Digital Social Hour - Podcasting Secrets: From Pro Poker to Top Podcaster | Liv Boeree DSH #757

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

🎙️ Tune in now to discover the fascinating journey from professional poker to top podcaster in this episode of Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! Packed with valuable insights, this conversation delves into the world of podcasting secrets as we chat with Liv Boeree, a retired poker pro turned podcasting sensation. 🤩 Join the conversation as Liv shares her incredible transition, revealing the exciting challenges and opportunities in the podcasting world. With topics ranging from the strategic mindsets of poker to the intriguing realm of energy healing, this episode is a treasure trove of information! 🎲✨ Don't miss out on this compelling discussion that bridges the gap between poker strategy and podcasting success. Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Watch, subscribe, and join us as we explore these captivating stories on your favorite platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 🎧🌟 #startingapodcast #podcasttips #howtopodcast #podcasting101 #podcastingequipment #podcastingbenefits #howtomakeapodcast #startingapodcast #beginnersguidetopodcasting #podcasttips CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:32 - Liv's Podcast Insights 01:36 - Liv's Retirement from Poker 07:47 - Energy Healing Techniques 10:41 - Energy Healing Practices 16:36 - Intuition and Inner Voice Exploration 24:03 - Win-Win Podcast Highlights 26:37 - Embracing Aging 28:58 - Key Win-Wins from the Podcast 29:54 - Conscious Capitalism Principles 33:45 - Understanding Karma 35:40 - Role of Incentives 38:04 - Capitalism Today 44:15 - Impact of AI 45:15 - Are We Doomed? Discussion 46:25 - Strengthening Local Communities 48:20 - Addressing Loneliness 51:30 - Where to Find Liv APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Liv Boeree https://www.instagram.com/liv_boeree www.youtube.com/@UC09fp6hZ2RHiUYwY8hNCirA https://www.livboeree.com/ https://x.com/Liv_Boeree https://www.facebook.com/livboeree/ SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you a big reader? I am now. One of the main incentives for me to do the podcast in the first place is because I want to read more. Like seven out of 10 in knowledge across a lot of different facets. And it's a really good way of doing that. I want to be able to like, not just ask like dumb questions. If I can find like one spot where I can challenge the guests,

then that's satisfying. That's true. All right, guys, we got Liv here retired from professional poker now and now a podcaster yes thanks for coming on thanks for having me yeah it's podcasting the main thing for you right now pretty much although like I am not as set up as this you're just saying how many episodes you've done like I'm managing to maybe crank one out every two weeks yeah you're doing like well 800 in a year and a half yeah 14 a week 15 a week i'd off my hat yeah but yours are more longer and more in depth yes you go into it yeah definitely it's like i don't know i have to go and read it usually the person's just written a book so i have to read their book and then try and find all the ways i can critique their book wow that's intense yeah okay i see why it takes you two weeks

then there's a lot so are you a big reader uh i am now uh it's actually one of the main incentives for me to do the podcast in the first place is because i want to read more i want to become like like seven out of ten in knowledge across a lot of different facets. And it's a really good way of doing that because I want to be able to like, not just ask like dumb questions. And also at least if I can find like one spot where I can challenge the guests and that's satisfying. That's true. Rogan does a good job with that.

He really does. Yeah. You can talk to anyone. Lex too. Yeah. Yeah. Your episode on Lex was great by the way. Thank you.

Yeah. I think that got a ton of views too. Yeah. Yeah, well done. Him and Negrano was a good one as well. He's coming on tomorrow. Oh, he is? Yeah.

I'm seeing him tonight. Oh, you are? Yeah. Oh, Small World. Thomas said hello. Do you still play? I play like twice a year. I was here in the World Series.

I played the main event for all of about four hours. That's usually how it goes. Yeah. I mean, short and and sweet i came in like day two just swooped in um classic i mean not even an interesting hand but it's it's so interesting how quickly you get rusty like i've still got some sort of some kind of database in my head of how poker works but it's like the mental machinery is slow um i can't calculate things as quickly as i of how poker works but it's like the mental machinery is slow um i can't calculate things as quickly as i used to and uh but it's nice it's like now i feel like a cheerful amateur as opposed to someone who's actually trying to like be good and have their ego wrapped up in it right that's how i feel about chess because i play a lot of chess really

yeah what's your elo i'm 1450. What's yours? I got a good day 1300. Oh, you're good. I'm okay. So I went through like a kind of cracked out period where I would play an hour of Blitz games before bed every night. Right. And I don't know, but I find it's like I try and start with the 10-minute games and then it's like, well, I want a bit more of a action and it's five minutes.

Next thing you know, I'm playing one minute bullet. Oh, one minute. Yeah. So I had to stop. It was like, go cold turkey.

I just uninstalled the app yesterday. It's too triggering. Right. If you lose like two, three in a row, you get so tilted and you start playing aggressive and then you lose another two and three, you're down a hundred. You know,

chess is, I'm sure poker is similar where you lose a few hands in a row and you're like 100 Elo. You know, chess is, I'm sure poker is similar where you lose a few hands in a row and you're like playing tilted. Or like, I mean, especially if you're playing lots of tournaments, it's, you know, there's so much luck in any given like game of poker. You know, we play for a day or for a few hours.

