Alysa Liu and doing it for YOU [The Zero Dot Podcast #22]

Pasio derived from the word suffering.

Everyone's got to find what they're pasio about, meaning what is the suffering you're
willing to put up with that's so joyous that it's worthwhile every single time?

And I'm a big believer in that in whatever way you can.

And when I think of Alyssa Liu and her renowned success and fame, I say thank you.

Thank you for showing the world joy.

Thank you for giving us that glimpse that you don't have to do it the way everyone else
does it.

She seems to be living life on her terms.

I hope she can.

she gets to continue doing that for the rest of her life.

That's what I have to say about that.

ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, boys and girls, everyone of all ages, this is the
Zero Dot podcast.

I'm Sam, this is John, this is Daniel, and we're here to remind you that when our chips
are down, our resources are at its lowest, we are our strongest.

And boys, it has been a week, hasn't it?

holy week of weeks it has and not in a religious or sanctimonious way no it's just what a
what a total ride just an absolute experience some would describe it as notable yeah

significant

been a freaking day.

It's been a day already.

The day itself contained within the week that we've had has also been a day.

It has, hasn't it been?

It's almost like the platform we use to record this podcast gives us lots of technical
problems.

And I'm sure we could look past that if that platform sponsored us, but because they're
not, I dangle your fate in my hands.

Mm-hmm

But anyway, John, give me some good news.

I need some good news for this week.

By the way, the date we are recording this is on good old St.

Patty's Day, so I'm wearing a little bit of green.

John's got a little bit of green.

You'll be getting this the week after, but John, give me some good news beyond the fact
that a lot of people like to pretend they're 1 8th Irish and get drunk today.

Oh, okay.

whole good news is that the Irishness of Americans specifically is so flexible that if
you, I don't know, can kind of jump in the air and like put your heels together, boom, you

qualify.

Instant, instant Irish.

There are no rules here whatsoever.

My good news, man.

I closed so many things just to make this fucking recording app work.

So my good news is brief.

Dear listener slash viewer, I'm gonna let you in on little secret.

This isn't the first time we've tried doing this today.

ah We've just been trying to all be in one consecutive call that works.

ah So here's what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna just drop you the headline of my good news and spare you so much of the adorable
lore.

Hedgehogs can avoid extinction by silent ultrasound installed on cars to prevent roadkill.

They're putting new sensors in cars that are going to stop hedgehogs from going extinct.

What?

Wait, repeat that one more time.

I'll try.

Hedgehogs can avoid extinction by silent ultrasound installed on cars to prevent roadkill.

There's technology that they're looking at putting on cars to like tell hedgehogs and
other creatures.

It isn't hedgehog specific.

It's just gonna be like zoop, get out the road.

uh Short sonic bursts up to 20 seconds long.

There's a Danish study working on this.

uh I had more talking points about it.

I don't have them anymore.

The gist of it though is

you know, we're going to shoot hedgehogs with sound lasers and they're not going to die.

And I think that's cool.

I'm pro hedgehog.

ah Ever since, you know, my youth, when I learned that they can collect rings and fight
evil scientists, I just, I just, and they're notably blue.

uh One consecutive body shape, no features, and they wear red tennis shoes and are friends
with a mutant fox.

But yeah, no, the more important piece of this is that we're going to make

I don't know, I'm like an animal guy, I don't like animals.

um This technology, strap it to some cars and you're gonna shoot vermin with lasers and
they're gonna live.

I just think it's adorable.

Vermin said it in a technical term, not in a

pedantic, yeah.

bits.

I love hedgehogs.

used to work with a hedgehog rescue.

m And a lovely lady named Joan, and she takes care of all the hedgehogs and rehabilitates
them and then sets them free back into their natural habitats where they can kick back and

eat chili dogs, which is I believe what they do.

um

Would you like a follow-up of hedgehog-based goodness that's so relevant to what you just
said that I'm...

There's a place in Scotland owned by Andy and Sharon Longhurst and they've opened the Bird
Island Hedgehog Haven, which is a place that they are nursing over 500 European hedgehogs

for at least three years, which is just the coolest thing.

I just think it's amazing.

It says they are rehabilitating over 500 spiky...

critters and their sign and they look adorable.

So shout outs to them.

Andy and Sharon Longhurst.

lot hedgehog news today.

yeah, big special place for hedgehogs in my heart.

I feel like hedgehogs are kind of like a quintessential, well, they're from other parts of
the world as well, but they're very much in my eyes kind of a quintessential like British

wildlife thing.

um Especially, well, the British ones that I always think of.

Funny that, funny how that works.

But whenever someone mentions British wildlife, I always think.

hedgehogs is one of the main ones.

I love them to bits.

They're so cute.

And to know that they would be safer on air roads.

That is lovely.

As well as the other animals.

Because you said it wasn't just hedgehogs, right?

It was like anything.

We're just shooting everything with lasers now.

it's a sonic thing and it's gonna be too, I forget if it was high or low, but it doesn't
hit humans.

Like if you're a human, won't be impacted by it.

Also, if you're a human, get out of the way of the car, just the same.

Like, you know, use your knowledge of cars and eyesight, perhaps to compensate for your
lack of hedgehog sonar.

work.

It could work because there was, I don't know if they ever installed anything like this
over your side of the pond, but over here, the government to deter loitering and like bad

behaviour in groups of youths, outside shops and stuff, they'd install a certain frequency
that would like

ping off if it noticed that people were loitering around the entrance to the shop and
stuff, that only people below a certain age could hear the frequency.

as you age, yeah.

