so I'm staring at a black obelisk with a green
circle and it doesn't feel like anything, but here's what I want you to know.

Shit's about to get real dumb, because I was looking at that content of that video, and we
talked about emotional intelligence and how to promote your human strengths.

You know, election stuff.

But I kept saying things like Minnesota.

And we did talk about Nvidia who does have shareholders who might give money to some
people.

And if I were to say to you that I wanted to buy weight plates for my gym and you said,
Oh, dinner plates, the metaphor of plate being full.

Oh, a plate glass.

Like it is going to be so dumb.

It's going to be so dumb.

And I think ultimately the good news is like

People will make change, you're seeing it here.

You're gonna see it elsewhere, but please make your voices heard.

Please make your voices heard.

However you see fit, wherever you want to.

The zeitgeist of, know, talking is powerful.

That's a really dumb way to say that, but if you make it the narrative and you share it
with people, we can get on board and support each other.

Never, never get it twisted that a corporation cares about you.

It's not a thing.

They don't.

And they have...

Wanted to do less work and get more money per tradition and AI is the absolute king of
that.

So they went ahead and scanned for a bunch of buzzwords, which apparently are related to
elections.

So now you're protected from our harmful bison.

It's so soft.

It's so weak.

Like do your fucking job.

my God.

I don't know.

We have this guy on our show.

His name's Daniel.

He's incredibly important.

And what he does is he weaves together things and makes them work and he makes them pretty
and he makes us art and he makes us have a vibe and he does a beautiful job and we're so

glad he's here.

He's a fucking honor on the team.

We'd be lost without him.

If you replace Daniel with a fucking robot, you're a loser.

Don't fucking do it.

I'm so...

And like, in cases like this, once again, we will drive our own ship.

We will figure out our fate.

Don't feel bad for us.

It's gonna be just fine.

But golly gee.

It's so dumb.

I want to make an actual promise right now.

If Zero Dot ever, for whatever reason, replaces the functions that Daniel or any of us
provides with quote unquote, real AI, like full, full hook line, I don't mean AI

assistance.

I'm talking full AI generation, all that stuff.

You have my full permission, listener and viewer, to literally cancel your subscription.

Don't listen to us anymore.

We are full of shit.

Don't, we're crap.

Don't ever listen to what we have to say, ever.

Yeah, we can call that the Sam Altman promise.

You know how he would never put ads into chat GPT because he finds that quote particularly
disturbing.

I recently got an email from OpenAI saying, hey, we're doing ads now.

And I said, cool, my account is going to be deleted, ah But just, no, that's not a line
that we're crossing.

I'm not here to, know, like use AI to make your fucking grocery cards look nicer.

I don't care, whatever's fine.

Also invent grocery cards so that sentence makes more sense.

Grocery list is what I was going with in my head.

But just...

AI doesn't create.

It doesn't create.

It replicates and it barfs.

Do you want things barfed to you?

Yeah.

Well, thanks for indulging me.

That was just the thing.

That's a little bit behind the scenes with Zero Dot, once again.

um Again, it's not hopeless, it's not all loss, but it is something to be aware of, that
anything you post online, basically AI is collecting data about it to use it for some kind

of mechanization.

I won't begin to guess what it's for, but I'm sure it's profits.

um And you can fight back.

Can I do a type five?

This is a type five that I used to do.

All right, let me set a timer.

I'm bluffing, I'm not actually setting a timer, I'm just pressing keys on my keyboard.

if I go past it, somebody let me know kindly.

um There's a thing I would use to do when I was working in a rehab.

And I would talk about AA meetings, or I would talk about a uh warm line.

A warm line for the records, like a hotline you call if you're not suicide.

Somebody to talk to is actually a really great resource.

And would talk about like, not Narcan.

What's that thing?

That thing that you take?

Now, Trekzone, which is a whole other topic, but it's helpful.

People will be like, this is just a fucking dinky little tool against this giant mass of
addiction.

Like this is, it's David and Goliath, right?

And the, I've spoiled what I'm going to say about using David and Goliath.

um But the analogy that I use,

will delete that part.

Oh, we never saw it or heard it.

Anyway.

Well, the analogy I use features no David's and no Goliath's.

It's the tiger and the knife.

I assume you, dear listener slash viewer, are human, and if you're not, once again, stop
scraping my data, get the fuck out of here.

But if you are a human, I'll presume that you are anywhere between three feet tall and
seven foot five.

I don't know, something in there probably.

I'll presume you have an average level of strength, perhaps some average level of fitness.

And I present to you your opponent for the fight, a tiger.

Not much tiger weighs, but I'm willing to bet north of 500 pounds at least, probably more
than that.

Their claws are bigger than my fingers.

They're like huge giant monsters.

And I say to you, hey this tiger, not a wild one, this is one that's bred in captivity to
murder you.

And it's gonna try.

We're gonna put you in that in the same room.

You have to do it.

There's no way out.

You're like, well that fucking sucks.

And I'm like, well I will give you a knife.

Do you not take the knife?

You take the fucking knife.

And that's kind of the story here is like, even though sometimes the things we talk about
are just so big and scary and tough, like you want to fight back.

If you just go into the room and just lay down and be like, all right, dog, eat me.

First of all, he's a tiger, not a dog.

And second of all, you're missing your greatest strength.

Humans are fucking unbelievably resilient.

We come back like nobody else.

I mean, all the animals, like we do, like we're the most resilient creature other than
maybe squids.

But.

weigh about 680 pounds by the way.

So yeah, very good guess, very good guess.

But uh I do just want to point out, it's never actually hopeless.

It never is.

And hope is a ripple.

If you make a difference, someone else will see it.

One of the greatest joys, I'm so emotional already, one of the greatest joys of my life is
I like to share little wins that one of my clients will have, very HIPAA approved

anonymous style with another one of my clients.

And then I'll say things to various people I work with like,

You've helped people you don't know.

And I mean it.

Real specific people have benefited from your story anonymously.

And whether or not you're my client, this is already happening.

Somebody in your life was touched by something you did, who talked to somebody else, who
helped somebody else.

The shit we do makes a difference.

Humans are fun that way.

The whole Echo thing is very real.

So when we're talking about all the negative, scary shit, we never want to do it from a
fear-mongering standpoint.

That's like our number one promise is this can never be that kind of a show because A, of
all, there's way too many of those.

And B, of all, they don't do anything?

They get clicked on.

I guess.

But I think our goal is to always help you say like, I'm scared, but I'm brave.

I'm gonna take the knife.

I'm gonna try.

And we support you in that.

Fuck, we'll hand you the knife.

Now if you take us out of context, we sound real insane.

So please listen to the preceding five minutes.

um

the wrong point, it's gonna sound like we're promoting people um getting a knife and
getting into zookeeper fights with tigers.

That's not what we're promoting at all.

But it is maybe a zookeeper-flavored agenda, and I have.

matters.

I'm British, I'm all about the knives.

They didn't let us have guns like you guys, so we were just like knives.

Knives, okay.

fucking hardest thing you've ever said is I'm British, I'm all about the knives with such
a casual tone of like, yeah, no, I just, I do be stabbing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

spot of afternoon tea and a knife.

Wonderful.

Oh, oh you fool, you think this is for buttering my scones.

Oh no, this is for murder.

You oh

to me, because I'm a dumb, stupid American?

I always am like, dude, you do the best British accent.

Like, every time I'm my God, his British accent is flawless.

It sounds so real.

Because I don't believe anyone could actually be from anywhere else.

So very convincing.

Very convincing.

If British people were real, my God, you'd be exactly like them.

amazing.

uh Skone or scone?

Let's go.

We say scone.

See, I say scone, but I don't know whether that's the typical British way or whether I've
just been kind of like mind-warped by the amount of American things that I've seen.

Scone.

Because scone, it would make sense because isn't it two ends?

For us, it's one end, scone.

Like, think of the word cone like an ice cream cone.

Yep, let's do it.

Let's go.

Hang on.

This is what we bring you here at Zero Dot, the hot takes.

Scone or scone?

Let us know in the comments who's right, who's wrong.

It's one and where have I seen it with two ends?

Am I going insane?

scone with two N sounds very fancy and we do sometimes dabble in the fancy if we wanna be
fancy.

Oh, okay.

Apparently in the UK, it's like a regional thing in the UK.

So apparently up north and up by Scotland and the Northern England, uh they say scone.

Whereas down here in the Midlands and in the South and Ireland, they say, or we say scone.

uh Both are considered correct.

But ASC is more correct.

I'm fine with that.

can't find it.

