The Laziness Lie [The Zero Dot Podcast #19]

Thing the first, if you have a person who is very tall and they're like, I don't know,
they have to like duck under a doorway, you wouldn't be like, okay calm down tall guy,

fucking walk into like a regular person.

No, you wouldn't because it's physically fucking obvious.

You're like, they have to duck.

This is unfortunate.

They probably should get a car with more leg room so that they can drive in that car
without fucking hurting their head.

It's the same thing.

And you would never shame that person.

Like, why are you so tall?

Didn't you want to be like a regular, like, what are you, didn't you think about this?

Stupid.

We should be shaming the systems that we've had to navigate for all these years, not us as
people.

Like these systems were not built for everyone.

What I would say from my lofty high fucking high concept horse is we should be shaming the
people who insist that the systems are based on value, because they're fucking not.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages.

This is the Zero Dot Podcast.

I'm Sam.

This is John.

This is Daniel.

And uh guys, it's been a week.

Yeah, no, um I was, it was like a Friday and then a Saturday and then there was a Tuesday
and something, couple of things before that.

And I think it shakes out to about a week.

I feel like we're about like a week.

I you got it.

I think you nailed it.

Well done.

I open with that, it's been a week, there's a palpable pause of like, yeah, it has been a
week.

I to think about it for a minute.

Yeah.

No, I feel like I always give the same response, which is just the silent, silent nod, the
knowing nod.

Just.

There's so much to unpack in this minute interaction, but I would share with you this
aspect particularly.

As you get older, time changes for you subjectively.

When you're a little kid and I'm like, well, we'll get you a present for your birthday
next year.

You're like, well, that's a fifth of my life.

That's an incredibly long ways away.

And then when you're older, you're like, that's like nothing.

Like a year is like nothing.

Like planning for a thing in like May, as at the time of this recording, it's February.

That'll be here like when you blink, right?

Like that'll just happen.

So when you say it's been a week, there's a whole moment of like time dilation because in
this particular year, I guess a gratitude oriented person would say it's nice because you

can savor more, but like the weeks are fucking glacial.

There has been so much stuff to contend with that each Friday that hits at the time of our
recording is just like, oh my God, it's only been a week.

I aged 36 years over this last time.

absolutely right John.

I think we have a nice convergence.

We're getting older, so we're noticing that.

But at the same time, we're also in the age of information highways where they're just
funneling so much information to you that we didn't have even just a year ago, two years

ago.

And on top of that, things are actually happening a lot more intensely in a lot of
different ways, geopolitically and otherwise, that it's just like, can things stop?

Can we just like slow down just a beat, just a second?

That would be great.

I think about this a lot in the context of the information highlighting.

Like to what extent more shit is happening and to what extent I'm just being told about
shit more, even if it's not even happening, know, just being like, here's some shit,

here's some shit, here's some shit.

Like every time I open my phone, somebody uses a lot of capital letters to tell me that a
very important thing has happened.

uh It's not one person, it's just like the internet TM.

And I don't know, it's almost like we weren't designed for this.

It's almost like that's

a bad system that I have opinions about.

Remember when CNN, when it first came out and the biggest criticism was they just kept
repeating themselves over and over again, like nothing was happening?

I feel like we've done something where now that has sped up to the speed of CNN, which is
24 hour news cycle.

I don't like it.

Can we go back to the days in which you saw enough news and you were done, you can move
on?

Now it's like, it's literally happening when you're sleeping all the time.

Old man shouts at clouds.

Old man's got a point though.

Like it's it's worth hearing that out because there's this thing like Okay, I'm gonna get
on my fucking soap box.

I can feel it assembly underneath my feet right now human beings are It's made of barley.

I Said that with great conviction.

I don't actually I've been I've that a soapbox material typically I've never made a
soapbox before Well, there's only two things in the world.

There's soap and barley

Yep, that's it.

spectrum from soap to barley, where do you fall at home?

Please submit your answer in the comments.

Thank you.

Exactly.

You know, there's the dark side, the light side.

It's just so barley.

Oh, sorry, drink.

I was going to say, oh, right.

Here's the thing I was going to say is that we're monkeys in shirts.

We're not supposed to have a whole lot of information outside of where banana and when sex
and is it OK to sleep now?

It's just pretty pretty straightforward.

But we like stimulation so very much and.

You know how like every fairy tale slash fable ever is like, well, don't have too much of
the good thing because then it won't be good.

We were all like, we learned that lesson.

Wait a minute.

What if we don't and we just fucking always do the good thing all the time?

And then somehow it becomes bad.

We're like, again?

And it's like it's so predictable.

It's it's it's it's a time of frustration for me.

Perhaps you can tell because so many of these problems are so avoidable.

Yeah.

And yet we choose not to avoid it because that's the fun part, I suppose.

Watching the slow train crash in slow motion.

validate the layman, dear layman, layperson, um layman, I feel like...

uh

Thank you.

I hoped that would happen so very much.

um The layman doesn't pick that this happens.

The layman's like, I would like to buy some eggs perhaps and who knows, I could eat them
and I could watch a program of them.

I would have a great time.

I'd pet my dog.

And then someone was like, no, I've decided that you need to have a more expensive
computer chip.

I've massively oversimplified this out of rage, but there is a piece of that person didn't
consent to that or having to do with it.

And it's frustrating being part of system mechanic control.

So.

Here's me advocating that you should interface with your system.

This is a very not helpful PSA, but you should do it.

Yeah, it's not fun to be not in control.

You bring up a point about, you know, joy and like brains and so forth.

Brains are really good at homeostasis.

They're good at finding equilibrium.

I talk about this a lot in my classes.

I say to them, there's a part of my job I really do not like, which is report writing.

I don't like it, but here's the fun fact, John.

I know for a fact how my brain works, which is if I deleted that part of my job and only
got all the fun stuff,

my brain would find a way to not like the stuff I used to like.

So I keep that thing I don't like.

I keep it there.

So that way I can know that is the thing I don't like so I can enjoy the other stuff.

Cause I want to keep my brain happy.

Yeah, no, that's true.

And it's valid in everything, right?

Like if you're an old person, because this is an old person thing now, and you've watched
The Office, if you watched it when it came out, you're a super old person like us.

I know, right?

I'm thinking about that.

There's this whole Jim and Pam scenario, spoiler alert, they get together, and when it
pays off, you're like, ah, finally.

Oh, how great, what a good thing.

you were there, that was a really fun time in television, for sure.

it's a one episode thing, it's fucking five minutes in, they like each other, hey, let's
get together.

Okay, the payoff is non-existent.

You have to have the buildup for it to pay off.

It's like a whole thing.

But we've decided we can cheapen that system and just, you know, it's loot boxes.

It's what it is.

Ha!

Waiting is important.

while I really like getting depressed with you and Daniel, I really do enjoy that.

It's a very cathartic experience.

It makes me feel better about myself in every single way.

And I hope we do it next week.

I hope we do it all the weeks that we can.

I need some good news.

uh It's been, as we said, a week, seven consecutive days.

Last week checked, although maybe they were non-consecutive.

I'm not quite so sure.

I need some good news, my friend.

What do you got for us?

Allow me to answer you in an incredibly indirect way, per tradition.

There's an old saying, and it's relevantly old, of if a person has been around for some
time, you might say that they're long in the tooth.

I this is based off of some creature, perhaps a wolf, I don't know.

And as you've aged, you have like a longer tooth.

It's a hallmark of age because there's only one way to have a tooth, which is you're born
and then your tooth goes, and if you're an animal that has multiple teeth and you like

regrow teeth, that's the whole thing.

However, you may have noticed, dear viewer slash listener slash Sam slash Daniel slash me,
uh you only get the two shots at this.

You got baby teeths and you got not baby teeths.

And that's a problem, because if you donk up your not baby teeths and then you have a
messed up tooth, you have dental implants or you have other...

I mean, back in the day, founding fathers of our country here in America, famously wooden
teeth was an option.

I don't know if anybody here has the wooden teeth minor all still.

was it that teeth are stronger than bones?

Teeth are the strongest thing we have in our entire body.

Whose idea was that?

I'm not supposed to tell you this, but like, it's Big Teeth.

Big Teeth has an agenda and they're pushing it on everyone.

Look out for Big Teeth.

um But that's the...

for little teeth, but I guess big teeth is the real one we gotta be careful for.

Let's talk about little teeth for a quick second.

If you have a cat at home right now, go to your cat, big as this, pop open its mouth.

Look at those little teeth in the front.

Why?

Those don't do anything.

Those teeth are worthless.

Those teeth are smaller than like, I don't know.

You can't eat with those, they're stupid.

Anyway, moving on.

um The point of this isn't about cats.

It's about people teeth.

There's a hormone.

No, it's not a hormone, it's protein, sorry.

It's called USAG1, or as I call it, USAG1.

And ah it is a protein that prevents the teeth from forming, which is a fun and kind of
horror-flavored sentence on its own.

But there's a Japanese group of researchers who have been working on a drug that
effectively suppresses that protein, and it lets you just grow new teeth.

You can just be like, I'm an old person, I got no teeth, zoop, and then you just have new
teeth.

It's not quite that fast.

The zoop was perhaps a bit misleading there.

Hmm, but still any growth

In 2030, there should be, in theory, the ability to grow new teeth.

So if you lose your teeth, the, no, I don't have teeth anymore thing is sort of just like,
well, I'll just get some new ones.

And that's like really fun.

And it's crazy for the following reason.