So like your frequency diminishes, your frequency range diminishes.

And they were like, ah that's an annoying noise.

And it'll drive the kids away from the shops and stuff like that.

not so much a thing.

It's not so much a thing anymore.

m I don't think

it's a thing.

the birds are doing that to me, like in my home, because I woke up today at four in the
morning, because some bird was like, hey, hey, hey.

And I was like, what's going on?

So fun John fact, I sleep with an earphone in one ear, because it's just effectively like,
you know, it's noise canceling my other ears and a pillow.

And like it was doing its best, its valiant best to stop the bird from getting through to
my ear.

But it was just like,

just like this little pathetic squeak noise and I was like is that my dog?

But no he's sound asleep.

Evolutionary success that he is.

Able to sleep through birds but I fragile human that I am.

No, no my fate was grim.

Hmm.

wow.

You know, the story John makes me think of two things one the fact that they have to put
like a humming noise in electric cars to make them make a noise so humans can hear them

because otherwise we will just miss them which always makes me think we've gone too far
like We should be able to physically naturally hear something big and hulking that can go

at lethal speeds and kill us We should just be able to hear that and the fact that we have
to install that That's an add-on.

We have to do that.

It's crazy but the other thing is Daniel on my neck of the woods here in the

in our pond, there are certain states of the United States where it is illegal to have a
hedgehog.

Is that something you're familiar with?

How does your regulation work when it comes to owning a hedgehog?

You know what?

I'm unsure.

I'm sure that they fall under some sort of protective licensing where it's like you need a
specific license to own one.

You can, I know a lot of people that have had uh various hedgehog, various hedgehog
species as pets, like African pigmy hedgehogs and all that kind of stuff.

And so I don't think it's, I don't think it's illegal to have one here.

I just think

because they sell them as like exotic pets.

em But they don't sell the ones that are native to here as exotic pets, because that
sounds, yeah.

But I don't think.

There's bound to be, and I'm probably very wrong about this, but off the top of my head,
there's bound to be some weird loophole where like you are allowed to own a hedgehog that

is not native to here as an exotic pet without a license or anything like that.

But you cannot keep one that is native to here as a pet without a specific license because
it's like removing it from its natural habitat and they've got laws against that.

It's bound to be.

laws regarding ownership of animals.

It's all a mess.

It's all a complete mess.

I used to know a lot more about this when I was actively studying it all.

And then since then, I've pushed it out of my brain because it was just a jumble of
nonsense.

Yeah, truly, truly just nonsense.

So we live in this 50 states of the United States and how this works is in the state that
I live in, Pennsylvania, it is illegal to own a hedgehog.

But the state next door, New Jersey, it is not illegal to own a hedgehog.

It is illegal to buy a hedgehog in New Jersey and transport it to Pennsylvania.

It is absolutely illegal.

It's absolutely illegal to have a hedgehog in your home.

However, I can tell you, and I won't nark at anyone, I know many lovely people who have
hedgehogs here in Pennsylvania, and they have done exactly what I've just said, which is

they've gone to New Jersey to grab a hedgehog, keep it very safe, drive it back home, and
they keep it in their home.

And I just think that's bizarre and weird, and why do we even have laws like this?

This just makes no sense.

so I just did a quick search online.

I was, as is usually the case, correct.

Yeah, so you can own an African Pygmy Hedgehog as a pet, totally fine.

You can't own a native hedgehog as a pet um unless you're under very, very specific
circumstances, I assume.

And you've pleaded with their government and said,

Please, I need it for these reasons.

I don't know why you would need a hedgehog.

only live like three years, right?

like, takes you three years to plead your argument by the time you get it approved, the
hedgehog might not be around.

That's really unfortunate.

an old decrepit hedgehog, just a ball of dust with quills.

This is my legal dust pile.

I earned it via arbitration.

Well, thank you John.

I appreciate that.

I needed that good news uh It's my job then to remind us of something It's not so great
and we're gonna keep this really short because I think everyone this call knows about this

but I'll just remind us all right now thanks to the Agenda team that we are all living in
right now uh US RAM prices the cost of purchasing RAM has not only Skyrocketed but

according to Tom's hardware an article from just a couple days ago in March 11th

The US RAM crisis hits a boiling point as AI mania wipes out all 32 gigabyte DDR5 kits
under $359.

Meaning it's not possible anymore to buy a 32 gigabyte DDR5 RAM kit for under $355
anymore.

Simply not possible.

uh Many of the prices we're seeing right now have gone up to well into the $1,000 range.

We're looking at $1,133.

uh

for some kits here and there.

Why am bringing this up, John, as depressing as this is?

uh I am not a financial guru.

I'm not here to tell you anything, but this scarcity is going to keep ramping up.

We even have game makers like Valve literally asking, please let us know if you have RAM.

We would like to get the RAM from you.

Like it is a huge scarcity thing.

And so I would recommend to anyone listening to us, it would have been nice if you got the
RAM maybe a year ago, cause then you could have gotten it for like hundred bucks.

Now the prices are incredibly high.

But as tight as it might be, I would say to you, I don't think this is gonna get any
better.

And my recommendation would be that if you are in need of RAM now, do not wait any longer.

If you need a signal that there's a fire sale happening, this would be the time to buy the
RAM.