There's a quiz slash heat map and it dial, it breaks down who uses which words where.

It's really fun.

It's just the United States the one that I have, but it's Fireflies versus Glowbugs
versus, there's another one that they are.

um We do Semi-Truck versus Tractor Trailer.

We do Soda versus Pop versus just Coke is its own thing in the South.

We call it everything Coke.

Kind of got a Coke, be like a Sprite.

um But it's real fun and I'm like on the hard line of pop and soda from where I'm from
originally, but I'm a hardcore pop guy, which is Michigan centric for those of you in the

States.

Turns out that's where that's from.

What about a soda pop?

I do feel like that is a weak compromise from a coward to avoid having a real opinion.

But it is also cute if you say it's Sodipop.

So I'm back in.

So here in Philadelphia, seltzer water is a big thing, but seltzer water is just soda with
no sugar.

And I forget where I was, but they called that just plain soda, just plain soda or club
soda, which has a little bit of salt in it.

But here you never say that, you say seltzer.

Give me a seltzer.

That's.

just sparkling water.

Mm.

For us, sparkling water implies there's minerals in it, and us filthy Americans don't like
that.

You see there's minerals all up in our water, all over the place.

We're all about those rocks in our water.

This is great.

We don't want that shit.

If you go to a restaurant here and they ask you if you want still or sparkling, you're
like, I didn't know we were in a fancy restaurant.

That's a big deal here.

And it will not taste good, we think, but we will order it anyway.

So our date is impressed.

And they'll go, I don't want this.

go to a restaurant, they offer you bottled water, which is the same as other water.

They don't call it tap water, what do they call it?

Because, and it's a trick, because if you go with, yeah, I'll have water, they will charge
you for the bottled water, but if they give you just tap water, it's free.

And I forget, what, what are they, how do they phrase it?

what do they do?

They do it in a really confusing way.

house.

cancel pop.

Cancel pop is water here.

That is good.

No, I don't know, but I do know you're right.

And I can't think of it that's gonna bother me.

They phrase it differently.

don't think they call it tap.

faucet juice.

Fossip juice.

Fun me fact, in French, and this is true, French class years and years ago, I had to say
milk on a quiz.

And it was like, I would like some milk, and I did not know how to say it.

So I said, voudrais le jus de vache, which means I would like the juice of cow.

And I did not get any points.

Technically correct, well, coas do have many juices.

They have multiple juices, so.

You can't legally ask me which one I want.

You just have to guess.

That's the rules here.

We do raw milk around here sometimes, which is its own conversation that I'm not going to
get into, because I don't want to get pegged for elections.

I don't want to get into that because I will...

my brain will explode at the thought of people willingly drinking it.

I love that idea for you and I wish it was more common.

Okay, and where I'm from in the Philadelphia area, they offer you bottled water or from a
pitcher.

And the pitcher water is just tap water, and that's free, but bottled water is stuff you
gotta pay for, because they have to open up a fresh bottle for it.

That's what they do.

They do that.

What you're paying for is the lid to cover the water and protect it from irritants.

You're raw dogging it with pitch or water, anything could go in there, who knows.

And some restaurants, they won't even do that.

They'll do, would you like bottled water?

And you go, you have to say, no, I'll just have a pitcher.

Okay.

There's so many vampire rules bullshit things.

Like, you have to invite the vampire into your house.

Would you like bottled water?

Hang on a second, let me get some.

No, and don't take my son, and also I would, this is crucifix, and also uh a pitcher's
slime, thank you.

And the question implies like, I, gross water, but like, no, I want water, but they don't
give you the option of saying you have to know there's a secret hidden option.

I try to game it.

Well, you just ask for it loose.

Just like, me some loose water.

like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Keep that water loose.

I want it to be real.

I want like farm raised grass fed water.

OG style.

gonna stop it there because I can see how I'm gonna go in a deep end somewhere, but yes.

The deep end.

Ha ha ha!

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

thanks to that belly laugh.

I guess that's all we got to talk about, but I guess we could talk about a deeper topic if
we really wanted to, if we had the time.

We could begin to do a little bit of a spicy, saucy topic if we prefer.

I depend on you to give me that information to get us started.

Fuck, I was so close to being clever.

I hate this game.

uh I'm gonna share a deck like before.

John, I'm letting you know right now, there is a number of slides it shows that is not a
real number.

Do not pay attention to that number.

Do not think that number you're about to see is real, okay?

Have you done this literally just to fuck with us?

He's done this just to just to mess with us.

Ha

We're going to be here for the rest of time.

This episode is never going to air.

Hopefully it starts streaming somewhere retroactively.

Well, gents, I've been thinking about this for a while.

It relates to what we talked about before about, you know, AI listening to us and feeding
us presupposed information and all of us kind of being in our own echo chambers for

things.

I feel like 2010 ish in my field, in my work, we had like a good grasp on this, but now I
think we're edging in the wrong direction.

Of course, I'm talking about this thing called bias here.

And I want to presuppose something for you.

Imagine you're walking down the street and you see a gentleman.

And maybe let's say it's this gentleman right here.

Maybe Dan will know who this gentleman is.

Maybe he doesn't.

Whoever.

You see this gentleman right here.

He's approaching you and he's got his fist just like this.

He's got that look on you.

You're probably having some kind of fear of maybe dread.

Is this guy gonna try to beat me up?

Is he gonna try to, you know, do something to me?

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Don't worry folks, if you're listening in or watching in, don't worry.

That's Ron Simmons.

And Ron Simmons recognized as the first black world champion in professional wrestling
history.

That's awesome.

We love that so much.

And he's a happy smiling guy, right?

He's a really happy smiling guy.

He's in retirement now.

He's good.

But that first image right there of that individual, that gentleman with his fist like
that, he was notorious for playing a persona that was a little bit of an evil bad guy and

all that good stuff.

But we might, if we didn't know any of that context, think, gosh, this guy's about to
fight me.

He's a threat.

Gotta worry.

Gotta be careful about that.

But no, it's not him.

In addition, we see an actual wrestler literally doing damage, about to do a pile driver,
about to do a slam on someone.

But don't worry, that's just Mr.

T.

Mr.

T.

He's just telling you, you know.

Mr.

T, right there.

He's a guy, he's an entertainer, he's harmless in any way.

mean, hopefully you don't run into him in that kind of capacity whatsoever, but it's just
Mr.

T, right?

And then lastly, you see a gentleman, and it's a little fuzzy, things you can't quite see,
but looks like a guy wearing a jacket and a small little Bruno hat, et cetera, I shouldn't

be worried about, just a small little scrawny guy.

shoot, that's Charles Bronson.

He takes off his shirt, he's ripped as heck, he's gonna beat the crap out

If you went down on that journey for me, you might've had different reactions to all those
things, and that is our biases at work, our biases doing work for us.

And before we dive in this a little bit further, I know, John, you talk a lot about biases
with your clients, with your patients, and so forth.

Biases are a tricky devil.

They're good for us, but they're also not so good for us.

Wouldn't you agree?

I would strongly agree.

Biases are your brain helping you save time.

If you eat a thing and it looks purple and it looks spiky and you go, ow, this is poison,
I shouldn't eat this.

You stop eating those things.

That's a great idea.

It's a super helpful time-saving trick.

The problem is your brain isn't really good at making those assumptions.

Occasionally it'll make a very helpful one and be like, this is in fact dangerous.

And other times it'll be like, that's dangerous.

And it's like, no, that's uh actually quite lovely if we get a little more exposure to it.

and it can make huge skipping leaps.

Yeah, right.

It does that thing where it says, well, in the past this is what happened, so we will just
assume that's what's also going to happen in the future with the limited amount of

information that we have.

You're right, it skips time for us.

And it is very helpful, especially if you listen to our prior episodes, we talk about
fight or flight.

It's incredibly helpful in those particular capacities, but if you're listening to this
podcast right now, chances are you're probably not in a fight or flight moment every

single day, every single moment of your life, so that's where biases can get us into a
little bit of trouble.

The fancy term for this...

Cognitive bias is a systemic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment.

Individuals create their own subjective reality from their perception of input.

Here's the truth.

John knows this, I know it, Daniel knows it.

We all have a cognitive bias.

Every single one of us.

we didn't have this, we would be, well, we wouldn't be human, but I'd also say non-humans
also have some kind of cognitive bias of some kind.

Well, if I know that I have a cognitive bias, and clearly I won't be biased anymore, I'm
gonna check myself.

Well, no, then it can turn into an explicit bias, right?

You have conscious attitudes, beliefs, or stereotypes about a person or a group that are
intentionally held or often openly expressed in some capacity.