Because if you're a little baby and you've been born in 2045 into a post-teeth growing
world, and you look back into every other year that's ever happened, and you're like,

wait, when you lost your teeth, you just, you just didn't have them?

They were just gone?

That's bananas.

Humans are getting really, really good at healing ourselves.

It's fucking crazy.

We've been in that for centuries now, but like, that's amazing.

That's amazing.

That is amazing.

know, John, it makes me think about, and I've said this before, but like, when I learned
the fact that actually when we get a quote unquote cavity in our mouth, it's actually,

yes, it's from the food, but it's also the combination of the bacteria that's in our
mouth.

And when we are born, we don't have that bacteria.

We only get it from saliva of someone else, meaning our mother or whoever gave it to us.

And I've been thinking about this for years, John, that if we just create...

This race of super babies that just never kiss or touch or use saliva ever, they could be
immune to cavities, which of course is an incredibly dangerous thing to think about

because it goes down really bad connotations.

But wouldn't that be great?

But this solves that problem because hey, you get a cavity, you get real bad root canal,
just grow new teeth, get new teeth.

famously been on the record as saying no one should touch babies for 10 years.

Just like leave a baby in complete isolation, glass chamber it.

Kind of what happens to like Homelander and the boys now that I'm saying it out loud.

But like no burning the babies with fire.

You just like, you just don't touch them.

And also moms, stop spitting in your baby's mouth.

That's fucking weird.

Don't, don't do that.

Why would, I don't understand.

It's gross.

actually did that, John, that would give a whole nother meaning to uh nature versus
nurture, wouldn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

No, at some point I feel like you can really just nurture some shit right to hell.

You can just nurture it to pieces.

um But I just wanted to give a shout out to those.

that where he took twins and he would nurture one and not the other and you actually saw
the one that got nurtured like grow?

Well, who is that psychologist?

Okay, yeah, fair enough.

No, usually those are, what is it, it the longitudinal study?

It's actually very weird because you have to do it case study style and be like, hello,
are you perhaps a twin who was separated from your other twin, wanted to drop that

information on you?

Anyway, why are you so different than that one?

Or why are you so similar to that one?

Also the nature nurture thing is one of my favorite things to not talk about and make fun
of instead because it's sort of like being like, which is more important, fucking left

sock or right sock?

Like you kind of need both.

You kinda do need both.

You kinda need both.

Yeah, yeah.

I think the nature nurture thing is used as a way to like either derail or in rail the
conversation towards genes or not genes, right?

Like what you're pre-baked with versus not.

And that's kind of irrelevant in a lot of cases.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

All right.

Well, that's great news, John.

I'm super excited.

I'm gonna ask my wife to knock out a couple of my teeth and...

Hell yeah.

By 2030, hopefully I'll get some new ones, right?

That's what you said, 2030, 2030, maybe.

They're saying in theory publicly available by 2030.

That's the hope.

How expensive do you think this is gonna be?

it's gonna be crazy expensive at first, I gotta assume.

But you kinda hope not.

You kinda hope not.

for brand new functioning teeth.

Man, I got a second positive thing.

I'm kind of half quoting this because I closed out of that tab long ago, so I can't
remember, but I think it was Colorado.

no, let me tell you fucking I am changing the millennial way and the ADHD way.

got like six tabs open.

That's it.

That's it.

I'm just I'm just keeping it real, real small right now.

Unlike my teeth, which will grow eternally.

um No, the study study.

It was a fact.

of a study, more of a thing that happened.

There was a billionaire, so I know, stay tuned for this, but the billionaire was like, you
know how people can't afford housing in the community they work in?

What if I just bought an apartment complex and made it affordable?

And then he did.

What a cool guy.

Colorado, I think.

I can look it up, but I'm pretty sure this is a thing.

In fact, me five seconds, I'm gonna do it.

Maybe a little more than five seconds.

Yep, billionaire venture capitalist and Steamboat Springs resident Mark Stevens purchased
the 104 unit Riverview apartment complex for over 95 million in late 2025.

And the idea is the mission aims to solve local housing shortages for workers with rent
heavily discounted studios for 9.25 a month, two bedrooms at 1600.

That is expensive for people who do not live in a city.

But if you do live in a city, that's not expensive at all.

And I just thought that was cool.

And I feel like...

Shoutouts to people who do ethical things when they have lots of money who are supporting
the people around them.

I don't know hot take being nice to people pretty good.

I like it High tide all boats, etc

being nice to people.

It's a goaded strategy, I would say for sure.

It makes us all happier, makes you happier.

uh Give us more stuff to say at the Zero Dot Podcast.

I'm always happy about it.

I love filling up the space with good, positive vibes.

Thank you, John.

I appreciate it.

I would say, um, as a person who looks up for a good thing or two every week to talk about
for the purposes of this podcast, you should do it.

Like you, dear listener, if you are at home, just like be like good things and look it up
once a week.

is genuinely good for my brain because my brain is always auto-populating full of terrible
things because I have social media.

I'm just happy to tell me about things that are bad.

Usually things that I love that might go away soon, or maybe you're becoming bad.

Same point.

man, do I want to drag down the mood with what John Krasinski did during the pandemic?

He did this cool thing where it was like, what was it called?

What's good news or something for like a couple days or a couple weeks with a bunch of
celebrities was like a COVID YouTube style like thing.

And then he sold the rights to I think Amazon.

Let me get the actual stuff down.

I don't want to misquote.

Krasinski, what's good.

God damn it, Jim.

Trying to celebrate your fucking being with Pam and here you are selling out to Amazon.

I'll say it right now.

If Amazon wants to buy this show, I'm listening.

But I'm not taking it.

I just want to know what you think I'm worth.

No, I don't.

I don't care.

Hey, Amazon.

wait, wait, wait, wait,

Kresince you later confirmed the drop plans for any adaptations of the show and that it
would be kept in its original format.

Kresince bought the show back for its holiday special on YouTube in December 2020.

Whoa, reversal.

Nevermind.

And then raised $2 million for various charities throughout some good merch and everything
else.

Is the show still going on?

I feel like it's not doing anything anymore.

Hold on.

you just preemptively dragged John Krasinski's name through the mud and he's still a
sparkling silver shiny boy.

We make sure.

Because I read the news that he sold to Viacom and I was like, what the hell?

But now, of course, yeah.

as a John, we have like a regular meeting all the Johns get together.

If you're a John and you don't know about this, that's really bad news for you.

Cause it means we didn't choose to invite you.

But John Krasinski, like a regular attendee, pretty like pretty popular guy amongst the
John coalition.

was, think so.

So yeah, this is some good news.

2.25 million subscribers, only 15 total videos they ever made.

But based on the popularity, they're able to sell it, then buy it back, and then do stuff
with merch, but I don't think they've done anything since December of 2020.

That's a nice idea.

I like it.

So anyway, that's a great idea.

Good news.

Thank you, John Krasinski for doing it.

I wasn't a fan of the selling of Tivaya Comm, but you you bought it back, it seems like,
and I'm happy for it.

That's how we're spinning that.

Yeah, and their acronym is SGN, which I pronounce Sagoon.

Or sign, now that I see it.

That's sad.

Never mind, I'm

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, before we dive into our main topic for the day, I think it's also good to kind of
level set a little bit and kind of give us a little bit of uh weapons of the trade, as we

might say, to kind of go against the agenda TM, I might say.

So before we get started, trigger warning to those that might be listening, we're gonna
talk about something that's gonna be a little dark, but it's a part of our history and

then give you some hope at the end of it.

So if you're triggered by this, we apologize, but don't worry, I have a point to all this.

So John and Daniel, do you remember the time?

And by the way, this is not a time that I know all of us on this call do not agree with.

But there was a time when, back in the good old psychiatry, psychology days of the 50s and
60s, it was said that homosexuality was something that could be cured.

Do you remember reading about that?

It was in the DSM for a fairly long time as a disorder, which is not the coolest thing
that ever was.

No.

When I'm bringing this up, I'm not saying we agree with this, but this was a thing in
history.

In the 50s and 60s and 70s, and some people still believe it today, they believe that
homosexuality was a disease to be cured.

And just to throw some history down here, this is literally the Time Magazine article from
it from

1965.

It's still on their website, by the way.

It is horrifying if you want to read that time capsule of what was going on.

Fun fact, uh Philadelphia's Dr.

Samuel B.

Hadden, is that any relation to Samuel Hayden from id Tech's Doom video game franchise,
who's the bad guy in that game for many reasons?

I don't know, you tell me.

But from 1965 onwards,

we also had an aggregate study.

Yeah,

the aggregate study in 1974 saying homosexuality could be cured and looking at, you 785
homosexual patients and determining that 307 of them were quote unquote cured.

John and Daniel, you and I both know that that's just simply just conversion therapy,
which is icky and gross and all that other good stuff.

And by good stuff, I mean awful stuff.

And of course, in 2004, we did another study, treatments of homosexuality in Britain since
1950s and oral history, the experience of patients.

There's still people that believe that this thing.

our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community and otherwise think it's some kind of
disease to be cured.

Why am I bringing this up?

I'm not bringing this up to bring down the mood or anything.

What I am trying to bring up is the fact that

for as long as history is dictated, whenever we can think of what possibly could be the
solution to anything, we try to kind of think that it's our fault.

We shame ourselves.

John, I think in episode one, you talked about the difference between guilt and shame.

And for some reason, we always go down this path of shame.

We always go, we're the problem.

We're the issue.