If you have the time, the money, the means to do so.

That's my warning to everyone.

This sucks, this sucks, this sucks.

But yeah, it's just the reality that we live in.

But Sam, but Sam, surely the RAM is going towards good things such as changing the faces
of our beloved video game characters to be an amalgamation mishmash horrific uncanny

valley uh eldritch horror of all of the people on the internet that it has scraped the
data from.

Yeah, of course, it's going only towards the truest, most altruistic needs imaginable.

um I'm not at all pointing fingers at any one particular company, video.

em But yeah, that's absolutely what's happening.

Trust me, if we just hang in there for a couple more years, this will all be worth it and
we will have video games, not even just video games, everything have an AI filter to it

that will look a specific way that...

em

will not be human made of any kind and we will get to enjoy the fruits of those labors.

Because as you know, Daniel, I just hate human made things and I want everything made by a
robot.

It sucks.

I want, yeah...

Yes, yeah.

If you are unable to gauge the tone here.

if you need tips on sarcasm, I can help you, because it was pretty thick sarcasm.

You should have got that one.

That wasn't a subtle...

He just put it out there.

We'll get you there, don't worry.

um

be okay.

But yeah, but yeah, Daniel, you and I were talking about this.

NVIDIA has released as of this recording new technology updates on DLSS5, which is meant
to enhance the lighting, but it does more than just that.

It literally changes how faces look.

um I think the most egregious ones are when they change the look of a female video game
character to literally look like every other video game female character from a male

hedonic gaze you've ever seen.

And it's just gross and nasty.

But worse than that, I think the greatest example was

the game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

They literally changed what Harrison Ford looks like.

He doesn't look like Harrison Ford anymore.

And that's supposedly an upgrade.

It's so insane.

Like they, they, they're calling it an upgrade and it doesn't look like Harrison Ford
anymore.

It, it's produced the exact opposite of what you would want.

It's I'm not yet.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

This is still very fresh.

This is still very fresh.

eh I am still very enraged.

uh So I won't, I won't fly off the handle too much, but just know

Nvidia, you suck.

Yeah.

And again, I don't like to offer bad news with nothing you can do about it.

I wish I had a better solution.

But again, the thing is, if you've got the spoons, if you've got the funds now, don't wait
any longer.

Try to get the RAM while you can because there might be a time when you can't get it,
period.

and play more cool indie games made by people that love what they do and still have
artistic integrity.

Please.

I will get on my little tiny soapbox that if your game is really well optimized, you
shouldn't need anywhere near to 32 gigabytes of RAM.

Just saying if you're a gamer of that type.

But that's a totally different conversation for a totally different time.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I missed the hedgehog part, you guys.

Well, thank you for your service.

I do feel like the, don't know.

If you're a viewer or listener of this, you have to have eyes.

So if you're a listener and it's not by choice, I'm sorry.

But like, if you go and you just type into your favorite search engine, like DLSS5.

Harrison Ford just have a look because they were just like, you know Harrison Ford I don't
like it.

I think like a Ken doll maybe like can we just like smooth that out a little bit and you
know, like the little bit of a Grizzledness perhaps go ahead and wipe that away Like so

much of yesterday's trash just throw it out and he should look kind of I don't know
excited to be in the temple

Oh, none of the problems today are legitimate.

I mean, they're legit.

They're real.

They're impacting us.

But boy, they're just so dumb.

They're just so embarrassingly dumb.

Oh, Christ.

I don't too much about, but this reminds me of Back to the Future, 1985, that film.

If you recall, it's a trilogy.

And if you really recall, there was an actor, Crispin Glover, who played the role of
George McFly only in the first movie.

And in the second movie, they got a second actor to replace him.

And what they did is they gave him a face mold of Crispin Glover's face on top of his face
so he'd look kind of like him.

But then, here's the cool part, and by cool I mean not cool for those that can't tell
sarcasm,

They had his character because he's in the future flip him upside down so you couldn't
quite tell because he was upside down that it wasn't quite the same person.

Now why this is important is because Grisp and Glover didn't want to do the movie for
whatever reason.

He wanted more money, but that's not important.

He then sued the Back to the Future cast like, hey, you're using my likeness without my
permission.

That was not part of our agreement.

Like, yes, you took molds of my face and we did it for marketing material, but now you're
using it for this new role and

You're using it without my permission.

And he was successful in his lawsuit.

He actually won the lawsuit.

The problem is, we still think the guy is a creeper.

I'm not going to talk about his personal life, but like, people should be fighting for
their rights towards likeness.

And I think that's, when we talk about DLSS, that's going to be a big, complicating
problem.

That's all that really is, is a legal loophole way to get around likeness, and it sucks.

I love that I'm waking up in a world where I need to defend the rights to my own face.

That's super cool.

Like, you know, you wake up and you brush your teeth and you look in the mirror and you
just like, hope someone doesn't steal this today.

That's super good.

No, for sure.

I remember as a youngin learning about identity theft, I mean, well, that's insane.

I'm John.

No one is gonna take who I am.

That's crazy.

Little did I know.

It wasn't gonna just be my name and my bank account.

It'd be like, no, that is actually just not you.

You don't own that anymore.

I don't know.

are the people that are propagating this, which are the LinkedIn bros that think this is
all great, it's gonna upend our production, all that stuff.