So even if you are fully aware of what your biases are, if you call them out, you can't
expunge them from yourself, now they just become explicit, you're fully bought into that

particular capacity.

Now, I think there's two different categories of explicit biases.

There's the explicit bias of

The real nasty stuff, we're talking racism, uh prejudice, that kind of thing.

Other explicit bias can be smaller in nature, like, man, you're the kind of person that
likes to watch people play video games on the internet, but you don't play the games

yourself.

You're not a real gamer.

Those are kinds of explicit biases we might have as well.

Then we have things like this.

Literally news pages flooding.

our data mines with all this stuff, know, stuff about AI, stuff about Alfonso Rebier,
about James Van Der Beek, Rest In Peace, we've got Whoopi Goldberg struggling with

something on the view table, we've got Google News telling us all the things that are
important to us, right?

Well, I'm trying to be cognizant of my biases, then what happens when all this information
is being fed to me and all these things are being fed to our blue sky?

And hey, even us, a YouTube slash podcast channel, is flooding your space with information
telling you crazy ideas we call that availability bias.

What news we see, what's readily available comes to the center of our brain.

John, you've seen this so many times.

Something comes in your algorithm.

You go, huh, that's a take I don't agree with, but okay, that's a take.

And then before you know it, next week, everyone's saying, hey, I've been thinking about
this thing, and they're all saying exactly the same thing from that particular take that

came to you from your particular algorithm, right?

The availability bias.

We can't run away from it.

All of us in our own particular echo chambers and our...

can't escape it, or can we?

Maybe we just make sure that I just curate what I see and hear and eliminate that stuff so
I don't have that availability bias.

Well then we get into confirmation bias, because now I'm literally just pulling in the
information that I want to have and nothing else before.

You know, I've said this story before many, many, many a time.

There was a YouTuber that I used to watch, uh his name's Scooby, he was a fitness
influencer, I liked all of his stuff, he had some good information.

He had one video I did not believe in, I thought it was a bad take on a prior generation,
and I unsubscribed for him.

And I realized, you know what, after about a week, that was a mistake of mine, because
even though he had one video he didn't like, he had so many other good videos I did like,

I went ahead and resubscribed, because I didn't want to give in to what I believe was
confirmation bias.

I did not want to believe in this echo chamber that...

You know, I want to funnel everything and curate everything specifically to my wants and
my needs.

Cause this is really easy to do, John, isn't it?

I in the TikTok vacation of life, in your experience, know, what has been things that
you've seen your patients or you've done to try to eliminate or at least be aware of this

as much as possible.

I feel like the single greatest talking point about this for me is the whiplash you see
during elections since social media has been popularized because people will go in with a

level of gung-ho confidence and then half of the people are like, what the fuck?

Because they're surrounded by the same opinion all the time and it's very easy to think
that your thing is the thing.

It's also very easy to think that the things you like are well liked by everybody.

Whereas it, I don't know, like say you're really into.

crochet and you are on you know crochet, TikTok, crochet, YouTube, crochet, whatever else
and then you talk to someone and they're like what is that?

And you're like well that's weird but instead of crochet a relatively benign and harmless
thing it's shit that you're like violently emotionally invested in not violently but like

it's your full fucking self like it's crazy important to you.

Yeah no I this has been a fun listen so far for me because I keep getting baited by your
hooks when you're just like well you could do this or like no you couldn't do that and

then you're like but you couldn't do that.

oh

Yeah, no.

And I just want to echo the sentiment of the, again, you know, we become a part of our
identity becomes part of our bias.

It becomes attached to ourselves.

And that's really tricky and really kind of hard to navigate.

Then we got things like anchoring biases, you know, clinging to the first impressions of
people.

I can't tell you how many times folks I'm going to let you in a little secret.

I give the worst first impression.

That's just the way that I am.

People have a certain perception about me.

That's just what happens.

And then once people kind of

Unravel a bit more about me.

They start liking me a little bit more but that anchoring bias kind of hurts us all Every
single one of us we have a certain assumption about someone literally the first three

words out of John's mouth and the way he looks I'm like, John must be that kind of guy Sam
has to be that kind of guy Daniel has to be that kind of guy and yet that literally trails

and follows us for years sometimes until we're Visibly shook and shook and distraught from
that or we just go along our day really having that

Mistaken bias and then we have hindsight bias.

This is one I'm guilty of all the time John Believe in the events of the past were
predictable and avoidable We all knew this was gonna happen Didn't we all where isn't that

fully aware this this absolutely had to happen the way that I did know we didn't exactly
100 % know all the time it just feels like it in hindsight because I'm now in the future

and I get to say that and we call that an option select in certain industries because I'm
right every single time isn't that right John

It is right.

I would just do a very short plug in so far as how these are mental health flavored.

The hindsight bias is the shame thing where you will go, I should have fucking known
better.

I'm bad.

If we haven't done shame versus guilt before, the five second version of it is guilt is
productive.

Shame is not.

You can't do anything with hindsight bias.

It just makes you go, I should have known.

Why am I inadequate?

And anchoring bias is anxiety bias because you go, I have to get this exactly right.

Cause if I don't, then people will hate me forever.

And it's, they're both based in some real shit, but also.

that we have more to say about that.

That's not where that ends.

I mean, my job, I'm a public speaker.

When I go into these events, John, this is the first time they see me.

I have to try to circumvent people's anchoring bias about me within the first minute of my
existence in front of them.

And for a while, that sent me down a spiral.

Like that really made me upset because that's intense amount of pressure for any single
person to be on.

And that's literally my day job.

And that was incredibly frustrating.

Once you learn more of the mental aspects and psychological stuff about it, it's not too
bad.

But yeah, it's a real thing.

We all face it.

We all have this issue.

and my heart goes out to any single person that has that umpteenth level of exceptionalism
and perfectionism for themselves, trying to raise that bar.

Cause I've been there.

It is self-destructive in many ways.

Um, and we want to see what we can do to help out with that in that capacity.

So, that's all I'm thinking right now, John, like what do we do?

How do we handle this?

This is tricky.

How do we stop this?

Well, the first thing I would say is to understand what I've already said before, which is
that every single one of us has a cognitive bias.

We can't escape it.

That's 90 % of the battle.

That's the good news.

That's the good part.

Once you accept it, don't be the guy that's listening in right now or watching if you're
on John's side of the fence saying, I don't have a cognitive bias.

No, you absolutely do.

In fact, if you're the guy that says or lady that you don't have a cognitive bias, that's
a red flag for a lot of different reasons.

I'm sure John knows all about.

Absolutely.

First of all, I would like to address the implication that my dear viewers are cognitive
bias unaware.

No, they know.

They all know.

I would also validate this has been extra fun for me as we're talking because it's fun
that Sam and I come from different worlds of work, different professions, but like the

data is just a dead-on fucking same.

You do have a cognitive bias and you can't not do it.

There's no purification of yourself.

You're an animal.

You're supposed to have them.

And if you know you have it, you can know how to work with it.

And it's really not that bad, but it is...

It is impossible and so many people and it's so cute that we think this.

We're like, no, no, no, I figured it out.

I know all the things.

I can see it in this really healthy way where I can just, have total perspective.

I get all the data.

My conclusion is totally great.

Great conclusion.

Love that for you.

You're still, you're carrying a cognitive bias.

You have to, if you're alive, you do.

That's okay.

You just got to know.

Yeah, I mean, if you have two eyes in front of your head and no eyes behind you, which all
human beings do as far as I can tell, you have a bias, you have a blind spot, you have

something that you are not seeing and you have to do some kind of interpolative data to
figure out there's nothing behind me, right?

There's nothing behind me, right?

I'm assuming there's nothing behind me, right?

You just have to, every single one of us has to do this and this is okay, it's fine.

John knows this, I know it, Daniel knows it.

The amount of times I've talked to people.

and then they say something to the effect of, I used to have a bias, but I figured out
everything and now I'm good all set to go.

And I'm like, that's scary.

That's tricky on a lot of different levels.

So the first thing is I would say, just understand you have it, even if you don't think
you have it.

Bias basically in the simplest of terms tells us that our experience is the only reality.

This is it.

Fun bias that I have, John.

We've talked a little bit about this called good old Dung and Kruger.

You know Dung and Kruger, right?

I do.

here's a fun little fact.

So the Dunning-Kruger effect basically means it implies that when you're starting a brand
new skill, you think you're hot shit at it.

But as you get more and more into that skill and learn more, you realize the world has
gotten much more expansive than it can possibly ever be.

And then you realize, crap, there's a lot more that I don't know.