I'm bringing this up to bring up a of a larger whole um of what's going on in my world
right now.

I have the luxury of traveling across the entire United States talking to people in all
different industries.

And what I'm hearing more than I've ever heard before, it's always been a common thread,
but I'm hearing more than ever, these people that are working hard in whatever job that

they're doing, these are leaders, these are middle managers, these are supervisors, these
are executive suites.

A thread comes through that says, the people that I'm working with, they're just lazy.

They're dumb, they're stupid, I wanna find a way to fire them, they're bad.

They're not doing so good.

And I'm bringing this up to say that since all of history, we've always found a way to
demonize some group for whatever reason, which is simply false.

And during one of my workshops I had literally this week, I brought up the fact that you
will, here's a hypothesis, and John, I'm curious for your thoughts on this one.

What if all of us are lazy?

All of us.

We're all programmed to be lazy.

And I know the answer, we are, that's how our brains work.

We are lazy creatures, that's what we're meant to do.

So what if instead we did any of this stuff, which is shame other people for doing things
we don't understand or agree with or et cetera, what if we asked the question, how can we

develop systems so we can harness that laziness?

How can we make things as easy for us as we possibly can?

And in the workshops I've been working with for the past couple of weeks, em when I say
that to people, I've been hearing a big resonant kind of like, huh, I never really thought

of that before.

which tells me this horrifying thing, which is there are people that have been brought up
in the past couple of years with all things that are happening with COVID, with artificial

intelligence swarming the industry, with the hardships happening geopolitically, they've
really been put into a tribalism state of really hating themselves and hating other

people.

And that makes me really sad.

I bring that up, it's not a recent phenomenon, but it's something that I've noticed that's
been growing on in the United States at the very least.

And I say to all of us, and I give us all the hope that if we just...

Realize the fact that human beings are awesome.

We are team human.

We at Zero Dot, we are team human.

And if we don't demonize ourselves, but instead recognize the superpowers that we
currently have and what we could possibly bring to the table and embrace the things that

we do well and do what we don't do, right?

Because again, I will say to you, John, I'm a lazy person.

I'll say to you, Daniel, I'm a lazy person.

You might not think that, but I am incredibly lazy.

The difference is that I try to harness that system in whatever way that I can so that
when my laziness works for me, not against me.

And so I bring up that history lesson right now, this thing that seems horrifying to us,
it's still for some groups of the world still feeling this way.

I bring up the fact that there's still people in this day, that the solution is always
pointing fingers, blaming other people, tribalizing ourselves.

And I challenge us all right now today to go, you know, we're all team human, we're all in
this together.

What could we possibly do to bring ourselves up and embrace what we're good at?

Recognize the things that we struggle with as just, you know, as you say, monkeys in
shirts.

what we can do to kind of be the best for us if we can possibly be.

Because I think there is a way we can do it.

And I'm seeing a difference whenever we talk about this in our workshops, but it's really
sad and it's breaking my heart that thanks to, as you said, the social media and other

elements and other things, people are very much more predisposed to thinking it's me
versus them.

And we at Zero Dot definitely don't want to do that.

No, far from it.

um Lots to say.

First thing, I made sure to make a disgusted face the entire time conversion therapy stuff
is on the screen because I don't want anyone to ever have a clip of me anywhere not being

actively disgusted by that.

First off, it's hideous that they would call that therapy because that's about as
therapeutic as fucking slamming a rock directly into your eye and then saying that God

told you to do it.

Like, it's a fucking crazy thing.

um

Conversion therapy isn't in the realm of therapy.

It's not a form of therapy that we don't accept.

It's literally garbage.

It's if somebody was like, they just shot a guy and they were like, this is called bullet
doctor.

Like you just can't fucking slap a healing word on the end of a terrible thing and call it
that thing.

So it's like incredibly triggering for me because I don't know.

It's, it's, took a thing that I care about more than anything in the world and then tried
to use it for openly discriminatory purposes.

It's not based in science.

It's based in fucking phobic bullshit.

And it's, it's just, there's, this is the lowest of the fucking low.

If anyone tries to get you to conversion therapy, know for a goddamn fact that's not
therapy.

That's not what it's about and any therapist willing to do any creature willing to do
conversion therapy is not only not a therapist, they're not aware of mental health and

they're at best really misinformed.

So perhaps you can tell I am pretty fucking fired up about that.

and I would argue, they've decided human beings are the enemy, or some kind of human
being, and that's not where

Well, and then there's the whole laziness thing too.

uh I have a very hot take potentially.

I don't think laziness exists.

I think laziness is a term you use to describe things people don't understand.

uh Laziness is also, okay, so here's some things that lazy can be.

It can be a lack of ability.

So for instance, if I, I don't know, I have got one hour of sleep, I've been physically
fighting people every day.

I have to go climb a mountain, it's freezing cold.

Someone's like, why aren't you doing it?

Are you lazy?

No, I'm physically unable.

Like I am, I am at a reduced capacity.

So that's the number one thing.

Number two is there's like a mental health issue going on.

If you're a person with ADHD and someone's like, Hey, all you gotta do is fill out this
form and then you can have the thing.

Your brain goes, I don't want to do it.

Lazy is a fucking weird way of morally demonizing the thing instead of saying, your brain
might not be able to perform in this capacity.

I've said before, people lack either the knowledge, the ability or the will.

If they don't make a change, we're so ready to fucking assign it as a fucking.

personal will-based choice to not do a thing.

Every person with ADHD prior to the diagnosis, I fucking guarantee you this, I fucking
guarantee you this, has had a moment where they didn't do a thing and they thought, why am

I lazy?

Why am I bad?

And it's why I use very specific verbs when I talk about this kind of thing to say, you're
not lazy, you're not bad, your brain has an issue with dopamine and it's gonna make you

physically hurt.

There's a pain to it to do tasks.

Other fun fact, and I'll talk about this one until I'm blue in the face, it's the other
side of the spectrum.

Humans are naturally self-actualizing.

Humans are naturally going to get where they want to go.

We're built to succeed.

There's a reason that we want evolution.

It's because we just kind of do shit.

If I'm like, I gotta figure out how to get across the ocean, we'll just do it.

Stuff will get in my way.

Lack of technology that has to be invented.

Scurvy.

Pirates.

All kinds of shit can happen, but humans are great at this.

So the person goes, oh, I'm lazy.

Cool.

We slapped a fucking label on somebody's forehead and reduced their ability to do the
thing they naturally want to do.

We're making more obstacles and making it worse.

So it's not, why are you lazy?

It's what's stopping you from being who you want to be and how you want to be.

RE laziness too.

Laziness is if you, which once again, I don't know, I hate that fucking word.

Um, it, if you, if you do use that word, which I, I don't know, like I said, not a fan,
but speaking to like my ADHD people.

ah If you want a process to be efficient, you want an ADHD-having person to design it
because they hate wasting time because wasting time hurts because it's inefficient and if

you're inefficient you can't have good things.

So this is actually definitely a strength.

You can get to that place, but this is at the end of the day, and if I'm being real with
you, like it might just be my bias from my training and experience, but literally every

fucking problem runs through fear.

Every single fucking problem runs through fear.

everything that's wrong and everybody's fucking life runs through fear.

So like what happens is, it's a great motivator for-

it's the strongest motivator we have.

em Can be unhealthy, but yes, yeah.

it's wildly unhealthy.

Fear is meant to be an on-off switch.

You go, shit, I'm afraid, resolve, done, fear off.

But instead we just kind of turn it on and we leave it on and we feel fucking terrible and
it saps your resources passively all the time.

And it's weaponized constantly.

So if I'm afraid of a thing I don't understand, I say that thing is bad.

And now I can't understand it and handle it differently.

Which is, I mean, that's the fucking core of so many things.

And fucking sidebar.

I'm just being a spicy little angry boy because I am genuinely pretty pissed off about
this right now.

If a person is like, why are you lazy?

What they're also saying, whether they want to be or not, is they're saying, I'm not
capable or willing to understand alternatives from my perspective, so I'm going to

demonize this to avoid doing work that maybe could help us both improve.

Which, if you're listening to spicy meat right now, is fucking weak.

Like

grow some fucking balls metaphorically.

Like this, you have to do hard things to make change.

thing number two is it's cowardly.

Fear is a biological response to choose to give into the fear is a choice.

You will have a reaction if you go, oh shit, like you get scared, like that's fine.

But if you can go like, I'm afraid of that thing.

I'm going to try to demonize it.

Cool.

You're being ruled by an amygdala and you can say all the shit you want about fucking core
values and all the shit you want about whatever ways you value.

You're running.

and I'm just fucking tired of it.

I'm I'm actively on fucking fire.

The conversion therapy thing, it fucking puts so many people in a terrible position for so
fucking long because they were told that a personality feature, a trait of who they are as

a human, and also not like a dominant one.

Like my dominant features include that I have two arms.

Like I use them all the time.

If I only had one, that would really fuck my shit up.

I wear a hat today.

That's not a dominant feature.

It doesn't fucking matter.

Your sexuality matters.

Your gender matters.

but it doesn't preclude you from doing literally anything.

Like I can't be like, well, you can't be an astronaut.

You like dick too much.

Like that's not a fucking thing.

That's just, that's not real.

Anyway, last thing that I would say in this realm and it goes back to the laziness piece
is procrastination is not a time management issue.

It never has been the people who say that it is don't know what the fuck they're talking
about.

Procrastination is an emotional management issue and a psychological issue.

If I'm a person who's not, know, fucking what am I not doing?