It's like luck is a very big factor. If we play a week week then obviously the skill matter you know the the luck factor gets smaller um but with tournaments you can sometimes if you're only playing live tournaments you might only play a hundred a year it's very easy to have a losing year or even multiple years and be still technically a positive return on investment player wow um so it's it's very brutal and And so then you start playing, you know, you can't, I, is I, am I losing because I'm playing badly or am I just getting unlucky? But then sometimes that can just make you stop playing worse. So it's like, it's very, yeah, it's

annoying. So is that why you retired in 2018? One of the reasons, uh, I mean, definitely, um, I mean, I've been doing it for like 10 years or more and the game had really changed since when i first started playing it was much more a game of like street smarts and reading people's body language and intuition because we didn't really know no one really knew what the the real like mathematics of the game was but then this sort of data revolution happened where it became all about analyzing um you could like use software to analyze the what's called game theory optimal solutions um and so it very much it came it became almost more like chess study and it's like whoever would be willing to sit and just study and memorize all these solutions and try and like

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and head for the end zone all season long. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Make their brain be like the computer would be the best players. And it was fun for a while uh like don't get me wrong i've had plenty of like nerdy rabbit holes i like to go down but like

it did not suit a my learning style and i just didn't have the fire to keep doing that and then i was just like it was getting harder and harder to sort of keep up with the best yeah um so yeah it was a combination of things that and i also wanted to try some new stuff it seems like it took away the fun from the game some people love it but for me personally it did yeah no for real like these kids are just nerds with i don't want to stereotype people but you know what i mean like it's the i mean there's still some space like some of the really best players like like negroni for example right he you know i mean he's not like best best but he's still very much up there and he he's one of the few sort of old school players who ultimately learned you know played as he's one of these like street smart

hustlers but then realized well shit i've also got to learn all this you know dig into the analysis side the the mathematics and so he also incorporated that. And then he, so now he's kind of got both sort of sets of playing styles to draw upon. Right. And the best players are the ones who can do both. Okay. Do you still keep up with it at all? Or did you kind of walk out completely?

Yeah, I'm not really following it that much. As I said, like like yeah i'll come and play two tournaments a year and that's that's that's enough for me wow just a scratch your itch right yeah damn so you're really checked out then uh-huh there was a lot of uh interesting things this year at the world series kristen fox and made a deep run yep yeah i mean i was following that because i mean if i was a tournament i was in and i mean the main event is always just really fun to to follow but yeah, no, Kristen's amazing. Did you see the final drama with the two guys?

One of them was using GTO. Oh, no. So I actually didn't watch the final time, but I heard this. So yeah, he was like, he had a laptop on the side and he was going and like consulting it. Yeah, I mean, at worst, it's very much outside the spirit of the game and kind of bordering on cheating. And at best, it's a much outside the spirit of the game and kind of bordering on cheating.

And at best, it's a really dumb thing to do because it just makes you like... I mean, I get it. It's your one shot. There's so much money on the line. But it's like... The main event is meant to be about... The main event is what it is

because you get these amateurs from all over the world trying to have their shot. And if they see that, oh, wait, there's like the math guy on, you know, the math guy has got his army of math guys on the side. And they've got all the answers. And it's like on TV. It's not good for poker. But, yeah, it's one of these classic dilemmas where short-term incentives for the individual don't match up with what's actually good for the whole game. Yeah. Yeah.

So poker has turned into a very logical game, but I've seen you on other shows and it seems like you got a spiritual side to you. Somewhat. I've seen you talk about using energy healing on your body. Okay. Yeah, so I grew up pure science, rationality. I studied physics. I'd never had any kind of weird, unexplainable experiences until I get to Burning Man one year.

I've been to Burning Man many, many years. But one particular year, I'd been having this problem with my ear for a few months prior where i couldn't uh men's voices were being distorted and it would come and go but it was really like i couldn't socialize men's voices men only men's voices were just becoming really unpleasant to listen to well i assumed it was something to do with like the lower frequency or something but anyway it sucked and And went to various doctors and they told me, some of them didn't know what it was, but they noticed I'd lost some of my hearing in that ear as well,

as well as having all this distortion. And in the end, I got diagnosed with a thing called Meniere's disease, which is, from all accounts, basically it's a progressive hearing loss thing. You eventually end up going deaf, but along the way you have these bouts of vertigo and these attacks of dizziness and it sounds miserable anyway so i've been having this on and off for a few months get to burning man i have another really bad attack of it where i get the vertigo for the first time and i'm really

sad i'm on the last night and i get talking to this girl and she's like well have you tried doing any energy healing I just kind of laughed at her like that's not my thing no I don't believe in that and she's like I mean you sure you don't want to try I was like yeah all right screw it what have I got to lose um long story short she ends up like sucking with her mouth over my ear what yeah um and she she it was quite an unpleasant sensation because it was like very loud and i was like please stop there's something there i was like okay and then she sort of at the end of it sort of drops to the ground and is is quite like in discomfort shall we say she's like cold and shaking and she was like that was a that was a major thing I needed to clear and I was pretty freaked out by this because it was like

