Doomed to Fail - Ep 235: Fallacies of logic - Second Order Thinking with Juan Carlos Pineiro

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Today we have a guest!! Juan Carlos Pineiro - the creator of the Re:Mind Mental Model set (and also Taylor's husband) is here to walk us through three examples of doomed scenarios that used 'Second Order Thinking' to the detriment of many! Second Order Thinking is only thinking about immediate consequences and not thinking in the long term. Like when the city of Cleveland released millions of balloons into the air in 1986, the cultural treasure that is the Biosphere 2, and when doctors set out to give vaccines to people who hadn't had them before. Three stories of things that did NOT work as expected! Learn more about the Re:Mind card deck at https://remind.coach/ and follow Juan Carlos in Instagram @readjuancarlos - https://www.instagram.com/readjuancarlos/  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask what your country can do for you. We are recording. We are live and we are joined by somebody that we'll introduce here in a little bit. Taylor, how are you? I'm good. I'm good. Well, now's the later part.

We're to introduce another. So far, so good. This is perfect. I have no notes. We're going great so far. We are doing a special episode today with one of our number one fans. And this is something that other fans should take note of because if you want to be on the podcast, you can by writing to us and letting us know what you're into.

And then we have to have a little bit of a sanity check out for that. But then we can move on with it. But we're joined here by one of our number one fan's Juan Carlos, who is married to Taylor. Hi, Juan. How are you? Oh, hey. I wouldn't say I'm one of the number one fans. I think I am the number one fan.

I think so too. I just want to make sure that that's known to the other contenders for number one, that they really have to show up if they want to unseat the number one fan. I've listened to every single episode at least once, if not more than once. I wouldn't say that that's like true for everything, but I'm pretty intense on my doom to fail. Sometimes you'll be listening to something and I'll be like, are you listening to me? And you're like, yeah. I'm like, that's so cute, thank you.

Juan is definitely a top contender for our one and only autographed Doom to Fail poster and soon to be album that Juan himself will have to produce and then we can sign it for him. So we are joined here with Juan's a limited edition, hot merch. Super limited. Super limited by necessity. Taylor, do you want to go ahead and introduce the show? Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Doom to Fail. We bring you historical disasters. and failures. And I am Taylor, joined by Fars and Juan Carlos. Welcome. We are here. So we decided just something a little bit different this episode, which was having Juan on, and he's going to tell us the story. And then Taylor and I were going to be the captive audience, whereas you're usually with one of the other. And so that's kind of the direction we're going to take it today. So hopefully you all enjoy. Is there any banter-related items we should go through? I think the only thing that's probably valuable,

at least from my end, is noting that I am massively into mental models. I've been writing and talking and now building my own app and card deck with them. So this story is going to talk about both historical disasters that is very doomed to fail and also backed up with the models that have created the conditions for those disasters. So it's a very doomed to fail. So it's a very doomed to fail. I love that. mixture of those two things, which ultimately, I think, is sort of the thread that I'm wondering is like the right way to needle through, hey, these are how models and frameworks for how to live really affect you individually and personally. Hey, these are the reasons why things kind of got screwed up sometimes. And this is a way to utilize them to essentially overcome or

hurdle what other people have failed to do or failed to acknowledge before things went awry. Love it. I love it. And I don't actually know that's very on brand. Yeah, no, I'll call it out as well. I'm actually holding the cards that Juan is generated, Remind, which also will have an app or has an app currently. I can't remember which. One, I don't know your topic. I know that you posted a bunch of ideas to us a while ago in a Slack channel, but you also know I have the memory of a goldfish. So I literally do not know what your topics are. But based on this, I'm going to guess that there's something having to do with confirmation bias, maybe some dunning through growth that going on there. I don't know. I don't know where you're going to go with this. Swiss cheese is one of our

favorites. Let me get my time. We love Swiss cheese. Yes. Swiss cheese models are fantastic. So it's none of those, but I love that you have a bunch of the frameworks. And those are all in that sweet little deck and I'm glad that everyone's holding theirs I hope that you're using it and that it's cool and fun and valuable as you play around with it it's great like what you said

like in the middle of like the day it's like I'm thinking a certain way maybe my mood is affected and you can kind of feel that's bubbling up within you and it's like well let's pull out a card and it's like maybe this is like kind of like a different way for me to perceive what's happening in front of me it's super useful so thank you for this

remember when I Oh, I remember this one I had the prisoner's dilemma out Remember when I was like, the moral of that is that you should rat on your friends and you were like, no, it isn't. That's the antithesis of what you're supposed to take away from that. You're supposed to wrap me.

All you're supposed to learn from there. Well, well, why don't we get into it, Juan? Like, what do you have for us today? Sure. We will, by the way, by the way, why I'm sure you're a listener so you know, we interject with questions all the time.

So don't let that throw you. Does it matter if I go real Dan Carlin at the start? Just kidding. I assume that, hey. No. All right. September 27, 1986. Cleveland, Ohio.

150 in the afternoon. A structure of the size of a city block, 250 feet by 150 feet, three stories tall, sits in public square, draped in mesh netting. Beneath it, 2,500 volunteers have spent hours filling balloons with helium.