I gotta get my taxes, right?

I haven't got my taxes yet.

I'm not doing that because I'm like, I don't understand how to do it.

No, it's because I don't want to fucking sit there and be bored.

And occasionally it's because people will say, I don't want to do it because I don't want
to see what's on the other side of that.

Because if I do it, they'll go, you owe X thousand dollars.

And I'll go, well, that's fucking terrifying.

Same reason people don't go to doctors.

Because what if that needle really fucking hurts?

Or what if the prognosis is you're actually incredibly sick?

Fear rules everything.

And if you learn how to fight it, you get so much fucking power.

Part of why I like being a therapist is because this is ultimately all of my job, right?

You have to learn how to fight against fear biologically.

Like the amygdala you can't reason with.

You have to teach your body to get stronger so we can handle it.

And when it comes to the cognitive side of it, you can be like, your fear and the
conclusions aren't necessarily valid.

can challenge those things.

But then again, you know the boy Alex Honnold?

If you don't, he's the guy from Free Solo, he just climbed a giant building.

Oh yes, yes, that guy.

He's a neat little guy.

And actually he's not little, he's quite huge.

His amygdala is fucked up.

Like it's underactive.

So he just doesn't have fear responses, which is why he can do incredible things.

Asterisk.

There are some problems to not having fear.

Fear is not a, you don't want to like purge fear from yourself because you will, I don't
know.

Yeah.

It's just that like any good tool, it has a purpose and you should use it for that
purpose.

If you have a wrench, you should use it to turn bolts.

You shouldn't use it to pet your dog.

That's fucking.

Sir.

That was the headphones that I'm not wearing.

They're jealous I'm using these ones.

I was hoping it was actually your dog, because you literally said the word dog and that
would have been fantastic.

That would have been apropos.

Behind this green screen right now is a dog.

believe it is laying down, probably on all of my pillows getting its hair everywhere.

Your adherence to authenticity bums me out, but I like

such as the only.

John, I'm glad you brought up the ADHD piece because in this same workshop where there's
an overwhelming response of like, they're the problem, they're lazy, they're doing this.

I challenged them with what I said before, which is, hey, what if we're all lazy?

What if all of us are lazy?

You're lazy, I'm lazy, whatever, right?

But we've just learned how to manage our systems better so that way we are moving and
acting in a way that the system likes.

And they, they're really any different than you.

They just.

either don't know how to manage the systems or they've looked at the systems that we're
managing, go, that's bullshit, I don't wanna do that.

And what if that was, you just said the same thing, what if we could bridge that as a way
of connection and understanding?

Because it might be we're the same person.

They thought about that like, that's interesting.

We break out in some activities.

And one of the activities we did is, hey, here's someone's response, they're having
trouble with something, how would you help energize them?

And I'll summarize what the response was.

In the simulated pattern, it was something to the effect of like,

Hey, I'm really, on this innovation committee.

I'm super excited about it.

I'm glad we got to launch this new project, but now that we're executing it, I'm losing
focus.

I'm not super interested in it.

My work is slacking down a little bit behind, but I don't know what to do.

And the five people that were on this particular prompt, they stared at that and went, I
don't understand, just do it.

Just tell them to do it.

If they can't do it, then they should get fired.

They jokingly wrote the words fired, right?

So then I said, hey, so let me tell you something.

Increasingly now since about 2021 or so, we're seeing a rampant uh diagnosis and diagnoses
of people with ADHD.

That's not because there's more people with ADHD than not, just we're getting better at
understanding what ADHD is.

And with ADHD, with a fun thing about ADHD, and it's not fun for them, but it's fun for us
to understand, is that the way they regulate dopamine is totally different.

One of the things is that when they procrastinate against something, what to you looks
like laziness to them, for them, it's them responding to the fact that...

At a certain point, the pressure becomes so increasingly high, they're looking for relief.

And when the thing is done, that's what they're feeling.

They're feeling relief.

Whereas other people that don't have ADHD, they don't get that.

They actually get a nice little dopamine little tick and it makes them feel good.

They don't get that.

That's why procrastination happens.

So in this case, let's pretend this person's ADHD.

How will we try to manage that?

And they didn't answer my question, John.

You know what they did?

All of them said, I'm the same way.

I've got like 15 things that like I should do right now, but like I'm going to wait until
the last minute and then I'll do it.

and then, cause that'll make me feel better.

Like it's actually eating me up inside that I can't do the thing and it'll take me 10
minutes to do it.

But like, I just wait until the last minute to get it done.

And I noticed that when I do that, I get it done a lot faster and it's really efficient
and it's great.

They literally said those words to

It's so fucking face-smackingly dumb, I...

Like...

And so let's pretend for a moment that what they're saying is authentic and let's pretend
they're undiagnosed ADHD people.

I'm not saying they are, but let's just pretend.

They have been taught to shame the exact same people that they're trying to help manage.

That's what I'm talking about.

Like that, that's insane to me.

This is...

I'm a big fan for the record of everybody playing nice and getting along.

My preferred way is just everybody be homies.

It's a really nice thing I recommended.

But I'm a little bit radicalized about this area, right?

Because I am the person in this story.

I'm a little bit past the part where they're at.

But I did grow up thinking, well, if you just want to do a thing, just fucking do it.

Don't be so goddamn lazy.

Which turns out had like devastating consequences for me and contributed to my depression.

So I was like, guess I'm a piece of shit.

But turns out I'm not.

I hope that thought was terribly interesting and I hope you can maintain it for the next
several seconds as I sit here, interrupting your progress, disrupting a project that I was

part of making like some sort of asshole.

And I'm sorry for swearing during this commercial break, which is what this is.

If you're watching our show and enjoying it, please stick around and continue to watch the
rest of it.

Maybe click past me in just a few seconds here.

But do consider subscribing to our Patreon because we have a whole lot more show and
actually recently...

We have a new thing going on where we have a whole second set of content that is exclusive
to the Patreon members, not just divvied up in a different way.

It's a whole new completely independent thing and I sure would like you to watch it.

That's why I made it.

Okay, that was all.

Bye.

Um, and like, oh, what a fucking like, like predictable, but yet still so painful
conclusion to that story where you're just like, nah.

And like, okay, back to my radical life.

like, the thing is, if you are a person who is living in the current world, um, at least
in the Merica area, frankly, most of the Western world, um, probably, probably just the

fucking world.

You've been living in norms that are established based off of a large number of people.

but it's nowhere near 90%.

And frankly, it's way less than you might think it is because a lot of us who are fucking
neurodiverse weirdos didn't realize it because we've been told that the way we are is bad

long enough that you shove that shit down and then eventually when you learn to be
yourself, you're like, I'm getting away with something.

I'm being naughty.

I'm bad.

And if I'm going to just jack myself off for a second, which is probably not a thing I
should say, but like when I get to do things my way,

I fucking rule at stuff.

Like my metrics at anything that I get involved with are incredibly good if I get to do it
my way.

Which is why micromanagers are so fucking terrible because they're like, no, do it this
specific way.

And people go, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow,

It's related to willpower and effort, which are things that are wildly misunderstood by
fucking everybody.

um If you leave a thing to willpower, and you say, you care about this, it, and you that
to person with ADHD, what you're really saying is, I hope that thing by its natural state

currently induces sufficient dopamine that it has enough appeal for you to go do it.

I'm not gonna help you, I'm not gonna build that dopamine structure, I'm gonna just pray
to God.

I'm actually gonna fucking expect without any prayer or anything, just like, you should
just be able to do that.

And this person who might fucking kill it at this thing is like just a little finagling
away from being amazing at it.

And that is so horrible.

Yeah.

tweak.

That's all it is.

It's a, we're gonna borrow a phrase.

It's a skill issue, but really it's a knowledge issue of just knowing how to tweak that
just a smidge, just a smidge, just a bit.

the analogy that I saw with somebody recently and they liked it because they were feeling
like they were like but now I'm a special snowflake which also we shouldn't fucking shit

on being special why the fuck is that a thing but I don't

I mean, I understand what they argue when they say that, but...

But the thing that I want to get to, is like the person I'm talking to who is one of many
people is like, well now I get these accommodations and I can do stuff but I feel bad

because I'm getting this special treatment and I don't deserve it.

Several things.

Thing the first, if you have a person who is very tall and they're like, I don't know,
they have to like duck under a doorway, you wouldn't be like, okay calm down tall guy,

fucking walk into like a regular person.

No, you wouldn't because it's physically fucking obvious.

You're like, they have to duck.

This is unfortunate.

They probably should get a car with more leg room so that they can drive in that car
without fucking hurting their head.

It's the same thing.

And you would never shame that person.

Like, why are you so tall?

Didn't you want to be like a regular, like, what are you, didn't you think about this?

Stupid.

We should be shaming the systems that we've had to navigate for all these years, not us as
people.

Like these systems were not built for everyone.

What I would say from my lofty high fucking high concept horse is we should be shaming the
people who insist that the systems are based on value, because they're fucking not.

They're not.

I always feel icky getting into metrics, but like I'm very successful at a lot of the
things that I do.

And through coaching from a lot of people, including from Sam, I've learned how to use my
brain in ways that fucking work instead of ways that I was told it would work.

ah

This is a little bit of a adjunct.

I may have brought it up before, but like in one of my hobbies, I like to play a game on
the internet and I like to compete in that game.

And frankly, I competed at pretty high level these days.

And I remember talking with Sam about it and I was like, I can't make myself practice how
I should.