well that was I've never seen anyone have that kind of reaction and I can't say I really felt anything particularly other than like the unpleasantness of that but her reaction was quite jarring to me because she seemed genuinely like she'd been through something and i was like well am i better what does this mean and she was like yes that was it was uh whatever it is it's it's been cleared it's gone um you'll probably have the physical symptoms for another few weeks and then you'll be fine and that's exactly what happened whoa so after that i was like well uh that i mean like talk about like having a worldview shaken up right um now there's plenty of you know classical explanations which is you know maybe it was going to just go away anyway maybe i didn't have many years and i had something else i mean that's possible um maybe the you know a lot of people talk about the placebo

effect right and it's how it's incredibly powerful but i mean i think that can be both true and this was also a realm of healing that conventional science doesn't understand because like placebo effect is basically the rigorous science world word for this is something we don't understand right the body and brain is doing some form of healing and is beyond our realm of current understanding so you know there's many different lenses you can look through about what that what happened there like did i have an energy blockage was it something you know darker was it was it just a like post-viral syndrome I didn't know about? Who knows?

But what's been useful from that experience is that now it's like I have another tool in my arsenal of how to deal with stuff, whether it's in my own health or another friend I'm seeing who's in some form of distress. It's like, okay, it's not just mind mind and like psychology there's also like this like spiritual side of things like this there's more like esoteric realm that can also be a useful like medium of healing interesting so uh yeah so that's

why like when you said oh you're into energies it's like well like yes and no i i'm trying to navigate this world with some scientific skepticism but also like a healthy balance because before i was too closed off to this idea and now it's like you know i went through a period where i was like well so if that's true then what else is true and i was quite scared for a while because i was like oh are demons real and so on and so forth? And like, you know, because it was just so, such a jarring experience. And now it's like, oh no, there's like,

how can, there are ways to sort of navigate along the spectrum of like cynicism and rationality to all out woo. I think there's elements of value, like there's valuable things along that spectrum and you can like pick and choose which things to to use right um yeah so that's interesting so you acknowledge it's there now you just don't know where you sit on what you believe in i think i think i know i think there's i think there is something to it i've tried i've since tried

things like reiki and i've had sometimes not noticed much and other times felt something quite notable and they weren't even touching me i was like and again it's like well are you is it things like reiki and i've had sometimes not noticed much and other times felt something quite notable and they weren't even touching me i was like and again it's like well are you is it is that just like my brain tricking me is it actually something real and i think it's it's kind of a bit of both i think maybe you need to be in an open-minded state for to feel anything in the first place so in many ways you almost have to like trick your brain into a certain state of being. But then once it's there,

then it starts actually becoming real. Because, you know, I don't subscribe to the notion that, you know, there is this like cold objective reality and we're just little blobs moving around in it. There is some kind of interplay going on where like our consciousness simultaneously is affected by the external world, but also sort of feeds, it can also affect it.

Wow. So yeah, I think both things can be simultaneously true, but we need to, you know, so we don't want to be so cynical that we're closed off to these alternative ways of healing that are like pretty low risk, high reward, but also not so open-minded

that our brains fall out. Right. Yeah, there does seem to be that divide with the science world and the spirit world, spiritual world. But I'd be willing to try it. Like you said, the risk is pretty low on these things.

Sometimes they're not even touching you at all yeah so what's the worst that can happen right i mean like some people i'd say go to but what i think would be concerning is if let's say you know you hear these stories of people who then you know they'll have a strong experience of healing like this and then they'll be like well all science is bullshit all science is nonsense right right i'm not going to listen to any of that anymore. I've met people like that. Right. And that's, I think, the danger.

And it's like, there's a way to have healthy balance of both. That's, in fact, the best way, I personally think. And it doesn't have to be perfectly 50-50. You know, I think various people have different, like, are more inclined in different directions, but you need to have some kind of grounding and balance in both for the best results, in my experience. Yeah. but you need to have some kind of grounding and balance in both for the best results, in my experience.

Yeah, it'd probably be useful to have in poker to be able to kind of feel people's energy, you know, see if they're bluffing or... Yeah, I mean, there's definitely, like I've had times where I've just had a really strong feeling that I'm like, I know my cards, this is a trash hand, but I just know I'm going to hit what I need to hit.

Wow, really? Mm-hmm. And then it came. Whoa. Yeah. You manifested the card. Did I manifest it? Have I somehow subconsciously picked up on a piece of information I didn't know?

Is it something from, like, is time not linear? Like, there's many different explanations from anything from, like, the very wooey again to like well maybe there's just like i'm picking up on something well i mean feeling sensing that you're going to hit when when like a card still to come that's a different thing because like technically no one has that information right but yeah at the same time it's not perfect there have been i've had plenty of times where i've had some kind of feeling and then it didn't and then it didn't hit so then it's a question of like well am i just remembering the times when it did interesting that's possible um but i've known a few other poker players and i've certainly had it myself where like I was quite, when I won this really big tournament in Europe in 2010,

I had a voice in my head that said, you're going to win this tournament right before the tournament started. And as far as I can remember, never had that in any other one. And it was the tournament that like when I, you know, I was kind of a nobody in poker prior to that and then one week later i was like the biggest star in poker for the next few months holy crap because that's how big this tournament was and also just like it was a perfect storm i was like a 25 year old girl it was the biggest tournament held in europe at the time um and like the british

newspapers somehow got wind of it and i was like on the front page of like all the tabloids in the UK that week. So it was a really big deal. And it fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life. Dang. Yeah. That was like a life changing moment. And you got. One of the most notable moments of my life.