I feel like they listened to this one song by Josh Radner, who was a famous actor, now
he's famous artist, and they listened to this one song and got the wrong message from it,

and the song is, I'm so tired of my thoughts, each thought in my head is a great big bore,
I'm so tired of my words, everything I say I said before.

I'm so tired of my face.

It won't stop being the same old face.

They heard that song and went, yes, let's take that away from you.

We got it.

We'll give you a new face.

Well, Josh, do we have the solution for you?

Yeah.

Oh no.

jeez.

My god, it's so dumb

Yeah, it is.

It is so dumb.

It is so dumb.

anyway,

Also, if you've been listening to us talk and you were like, you don't talk about me at
all, that's fair.

We don't.

I would love to remedy that as soon as possible.

And I was thinking maybe we could fix that by you writing a question and then we would
answer that question.

And if you are a Zero Dot member, club members, you may have priority access to that.

So feel ever so free to do so.

We'd love to hear from you, specifically you.

But anyway, I think it's about time we talk about our main topic for the day.

And I thought, you know, this has been something that's been especially old news now, but
I feel like it's important to talk about right now, which is talk about a recent sports

event and kind of what's cool about it why I think it might be zero dot coded in many
ways.

You know, John and Daniel, you ever notice there's that big moment someone has to perform
something like in the movies.

They're about to do this big, do the final shot in the basketball game, the final shot in
hockey.

There's this like one clutch moment they gotta do.

And the way they film it is they zoom in on the person's face and they do it in slow
motion.

The sweat's coming down their brow and everyone's like, and they've got that butt clencher
moment that John Oso craves so much.

you hold your breath.

And if the movie's really cool, actually cut to black right there.

Cause it doesn't matter what the result is.

But if it's a Disney made movie, they will show you the end of it and it's successful.

it's all this wonderful thing, right?

We expect that out of people when the chips are down, people do that.

They get really intense.

They tap into their cortisol and their adrenaline and they do the superhero thing.

And it's a great thing.

But what if in the biggest moments of your life, you were actually your calmest, you were
your most joyous, you are most happy.

And what would that look like?

And of course I'm talking about Alyssa Liu, the Winter Olympics, 2026 American skate.

gold winner this year, a of weeks ago.

Now, the reason why this story is important is that yes, she won the gold.

She also won in the team sports.

That's great.

She won after having a four-ish year of retirement, actually more than that.

I think she retired in 2016.

Let me get that date right.

Let me double check when she actually retired.

2022.

So a couple of years, she took a little bit of retirement.

Then she came back to do just this Winter Olympics, just to compete.

That's not the interesting story.

The story that people talk about with Alyssa Lue is when you look at pictures of her after
she won or during her run, she was happy.

She was joyous.

She was calm.

She was the happiest person to be there.

She said things like, there's no way I can lose.

She was just happy to be doing the sport.

I love struggling.

It makes me feel alive.

When she was asked if she skated badly, she said she would be happy just to be there.

And people are talking about this because it completely upends our narrative of what it
means to be in that

make it a break it moment and here she is she doesn't even care if she wins or not and yet
she's the one that got the gold medal and i thought that'd be a great topic for us to talk

about because we often think about when we're trying to succeed in something we think
about the extrinsic value of it what am i going to get out of this i'm doing this for a

reason and yet here we saw in this example alissa lu did this where she did it from an
intrinsic purpose she just fucking loves skating she took that retirement she took that

break

By the way, she's quoted as saying she thinks breaks are great.

Everyone should take breaks.

Don't, don't keep working forever, which I'm a big fan of.

Um, she took that break to only to realize that she loved it so much.

She just wanted to do it again.

And all of her peers, her, her mentors, her father even told her you were making a big
mistake.

You've been retired for too long.

You're not going to be successful.

It's going to be a big problem.

And she says, I don't care.

I'm going to do it anyway.

And she did.

And she got the gold medal.

So no one can tell her she's wrong for this.

I want to unpack that a little bit with you, John, because we've talked about this a
little bit about intrinsic versus extrinsic.

I'm very much on the path of trying to find what your intrinsic why is and your meaning
for doing things because you're going to lead a happier and better life.

But I would also argue it also leads you to lead a life of actual more extrinsic success
if you chose to do it.

But oftentimes, video games are probably related to it.

We are taught to follow the breadcrumbs, whatever leads to whatever we have to lead to,
right?

I'm going to do this to achieve this particular goal.

I'm going to do this to achieve this particular goal.

And something that I'm finding in my work, John, and I'm assuming you see this in some of
your patients you work with,

That only works if the system is fair.

That only works if there's this thing called meritocracy.

That only works if we actually set them up for success.

But 99 times out of 100, we don't do that, we?

We tell them, well, you do this and you might lead to success.

You might not.

And so we have an entire generation of people who are becoming incredibly frustrated
because they followed all the rules.

They went to the right schools.

They did well on the tests.

They achieved what they have to achieve.

And yet they're not seeing the success they want.

Or if, in some cases, they are receiving that success,

They're miserable and they don't know why.

They don't know why they're miserable, John.

I want to pause right there because I'm opening up the platform for what you have to say
about that topic as I talk about this.

I would just validate.

um It's a little bit, there's a generational element to it.

And I would say millennials, I talk about millennials and zoomers a lot with this, because
I work with lot of millennials and zoomers.

um Gen Z, perhaps they prefer to be called.

It's too late though.

are mice that just zoom around a lot, that's what they are.

correct.

Little mice, yeah.

hedgehogs, I'm not allowed to have any, but I like to work with them just the same, yes,
legally.