Notice the operative word there, should, also can't.

And Sam told me something that I will massively overproduce, but he was like, well, just
don't then.

And I was like, well, that doesn't work.

He said, well, you should do it.

Just practice when you want to.

And I was like, well, that doesn't work because I won't ever want to.

But as we talked about it more and more, the structure he gave me was sort of just like,
well, build yourself a goal.

See if you can make that goal feel appealing to yourself, build things around it that will
feel good.

Do those things.

I confess that's an oversimplification and that it did take a little bit of like, want to
set opportunities for myself to engage with this.

But if you, if you make yourself do stuff that you hate, you will hate it.

It's not rocket science, right?

And if you help your brain engage with things, and this is true for anybody, it's
especially true for people with like ADHD.

But if you make yourself do things in a way that

or if you get yourself to do things in a way that feels good, you're more likely to do it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was coaching someone else on that same particular game.

They're in a similar facet.

They're trying to compete at a high level.

And the main thing they were trying to get around was the mental block of, feel like I'm
running away from ranked.

I want to keep playing ranked because I enjoy ranked play.

And ranked, by the way, just for those that don't understand is when you navigate into a
multiplayer game online, typically a double blind situation, you're match-maked by the

game system itself.

And...

Whoever wins in that match gets points and the points goes towards an award and you go up
a leaderboard, et cetera.

This person said, I want to play in ranked more.

I want to do this, but I can't.

Every time I think about booting up, I literally can't.

I don't understand why.

And so we went down the rabbit hole and we talked and we talked.

What was the last time you played ranked?

like three months.

wow.

What was that session like?

it was great.

I loved it.

It was amazing.

Oh, interesting.

All right.

All right.

How long that session go?

yeah.

I had the whole day off on Saturday.

So I played 11 hours straight.

Oh, okay.

You played 11 hours straight and you loved it at the very end.

Yes, yes, yes.

And it says, yeah, and I got sweaty and it was lot of, it was like really, I was really
actively engaged and like, is it possible then that your body is responding in a way, your

limbic brain is responding and saying, we don't want to put our body and our mind through
that level of stress again.

And that's why you are actively avoiding that.

Even though you enjoy it and you love it.

Is that possible?

And he's like, oh shit.

Yeah, cause I was exhausted afterwards.

Like, okay, all right, all right.

So what we need to do is train your limbic brain.

to know that when you go into this, you're not gonna do that ever again.

And so we developed a plan and how they could just dip in and out real quick and then into
ranked on a consistent level.

And the person gave me good news like a month later, just dude, it's amazing, it's
incredible.

I'm always leaving like right before all my spoons are spent and I'm excited for the next
session and all that other stuff.

And I'm like, that's fantastic, that's great.

And again, all it takes is a small little tweak and we can get you back where we want you.

And you are not the problem.

The systems are not developed.

for you to succeed, but you do have to do some modulation of yourself to make sure you can
be as successful as you can possibly be.

Yeah, that's A of all, that's fucking awesome, And B of all, like part of one of the many
reasons, and I'm sure I've this a thousand times, I'll probably say it thousand more

times, that I made this show and I do all the shit that I do in and outside of my job is
because I didn't know any of this shit for most of my life.

And like, this is the thing that I really want to harp on.

And this is not a knock on where I went to school.

I went to a fucking amazing school.

I loved my school.

Not like in way, but in a way of like, was just, was really, I felt really thought of and
cared and the people gave a shit.

But a lot of the material you'll be presented with, if you're presented with any, is
written and authored based on things that are outdated.

And this is kind of a spicy one, but also by people who haven't had the experience.

A thing that, ooh, I can feel the old temper flaring again.

There's a thing that bugs me.

Because I do believe that it is quite possible that a provider in any profession can help
you with a thing they haven't experienced.

If I'm a doctor and I've never had appendicitis, but I'm like, that's fucking
appendicitis, I can help you get the treatment you need.

I do think, however, that there are certain things that are much easier to understand and
have a specialty with if you've done it.

So for it, or been there, there's a person in the professional world that I live in, and
more than one of these people in fact, who's a fabulous professional.

They're incredibly smart.

They're very good what they do.

They give a shit.

They try really hard.

They're very kind.

They're super polite.

They are neurotypical.

And occasionally people will refer to them and they'll say, hey, can you do this service
for me?

Can you do this testing?

I'd like to see if my kid is depressed.

I'd like to see it bleedily, blotty blue.

And they do it.

And they go back and they give these really well-informed reports with lots of wonderful
data.

And they're actually incredible at going through the data with you and saying, well,
here's how this means this.

does that make sense?

And this person fucking rules.

I love this person.

I have a teeny tiny little beef with this person.

because this person is constantly telling people they don't have ADHD.

And I know that they fucking do.

So I'm not super confident about a ton of things.

I'm really confident about therapist things.

just, this is the one of two things that I'm incredibly good at in my life.

And what'll happen is the person will look for a lot of data-driven metrics, which are
good.

We like science, but what happens is the science is based on things that aren't the
fucking thing because they're based on indicators people can tell when they're observing

it without having it.

This has been a challenge for me, right?

Because I'm fucking chock full of ADHD and there's a Venn diagram with autism and ADHD,
but I don't have autism to the extent that I know at the very least.

So when I learn about autism, this is a little bit past tency, but I've really, like I've
been a therapist for 15 years.

recorded line ever say anyone does have autism until the administration makes changes
about that.

Anyway.

know it.

um But I've learned so much more about autism in the past few years than I ever did in
fucking school because I have so many people that I'm close with who have been diagnosed

with it, who understand it, and they can talk about subjective things that I just cleanly
fucking missed.

I remember early on in my career I was talking with a client of mine they were like, do
you think I have autism?

And I was like, I don't really see that for you.

This person definitely has fucking like 100 %

Uh, like, like diagnosed frankly at this point, I mean, but, um, there's so much shit that
I didn't see.

Like you learn about like fixed patterns, repetitive motions.

You don't learn about a ton of other shit that are science.

Also guess what's been normed on straight white men, everything, but also like, autism in
women is it presents very differently, frankly, and you kind of just don't see a lot of

shit.

So a lot of these people are going around being a list stick, which is the word for
non-autistic.

uh, they're, they're supposedly being that they're not, but they feel like they are.

And why do I have this fucking incredibly disproportionate response to X, Y, or Z?

Why am I like this?

I must be bad.

You're not fucking bad.

You're running Linux and people keep telling you you're using windows and you're like, why
does this fucking not work?

It's cause it's a different fucking system.

And it's a great system.

There's a, there's a term that I used to have beef with and I have less beef with it now.

And it's instead of disabled, you say differently abled.

That sounds like optics and buzzwords, but like genuinely when Sam used the word
superpower earlier, that's not a fluff term.

it, like any, like if you fucking talk like classes in a game, right?

Like you have your strength guy and you have your fast guy.

Fast guy sucks at strength.

He's good at being fast.

We should let him be fast.

There's a processing thing with people with autism.

You'll see all the time where they will seem slow in responding.

Like just like, like literally slow.

and you'll be like, I'm a regular person.

I shouldn't say regular, that's bad.

I should say holistic, my bad.

I'm an holistic person and I'm frustrated with the fact that this person's going so slow
and here's what's happening for realsies is that person with autism is processing every

single piece of data pertinent to this.

So they just biomechanically are slower, but they also just went through way more fucking
data and they have a really informed conclusion.

And if we go, not my tempo, not good enough, off we go.

Mm-hmm.

discounted this fucking incredible resource.

And as soon as I learned that, I remember being like, oh, some of these people I'm talking
to, when they sit there and they take a long time before they respond, they're not like, I

don't I don't know, whatever shitty assumption you want to make, they're like, they don't
care, whatever.

Like, no, they care a fucking lot.

They just do it differently.

That's why information is so fucking important.

That's why education is so fucking important.

And that's why fucking updating your information is so important.

Because as you can recall from moments ago,

I'm talking about going to grad school and leaving with fucking none of this knowledge.

Right, yeah.

It's so as part of how fucking impassioned I am today.

I just I've played life on hard mode for most of my life because I thought I was shitty at
things that I'm openly not only not shitty at, I'm fucking good at them.

But I was being told to do it backwards for me.

If someone says, OK, you got to tie your shoes.

And I'm like, cool.

And they're like, you can only use one hand and you got to shut one eye.

I'm like, well, that seems incredibly hard, but I guess I can do it.

That's a metaphor, obviously, but that's what it's like.

And when you learn how to do it the way that works for you, which for the record isn't
like fucking voodoo.

It's always something that's quite reasonable.

It's usually like a timing thing or a structure thing.

You just, you unlock so many potentials, let alone the mirror of this with trauma.

How many people have fucking trauma that feel like they can't do something and it's
because their body goes, oh fuck, and it thinks they're going to die when they encounter a

thing.

And then fucking will gatekeep that shit and say, well, trauma as per the DSM-5 is when
you're exposed to potential death.

Cool, that's a definition that someone made up.

Trauma as it impacts your body can be the same thing of being publicly humiliated in front
of 300 students in your junior high when you're fucking solo.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's just infinite flexibility with these things and to pin it down like we know
everything, which is why conversion therapy is so goddamn upsetting.

I am on one today.

I'm on one today.

This hit a fucking nerve with me today because I'm so fucking tired of seeing this and I'm
so...

but only the listeners.

Do you want John to get even more spicy?

Click like and subscribe.

I'm kidding.

Viewers, do you want me to get more spicy?

Be aware that it's dangerous.