And there's that fun little meme graph people have about people starting off a skill
thinking they're pretty good.

people in the trenches suffering and then the master is, don't know, you just do it, you
just wing it, right?

There's just a certain level of master that happens throughout that.

I have a bias where I'm, always believe I'm on the end of the Dunning-Kruger and everyone
else is smarter than me.

Like everyone else is smarter than me.

They call it like a weird imposter Dunning-Kruger bias where, you know what, if I'm just
learning this new skill, John, clearly John, you already know all of this and you're a

master of it.

I'm just catching up to you.

That's always...

That's one of my biases that I have, and I have so many friends that have to keep checking
me on that, saying, you know, Sam, actually, it's not really true, right?

But because it's my reality, my experience, I substitute that for the larger reality of
all of us.

So bias wants to tell us that our experience is the only reality.

Yes.

John, the therapist.

I have a thing I wanna say about this.

It's a special therapist piece of knowledge.

One of the cool things about my job is that I get to know a zillion people on a very close
basis over the years I've been doing this.

And everybody feels this way.

They go, I'm a fraud, I'm not real, Timmy's doing better than me.

And then Timmy's like, I'm a fraud, I'm not real, Billy's doing better than me.

Everybody thinks this.

And it's been really healing for me.

I'm gonna move away from the mic slowly.

I'm gonna let it adapt to my new position.

uh But that...

That's like a really freeing thing is you are on par for where you need to be because
par's made up, it's not a real thing.

And everybody's lost, which is good, which is good.

But we're built to be afraid of that because if we are, we can catch up, which is useful
if I'm out here eating poop and you've made it agriculture, but in the current era, it no

longer is serving its purpose how it was intended.

And it's wired into your brain.

You can't not have this.

stuff John.

I'll provide a little segue.

One of the earliest examples of this that I had is I had a friend who, I don't know how
they made this work financially, but they had a retail job that paid less than minimum

wage at the time, which was like five bucks an hour.

uh Girlfriend didn't work, was going to school full-time and somehow making all the magic
happen and moving into a new apartment and was buying new furniture.

And I remember helping him move and I'm like, man,

How are you making this like financially worth?

Wouldn't you be afraid you wouldn't be able to afford payments?

he had such confidence and gusto that everything was going to work fine.

He had it all figured out.

And as he's talking to me, I go, oh, wow, I'm stupid.

You're so goddamn smart.

Oh, wow.

I know this person isn't listening in, so I have no problem saying this part.

Got a divorce within a year with the same person they were married to, lost his job three
times.

There's a whole big mess of things and was financially destitute for a while afterwards.

So.

That's not a good story, but I'm here to tell you that like, we all fall for it.

We all fall for the fact of like, man, this other guy's got it figured out, this other
lady's got it figured out.

No one knows anything.

No one knows what the heck's going on.

My favorite part about my job is reminding people that you think you know everything, you
think you've got it figured out, you probably don't.

And I get one of two reactions, John, when I say that.

I get the reaction of the person going, meh.

Who the hell are you?

You don't know nothing.

I've been in this industry for 30 years.

I knew everything." And then you get like the other reaction, go, yep, you're right.

We don't know anything.

We're just monkeys in suits, as we say, right?

One of your favorite expressions, monkeys in suits.

So, bias wants to tell us that our experience is the only reality.

One of the ways in which we try to check this, and I don't believe I'm saying a
controversial statement, but feel free to check my bias, John.

I believe we all believe in science here in this room.

We think science is relatively a good thing, right?

Science is the systems used to interrogate the universe, I like to say.

You feel good about that, right?

Yeah, I feel we're pretty good about science.

Science is the way in which we examine the world with the tools we have available, whether
microscopes, telescopes, and whatever in between, to check to say, I have a data set

that's in my gut.

Let me actually see in the real world right now if that data set's here for us.

And to find out more information, I'm actually not gonna talk too much about this.

I'm gonna recommend you check out a course called Crash Course.

What is cognitive bias?

Hank Green talks about it.

We're big fans of Hank Green here on this show, but I want to take a turn here and say,
what can you do forgetting about the science piece?

What can we possibly do to check our biases just a little bit?

And I know John's going to have something to say about this.

And I'm going to say this, which is you cannot overcome your biases on your own.

Your network of colleagues and friends look out for your blind spots, help you do that.

And this is a lesson I learned way too late in life, but I'm happy to share it now, AKA.

It's the friends you feel comfortable being able to ask and say, am I crazy?

Hey man, this is something going on.

Am I seeing this right?

Is this absolutely valid?

Should I be doing this right?

Some of us don't have this and don't worry, that's okay.

It's not doom and gloom for you, but we all have the ability to have a network of people
to check ourselves and say, hey Daniel, this crazy thing happened and I'm angry about it.

I'm feeling what kind of way, am I seeing this right?

And go, dude, Sam, get off the log.

It's totally fine.

You're overreacting.

It's not that big of a deal.

It's okay.

Or Daniel can be like, hey, actually you should be mad about this, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera.

Our networks and our friends help check for our blind spots throughout our day.

And I know John's just dying to say something about this.

gonna let him say.

What do got for me, John?

Oh, I have a few things.

This is so central to our whole thing here at ZD in that humans are great.

To be on Team Human is awesome.

Notice the word team.

It's really important.

If you don't have a team, you can't acknowledge your cognitive biases.

So you just have a belief and it's stuck.

But here's the problem, dear listener slash viewer.

is oftentimes people will deliver you messages to update your biases and they will do it
in a way that makes you feel fucking stupid.

And they'll be like, dude, we don't say that word anymore.

That's a bad word.

And while that might be really good for you to know, you're now like, well, fuck you.

I hate the way you said that.

And I'm going to cling to it much tighter now.

So we're enemies and I don't like you anymore.

And that's why gentleness is actually like a mandatory part of this.

It's not just fucking soft, cozy, bullshit blanket stuff.

It's like, if you deliver people things in a hostile way,

They won't take the data in.

At the end of the day, everyone should know this.

I'm very passionate about it.

Emotion trumps logic 100 % of the time.

It's not even close.

It's not even close.

If you feel something, it will defeat the logic of it every single time.

People buy shit they don't need because they feel ways.

They get in fights because they feel ways.

They fall in love because they feel ways.

It's not based on logic.

Humans have never been logical creatures.

It's cute that we think we are.

We can use it, but we're not.

So, yeah.

I, there's more, but I'll get to it later.

Thank you.

I want to go even further where you're going at with this, John.

Absolutely right.

We're not logical creatures.

Pretending that we are is a trauma response that we'll get into some other time.

But more importantly, you literally cannot, in whatever conversation you have, you cannot
have a successful conversation if you don't address the emotions first.

You can't do it secondary.

You can't block it out.

You can't cut it out.

No, you have to address the emotions first every single time.

You do.

So I'll always do the five second recap of this.

We have an episode on this elsewhere, but emotions are a biological process they're used
for communication.

It is in the way and it filters your perception of things.

If you validate my emotion, I can now hear your data.

If you don't, I will sit here waiting for you to validate the emotion.

That's not because I'm a therapist.

It's because I'm a fucking animal.

When a dog comes into the room and he's growling and bristling, the first thing you do is
you make the dog feel safe.

Using a gentle voice and you put your hands up and you get low and small.

What you're doing is you're helping his brain go, not an enemy, we're fine.

Humans are the same, humans are the same.

Emotions aren't weakness, they're fucking, they're biological processes, you can't skip
it.

And even if you wanna like fight me on whatever else, like this is still just, it's just
the most efficient way to get your message across.

If your audience thinks you understand them, and I don't mean necessarily like you're like
YouTube watching audience, or like just like even one person, any kind of audience, if you

can get past the emotional stuff.

You can get through it.

This is so important.

You will be a better communicator over fucking night if you incorporate the skill into
your communication.

I'm telling you that right now.

It's so important.

Absolutely.

As we dive into this again, this is the greatest takeaway I have for checking your biases
as well, is having that network, those people that you can ask this question to in

whatever way you want to, right?

Just to check yourself.

Because I made the mistake, and we'll get to this in just a little bit of thinking, I had
to conquer all my biases myself.

I have to be an impenetrable force.

I have to figure it I have to be the lone soldier.

And that's simply not how we address this in this capacity.

I want to bring our attention to a YouTuber that I'm a fan of.

I'm not saying Dan and John are fan of, LS author, he's actually a therapist.

He gets off the cuff.

He reminds me of another therapist we have on this call.

I who that therapist might be.

That was my mic, sorry.

I was putting on headphones.

I mean these things, iPhones.