But the millennial experience, in case you're younger than a millennial, or older than
one, is this.

You are born, life's pretty fuckin' sweet, or it's not, depending on who you are and where
you live.

But for a lot of us, it was pretty nice.

Primary colors, video games were cool, the future's bright.

And if you do these things, you're going to be okay.

And then you just kind of keep watching that dream get moved.

And for a little while you're like, am I bad?

And then eventually you either become angry at the system or you give up or you are, you
know, you take one of those career opportunities.

It's very lucrative and then good for you, but ah you're still maybe missing the point.

If you say everyone should do that, that's not necessarily a viable option.

um And then with the zoomers, they grew up without that, where they were just like, no,
it's kind of fucked though.

Like.

you will lose, like this isn't a game we can win.

And there's sort of this built in hopelessness.

The idea of if you work the hardest, you get the best things doesn't get a lot of play the
way that it used to em and it's understandable why.

Yeah, and then I'm talking to people who are on the tail end of their careers or maybe
like in the middle part They don't understand that like why are these people so lazy?

Why have they given up?

Well, because they zoomed out and found out hey if you give into this system If you're
lucky, you might get something but more times and not luck is just the factor You're

probably gonna be left with nothing Why would I spend 20 to 30 years of my life working
towards something with absolutely nothing to hold for or show for it, right?

Hi, I'm interrupting Sam's rambly message right now to remind you that if you want an
extra spicier, longer version of our episode, you can find them at our Patreon.

For only $3.99, you can join our awesome ClubZero.members and check out extended versions
of our episodes that are released a lot sooner, like on Monday instead of Wednesdays.

So you wanna check that out?

Go ahead and go to the link that we have in our description, check us out, we'd love to
have you.

Otherwise, I'll get out of your head and see whatever else Sam has to say about this
topic.

So I bring this up because I mean, I'm actually kind of a little upset that Alyssa got the
gold.

I mean, I'm happy for like, obviously got the gold, fantastic.

But like, I think we might be on the edge of learning the wrong lesson here because I
think we're going, because you won the gold, this is now the new strat to get the gold.

No, the strat was Alyssa did not care if she got the gold or not.

She was not trying to chase anything.

When you watch her performance, she was just at this big smile on her face.

She was just happy to be doing it.

She was happy to have a crowd to watch her.

She was in her particular moment.

She basically said, when everything external disappears, the rewards, recognition, the
validation, what remains in her performance.

That what remains, and it was her intrinsic why.

She loves doing what she's doing.

And I have to be honest with you, John.

We've talked about this before, your value systems, why you're doing things, why you're
doing.

It is a really hard sell to sell people on the fact that, you should be doing this for the
right reasons, what you believe in.

Because I think it's messy, I think it's complicated, it involves, as Alyssa Liu talks
about, a struggle.

There is a bit of struggle in that.

It's not an easy sell.

It's like, it's very easy for me to understand that if I work hard, I make more money.

That's easy to comprehend.

Here it's, hey, you should work hard and figure out what you like and dislike, and I don't
know what you'll get in the end.

That's really hard to sell on people, especially in the Zoomer generation, as you say.

Would you agree?

Absolutely.

It's, and understandably so, right?

Like I, we've talked before about like fitness on this channel a little bit.

Uh, I am a fan of fitness because the, uh, the, the rhythm of it, the, just is true,
right?

If you lift weights, if you eat a certain amount of calories, a certain amount of protein,
you get a certain amount of sleep and you don't do certain things like drink a bunch of

alcohol and fuck up your progress.

You will, you'll just get stronger, especially if you're new, like it is a fucking, you
can just set your watch to it.

Super consistent, super real, super valid.

If you want to I don't know like learn a craft you can probably follow x-guide learn how
to do it You will start getting better at it There's an end game to surviving and making

you know Economic gains specifically that just doesn't really tie to that.

There's it's a weighted thing I know that for instance in my field I was talking about
money's a little gauche But at the same time I kind of want people to know like when you

come into this field of being mental health therapist

you're going to make no money for two years.

You just, you just aren't.

And a lot of people don't know that when they start, this is considered, this is like,
don't know.

feel blunt saying it this way, but like, it's like a, it's like a spouse job.

If that makes sense.

Like you should have a spouse who has a better job than you, who can like make sure you're
okay during that time.

Um, and it has a really high ceiling.

If you want to just make money, you can, but at the same time, like most people who pursue
this job, pursue it because they want to connect with people.

They want to do something good.

They want to help.

um And that road doesn't always social workers have it even harder frankly than counselors
doing this arena because social work is a brutal entry so shout outs to social work

homies, but And then I've you know, how many people you know, you get told go to common
I've heard this story so many fucking times in my job But they get told go to college get

a degree they do and then they finish and they go I didn't get a business degree.

What do I do?

and you can can go back and get a business degree, I guess but

The alternative is like, just kind of go find a job and you just start doing stuff.

And a lot of people end up doing things that they didn't necessarily know they were going
to be doing because the system just kind of doesn't work.

And this isn't just me rah rah, shakes fist at system.

This is an understanding and an acknowledgement that like the system has fucking changed.

It doesn't work how it used to.

It doesn't work how it's frankly, we were told it would in a lot of ways.