It will involve things below the belt line.

I'm coming for your dick.

That's what I do.

I get upset, I rip off your dick.

Those are the rules.

Zero that.

Book it.

It's not the movie Street Fighter, like the actual 1970s Street Fighter.

Yeah, that happens.

Don't Google that unless you're in a safe place.

You will see a meme or something that happens from that film, The Street Fighter.

I think it's called The Street Fighter.

But yeah, John, when you're talking about that, know, I always share people, actually I
don't share this story too often because it's a very specific niche story, but in my

field, in my work, you know, I teach in front of a lot of people.

You're given a script, but you're told to use your own script, and I always do.

You're given a slide deck, you're given activities, you're given a whole book to plan.

I always felt like I was wrong because I would watch my peers and I'd talk to them and
they would map things out and they'd write things down and they'd get everything figured

out so that way they could execute it perfectly in the moment.

And I'm thinking to myself, I'm not gonna do any of that.

I'm gonna read through it, I wanna know what the story is, I wanna look at the literature,
because I wanna understand that.

And then when we start going,

Sure, the first 45 minutes, that's dialed in.

But now that we've got 45 minutes in, Daniel might have a response to this, and that's
interesting.

We want to go in that direction.

And John might feel this way, and Susie might feel this way.

this person just said something that we just talked about that for a bit.

We can skip that last section in the end and save ourselves time.

Like, I'm very comfortable doing that.

That's why I'm very good at what I do.

But for a long time, I thought I was wrong.

I was the problem.

Like, I'm not doing this right.

And part of this is just figuring out what works for you to make it right for you.

And I, okay, to A of all, how fucking relatable.

When you were telling that story, I was thinking of a class I had in grad school.

There was a group project, which you can tell, like, this is gonna be bad.

ah There was a woman in my group, name was Jen.

Jen is the...

and tell us all the group projects that you thought went really well.

Answer probably none, but tell me I'm wrong.

No, it's like a thing.

There's like a cute thing with this because like humans have to do group projects because
we're a team.

Like humans are a team.

You have to be on a team, but also, uh, I have a really.

project always propagates the idea that one person is not gonna do anything at a minimum
and one person is gonna do all the thing at a minimum and whatever matrix that's on.

Yeah, but continue John.

Okay, I have to do this analogy.

I don't know how much of our viewer base slash listener base cares about fucking American
football, but it's like a really good analogy for this.

If you have a group project and you have an American football team offense, offensive line
receivers running back quarterback, right?

Maybe a tight end in there or something.

And then you say, okay, we're all going to do the same thing.

You've just randomized who plays which position.

You're running back is now your offensive lineman.

Your receivers, one of your like huge 300 pound guys like, no, you need to let people play
to their fucking strengths.

which is why group projects, when you do them well, are beautiful.

They're fluid, they're amazing, everybody gets to feel helpful.

And it's also okay to notice that for certain projects, some people might not have the
same strengths.

That doesn't mean they're shitty, that means they're not gonna be as good at some of those
things.

Anyway, to my project slash story, there was a woman in my group who I had classes with
throughout grad school, and she was awesome, her name was Jen.

um And I remember we got assigned to do something, and Jen, on day one, was like, okay,
let's all go home and read this chapter, we'll get reports on it by, how about Monday for

you guys?

I remember just being like,

Jen, we're going to fight like for sure.

And I'm going to win because I'm way bigger and meaner than you are.

Like don't do this.

Jen was doing things her way and her way is great for her.

And Jen got really good grades.

And I'm sure Jen's a lovely therapist.

And if I tried to things that way, I would not, I would be done with most things.

I would no longer be in this industry or school or anything.

And I'm, and like, this is subheading B.

Subheading B is for one person, maybe more.

I hope it's you person who's listening to this or watching it.

I don't know.

If you are a neurodiverse person, what will happen is you will be forced to do things in a
way that doesn't feel good for you, and then you will go back and you'll do things in a

way that you like, and it won't work, and you'll feel fucking terrible.

You'll say, well, you know what I'll do is I'll just go play video games, and then later
I'll go read my book, or I'll go do whatever, and then I'll just come back into the work

later, and then can feel better.

And then you won't, and you'll panic, and you'll do it last minute, and you'll go, ah, ah,
and then you'll feel shamed.

but also you'll get really defensive of it.

Well, someone will say, well, why didn't you just go ahead and do the thing that, you
know, Jen was doing, just fucking do it ahead of them.

You're like, well, cause that way sucks.

And what you do is you need to lock yourself into, well, I have to do it this way that
doesn't work.

It's okay for your way to get a lot of updates.

I used to tell people, I was famous for this, lot famous, but like locally famous, about
how much I hate structure.

I was like, fucking structure, don't lock me down.

I want to fucking open schedule every weekend.

Crazy talk.

Like my brain needs structure so bad.

These two guys that I do this show with are two of my very dear friends and they have been
incredibly accommodating, especially Daniel because he's just so polite to do this with

us.

Because my ass, every fucking show I'm like, hey guys, I'm gonna be a half hour later than
I thought, I'm so sorry.

And then they do it and I will always make good on my side of things, but that's just how
my fucking brain works.

And I'm really grateful for having that.

Because when you don't have that and you...

Anyway, quick side, back to the structure thing.

If I didn't know we were gonna do this show on Fridays,

And I just was like, well, let's do it in real one.

I would never fucking do it.

And if they were like Fridays at this time, no fucking exceptions ever, I wouldn't fucking
do it.

But they've been incredibly helpful in letting me have a little bit of flexibility while
adhering to a structure that I don't really consent to.

I want.

And if that feels foreign to you, it's because you haven't been exposed to it in a good
version of it yet.

And holy shit, it's so good.

You are going to feel so fucking safe.

Like you can do on things to get done.

You can trust yourself to get things done.

you're gonna feel understood.

Like, this shit is available.

And the reason why I'm so fucking heated about conversion therapy is A, like half my
friends are gay.

And B, because it's the opposite of this.

It's no, has to be that way because some guy said it was and every other way is wrong.

The arrogance of that is insane.

How many times have people been like, this is how basketball teams should play.

This is how we should print things.

This is how we should mail things, whatever the fuck it is.

And then someone's like, wait a minute, I know a much better idea than that.

Can we do it my way?

Inversion therapy says, nope, it's the only way we locked it in before.

That's the thing forever.

And it's based on.

How much you want to bet John and Daniel?

Conversion therapy.

know, it's in a dark corner of the world now.

It still exists in some horrible places, but it comes back again and it's broader than
what it was before.

It's not about LGBTQ stuff.

It's about how your brain works.

you're depressed?

We'll convert you.

You have ADHD?

We'll convert you.

You have autism?

No, that's not.

We'll convert you.

We're already seeing elements of this in other places.

It's not being called conversion therapy, but you know what I'm talking about.

I do.

That's awful.

I do.

Well, also it's hideous.

So like, people who think there is one best way to do things, hey, of all, you're dumb.

um I can be nicer about that.

Maybe in a different episode I'll be my usual nice self, but right now I just have the
fucking time.

um I'll do it.

today, you're allowed to say you're dumb.

Yes, I'm with you.

Keep going.

well, and like, okay, I'll be a little bit nice.

It is literally dumb.

People who think this do not know better and are afraid to learn.

So they just, they literally lack information.

But like, you're effectively saying, okay, everything's great.

My favorite color is brown.

We should only use brown.

Brown is the only color.

And I'm like, what about the sky?

Can we make the sky like, I don't know, blue, orange, purple, something like that?

They're like, no, brown is the only good one.

And what you will do is paint a monochrome brown everything.

That's nothing.

That's nothing.

You did nothing.

You just made a

flat piece of paper with one color.

don't, like, uh, in the grand tradition lately of things being stupid, people decided that
the word diversity should be politicized.

Diversity literally just means different things.

It just means you should different things.

If I want to have a dinner and I would like to have like, I don't know, like steak, eggs,
vegetable of some sort, orange juice, I don't fucking know.

That's diverse.

If I'm like only steak, steak to drink, steak for dinner, steak appetizer, that's not
diverse and it's bad.

And if you think that having more than one thing is bad,

Why?

And the answer is, it always is, it's because you're afraid of it.

Because you brought it up, feel like giving it some good news while we're spewing about
stuff.

This happened,

Department of Education backs down on lawful directed targeting, education equity.

This is important to me, John, just specifically because I work in DEI, not in the
education sector, but in the corporate sector, the work sector.

And this makes me just happy overall in general.

So as you say the word, I say that people are fighting this war against this imaginary war
against this word called diversity.

Diversity is a good thing.

uh

You can have disagreements on how that all works.

You can have disagreements about all that other stuff, mean, different things, having
different points of view is just a good thing to have.

Also, you can't argue with it, sorry, science got your ass already.

There's a thing with dogs.

I love dogs.

But if you ever want a dog, you want that dog to be like a fucking healthy dog that lives
forever, get a mutt.

Because when you get a mutt, there's different breeds and there's this genetic resiliency,
because all the best parts of all the animals keep coming together into this animal, this

fucking super dog.

My dog is an invincible god.

He's part husky, part German shepherd, part bulldog, part a bunch of other shit.

He's an absolute fucking cartoon and he's dumb as hell and I love him so much.

But what we do with the opposite of that is pugs.

falling apart.

we breed pugs and they become, said with love, I like pugs, pugs are cute, I want to have
a pug someday maybe, but like, they're not okay.

Like they're not okay.