And that message came on that moment. Yes. So there must be some sort of overlap or something there. It's, yeah, I don't know. It just was like, it was like, kind of like my own voice in my head. It wasn't like it sounded like someone else. You know how you sometimes just like have an idea and it's like you can kind of have some inner dialogue. Yeah.

And it just said, you're going to, well, I can't remember if it was I or you, which is interesting. But it was like, you're going to win this tournament. And I was like. Startled you? Yeah, no, I remember looking around the room and being like, okay, I just heard that. Okay, maybe I'm going crazy. And then the tournament starts.

I proceed to lose like half my chips. And I'm like, well, that was nonsense, I guess. But then I recovered. And then I made it to day two. Wow. And then day three. And then day three and then day four and next thing i knew i'm like final table down to final six uh it was 5 000 euro buy

in tournament and um even the even ninth was like 80 000 and then i ended up winning it for 1.25 million holy crap can't even do the math on that multiple. That's crazy. It's a lot. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a little like data point to me of like, sometimes there must be some other realm of information out there that we can access. I don't have a reliable way of doing it. I wish I could say this is how you do it. I have not figured that out. And I know a few other poker players who've had similar kind of experiences maybe not as strong um you should

ask daniel you think he's had one i don't know i haven't asked him but i'd be really curious whether he has had any kind of like this is going to be a good one for me um now again like you know was it a premonition that I was going to win? Was like I knowing something from the future or was it just like I had this weird like mental blip and it gave me so much confidence that I was just able to play this like weird A game? Maybe, I don't know.

Yeah, it's super interesting. Did you know a large percentage of people don't have an inner dialogue? I'd heard that recently, actually. Just like nothing. Nothing. So they don't talk to each other. How do they think?

That's what I'm wondering. Because I talk to myself all the time. Yeah. Literally as soon as I get up, I'm talking to myself. Because it's like there's this thing called aphantasia as well, right? Where some people can't visualize.

If I'm like what think of an apple in your head close your eyes and visualize an apple red apple yeah you you know but at least most people can see it at least the shape of one and the color and maybe a little bit of shine and especially if you add layers of words onto it you can usually make that image stronger some people just don't see anything at all what yes that's weird and it's not as far as i can tell correlated to like intelligence or anything like i know a guy um another poker player one of the smartest people i've ever met and he says he has it completely he can't he doesn't see anything when he closes his eyes so i don't know whether he's

like but he probably has a strong dialogue in his head or monologue should i say because he says he he like visualizes things by sort of speaking them out or something yeah some people see words right right so it must be like synesthesia adjacent or something yeah i see objects when people start saying words you know have you noticed uh the top poker players have any correlation with iq levels i mean there's definitely yeah like if i was to wager whether um the top players are above average iq i would strongly wager that uh i can't say there's been any like rigorous studies done on it um you know again certainly in the modern game it's about it would probably favor those with the classical you know people who would do well on an IQ test because it's a certain kind of very linear thinking

that you have to be good at to excel on a on a IQ test like okay that shape corresponds to that and there's this pattern and so on so it's very logical and there's a lot of that in the modern game whereas in the old-school game it was a little bit more intuitive which again probably correlates to being good at an iq test but it's it's less um you know that you often hear of people who have like really strong street smarts but aren't actually that good at logic puzzles yeah right does it make them less intelligent well it depends on like intelligence is such a nebulous concept um you know we have these ideas of like emotional intelligence or uh rationality quotient you know how good at hog how good are people are understanding their own biases that's another

form of intelligence yeah it's a good one i need to take that test yeah it's i mean it's but the nice one about that is that it's trainable oh yeah yeah okay because iq you can't really change too much right i think you can probably study um to a degree like because again it's like learning how to do a certain type of puzzle right um so i wouldn't be surprised if there's something you could do to probably like increase it by a few points um but i'd say some of the other ones like emotional intelligence like again it's I mean I think all of these things are somewhat learnable but some it comes different types come easier to others but that I mean again that's a cool thing about poker and other games especially poker it it like it forces you to learn to understand your own biases because like wishful thinking and and like

biased thinking is the death knell to any poker player right they'll go broke right like you know we we're playing against each other and and you make a huge bet and i have kind of medium strong cards but a lot of my chips already invested my motivation is to find all the reasons why you might be bluffing and you know because like that's probably my only way of beating you at this point um so i'm motivated to look for the evidence that confirms that hypothesis and uh motivated to like ignore all the other evidence that sort of goes against it but that's a very that's that's not actually rational right really i want to just evaluate everything as objectively as possible

um so i can't remember how this related to my point we got on a tangent there we've been all over the place i only remember we're talking about a lot of ground yeah iq eq we were talking about tests i don't know how we got there but uh yeah i i recently saw you had your partner on your podcast i've been thinking about doing that so what ended up happening with that episode uh oh with with eagle so yeah igor is my uh he's another professional poker player we met playing poker he doesn't do it anymore either um and we recently had our 10-year anniversary of being together. So my podcast is called The Win-Win Podcast. Shameless plug. And it's about looking for things in life that are win-wins,