And it's not your fault if this has happened to you.

same time you you're speaking about your field but like I know a lot of younger people
because it's now becoming a career choice like schools are actually offering it they're

looking into like being a youtuber they want to leave high school or college and be
full-time quote-unquote youtuber and I think that's right big caveat though almost every

successful social media person that I've ever met almost all of them with a few exceptions
they had exactly what you had John they had about a two-year buffer where they made

absolutely nothing

They work their butt off and they had a support system of some kind.

em I'm a big fan of Casey Neistat and his vlogs, but unfortunately I disagree with him on
one thing.

He has a short on his YouTube channel where he basically just calls all these YouTubers
that are trying, he calls them lazy.

He basically says, you're not working hard enough, but you have to understand he was in
debt financially and his wife was the moneymaker for him during his 800 days of vlogging,

which made him super successful.

Like someone had to invest in that and then

do a lot of work in that front to keep the wheels running while you got to do that thing.

And unfortunately, no one teaches you that.

And as you said, John, you leave college, you've got a ton of school debt.

If you get to college, if you don't, you still gotta make sense of the world.

Get any job you can get your hands on, or keep getting into more debt for some kind of
business degree, which most businesses I talk to don't even like that business degree

anymore.

It doesn't help them for what their business is all about.

It's very generalized, pragmatic, all that good stuff.

And then usually what happens is your first couple of jobs ends up being your career if
you decide to keep your footing in there and then you didn't want that job.

That was the one that was available to you at the time.

You one of my first real jobs was call center work.

I did it because I thought it'd be easy and it wasn't, but it kind of was because it was,
wasn't as laborious as other jobs were.

And then for a while it became my career and I'm like, I don't like this, but you, you
sell yourself the lie that you like this because it leads to quote unquote money, quote

unquote stability and security, which a lot of people

aren't an opportunity to trade off on.

Hello.

I am jumping in very quickly to disturb your listening slash watching experience to give a
shout out to our patron members.

Patron members, Patreon members who are patrons.

I have podcast where I speak.

We have Robert Restante, we have David Rivera, we have William Kirk, we have JP, we have
Aid, and we have God of Grunts.

Thank you so much, everyone, for still being with us and for helping us to do the things
that we like to do.

Back to the episode.

Yeah, that's well put.

um I know that my own path to my career was not, I don't know, man, I got it, agree.

And I was like, cool, I'll use this to, oh, it's 2009 you say?

Okay.

This won't go how I, how I anticipated.

Okay.

I guess I'll, and I will spare you the details.

I've had a couple of jobs, but there were, there were, there's some I won't read the
details on, you know, there's like direct support provider, which is helping people with

disabilities and live in home situations.

And also I did jobs that were a little bit less ah value aligned and a little bit grosser,
cleaning up lot of things from the floor.

You can guess what they were and where I did it, but those weren't careers that I wanted
to keep.

Yeah, yeah, and what's lucky is that you at least recognized it.

Unfortunately, I'm in the room sometimes when people begin to recognize it, but then go,
oh, here's what it is, and they just keep going.

And that's unfortunate, especially when there's an opportunity elsewhere.

So with that said, talking about intrinsic and extrinsic value, I want to try in the best
way that I possibly can to kind of wrap this idea up in a way that makes sense, because it

sounds...

It sounds lofty, sounds philosophical, sounds weird.

But basically, intrinsic value in the simplest form is when you decide to take control of
what matters to you versus letting the system or other external factors tell you what's

important in that system.

So if you are an athlete, you've decided that you know what, the most important thing is
to compete.

And you could choose to say the most important thing is getting that gold medal.

doing all those circuits, you could choose to do that, or you could make the choice that,
you know what, I just wanna be in the act of competing.

I wanna be in the room where it happens, I wanna be on the stage, that's the most
important thing to me.

You making that specific choice is you practicing intrinsic value.

This is Alyssa Liu practicing intrinsic value.

She says, the most important thing to me is that I'm competing, that I'm on the show
floor, that I'm there, that's it.

The rest is all gravy, the rest is all nice.

I would say the second piece to it is understanding that in this intrinsic value,

there will always be a struggle because it's so easy to give into the extrinsic.

It's so easy to give into what the breadcrumbs are in front of you.

We talked about this last episode where, look, if you want to give up control, that's
great.

And that can create all kinds of wonderful peace for you.

But there might be a point in time when you follow all the fires and everything that's
coming in, you're playing whack-a-mole with life, and eventually you either feel

unsatisfied or you feel frustrated or you start blaming those external factors for not
putting you in the right direction, never realizing that you had a lot more power than you

might've realized in the first place.

So I ask us to start challenging ourselves on this now because I'm seeing in my work and
in my personal life and elsewhere when I'm talking and surveying people across the United

States and the globe, I'm seeing it ramp up considerably.

seeing the ramp up of the systems must give me what I need instead of going, okay, the
system might be a little borked.

What can I do within this framework and make a change that's value-accordant to me?

Because I'm seeing a lot of people have this hopelessness as you said, John.

I'm seeing a lot of people kind of give up.

And I challenge everyone not to give up in whatever way you can.

And it doesn't have to be a big battle, just a small, any bitty thing if you can.

um I'll share from my personal story that when I decided to make a significant career
change, I went from working in pharmaceuticals to being a public motivational speaker.

That had a lot of risk to it, a lot of risk.

And I had a conversation with my spouse.

And by the way, I'm not gonna tell you that I did it all by myself.

No, my spouse was a big partner in this because we knew there was gonna be financial risk
to this and said, was it worth it?