I hate myself.

I'm never talking again, bye, continue.

good it reminds me of this individual right here But he's this video just came out a
couple days ago Which will be a couple weeks when you get to watch and hear what we have

to say but literally in the first 10 seconds He does something really powerful because I
said to you before that yes, it's having friends You feel comfortable asking am I crazy?

But let's just say you're someone who doesn't feel you have friends like this I don't feel
comfortable being able to say this to anyone.

I can't check with them

Well, this person in 10 seconds says something he said to a blanket audience that I think
anyone else can say.

He said this, the subject is, a therapist's trick to shut down overthinking fast.

Clickbait title, love it.

But anyway, there's an aspect of this overthinking conversation that I want to get your
thoughts on.

He says this, you are all very smart.

You've lived lives I haven't.

You know stuff I don't.

I'd like to read your comments and see what you guys think.

Let me repeat that middle part one more time.

You're all very smart.

You've lived lives that I haven't.

You know stuff I don't.

And it came from a place of genuine curiosity.

Let me know, this is what I'm thinking right now, but check me on this.

You live a totally different life than I've lived, and I wanna learn from you.

There's stuff I just physically am not capable of knowing, because of the way my brain
works.

And John, I wanna pause you for just a moment and just say that seven years ago, it was
easy for me to sell this to people.

If I say sell, I'm using scare quotes to that.

It's a very powerful skill in letting people know, look, I want to learn from you.

I don't know everything.

I want to know a lot.

But I'd say in the past couple of years in this new AI space and overconfidence and social
media, no one does this anymore.

Or at least when they do, they think it's some kind of weakness.

And I'm telling to everyone that's listening in right now, especially the listeners, but
also the viewers, I'll let you into just giving yourself permission to give your take, but

then say, look, I want to hear from you.

I want to know your understanding.

Check me on this.

I'd love to invite you into this conversation.

Not only does it speak volumes for you as a leader, people actually respond really well in
this, especially in person.

Online, that's a little bit different.

But secondly, you'll get the best data set.

You won't be stuck with your own data set because if you go around this world thinking
that you have to have only your specific data set for everything, not only are going to

suffer needlessly, but you're going to be spinning around in circles all the time, not
solving the problem you want to solve.

Extremely well put, extremely well put.

So like, there's a couple of little catchphrases.

I use a fucking shell of catchphrases when I'm being a therapist.

One thing that I do is I say, and I do all of these in like a very playful tone on
purpose, but I say, okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that, and I put

that in front, I think I say this, say, well, you've known you your whole life and I've
known you for an insert date period here.

Or I say like, you know, feel free to check me at any time.

If I get it wrong, let me know.

My feelings are pretty sturdy.

And I just make a very big point of letting people know that they do know their shit
better than I do.

because two things.

One, they just fucking do.

Of course, they literally actually do.

And two, people don't feel afraid or talked down to when you help them know that like
you're fucking inherently valid.

It isn't a trick, it's just helping facilitate the communication.

In online spaces though, John, we don't see this, we?

Why do you think that is?

I'm curious.

This is actually me asking you.

I have theories, but I really don't know the real crux of it.

Like, I've seen it in the past three to four years.

People aren't doing this.

They aren't doing, they're not engaging it.

It's very close sentences.

We're not asking these questions.

And even if the person that does actually ask this question, for some reason there's a
collective hive mind that the person asked the question is a fucking dummy.

And I don't know where it's coming from.

So I'm gonna respond to you in a long roundabout way by therapist law, so my apologies.

What I would do is I would talk about the conventional modality for couples therapy.

There's all kinds of modalities within therapy.

You got your ACTs, your ERPs, your CBTs, your CBRs, I made that one up.

the main one for couples therapy that I'm familiar with is EFT.

You can probably guess what it stands for just by tapping into what we've been talking
about, emotionally focused therapy.

And it's

fucking weird.

I haven't been officially trained in it, but I've been, you know, like went to grad
school.

And what you do is you have a couple, here they are, party A, party B.

You say, hey, party A, how do you feel?

And party goes, I was really hurt when party B did this thing.

And party B goes, I didn't fucking do that thing.

You go, hold on.

And it's way more directive and assertive than regular therapy, which is partially why
it's hard for me.

And I go, okay, hang on, on, party B, did you hear what party A just said?

Can you say back to party A what party A just said?

And party B goes, yeah, they said that they felt hurt when I did this thing.

I said, can you look at party A when you say it?

And it feels super fucking hands on, but there's a really good reason for it.

And they say, party A, when you said that, you were saying that you felt hurt in this case
when I did this thing.

Is that right?

And party A, you can watch them.

You can watch them fucking respond to it.

It's so hyper structured and it feels weird, but this is how you resolve couples issues
because what you're doing is you're forcing a situation where the couple will exchange

feelings and party A does feel validated.

But then,

If you're good at your job, you don't just leave party B hanging here being like the
fucking validating robot.

You make sure that they go both ways.

And then as a therapist, you coach yourself out of the picture until eventually they can
do it on their own.

So these kinds of questions are the actual, these kinds of structures are the actual way
that you teach people to live in a healthy marriage.

This is fundamental.

And yet to your point online, there aren't couples therapists waiting in the company.

Actually hang on now, user butt smasher 55.

Do you understand that like,

It doesn't go that way.

So we just say things to try to assert dominance and you can't be loud on the internet,
but you can be mean and you can type a whole wall of text and you can attack somebody's

character and just other shit that I won't get into right now.

But no, it's, it's a being right rather than being heard and being right as it turns out
kind of subjective.

So.

I think also, and I'm not a systems analyst to really know this, but calling out Reddit,
calling out Discord, calling out all these channels that social discourse, it's all linear

going down constantly.

What John just described is the literal going back and circling back and connecting to
that and making corrections and adjusting or whatever.

And yeah, we can do quotations and stuff, like here's what you said, but that's not the
same thing.

We do this linear down thing.

as if to say we're starting with the big dumb idea and then we funnel down to a solution
every single time and that's not how conversations work.

And I think that's also part of it.

Not a bad thing, not a good thing, but I'm seeing, again, in my goings and goings on, I
used to be able to say, you be the person that's brave enough to say, I don't know the

answers, I'd love to get your feedback.

And most people go, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Now it's like, no, I have to have all the answers.

I have to be the subject matter expert.

I have to know everything.

I'm like, this is growing, John.

And I'm worried.

I'm legitimately worried a little.

Quotations are the statistics of sentences.

You can just use them for whatever you want.

Like it doesn't, it's misleading.

You're like, but that's what they said.

And it's like, no, that is what they said.

But like you're purposely obfuscating the point.

And that's the thing, right?

Is like, and I won't go into this cause it's too big of a thing.

Also, we touched on it recently, but there's structures for like fair fighting in
communication.

There's ways to like have a disagreement, be opposed to one another and still like show
respect and like help the other person feel like they're participating in it.

And those things, are not what you default do as a human.

And B, they take effort.

And C, they're less dominant than the other ones.

Dominant for the record is not a good thing to be in a conversation.

Dominant is how you make enemies.

Dominant is how you win short fights and lose wars.

So, I get your concern.

Yeah, it's disappointing for me because I think it's gonna get a little bit worse before
it gets better.

But if you can just have this modality in your at least face-to-face conversations, if not
more so, it will set you on a right path towards checking that bias for sure.

In that same video description, he says this, and it's more tailored to this topic, but I
think it's important here.

If you can't stop overthinking, the problem isn't always that you're thinking too much,
it's that you're trying to use thought in places where it won't help.

Some problems have solutions, others only have uncertainty.

Knowing the difference is what gives you peace.

I bring up this topic, this middle part here, it's that you're trying to use thought and
processes where it won't help.

Our cognitive biases when we use them to the umpteenth degree is not helpful to us.

And knowing when to check that, knowing when to survey other people, whether it's our
friends, our family, colleagues.

I recommend having multiple networks of friends.

In fact, whenever I have an intense emotional reaction to things, John, I have like three
different pockets of friends.

I'm like, Hey, what do you think?

Hey, what do we think?

And usually it's a split.

One guy, love him to death.

He's like, nah, Sam, you're always right.

Every single time you have every reaction and that feels good.

But like, let me just trouble check with my other network of friends.

I don't know man, like I get what you're saying, but you not that big of a deal.

Then I check with my other network of friends who are the smartest people I know and they
make me feel like shit every time, but they always like, actually Sam, what you need to do

is like, okay, got it.

I understand now the bigger picture right here, but the mindset is and what I'm trying to
have us walk away from, sometimes you just gotta fire your brain.