that positive some endeavors, where the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And relationships are arguably one of the best examples of a win-win thing, if they go well. But they can be very win-losey. Some are lose-lose. Exactly. And more often than not, not more often than not,

but if anything, they're either lose-lose or win-win, usually. And if you have a good relationship, you can get pretty well calibrated at spotting ones that are like,, it seems like this relationship is a net negative on both of you. Um, so, uh, yeah, we decided for our 10 year anniversary to sort of interview one another about what we've learned over the course of the relationship that's been, you know, that we think is helpful for other people. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because 10 years is a long time these days. There's people breaking up every month.

My friends are going through tens of relationships. It's pretty common. How old are you? 27. I mean, that's a common age for people to go through breakups. I didn't meet Igor. Well, I didn't get together with Igor until I was 29. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Pretty late. Yeah. Nice. And I just turned 29. Oh, okay. Yeah. Pretty late. Yeah. Nice. And I just turned 40. Yeah? Congrats. Big 4-0. You go to the club or?

Did a party. It's interesting. Yeah. It's the first birthday where I was like, yeah, okay, I'm over this now. I'm done with this number going up thing. I feel that. I'm already feeling like that, to be honest. Oh, just wait.

Yeah? Oh, man. 30s are great, actually. 30s are really, really awesome. I mean, 40s, I can't say. Everyone's like, oh, it gets better. I'm like, okay, but. What was good about 30, you think?

I just stopped caring about stupid stuff as much. And I mean, in general, you get, that is something that just as you get older, it seems to be the case. You're just like, okay, I've been there, done that. That actually doesn't matter. Okay, this thing does. So I think you're just a little bit more efficient

with your emotions. Okay. So you used to care a lot about what people think about you? Mm-hmm. And, or just like, oh, i need to be the best at this and and sort of arbitrary metrics that didn't actually matter yeah it's easy to go down that route right trying to prove people wrong trying to be the best so you had that attitude with poker yes which incidentally though you need some of right that was actually another reason why i kind of ended up transitioning out of the game was i just lost to be a great a great poker player you need

a real fire in your belly you need to be competitive and like be wanting to look your opponent in the eyes and like essentially rip out their heart right take their money to take their money and i just lost i mean don't get me wrong I'm still very competitive but I just I don't know didn't have that same fire um is it because you befriended certain players you don't want to take their money away no no it was I don't know I in my early 20s I felt like that was how I could prove to the world and to myself that I was cool or something. And it just became less of a thing that mattered.

I still care about proving to the world. I still care what people think about me. I do want to be successful. It's just, I guess, my priorities have shifted about what I care about being successful. Yeah. Well, now I think you could have more impact with the podcast.

For sure. Because poker is just one thing in life. Right. And also, by definition, poker is a zero-sum game. My win is someone else's loss and vice versa. Player versus player.

But a podcast, especially one that educates people or makes them happy and like gives it provides inspiration is such a win-win thing you know you're putting you're gaining something out of it you get to have cool conversations and grow your platform and hopefully monetize and then your audience get a bunch of information for free. Right. It's really cool. It's like the pure act of creation. I agree. So yeah, that was,

um, yeah, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do my show. What were some of the biggest win wins you've found on the podcast so far? Ooh, good question. You've got on some big people, so I'm sure there's some big wins on there.

Yeah. I mean, the, You've got on some big people, so I'm sure there's some big wins on there. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that I'm trying to nail down through the show is what are the ways, how can we harness the power of competition such that it is aligned with what humanity needs in the long run. Because really competition is what makes the world go round. And collaboration, obviously. But our economic system is built upon competition. And some industries are very clearly win-win, like new drug discovery or something like that.

You discover some amazing new cancer-curing drug, you know, discovering new drug discovery or something like that. Like, uh, it's you, you, you discover some amazing new cancer curing drug. You'll probably get very rich from doing that. And you'll help a bunch of people or you'll end up dead. Clear win-win. Yeah. Why would you end up dead? Well, big pharma might not want that out. Well, all that. Okay, sure. Well, okay. So that, so let's, let's, you know just assuming they're like good health industry i agree there's there's plenty of whacked incentives in in pharmaceutical industry as well but um okay let's find another example sorry no it's fine um i have on a lot of holistic people on this show so no and i mean there's definitely some truth to that. Again, like there's so many things that are being missed

because it's not easily, you know, like, okay, maybe this is oversharing. There's a certain like simple sugar for anyone who gets regular UTIs. I went through a period where I had like, just kept having UTIs and doctors couldn't figure out why. And I went on all these antibiotics and saw a specialist and they were like, we don't know, it's just one of those things. kept having UTIs and doctors couldn't figure out why. And I went on all these antibiotics and soil specialists.