Like they're falling apart, their eyes don't make any sense, their breathing is built to
fail at this point.

And it's because we had zero diversity, we didn't introduce any differences, so the things
just kept like, diversity is protective.

If I fucking, I'm like,

There's a lot of examples of this.

I'm trying to think of a less intense one, but I just can't.

There's a thing called groupthink, which is now part of this conversation.

Groupthink is when you get a group people who all think the same thing and you just kind
of agree with each other.

For the record, feels pretty good if you're on the in group.

There's a huge problem with it though, which is occasionally you will miss very
significant things.

You'll all just kind of go along with it and then someone from the outside who's not part
of the group think like, wait a minute, that doesn't make any goddamn sense at all.

You want people with different opinions because they'll protect you from this.

I'm trying to think of a funny.

Okay.

Here's an example.

Um, the Chevy, is it the Chevy Nova who made, is the Chevy made the Nova?

The Nova is a car.

Now my Spanish isn't great, but this is true.

The Chevy Nova, when it was released in Spanish speaking countries, did less well than
other places in the world.

Because if you know what Nova means in Spanish, it's doesn't go.

in South America?

I forget where.

I should be more careful with my citations.

But somewhere in the world, so this story's off to a bad start, but they have a very low
literacy rate.

So what they would do is they would put pictures of things on the food.

So like this is a can, there's peas on the can, it's peas.

And they would do this for baby food.

And then Gerber's like, we'll give you some food, and they give you a can with pictures of
a baby on it.

Hmmmm

like cause them to not eat things, but people were like, what, what are you?

And you want somebody to be like, that's a thing.

We should count for it by this.

That makes you stronger.

That makes your team stronger.

That makes things better.

You want a difference of the, and the thing that why I'm so exasperated doing this is
because like,

All of this is demonstrable.

It's been proven a zillion fucking times.

And people who put up messages against this, 100%, 100 % are afraid that the things that
they are won't last if other things get introduced.

Let me tell you why that's actually not a problem.

Because if I am not good at this thing, and my friends, notice that I said friends and not
enemies and competitors that hate me, are good at another thing, they'll be like, oh, I'm

good at this thing.

Can I help you with this thing?

And I go, oh my God, yes.

Can I help you with my thing?

Now you've noticed the hole in my thinking here, which is what if I'm not good at anything
and I suck at everything and I'm worthless and I'm gonna get out competed?

That's the fear.

If you have such low self-esteem, you think you bring nothing to the table, you cling to
the old ways.

This is so fucking predictable.

But here's the good news, he said, totally being kind again, you do have something, you
automatically do.

going to that because everyone has something, everyone.

do.

It's not buzzword fucking silly time speech.

It's a real thing.

If you're a good therapist, you use what's called the strengths-based approach.

That's actually a really fun part of the job is you figure out what people are good at and
you use that shit.

I'm good at a handful of things.

I'm bad at way more things than I'm good at, but I use the ones that I'm good at.

It's a good story.

It was a fun story.

I think it's a story.

um I'm working long ago, working at a place that is not in a very nice neighborhood and
I'm leaving my job.

and it's like 9.35 p.m.

and I'm walking in my car.

And once again, not the greatest neighborhood.

And I'm walking with a person that I just got out of a group with.

And this person, who obviously would have been nameless for hippie reasons, is what I
would describe as a bad motherfucker.

He has seen the inside of some prisons.

He has done some terrifying things.

And he and I have a rapport.

So I've known him for a while.

We're walking in my car and he looks at my car and he sees in the backseat, he sees a
baseball bat.

He's like, John, what do you have baseball bat in your car?

And I'm like, I don't know, man, need to protect myself.

And he laughs in my face and he says, if you pull that out, John, you're a combatant and
they'll kill you.

The only thing you have to protect you is right underneath your nose.

Talk your way out of it.

Don't have that.

Get that gone unless you suddenly want to make yourself a fighter.

And I was like, OK, first of all, ow, you got me.

And second of all, yeah, no, correct.

I shouldn't.

That's dumb.

That's dumb.

And if you've ever known people who've been like.

actual fights TM like the scary ones where people don't get up.

As soon as you pull out a weapon, the tone of the fight changes.

It is now a significantly different problem and you have volunteered yourself as a mortal
combatant, not in a cool fatality.

Well actually in a very uncool fatality way.

Yeah, I just do want to let people know in case this is your first time thinking about it.

You know how in the movies or the TV shows, things slow down in an action?

No, it doesn't.

It's incredibly lightning fast.

It's over before you know it.

It's sloppy, it is messy, and you regret it every single time.

Don't even, I would encourage no one even thinking that's a good approach.

Incredibly true and valid and also just to add a little more to that.

was a wrestler in junior high for very short time.

uh And I remember I did my first like match with like wrestling against the guy.

He was on my team, just like practice.

I remember being like, my God, this is the, we've been doing this for fucking 10 minutes.

And I looked up, it had been 60 seconds.

Like it is exhausting to like full force exert like resisting somebody.

It is incredibly tiring.

And if you're like, I'm good at cross country.

Amazing, you're so good at things.

It is not the same.

It is not the same.

So big takeaway in general, and anyone who's good at fighting for the record will tell you
this, like don't get in a fight.

Don't get in a fight.

If you're doing an organized fight, fucking love that for you and do it up.

But if you're like doing a like, I'm going to fight this guy to prove this point, you are
risking your life from the get.

There's a whole thing about this evolution, pointy sticks, I can talk about it later, but.

Okay, okay, so back to the central point though that I'm gonna really really hammer in on.

If you are on Team Human, which you are, congratulations, welcome, the best thing you can
do is help your fellow teammates so they can help you so the whole team wins.

We are on the same team.

We can have like little fake intra teams, like viewers versus listeners, obviously a
series blood feud to death, but also an example of how like at the end of the day we

should all be on the same fucking team.

I will never acknowledge that again for the record, but...

What did you say?

was that?

I don't even know, maybe the error cut out the video, this deep downloading, the bit rate,
et cetera.

Um, but yeah, it's, if you ever feel like you're at risk of being replaced, have
phenomenal news for you.

We can, we can find the thing that you're amazing at and you can know you're important and
you can know you belong and you can know people want you.

And if you don't believe me, that's very vulnerable of you.

So thank you for thinking that and sharing that.

But don't try to make everybody else fucking be beneath you to maintain your power,
because that's soft as fuck.

It's like conversion therapy is like another person being named John Merrick doing
anti-therapy.

Like it makes me so incredibly upset.

Yeah.

And again, the point of it is more like we should be past this, right?

And yet I'm seeing it come back.

I'm seeing this zeitgeist come through.

um Yeah.

I want to just echo what you've been saying, John, and say that, you know, I think you and
I are probably really lucky in the sense that, at least in my world, I have the privilege

of having a lot of...

um

We in the leadership consultant world, before we even go out in the field and talk to
people, we have to know a lot about ourselves.

And what that usually manifests is we have multiple mentors, but not just mentors.

We get psychic evaluations done on our brains and how we operate.

And we also understand how other brains and other personalities operate.

Because my job when I go out in the field and talk to people is I have to literally mold
to what would make sense for those individuals.

If I am just always just me all the time,

my ability to kind of communicate a message to people won't work.

if I know a particular thing about how John's behaving to a certain thing that I'm saying,
and I can change my messaging a bit so it'll hit him in the right way, then that's part of

my training, right?

And one of the things that we're talking about is we're talking about knowing our
superpowers.

And I'm confident in saying this, all of us have a superpower.

You just don't know it yet.

If you have a personal one-on-one with me, if I coach you, I guarantee you'll find what
your superpower is.

I guarantee it.

I know I have superpowers and one of the elements that they do for us is they do, in my
work, we do an evaluation based on your leadership style.

And to simplify things, you take this very exhaustive exam where you're kind of forced to
ask forced questions.

And by forced question, what I mean is you're given two choices, you have to pick the
better of the two choices.

And at first, these are really easy things, John.

It's like, would you rather...

rob a guy or like earn your money the good old fashioned way.

Like that's an easy choice to make.

Most people make the one choice, but at a certain point we get to like really, really
uncomfortable questions of like, you have to pick one.

Would you rather murder your cousin or murder your aunt?

And it's an extreme example, but like you have to pick one, right?

And in your preferences of how you pick all these different answers to all these things,
it kind of funnels into like what your preferences are as a leader.

So.

I'm oversimplifying this, but the four categories of leaders are relationship-based
leader, a performance-based leader, a strategic leader, or a pragmatic leader.

So a performance leader is someone who really focuses on winning, on getting the best
score, being the leader, making sure you execute to the umpteenth degree and very

competitive.

A strategic leader is one who likes to be analytical, who likes to think about things and
make sure you make very cautious, conscientious choices.

A pragmatic leader is one who

You know, it's kind of a mix between strategic and performance, but basically you're more
flexible to the realities of life that might come to you.

You're more flexible to, you know, the external forces coming to you.

And you kind of realize that there's like a good enough kind of syndrome or a good enough
kind of uh win state.

Like, you know, we just, we can only do as well as we can possibly do.

And then there's relationship leader who is the kind of leader that focuses mostly on
developing relationship with other people and collaborating people.

Just so, just so we know.

I was diagnosed or kind of classified as being predominantly a relationship leader with a
little bit of strategic and pragmatic to it.

Now, why is that important, John?

Why am I sharing this information?

When you're given this classification, you're also told what the downfall of this is.

Every single one of these leadership tropes has a downfall, has a shortfall, we call it.