You gotta just unemployed this guy.

Your brain's cool, I like him, and trust your network and your systems.

John, you unmuted right there and then I feel like you have.

thought.

Always do.

So I think we've said before, or at least I have, because I say this all the time, you're
not your brain.

And this is what we're talking about here, right?

So your brain is a processor.

It's a whole bunch of shit.

But one of things is it's a problem-solving processor.

And this is why people with anxiety, specifically people with OCD, get stuck, because
they'll just keep trying to solve the thought process and it won't fucking resolve.

Not because they're dumb.

fact, it's often problematically because they're very smart and intelligent.

You just keep going through the data again and again and again and again.

There's like a, I have a good example of this.

Okay.

from before about the supercomputer.

The people with really smart supercomputers think, I'm going to use supercomputer to solve
this problem.

Well, the problem is not the supercomputer, it's something else, right?

So like an example specifically I would use like a concrete real world thing that models
this is you have Billy, Billy's over here and he's like, hey, I just lost $10,000 on this

investment that I made.

I'm just out $10,000.

It's never gonna get recouped.

The thing that I put it into is completely gone.

I'm done.

And he starts to spin.

like, how do I get this back?

What do I do?

How do I?

All of that is worthless.

That is gone.

What he needs to do now is feel safe and be told that he's okay.

whether or not he's okay.

He needs his brain to be able to regulate so he can make new decisions and move forward.

There's a whole therapy about this called acceptance and commitment therapy, which
effectively says, you're just hurting, if you're just suffering, it's not inherently

productive.

And it's not inherently valid, even at that point.

So you wanna help yourself get to feeling your feelings.

But if you're just spinning over, did this thing and it sucks, I did this thing and it
sucks, I did this thing and it sucks.

That's your brain glitching.

It's not you.

It's not what you believe in.

It's not what you'll believe in fucking six hours from now.

It'll be totally different.

So yeah, when we say fire your brain, it sounds funny.

It's fire a part of your brain, if it helps to phrase it that way.

But it is a really good piece of input.

You cannot out think these things.

I'm sorry Sam, that went on a bit ranty.

I loved it.

loved it.

uh This relates to John, Daniel, and myself are advocates for like physical fitness and
whatever.

There's a reason why you make a uh roadmap to your physical plan.

Like I'm going to do this weight.

I'm going to do this many reps.

I'm going to do this because if we just focus on what our brain feels totally unreliable,
the brain is going to change course every single time.

It's not the best source of data mapping things out to, to a system in place that
basically you're failing to your systems, right?

at the barest minimum I'm doing XYZ thing helps things move forward in a productive way.

Which if what I'm saying sounds a little familiar, by the way, let me talk about this real
briefly.

uh AI also has biases.

If you don't know this, if you think, hey, I'm a human being, uh but if I was a robot, I'd
be more autonomous.

Nope, AI has biases.

This is literally me asking AI if it has biases and AI is telling me, yes, it has biases
and the sites it...

It uses his IBM, MIT Sloan, Princeton University, Penn State University, the World
Economic Forum, and University of Chicago.

uh At some point later down the line, we're actually gonna have an artificial intelligence
expert come on, and we're gonna interview that individual and get more insight into this.

So let me not speak too much about this.

But again, all systems, all entities, including artificial intelligence, if you're
thinking, I'm still on team AI, I'm gonna use AI for everything, okay, just so you know,

AI has a purpose, but AI also has biases to be aware of.

What we've just talked about so far, what I've talked about, once again, saving you a
Google, that's what here at Zero Dot we do, is a brief little snippet about a book called

Atomic Habits by James Clear.

It's a really good book.

uh You can AI summarize it if you'd like, but one of the basic things is trusting your
systems and trusting your networks to make you be more successful in the long run and

doing small little itty bitty behaviors.

We'll talk more about this book at later date, but I did want to just let you know that a
lot of the information I've just pulled this from is from this particular book.

John, did you read this book or have you?

Clanced at it, known about it.

It's one of those books that I'm supposed to read and I should read and like 80 % of
therapists have read it and I'm in the shape for 20 % half.

See I'm bad at math, probably in the book, I can't do math.

But no, this is a well-respected and beloved book in my industry.

I have a lot of clients who've told me about it and I have gone, yeah, with that actually,
but no, I'm familiar with the gist of it and it is a good book.

small little tiny behaviors you're doing and then the systems you build so that way even
when you're quote unquote failing, you're still succeeding in that way and this is kind of

what this is about.

Now, once again, if you want more awesome stuff that Zero Dot offers, we do have an
excellent Patreon.

That's only $3.99 and you can join the club Zero Dot.

If you like what we do, you can vibe extra with us.

We give you extended versions of our episode.

That's right, there's more to our episode than what you're seeing right now if you're just
watching this.

on the public interweb stuff that no AI overlords can get in touch with.

You also get priority questions and answers from us.

So if you have any questions you want us to answer on our podcast, you can go ahead and
drop your questions in our Patreon and we'll get to you right away.

We have a couple of cool, fun, sneaky future projects we're working on.

You get a sneak peek in that.

And I'm not here to say that you're not cool right now.

You might be a cool person, but guaranteed, if you join Club Zero Dot, you will officially
now be a cool person.

So.

That's pretty neat.

That's pretty worthwhile.

It's true.

It's true.

um You'll feel good.

And this is a show about feelings.

So probably you want to feel good, right?

um I would be lying if I said that feeling would last forever.

We've solved your problems.

It won't at all, but it's maybe a value-accordant thing.

We'd sure like it and appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And again, helps support us, helps keep us making good stuff for you in whatever way we
can.

But don't worry, we're not quite done just yet.

Because I bring all this up about biases to tell you a story, or rather ask you the
question.

What if you're a system of failure?

What if your system for removing bias from yourself, or least limiting it, was the people
that you have around you?

And now I'm gonna tell you a story about me.

So in just a moment, I'm going to share a couple pictures, and I will...

I will illustrate what those pictures are via my voice for those that are not tuning in
via the video time.

I'm gonna show a picture right now and it's a very specific snapshot of my life, but
before I describe what that picture is, I'm gonna have John try to describe what he thinks

is special about this picture.

And here's the picture right now.

Okay, so dear listeners, let me paint you a canvas here.

There is a Sam with a different, slightly different hairstyle.

He's in a front yard-ish, I would assume.

He's looking down at a rabbit.

He's casting a shadow.

The rabbit is uh looking back at him-ish.

um There's a car in the background, I think is relevant to the main point.

uh I don't, it might be like you and the rabbit are doing like a Wild West, like
woo-hoo-hoo, kind of a thing.

Yeah, it could be that.

um

Otherwise, ah maybe it's like your Pokemon and you just like threw it out there and it's
supposed to fight something and it's like, I don't wanna do this.

ah Or additionally, you are carrying a mug and maybe you invited it out for coffee to talk
about its quarterly report.

Those are all really good guesses.

What do think, Daniel?

Nintendo might be after you if you're...

Summoning this rabbit.

Yeah.

That's true.

That's true.

we didn't mean that we meant Jamaican practitioners, okay, Jamaica practice Jamaican
practitioners uh Good call out there Daniel.

Thank you producer for keeping us on top of that You're right.

The picture that you're seeing right now is me in a and if I recall it was a summer month
It was it was a hot warm day was 7 a.m.

I've been up since about 4 in the morning doing work from home stuff

And I'm looking out here at a bunny that's literally on our front lawn.

That's literally on our lawn right outside our house right there.

And the reason that I'm there is that my wife called to me and says, Sammy, Sammy, come
out.

You got to see, we have a visitor.

We have a visitor.

And before this picture was taken, I'm like, honey, I can't, I'm busy.

I'm working.

I've been up since four in the morning.

I've got to get this done.

I've got 300 emails waiting for me.

a meeting I got to go to.

I don't have time for this, but she begged in, begged in, begged in.

I finally came out.

this following picture you'll see right here, I got a bag of carrots right here, I'm
spending some time with this bunny and I'm feeding it.

I'm somewhat annoyed but somewhat happy that I get to spend just a brief moment outside,
seeing a little bit of nature.

And before I get back inside the house to attend my 20th meeting of the day and work till
eight o'clock at night, my wife says to me, you know Sam, you don't take as much time as

you used to to really enjoy the small things in life and really just be happy.

She pointed that out to me.

Now, if this was a sexy version of the story, I'd tell you that that was exactly the
moment that made me wake up, but I'll be honest with you, because if she listens to this

podcast as she does, she'll be the first one to say, she told me that hundreds of times
and I didn't really listen to it.