And they're like, we don't know. It's just one of those things. And it wasn't until a friend who was very into very holistic stuff said, Oh, have you tried this? Um, uh,

D manos. It's a, it's a like a simple sugar. You can just buy it in any health food store. I was like, why would I do that? She's like, Oh,

the molecular shape of it is more adhesive to uh the bacteria that usually cause a uti than the blinding of the bladder so they all stick to that and you just pee it out and it doesn't cause any antibiotic resistance or anything you should try it it was like a magic wand every but my uti's just completely went away and i basically never had them again wow and not a single doctor had told me about it. So I went on like a rabbit hole of like, why is this not widely known? There'd been a few little studies done on it,

all of which were positive, but ultimately it's because it's not something that can be patented. It's just a sugar. Wow. And it's like, so it's one of these, if you sort of dig around and read it on like a women's health forum, you might find it. But it's somehow not in the scientific establishment's mind, which is crazy.

So there is, yeah, real, real truth to this, you know, that incentives don't always align. And so, yeah, that's really really like coming back to your question like one of the main things that win-win has sort of shown up through all these different interviews is that like what we need to do to fix so many of our problems whether it's like misinformation you know media like leaning more and more into clickbait or all these like addiction methods that are being used on social media to get teenagers addicted to whatever the latest platform is and so on.

They're all a result of short-term, because all of these companies are in a rat race against each other. So they're trying to do whatever they can in the short term to get a competitive edge. So these short-term incentives are misaligned with what is actually good for i mean the health of the entire industry itself in the long run but also

for all its all the consumers all the customers and so the like common theme that is emerging from every interview is that like we have to as a species critically examine the the design of the incentive structures that we are using to drive progress um so it's not like a clear answer like that's oh that's a clear win-win um but i like that that's what we got to do i agree and it's a very hard problem very so that's why i've like just like that's now my mission i'm like trying to like get everyone thinking about how can we think better about incentives very hard because of capitalism i call it conscious capitalism so i like to make money but if if the other side is losing or if someone's getting injured i don't want to make money that way because of karma or whatever you know i want to be conscious about how i'm making

the money that's actually an interesting point like karma is maybe an underutilized concept because it is actually a form of, it's like a metric of whether or not you're doing good, but it's a self, it's a self enforced one, right? There's no one from top down saying, oh, you're going to have bad karma. believe that I the universe has a form of wisdom that knows whether I'm doing something that's good or bad and it will punish me if I do a thing that hurts harms others um yeah maybe we need to like spread that meme more agreed yeah karma is kind of seen as like a woo-woo like spiritual thing so some people don't even believe in it a lot of people don't well yeah I mean if you're a like career criminal clearly you don't because otherwise you or like i don't know you assume unless you want the pain i don't know yeah but yeah it's um i don't know whether i believe in it because there's so many examples of like

bad people getting away with terrible things yeah then it gets into that debate but i think the world would be a like clearly better place if everyone did believe in it agreed agreed right because then why would you do bad things exactly if if in an ideal world people would just not do bad stuff because they empathize with their fellow human or like have i mean the other thing as well though is like a lot of bad things that happen on earth are done not because people intend to be bad but just because they don't realize that they're being you know like they're doing a bad thing like you know we're now seeing all these studies about like there's microplastics everywhere right and they're all in our brains and everywhere and people's testicles.

It's not like the companies that made all this cheap plastic packaging knew that they were doing an evil thing necessarily. It's not in the beginning. But the incentives, again, it comes back to incentives, the intense competition they were in to package their products as cheaply as possible because you know to protect their bottom line because otherwise their investors get mad and leave them or they can't attract more investment so they've got to they're under all this pressure to cut corners um and use whatever cheap plastic packaging they can so it's it's but maybe if they had the like true foresight, they'd had the information that like in 10 years time,

this is going to be everywhere, including in your own children's brains. Do you really want to do this? Then they might not have done it. So like they would have done the conscious capitalism thing basically. But if we don't have sufficient information, then it's very hard to be a conscious capitalist.

Good point. Yeah, you see it with asbestos, right? When they use that in the old buildings, they didn't know it was bad for you at the time yeah but then at the same time there are also plenty of examples of companies literally just being psychopaths because also with the asbestos thing there was a period of time so there was a period of time they didn't know it was bad but then they did find out it was bad and then funded a bunch of research that was basically just false false you know bullshit research that said it's safe.

Jeez. Yes. And that's what I feel like they're doing now. Still. Yeah. I mean, like, so like 3M, the big, I mean, they make all sorts of stuff. Yeah. billion fine for obfuscating the fact that um pfas uh which is like forever chemicals are don't break down and i just now everywhere and they kind of like tried to cover that up

and get away with it so geez it's it's a combination i think conscious capitalism helps for sure but at the same time there are always going to be a fraction of people who are with a lot of power and companies who are psychopaths because they just see it as a fine like it's business you know what i mean it's a percentage of their revenue right and and the thing is is if you think about like an actual corporate structure it has one goal or a couple of goals yeah it's like satisfy investors like they are fiscally bound to do it like they legally have to but that means that they are directly incentivized to cut whatever corners they can as long as they can get away with it right it's pretty psychopathic if you think about it people's health are being ruined i mean look at look at birth control look at all these medications kids are being put on it's it's