And we basically said in the budget, we got about a year of this.

One whole year.

If we made absolutely zero money off of this, we could survive off of a year.

And she gave me the go-ahead, like, let's do it, Sam, because if you don't do it, you will
hate yourself for the rest of your life.

And I did it.

And I'm happy to say we never were in the red.

We made it work.

So that's just how we operate.

And by about seven months, we saw the return that we expected to see in about three
months, or three years, which was incredible.

Now I'm not saying that's everyone's risk, but I mean, would have never known that if I
hadn't taken that risk.

I'm not asking anyone on this call, anyone that's listening in, anyone that's watching,
although you should be listening.

Listening's way cooler than watching.

Just FYI, just a little bias there.

I'm not asking anyone to stretch yourself to a place of uncomfortability, but I can tell
you every single time I've made this incredibly uncomfortable choice, I go, why didn't I

do this sooner?

And I talk to other people who've had similar stories.

It's the same thing.

They all go, I should have done this a lot sooner.

I should have done this a lot sooner.

But the problem is, you gotta take that leap.

That leap is really, really, really hard and it's scary.

Unfortunately, that's as far as I can probably take you and John can take you.

I can't make you make the leap.

I can just tell you this is what awaits you if you wanna do it.

It will be hard, it will be incredibly strenuous.

But I can tell you this, if it absolutely didn't work out the way that we thought it
would, I wouldn't have considered that year a waste, that year of work.

I would have done something, I would have tried it.

I would have loved it.

I would have made a different decision a year on, say, look, do I still have the cards to
make this magic happen?

Maybe I'm no good at what I do.

Maybe I don't like it, but I got to try it out.

You're always learning something new.

And so when I think about Alyssa Lou and I think about my experiences with my jobs, my
most miserable has been when I'm doing a job for a reason versus when I'm doing a job

because I love the job.

And it's a good reminder of myself for that front.

um And I try to remind people that they always have that choice, even if they don't think
they do.

I first of all said, second of all, I would validate like, and I'm, I will say this every
time we talk for the rest of the time that you know me, but, the beautiful thing about

humans is they're built to self actualize.

will get where we're going.

You, you, you're biologically made to do so.

It's pretty cool.

Um, there's a catch in that in order for that to happen, you do have to keep trying things
and you have to be able to grow and change.

if that gets in the way and you can't change.

and it doesn't work.

Sometimes it be like, it's never about personal.

Okay, this is going to sound very like bro before the fucking game speechy, but like, it's
not about personal limitations.

It's about the shit that's in your way.

All your job is to figure out what it is that's in your way to get it out.

And that's going to involve trial and error, and that's going to involve failure, and
that's going to involve some scary bad feelings.

That doesn't mean you can't do it.

And I just say that as someone who has tried and failed at a lot of things and is pretty
happy with where he's at in most of his life these days.

So, um no, Sam's something very powerful here.

And I would validate, like, don't know, within my family, nobody has the job they set out
to get.

Like none of us did our first gig.

um I'll talk about it before.

My plan was to be a police officer.

That didn't take.

My sister was going to be a, what was she gonna be?

Like a nurse and then her thing didn't change.

My mom was gonna be a French.

teacher and then that didn't happen.

And we're all on different careers and they worked out great.

It's it's okay to update your plan mid run like that.

You kind of have to, so please don't shame yourself for that if you find yourself in that
position.

And I'm really fortunate and I know my father listens to our podcast.

Hi dad, Will, pleasure having you on.

And I've never forgotten what he told me once.

So my father, I'm greatly bastardizing his own story, but he went to college like many
people did.

He got a degree in philosophy and he wanted to be a philosophy professor or just a teacher
for kids.

Unfortunately, he graduated in the seventies and during that time, affirmative action was
incredibly high.

So what that meant is if you were a white male, you were not getting that job.

And that's, he's not upset by that, he's not frustrated by that, it's just that was the
nature of the world he was in.

And so he ended up going down the path of insurance.

He had a career in insurance, which was not what he asked for.

I remember he drove me to the train station on my first day in college, because I was
commuting to college.

And he said, I hope you don't have to make the horrible choice I had to make.

I hope you get to do what you love.

But if you absolutely...

have to do something you don't love.

I hope you have the free time to do what you love on the side.

And I've never forgotten that.

I've never forgotten what my father sacrificed to give me the lens, much less the
opportunity to go, you deserve to do what you love to do.

You've got one life.

I've never forgotten the sacrifice my father did in my 18 years of youth of just like,
he's putting through all this shit together.

He's working a job he doesn't like.

He's working two to three jobs at one point just to give me an opportunity.

And the worst thing I could have done

is done what he had done.

Go down the path of least resistance, whatever job was handed to me and just take that
job.

And I'm very grateful for that.

But let me tell you, there's people in your life that would absolutely do the same for you
in any capacity.

I'll do the same for anyone that I know.

Like, hey, look, if I can give you some support, some extra wiggle room, so you can do
exactly what you love doing, I'm a big fan of that.

um I recently came across an interview with Jerry Seinfeld where he talked about when he
was first making the first Seinfeld show, the pilot, NBC was like, hey, we're gonna make

this pilot for this show Seinfeld.

He's talking to David Letterman and David Letterman says, make sure you fail doing exactly
what you want to do.

He told Seinfeld, you can make any show you want.

They'll give you all these show notes, know, do this, do that, make it funnier, make it
more mass appealing for your pilot.