But finally, one of these times it did, but I recall at this particular moment, go, my
life should not be dictated by me staring at a computer screen all day, answering emails,

being a part of web calls and so forth.

There has to be more to this thing, because here's me.

I'm done a big day of work, I just got back from the office.

It's like eight, nine o'clock at night.

I'm on my phone.

I can tell you right now that's not TikTok.

That's Instagram.

It's either YouTube.

If I have any kind of brain space left or it's me checking more emails, dealing with
things.

I don't even have the brain space to play a video game at this point in my life.

I don't have the brain space to go to a movie or go to the pub with friends.

I'm literally just living to work at this point in my life.

And it was my wife who's pointed out to me and said, something's gotta change here, Sam.

This isn't you.

You don't have to be the atlas of this particular universe.

So, I did like what any person does in this situation, John and Daniel, go, you know what?

You're right.

I deserve to be happy.

You know what I'll do?

I'll buy my happiness.

So I went ahead, if you're seeing the picture right now, it's a illustrious, very, uh very
illustrious antique arcade machine of the popular video game Street Fighter II.

And I went ahead and I'm gonna buy this for myself.

I'm gonna put it in my home and I'm gonna enjoy it.

Because I'm a hard working man.

I deserve it.

And John, if you know how this story works, you'll know that at a certain point, I go,
well, that's over now.

So of course, I'm gonna need a second one.

So let me go ahead and buy a second one, right?

Because again, I wasn't getting that dopamine.

I will give a picture from before.

Even my cat Doom, my cat Doomathy L.

Binks III approved of the arcade purchase.

So of course I need to buy a second one and put it in my house to make sure that I'm happy
with all of the things that I

Dear, dear listeners.

even started wearing the identity we talked about before for Halloween, dressing up my cat
as Wolverine, myself dressing up as Ryu, posing for a picture I forget for what function.

I decided to wear my hobbies as a part of who I was, and that's what happiness was all
about.

I'm sorry, John, what were you gonna say?

Never be sorry for greatness.

I was just gonna say that this is a real big point for the viewers because this is fucking
incredible and you should watch this part.

It's good.

I'll tell you what happened, but when he says, I'm gonna buy a second one, he cut to and
the two arcade machines are set up nearby each other.

It looks fucking awesome.

But also just the community timing was very good.

Not to dunk on the listeners in this one.

I just genuinely feel bad for them because that was really well done.

Also, you look fucking sweet in this Ryu getup.

I like it.

So at this point in time, at a certain point, there's actually a third arcade machine I
buy.

I'm not showing that part.

This didn't work.

Buying my happiness didn't work.

I thought that I could just keep slaving away, working this job that I kind of hated but
paid the bills.

And as long as I just had my hobbies and had the things that I liked, my toys, this would
help me out.

It didn't work.

Zoom passed.

two years later.

Outside, what you're seeing right now in this particular picture, we're outside on a
campus lawn and they're about to do a showing for the movie.

If I recall, I think it's the Labyrinth with David Bowie.

It's in May we're doing this showing and we're gonna wait for the sun to set and we're
gonna play a movie here.

And I'm playing this picture for a reason because this is one of my favorite pictures I've
ever taken of myself and the person who motivated all of this.

This picture right here is of myself and my significant other and my wife.

And this is literally the day that I quit my job.

And you can tell if you look at that facial expression, he's happy for the first time he
had been in a really long time.

Now it wasn't just an up and quit.

He had planned this for a long time.

He gave in his notice, all that stuff.

He was gonna change careers significantly.

He was gonna go away from being in pharmaceuticals, nothing against that, and doing
something that really fulfilled him greater.

He's gonna be a public speaker, he's gonna be a workshop instructor, he was gonna travel
the entire world showing people the things that he knew, the lessons he learned along the

way, the good, the bad, the ugly, and try to make a dent in whatever, well, whatever this
mess that we're in that we're gonna be in.

From construction work areas to other places to workshops, I've blurred this particular
picture because I don't wanna show people's faces, but doing fun little games and getting

people to laugh and see that it's the human connection that makes us powerful.

I got to see all kinds of places about the world and I got to travel everywhere and I
still get to do this every single day.

I even did it during COVID.

None of that would have happened if I didn't have my partner in crime who pointed out to
me, hey, this isn't quite right, something's off.

Because at this point in time, John and Daniel, I had this place like, I've just got to
keep, I've got to keep the roof up.

I've got to keep the ship afloat.

I just got to keep powering through.

I can, if I'm good enough, I'll get through this.

Misery is just what you have to do through life.

And if I didn't have that network system to point out that, man, something's off,
something's not right, this ain't the way to live, well, I wouldn't be here today.

I wouldn't be here at Zero Dot.

Zero Dot would not exist as a result of it.

I share this story, not to gloat, but just to rather to say the impact of just having,
opening yourself up to the opportunity that you don't know everything and that there might

be a better way and that this way usually is kinder to yourself.

My wife was the one who said to me, you you've got special skills, you've got special
powers, you've got special abilities, you've got knowledge, people would love to have this

from you.

And here I was settling for a lot less when the truth was I was actually enough.

So when we say cognitive bias and we say we need to be aware of it, it's not a bad thing,
it's actually a beautiful thing.

And the mechanism in place that I would suggest again is the network of people that you
have to check on you to make sure that you're doing what you gotta do so you can be the

best version of yourself.

And that's my story.

I love that story.

A lot of pieces of feedback for you.

First off, a piece of feedback for Chris.

Thank you.

What a fucking cool human you are.

Thank you for being just who you are and helping us be here, because I like doing this
show and probably wouldn't be happening if Sam hadn't taken that page turn.

uh Be of all, Jesus Christ, you look good in some of those pictures.

Holy fuck, man.

You're a good looking dude, but like the one where you're like posed with your leg crossed
back, go back a few more.

That's a good one.

Keep going.

That one.

That's a fucking stud muffin right there.

I love that picture.

um

I also want to just validate that like, you hit on a really important thing.

A of all, if you want to buy a video game cabinet, fucking do it.

It's amazing.

It's super sweet.

um B of all, I wanted to give a special shout out to the ADHD of all homies.

We are so fucking vulnerable to this where you're like, I'm going to work hard and get the
thing and the thing will make me happy.

It will make you happy and you should get it.

It won't make you stay happy.

It won't give you meaning.

It won't give you purpose.

And I had a moment today I wanted to reflect on very briefly before doing the show.

I'm hanging out with a person I'm dating and I'm talking to her about a piece of gym
equipment that I want and I got real fucking sad because I was like, I don't need this.

I can have it and it will be fun, but I'll be out a few hundred bucks for a thing that
I'll use twice.

I don't need it.

And why is that sad?

I'm saving money.

That's cool.

I had insight.

That's cool.

It's because my brain wanted to feel good feelys.

And the point that Sam is making here that I think is incredibly well put.

is like.

Joy that lasts is from experiences and relationships.

It's not from stuff.

It's never from stuff.

Have we done ego esteem and self esteem as a conversation here before?

We've touched on them.

We haven't done a deep dive yet.

I'll do the very short five second version.

Ego-esteem is your things are awesome, so you're awesome.

And things can be like your professional licensure, your marriage, shit like that.

ah Self-esteem is you're awesome because you are awesome, your personal traits are
awesome.

That idea is very tangentially, but very relevant to this.

And that like the things that make Sam feel good, the things that make him light up are
things like experiences with Chris, going to these places, helping people connecting.

That's just gonna make more fun and more joy than any arcade machine.

Which once again, I've played on one of those arcade machines, it's fun as fuck, it's
super cool.

but it's not the driver for what matters.

And it's so cool to be able to have people who are able to give that feedback.

And I wanna cheer on the Chris's of the world.

And this isn't like you can fix people thing, like humans take a while to change.

And if somebody lovingly plants an idea and it doesn't grow, that doesn't mean that soil
is dead.

That doesn't mean that idea will never happen.

It takes a while sometimes.

And it's okay if someone you love hasn't got there yet.

It takes a while.

I've also had a similar, but dissimilar version.

It wasn't Chris in my case.

It was actually my friend, Kevin, but just finding ways to know what actually matters in
life and how to.

And I also would add on, you have to continue to acknowledge the piece of your brain
that's like, get more shit though, get more shit though.

Because like, it is fun to get some shit.

I'm not knocking getting some shit, but it cannot replace this.

It can't, and you have to, you have to have a team to get that feedback.

And a team can be small, two people, three people, five people, it doesn't matter.

Personally, I think like having like Sam was alluding to a few teams, perhaps small teams
of three or four, incredible, very, very like genuine, like good for safety.