terrible yeah but then at the same time that same process does also drive a lot of great stuff like capitalism is driven you know solar panels so you know more efficient energy production that's cleaner etc so it's it's it's both cases are true so again it's like how do we design how do we improve information so that like people can be more aware of the potential harms of what they're building but then also design the incentives so that those who cut corners get actually really punished for it as quickly as possible and disincentivized what do you think the punishment should be oh that's being on my pay grade i think it varies it depends um the baby powder one is nuts what's that you've seen that one with johnson johnson no baby powder causing like all these diseases yeah looking at that one oh boy because a lot

of parents use that on their babies that's awful and uh it's terrible i didn't know about the microplastic in the kid's brain that's a new one to me well so i mean it's it's just a new study that was going around on twitter yesterday um i mean i think it's a pre-print so it's just a new study that was going around on twitter yesterday um i mean i think it's a pre-print so it's like i'm sure that i'm sure it's not as bad as the headlines are making out to be but it found that of the brains that were studied half a percent of them by weight was microplastic was plastic crap so one two hundredth of the brain's mass it was plastic that's nuts i mean that seems so crazy to me i i wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of error but the point is the real number should be zero or as close to zero as possible because like the brain is such

a delicate organ like it's and when something's in there you it's almost impossible to get out and and so if microplastics are able to cross the blood brain barrier that's a huge problem that's scary yeah and look at the rates of all these you know autism rates and young babies now there's there must be a link i mean yeah we it's it's so complex it's hard to like pin it down all we know is that we're we you know we are drastically changing our environment through all these different chemicals and new technologies faster than we can figure out whether it matters that we're changing the environment.

And that's what matters. I think a lot of these things aren't actually probably going to be as bad as we think they are. Some of them are going to be much worse for us than we think we are. But the point is, we shouldn't be just blindly running these experiments because that's essentially what you're doing like we're running you know i know there's still like a ton of debate about whether how much you know how much co2 changes the atmosphere and we do know that we have been increasing the amount of co2 in the atmosphere

but it's like why run such a huge experiment where we just don't know like why take you know it's you're just making a huge gamble with very clear unclear um long-term impact that's let me start that again you know you're just making a very high stakes gamble um on behalf of everybody right Right. You know, this is what concerns me about AI development as well. Now, there's a lot of very great people working in the big AI companies who are very responsible.

But at the same time, like these companies are all in a big race with each other to get their first, you know, who can be the first to build AGI. And again, like, so they're under maximum pressure to cut whatever corners they can. And that's a very dangerous situation, generally speaking.

Yeah. But at the same time, AI also, it's not like it's pure downside. Like, there's so many amazing things that can come from it. So it's like, how do we design the incentives such that they race really fast on the stuff that we know is low risk but very high reward but not the potentially dangerous things um so it's like we want to accelerate defensive type stuff and be very careful on the possibly offensive things that can be weaponized yeah

that makes sense i've seen elon talk about ai and how it could be used in the wrong way he was uh really scared about how open AI was going, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's been someone who's been talking about it for a decade or more, concerned about the various risks. You know, I think another thing that people don't, you hear a lot about like, oh, risk of extinction, you know, like the classic sort of Terminator, AI gone rogue.

And I think that's definitely a non-zero chance of that really um oh yeah i mean it's a possibility we just don't know right we're building just if you look through history whenever like a more powerful species comes up against a weaker species typically that weaker species doesn't do so well and or you know a more powerful or smarter or technologically capable tribe you know when the europeans landed in uh north america didn't work out so well for the natives right um so generally speaking the more capable species has an advantage over the weaker one and so that may apply with ai there's there's reasons why it might not um but there's also then this like it basically like raises the risk of everything

from like the risk of tyranny because like, you know, a powerful, power hungry, tyrannical government who wants to just do mass surveillance on everybody and prevent them from doing any, you know, preventing people's freedom. Like they could be empowered by AI or a terrorist cell who wants to cause max chaos

and just kill everyone. They could also be empowered by AI or a terrorist cell who wants to cause max chaos and just kill everyone they could also be empowered by AI um so it there's there's so many different clusters of risks with it that's why it just needs to be done extremely carefully but at the same time we need I think there are many parts of the like life that we definitely need ai's help with um there's so many like it can help us find new means of clean energy production it can help us cure cancer it can help us do so many of these things so the question is like how do we minimize those risks while also because it is a risk by not allowing those things to happen too yeah so it's just a we're just in the most high-stakes stage of history ever basically um uh it's an exciting

time to be alive it is it is so that's kind of why i gave up poker because i wanted to think about this stuff going full circle now wow that was a long answer the first question yeah ai man my dentist uses ai yeah crazy cool uh he took photos of my teeth put it into the ai showed me all my cavities. I had a couple of gum infections. Amazing. All with AI. Yeah, that's the thing.

I'm so excited about the idea of AI-empowered doctors. You know, like, especially like things, I saw a study about like they trained an AI on looking at cancerous versus non-cancerous moles. And its accuracy rate was significantly higher than a well-trained human eye. Wow. So again, it's just like, it's amazing what... Yeah, I think I just...

The world in 10 years, I think, is going to be a simultaneously amazingity i don't know a simultaneously amazing but also precarious place yeah unless we can figure out how to like you know as i say like temper these risks of the of the scary stuff so we just have the upsides you're building a bunker on the side no you're not one of those doomsday um no i mean i'm a little scared part of me finds that appealing for sure. But I don't think it would. Like, nothing is written. There is so much we can all do to help make the world better. And I don't know.