It's something that you need to be mindful of.

Now, if I'm a relationship leader, the downfall of a relationship leader is, and this
might surprise you, John.

is that relationship leaders more times than not have issues of people perceiving them as
being unapproachable.

I'm gonna ask you, I'm gonna use an unfair thing, I don't like doing this, I'm gonna use
the why question, but just curious, why John do you think that is?

Why do you think that relationship-based leaders, their shortfall, their downfall is that
more times than not people think they are unapproachable?

The relationship leader is the unapproachable one.

right, you're getting it.

Like this is weird.

Why do you think that is?

And remember, it's relationship, performance, strategic, pragmatic.

The first thing that comes to mind is that like a relationship leader might be perceived
as an expert in relationships and people feel inadequate when approaching them, but I

don't know.

That's a shot in the dark.

That's really close to it.

Yeah, so relationship leaders, they are very confident the solution will come through as
long as the people are together.

So they don't have the fear that a performance strategic or pragmatic leader does, which
is, we could fail.

my gosh, we could fail.

The only reason we're gonna be successful is if we shoot for the stars, if we're super
competitive, if we're strategic, if we take a step back and kind of weigh in all the

different options.

A relationship leader, once they get the team together, their confidence is super high.

And so because they have such high confidence, they are perceived as being unapproachable.

Huh, it is fascinating.

I feel like confidence is such a funny thing because it is both attractive and
intimidating.

You want to have it, you want people around you to have it, but also if people have more
than you do, you're sort of like, oh no, what do you know that I don't?

Right, yeah, I mean, when I got that kind of classification, which by the way, this stuff
changes all the time, I was like, that makes so much sense all the times in which I've had

friction with people or people have told me I've had a chip on my shoulder and they didn't
feel like they could come to me and come to me with questions or concern.

They felt like they couldn't talk to me.

And I've always been confused by that because I love people.

I love bringing people together.

That's one of the things I need to be mindful of, right?

So I share and I close things off with this because even when you know your strengths,
there is also knowing what your shortfalls are and it's all incredibly empowering.

Like I don't know that information about myself and I think, my gosh, I suck.

I'm terrible.

I need to be better at X, Y, Z.

No, there's gonna be shortfalls.

There's gonna be strengths.

And knowing yourself and knowing other people all starts with curiosity.

And so I did the unfair thing by asking John a Y question, but my number one thing I would
say to everyone to kind of break through this just a little bit is encourage yourself not

to ask Y questions, but instead ask what questions?

Like seek understanding from a place of curiosity.

Because as John said before,

A lot of this stuff comes from fear.

And a lot of it comes from the fact that you're the enemy and I'm not.

And the truth is we're not.

What would happen if we just had assumption of all sides and sought to understand from a
place of curiosity?

Seek to understand as we say.

It's a very leadership focused phrase we use, but it's true.

Asking the what questions, the how questions.

Paint me a picture, John.

Let me know how this is all working for you.

I don't have understanding.

I'd love to understand more.

Instead of why do you do that?

Why are you like that?

Why are you this?

I would do a real short plug because what you're saying is incredibly wise and I feel like
the number of tools we have for this that we can cram into this video is mildly...

Hang on one second, I'm gonna finish this slide.

Okay, we're back.

So um there's a, this is a channel that came up for me when I was talking with some
therapists in a console group called Charisma on Command.

It's a YouTube channel and it just gives like a lot of little micro tips about this.

And that's one of the specific ones.

I believe it was referring to the woman who plays Daenerys in Game of Thrones.

And they were saying, why is she a good interviewer?

And they also had one about, there were two at the same that got referenced in this, but
it's because they both use questions that prompt people to keep talking with them.

There's a level of just basically,

classic line, might even be Jamie Foxx, I can't think of what was, they say, tell me more
about that.

Or like yeah give me a little more on that.

And like there's some body language stuff that goes into it, but additionally there's a
lot of just like you can demonstrate engagement and also set people up to not feel

pressured.

um A why question should be a question that you think the person can reasonably answer.

Why did you do that is a fucking stupid question.

you're going to get a defensive response at best or an incredibly confident one.

There's occasionally like, oh, why did you do that?

Which can be okay if someone's a point I knew would be exactly, exactly.

So it also in the positive versions of that, it actually, I would think should be fairly
obvious as to why, when it would be appropriate to ask that because if someone's like,

yeah, well, I knew that this would work.

they're like, well, why did you, what did you want to learn from that's different, but.

I would argue the positive versions, there has to be tone.

The tone has to be, know, oh, why do think that?

Like, I'm curious, like I want to know.

I really seek to know your knowledge on this matter.

But if you type it out why, it's incredibly hard to circuit.

have a friend who does a thing that I at first thought was like kind of annoying in full
transparency, but they'll send me a message on your discords, your text messages, your

whatever's and they'll say like, Hey, whatever the messages and they'll say parentheses
tone and they'll say curious, hopeful and parentheses, or they'll say like tone fatigued,

but sincerely interested and parentheses.

And I was like, you don't have to, that actually is very helpful.

And what, what, what this is, is it's just more

Clarifying emojis.

That's what emojis are for.

If I see you like the haha like sweat nervous guy You know something that you wouldn't
know otherwise Which is also why you probably shouldn't demonize emoji you can demonize

like, you know the emoji movie if you want but I feel like Tone setters are super
important also to tie threads together in our episode today there are people who have

trouble with tone and finding other ways to compensate for that is a Incredibly reasonable
thing if you want to get the best from those people

If you want to get a shitty thing from those people that doesn't help them and makes them
feel bad and gets you a bad product, you can, you know, do it the other way.

But I don't know why you would do that.

Notice my tone and disapproving face.

Yeah, I never understand it when I get on people about word choice.

Like make sure you're using the right words for what you're trying to explore because I
think what you intended to say versus what you're actually saying are two different

things.

And I get this a lot, people say, I shouldn't have think this hard about this.

I'm like, yeah, you actually, probably should.

Because think about the effort you're putting on the other person to circumvent and try to
meet you where they you are.

Just do a little bit so that way you both can meet them.

Yeah.

but like we if we all do a little bit of a hard thing it's easier for all of us.

Super true.

Shout out to the ADHD homies on this one.

One of the greatest things you can internalize is a hard thing now makes easy things
forever.

Like, if you are willing to put in the work to do a thing, don't do it because you should
do it, you lazy fuck, because once again, that's insanely toxic.

Do it because you're like, this is gonna make shit so much easier.

Like, this is gonna make things so much gentler.

i'm currently in the process of buying a car which if you were like i bet that's fun for
you your natural car person what a fun optimistic take that you're completely wrong about

um

John is a fun car person.

I do enjoy, um, the, they've got wheels, I think that's a good, I love that part.

And then the engine goes vroom.

I think that's really nice.

When a window moves both up and down.

Don't hate it.

Unless it's the windshield, in which case I'm pretty concerned.

on the steering wheel and say you're being taken to Valhalla, shiny and chrome, all that
good stuff.

Yeah.

of all, I'm surprised my teeth aren't still silver.

B of all, I did have a moment the other day where a person got in their car and they were
like, oh fuck, the wheel won't turn.

And I was like, oh, put your foot on the brake and then it'll turn.

And they were like, oh my God.

And I was like, is this what it feels like to be a car person?

I should learn about cars.

That felt fucking incredible.

I'm gonna go do it right now.

And then I immediately did not do that.

But shout out to the car people.

Have a car person in your life, especially if you're an American.

Holy shit, you need one of those.

But.

In general, like, while I have been a very hot, angry, spicy version of myself today, and
my apologies if that intensity was unpleasant for anyone, the news is ultimately still

very good.

Like, we get to find a way to be on the same team and it makes everyone on the team
better.

And if you ever feel like you're not good enough to be on the team, the Sams of the world
and the Me's of the world and fucking the Dangles of the world will help you find that.

Like, we want you to feel good about yourself.

It is in my best interest as human number 8004, I got it on list early.

It's my best interest to get you to feel good about your life and to be hopeful for the
future.

And if anyone tells you that it's not in their best interest for that, that person should
be terrifying to you.

That person is okay with people suffering for their advantage.

That's not a good trait and it correlates with sociopathy.

Yeah, but there's a way to manage that and I'm sure we'll talk about that another episode
and how we can make even people that are diagnosed with sociopathy and other things, it's

still in your best interest to do all the things that we're talking.

It specifically is.

That's actually a hard part of the therapy for it, is if you help people go, so taking
advantage of people has significant consequences and helping them makes things easier.

Yeah.

What if I were to tell you that to actually be truly Machiavellian in your selfishness is
still good for the community overall?

Just saying.

Just saying.

When everybody says Machiavellian, I think you thought faking my own death.

Isn't that part of the traditional Machiavellianism?

It's like there's a death faking.

there's a little bit of that.

But the cost, I mean, we saw the cost was pretty significant.

God, what happened?

All right, Daniel, it's just you and me now.

em John's gone.

uh This is gonna make taxes really interesting, but, wait, yep, he's dead again.

He was alive for a second just to give a peace sign.

That was the, you know how like when people pass away, all the air and the flute and stuff
expels from the body.

And settling in that peace sign he just threw up.

It's just a natural thing that the body does.

He's back and he has fun facts about death.

ah

filings.

Yeah.

Yeah, very much, very much.

Well, folks, that's been the Zeroed Out Podcast.

It's been a pleasure.

I'm Sam, this is John, been Daniel.

As always, stay on Team Human and we'll see you next time.