Cause your brain has more places to bounce things.

doing this on your own doesn't work.

Humans are silly and we fall into fixed pattern mindsets and we'll be like, well, I'm to
do this thing.

And it's like, oh, that didn't work.

You're like, well, then I'll do it harder.

and like that doesn't usually pan out.

And when it does, boy, that's a dangerous lesson to learn.

it's actually dangerous when that how you're right.

Like, I did it harder than it worked.

And now the feedback loop has been cemented in your brain.

And that's what you that's your soul for everything.

And that was that's where I was before.

I was like, I just need to work harder.

You work harder.

Working hard is awesome.

It is awesome and people should find great ways to do it.

It's really good for you.

It is not the only thing.

It can't be the only thing.

You deserve better than that, dear listener slash viewer.

I would say to anyone that's watching or listening right now, my takeaway to anyone is
having that wonderful relationship, whether it's platonic, romantic, or otherwise, and

having networks in place to give yourself permission to go, hey, can you check me on this
real quick?

Being able to say that to anyone and have them actually give you their honest feedback is
incredibly powerful.

if this lessons anything, I'm literally going to Chris for all kinds of things like,

Hey, am I overreacting here?

Am I doing this?

Am I doing that?

And she'll be like, maybe, kind of, sort of, whatever.

And of course, I use other people as well.

She's not my sole source.

John's talked about this before.

Don't put all of your eggs in one particular basket.

But having that is such a gift, and I would not trade that for anything.

I'm one of the luckiest people on planet Earth.

But guess what?

Just because I'm one of the luckiest people does not mean you can't also be lucky.

Everyone can have this.

Not this specifically, because this is mine.

But everyone else can have something like it, right?

You get to have something like this.

And the thing I have to say is like, there are people who internalize the idea that they
are unworthy of this and can't have it.

I will never be done talking about this, hence the comment I made about expediency.

If you are a person, and I mean this so goddamn hard, I always say this, but like, this
might be the most important part of the show for me that we ever do, but like, because I

used to be, I don't know people know this, I was like super depressed.

I was like super depressed.

I was like hanging onto life by a thread.

If you've ever seen me, I'm six foot one, and I was the same height that I was, but like
today, but I was...

80 pounds lighter.

Like I was dying.

I was living on vodka.

It was not great.

And I was just like, there's no hope.

I can't get better.

I can't be okay.

That's insane.

That's crazy.

Cause life's really good for me now.

Like I'm like a very happy person.

I'm very content.

And I had internalized that like I couldn't make relationships.

I couldn't change my station.

I couldn't get a better job.

I couldn't find a career that would matter to me.

And I couldn't find people who would love me.

I couldn't find people like Chris.

I couldn't find people like Sam and Daniel.

I couldn't find people who would just give a shit and care.

And like you can.

you totally can and it doesn't start with, this is gonna be oversimplified, but it doesn't
start with being cool enough.

It doesn't start with I make enough money now.

It doesn't start with, it starts with you being really down with pieces of who you are,
sharing those pieces with people, building the network Sam's been alluding to, and then

you can kind of ping pong.

And the beautiful thing is when you add a person, they'll bring two more people.

It's like an MLM, but good.

and then you can like grow your friend network organically and have these people.

If they ask you to start paying dues, run away.

That's a different thing.

That might be a cult.

But what should happen is that you'll feel seen and loved and cared for.

And it is, I fucking from the bottom of my soul, it's never too late.

It's never too late.

Not a thing.

So, um I'm gonna get emotional, I can feel it.

um But like, this episode is important to me, because I wish past me and I wish past Sam
and I wish past Daniel and maybe current you, you know, and hear this stuff.

Because the reason that I got out of it, and I think that these guys got out of it, wasn't
that we used those famous bootstraps and pulled ourselves up.

It's that person one or person three or person five, just a small number of people were
like, I'm still here.

I still care about you.

Mm-hmm.

can build on that.

Kevin.

Kevin Barrymore.

Best friend since I was five.

uh Super fucking depressed, hanging on by a thread.

And he drove out to the middle of nowhere where I was living.

And he was like, you want to do yoga?

You want to go somewhere?

And I was like, I don't care.

And he was like, well, what's going to be a cooler story for your day, man?

You want to say you did some yoga and went somewhere?

You want to sit here and do this?

And he wasn't being rude.

He was like asking me.

And I was like, guess the story's better, right?

I never forgot that.

Yeah.

It's like, sounds dramatic, but he saved my life.

And I'm so grateful to him for that.

But I also like, that's the beauty of it, right?

It's like when you have a friend like that, you can do that for them too.

Humans are so fucking good at this.

And if you don't have these people to give you this shit, and this is to really tie it to
the theme of the day, like I'm getting other feedback that's disrupting my current flow of

data.

My current flow of data said,

You're worthless.

You're stuck.

Even if you succeed, you'll never change.

You'll never be good enough.

No one like just vicious shit.

And it's just you and your head and your head thinks faster than you can talk.

You can't keep up with it.

There's a famous quote that's a slight misrepresentation, but it says depression is the
only illness the body doesn't try to recover from.

That's why it's so fucking terrible.

Because if I have a cold, my body's like, we don't want this.

If I have depression, my body's like, yeah, maybe we deserve it.

Which you don't, to be clear.

We can get addicted to depression.

We get addicted to it.

to share what it truly is, because I think people should have this on record somewhere.

Depression is your body trying to protect you from pain by just giving up.

It goes, well, we're already fucked.

Let's make it hurt less by doing nothing.

It doesn't fucking work.

It's a glitch.

It shouldn't happen.

It's not utilitarian in any way.

I guess if I'm about to bleed out and it's going to hurt me to crawl, I could just sit
there.

But I'm fucking 20 in this story.

I'm fine.

I'm not bleeding out anywhere.

My brain is just like, well, we're done.

It doesn't work, let's not go down the path of thinking it's a glitch, but it's the way in
which the brain is trying to send a signal something's wrong.

And it doesn't have a mechanism to send it any other way than this, right?

It sucks, it doesn't work, but it can't do the other thing, which is actually literally
shut down your heart, although it can if you get really badly depressed.

um I think about the panic attacks that I had.

the real bad panic attacks.

And I'm like, I don't get it.

Why am I stressed?

I didn't understand why I was stressed, but here I am having a panic attack and my heart
won't stop doing whatever it's doing.

It's got a couple tools in its kit to try to send you some kind of signal.

that's

Yeah, it's electric meat.

It's doing its best.

It needs help.

Don't let it do it on its own.

It's not capable.

Hmm.

But it's okay.

It is.

because you get to be that wonderful person for someone else and someone else will be that
wonderful person for you.

We're all team human, we all do this, we're all in this together.

One of the reasons we do Zero Dot is we, myself, John Daniels, saw what was happening in
the world and go, someone should do something about this.

And we did all do the thing of like someone smarter than us, better than us should
probably do it.

But then it's like, well,

Maybe it should be us.

And I'm not saying we're a savior of anybody.

We absolutely are not.

But we're some kind of dent, some kind of punch in the system in whatever way we possibly
can be.

Hey man, those other people should do it too.

The people that we were like, someone should really do something about that.

They should, as well as us, everyone just, it doesn't matter how much of a dent you make,
just everyone should just try and make a dent.

What's worst that can happen?

avoid the platform we're on, having opinions about the content of this, I'm gonna be
incredibly vague.

But I was at a place once where a lot of people were and they were like, we're concerned
about things.

And a guy who was like, I'm in charge of a few things and I'm concerned about things,
specifically said, don't wait for the leader to come and make things right.

We might not have that, make things right, like make a dent, do something.

And I was mad at the time because I was like, well, what does that fucking mean?

But I think it's actually a really salient point, which is like, if we all do a little
thing, it makes a big difference.

Living in a state where I can tell you that shit works.

Mm-hmm.

percenti.

Oh, John, you said the word state.

And Minnesota's a state.

They're going to...

no.

Oh, no.

Oh, we're done for.

It's okay.

This won't be in the episode.

It's fine.

Gambling.

Gambling.

We love gambling.

Casinos go to a casino.

Well, that's been our show.

Thank you so much for tuning in.

We hope you learned something.

We hope you had fun.

We do appreciate you popping by and watching.

Click things, subscribe if you want to, either way.

Do me a favor, try to be a little more aware of your biases.

So you can just gently make decisions based off what you wanna do.

It's fun, it'll help.

It'll help your buddies, and it'll feel good, and maybe help out Team Human.

Thanks, yeah, we'll see you next time.