I don't like these people who are like, oh, we're definitely doomed. Or we're definitely going to be okay. Like there's just so much uncertainty and things are getting more and more uncertain. So all we can do is like embrace that uncertainty and like look it in the face and be like, okay, I don't know. But that doesn't mean that you then should just give up and be like, well, nothing matters.

Things still matter. So you just like have to really do a lot. I don't know. It's getting more and more into like soul searching. Like what matters to us personally, you know, me personally, to you personally. How can I make more of that? How can I enrich the people around me and so on? So I don't know. Going going back to community it sounds like right

like local communities yeah and it's interesting i think there was a lot of people certainly like the people i know around after covid so but so many people like i just want to build like a build a village you know i don't want to live in a big city anymore i want to go somewhere with all my friends and build a community um perhaps because almost it's like our communities have been replaced by digital community which in some ways is great because you get connected to anyone around the world who thinks in a similar way to you it's awesome but i do wonder at what cost that comes where we don't spend as much time you know like it used to be that you'd walk out your house and you'd walk down the road to buy some milk or some bread or something and now you can literally just click and it will arrive to

your house and you don't even have to like look the person in the eye who brings it to you yeah um it's not clear to me that that's a good thing overall it definitely makes the world more efficient but does it make it happier interesting yeah they should do some studies on that yeah um i think you know there's there's like efficiency can be good up to a point and then after a certain point it actually starts being negative when things are too easy just yeah or at least like it's just it becomes too alien like ultimately we evolved to be happiest when we were in a community of people somewhere around underneath the dunbar number you know like underneath the the number of which we know everyone's name and that's we evolved in

little tribes where we sort of were all interconnected and depended on each other and like laughed together and had you know it was multi-generational and so on and if we if we sway too far away from that i wonder if i i i worry that it it will make us sad and detached and kind of forget what we really are i could see that because if you look at all the blue zones the five blue zones all five of them have community incorporated into their lifestyle at all the blue zones, the five blue zones, all five of them have community incorporated into their lifestyle. What are the blue zones? It's centenarians.

So average age is like 100 years old. Oh, okay. There's five around the world. But a big part of their lifestyle is community. Right. So I could definitely see that. Loneliness is a killer. It's awful.

Awful. I used to be pretty lonely and I saw it kill a lot of people, I know. Really? Just being lonely. What did you do to get out of it? It was in college. I just locked myself in my room for like almost a year and just slowly started going to events

and stuff. It was hard. Forgot how to talk to people. I think that happened to a lot of people during COVID. Oh, yeah. And some just never got back out of it. No. Yeah, that was a rough time.

Were you here during that half or in the uk uh i was kind of in both actually i i was uh yeah no i was there like for the first half of the 2020 um and then managed to come out and then was here and uh it was interesting like the the i went through actually winter in the uk where it was like full lockdown you weren't allowed to go see your family for christmas yeah that was rough yeah that was really really rough because that's just like the one time of the year my family all get together and we kind of like waving at each other through zoom it was it was dark especially it was like i also was like dark outside for like most of the day because it's the UK and winter, which is miserable.

Um, yeah, it was really tough. Just shows. Um, and again, like there's so many young people now who are like growing up in that lifestyle because it's easier to, again,

like it's, you can talk to your friends. Technically you have some kind of proxy of socialization through texting with each other or facetime or whatever but there's something that happens when you're like sitting down with someone like face to face and you can touch them and you can look them in the eyes there's some kind of information going back to like energies like yeah maybe we're exchanging some form of energy we don't understand some form of information just by being in each other's presence like i notice when i do a i do some podcasts remote and some in person and i the

ones in person are just always so much better because you're just like there's something else there's something tangible that gets made that you can like your body is picking up on or something um yeah so it's like how do we help young people who maybe not never known the difference like my generation is probably one of the last that really like the world didn't go fully digital for me until i was like 22 so i had like most of my formative years like in meat space yeah and then i became a you know uh digital digital inhabitant but yeah like um for kids who are just growing up purely in this. It's tough. Yeah.

It's real tough. And then they're going to have kids. They don't even have parents who know. Yeah, by then they'll be in the metaverse. They won't even care about their physical bodies. Yeah. But I mean, who knows? If we can evolve fast enough such that it doesn't matter,

then okay, fine. I'm open to that being a possibly okay thing. Yeah, let's see what happens. maybe maybe we may if we can evolve fast enough such that it doesn't matter then okay fine i'm open to that being a possibly okay thing but yeah let's see what happens we'll look back at the show 25 years from now and see if we were right or wrong yeah let's do it it's been fun where can people find you in your podcast um yeah so uh mainly on my youtube uh which is if you just search win win with the live brewery win dash win um yeah that's the main place but i'm prolific on twitter x whatever it's called instagram i still call it twitter i can't i can't undo it like yeah i can't get over it also you can't search like you google x you're not going to necessarily find it

it's a bad seo yeah um yeah i love it we'll link your uh your x below and your other socials thanks for coming thanks for having me yeah thanks watch guys see you next time