Do it the way you want to.

So that way, if you fail and you probably will, he told him, fun fact, he didn't, but he
probably will fail.

It will have been your failure.

It would have been something you would have loved and you would have stood by it.

And I think about that quite a bit.

It is, yeah.

At the end of the day, like authenticities, it's the one thing we have, being yourself,
doing the things that matter to you, not to harp on the AI piece anymore, but like, boy,

is that going to be relevant more than ever.

And I think making sure that, you you stay close to that line.

And also fucking allow it to grow, you know, too, but like, I don't know.

I feel very ranty if I go further with this point.

But I do encourage people just to

Spread your wings a little bit, try some stuff out, no shame in looking.

yeah, that's what I have for this piece.

Yeah, I'll just say this though, because again, I know the person that's listening to this
is going, yeah, but it's gonna be hard.

It will be fucked.

Yeah.

I will save you the story about when I had to live in a car for seven months and I had no
home.

I was homeless.

I'll save you the story of working three plus jobs and getting two hours of sleep every
night just to make ends meet, just to make the magic happen and telling myself there had

to be a light at the end of tunnel.

It is going to be incredibly hard.

And I'm going to tell you that there is, there's an equal version of this universe where I
didn't succeed in what I did and I did everything right.

I did exactly the same thing.

It's just, I got lucky.

Luck is a factor.

Fortune we call it.

to say, which is when an opportunity hits and it's like, okay, I know this is an
opportunity, I have to go for it.

And a lot of us don't get that opportunity and that sucks.

I wish I could change that about life.

I really do.

I wish everyone could have the equal opportunity.

Unfortunately, that isn't the world that we live in.

uh But in the great words of some uh Roman and Greek philosophers,

Pasio derived from the word suffering.

Everyone's got to find what they're pasio about, meaning what is the suffering you're
willing to put up with that's so joyous that it's worthwhile every single time?

And I'm a big believer in that in whatever way you can.

And when I think of Alyssa Liu and her renowned success and fame, I say thank you.

Thank you for showing the world joy.

Thank you for giving us that glimpse that you don't have to do it the way everyone else
does it.

She seems to be living life on her terms.

I hope she can.

she gets to continue doing that for the rest of her life.

That's what I have to say about that.

Yeah, I don't have anything good to add to it, so I'm not going to.

I'm going to leave it there.

It's un-molested, pure.

As the day I was born, I'll say.

Maybe Daniel does, I don't know.

You know it's going to be good when you start a census with...

But no...

No, just...

I was thinking while you were talking about the, you know, try something, fail, it's okay,
go back with the knowledge that you now have of that failure and try something again, try

again.

And I was like, huh, roguelikes and roguelite games are, roguelike, roguelite, I'll let
people argue about that.

Like whatever nuance you want to find in those two terms.

That's fine.

But you know, for those who are unaware, you go on a run, like an attempt in these games
and you aren't very well prepared at first and you will fail and that is okay because then

you go again and you retain some of the knowledge and some of the things that you got from
that learning experience.

And then over the course of these runs, over the course of these attempts, you build up a
plethora of skills and experiences and strengths that you can then take forward into the

other things.

It's nice.

And I think for anyone who is gamer brained like me is a very, a very nice way of looking
at things.

em You know,

failing and for those listening and not watching, the air quotes, the scare quotes maybe,
it's not the end.

It is just an opportunity to learn and to be stronger when you try again.

Absolutely, absolutely.

You know, I've had my love and hate affair with rogue light slash rogue likes, but I will
say this.

Remember the time in video games when we were afraid of failure, when they were like, a
lot of games didn't have game over screens anymore because we were like, we didn't want

that anymore.

I'm happy we got that back.

know, rogue likes has trained us that failure is okay.

There's, a joy in failure and that's beautiful.

um And you said it best, Daniel.

I liked how you said it better, but

Samuel Beckett has this quote that I used to have on my wall.

don't anymore, but I should put it back up.

He says, ever tried, ever failed, no matter, try again, fail again, fail better.

Always, right?

Just, you're always doing better.

And the mistake we make is, I failed this one time, I'm just gonna keep failing.

Well, yes, you will probably keep failing, but you should fail, you'll get better, and you
will learn something, you'll take something away from it, and you are always getting

better.

And if you have the ability to look backwards and go, hey, I'm better than I was last
time.

That's incredibly fulfilling.

Somebody here maybe did a little bit of a thesis in grad school about Dark Souls, which
had come out when he was working at GameStop at that time, related to failure and how it

teaches you the experience of like humbling yourself and then the joy when you're just
doing it to learn.

It's very relevant to this, but it's very, very nerdy.

if that person were here, he would be brief when bringing this up.

But boy, would he be pumped about it.

I knew you were going to bring Dark Souls to the conversation because it's very relevant
and very fascinating.

Yeah.

Of course, I'm boring.

I did my thesis on Metal Gear Solid 2.

True story.

That's another topic.

ah Well, I know it's a little bit of a shorter episode, but I think that's a good time to
wrap ourselves up for a few things.

Well, friends, thank you for tuning in today.

As Sam previously alluded to, kind of a shorter one on this side of the adventure, but
still a message we wanted you to go home with.

We've had a lot of fun.

We hope you have too.

Tune in next time.

I've been John, that's Sam, Daniel is somewhere in the background lurking menacingly, and
we look forward to seeing you again.

Take care.