The goal? Two million. They stopped at 1.5 million when the weather started turning. The name of the episode, The Road to Hell is Paved with Balloons. I love it. I know this one. And it makes me, I love stories like this where it's supposed to be jubilant. And just nobody thought it through to its conclusions.

I'm very nervous. So I, balloons make, whenever I'm like, if I'm, I'm holding a lot of balloons. I don't like it. Yeah. So the net lifts. And you're right, Faris. So that's exactly where this is headed. So the net lifts. The balloons erupt upward, wrapping around terminal tower like a multi-colored second skin. The crowd cheers. Over 100,000 people are watching. Cameras flash. It's the largest balloon release in history, shattering Disneyland's record from the year before. A world record for charity

for 30 seconds and it's magic. And then the wind arrives, right? The cold front gets in there. The balloons don't rise and disperse as planned. They collide with cool air and rain and plunge back toward Earth. Still inflated, clogging streets, blanketing Lake Erie, shutting down the runway at Burke Lake Airport for about half an hour.

I'm going to ask you a question once. Yeah. Okay. It feels like knowing the weather would be like a clear. critical component to the planning process of all this? Like, is it safe to assume that either... Yeah, it's like one or two things, right? Either they knew and they didn't care or they didn't look at all, which seems unlikely.

They obviously don't care about like what's going to happen to the balloons. Right. Because the plan is that they just like go into the air. This is a huge part, I think, of what ends up being a part of the catastrophe ultimately is, hey, what are the second order consequences of these actions? And so a lot of the environmental factors that occur afterward, a lot of the challenges that come from this, I think are a result of essentially saying,

hey, we have a day, we're going to do this thing, rather than saying, hey, we can't do this today because these reasons, right? And it's not like this area isn't super windy anyway. And there is an airport, like near enough, right? Yeah, but I don't think that they were thinking about it that way. And the United Way, I'm sure, wasn't necessarily overthinking, hey, these are all the different places. It's definitely a very 80s thing to do. Yeah.

I mean, hands across America, this, there's all these big ideas for, hey, if we do this, it'll really show everyone that this is important. Hands across America. I'm asked one more question. and then we can get back to your story one. What happens to balloons? Do they just go into space and it's like in space forever? No, no, those come back down to the ground, blown up.

Yeah. Huh, okay. So they all come back. So if you have two million balloons that went up, they come back. And end up in like killing fish, I imagine. Got it. Okay. Back to your story one.

Sorry. Yeah. So in Medina, County at Louise Nowakowski's pasture for prized Arabian horses bolt in terror at this descending swarm. They injure themselves on fences. And then on Lake Erie, there's two fishermen, Raymond and Bernard, they had capsized the day before. Post-Sguard helicopters are searching for them. They can't distinguish between the men's bodies from the thousands of rubber balloons floating on the surface. The search is suspended on September 29th. Both bodies wash ash ashore days later.

Oh no. Yeah. No. No. So the United Way, of course, you know, they wanted to inspire Cleveland. And they'd planned for months. And they obviously meant well. And then, you know, Raymond's wife sued them for 3.2 million and settled at some later date for some undisclosed amount. Two men are dead because of these balloons. And the environmental effects are real. And so, yeah. I was going to ask, okay, remind me again.

So what was, this was a fundraiser for United Way? Is that what it was? This is an event that they put on. It's called Balloon Fest, and it was to direct attention toward what they're doing. I feel, I feel like they could have also invited Bono to play again. you know, because there's on a lot of things to draw attention besides this. Oh my God, I hate it so much. I'm looking at pictures and I can I see you want to.

Oh, Guinness doesn't do it anymore because they're like, no, you can't do that anymore. Oh, like balloon releases. World records, yeah. World records for balloon releases. Yeah, I really, it really makes me anxious. I just don't like it. It's kind of pretty. I'm not going to lie.

I mean, it is pretty. Yeah. It's a multi-colored, you know, balloons in the air. I mean, it's going to be sort of beautiful and majestic in its grandeur. Really, that, you know, in that sense, if you got swept up in it, sure. But then, you know, you have to ask, I think, and this is the mental model. It's called second order thinking, right? Before you act, ask, and then what?

And then you trace back these consequences. So you don't just see the first move, which is letting the balloons out, who everyone's excited. You see the second, third. There's a cascade of consequences as a result. And you have to think about those first, you know. And it's not like the organizers of Balloon Fest didn't have access to this tool. They were smart.

You know, they planned for months. They did all of this work. They built a giant structure of the size of the city block. They coordinated 2,500 volunteers. But that's a ton of infrastructure to do for a single day. They just never asked what happens after the balloons go up. Yep.

It's not because they forgot and it's not because they were lazy. It's because they were certain. You know, they were probably very similar to me, which I just, they probably just thought it goes into space and it's not a problem. These are, oh, cool. Well, he's just going to go to space. Space party.

I don't know how air works. This balloon is going to make it through the atmosphere. They go on forever, just like everything. Yes. I wonder if could a, I'm going to look this up. You can continue. Could a helium balloon survive in space? No.

Of course not. Yeah. I like that. I pose the question. You guys let me look that up. You're still like that. You're still, you're still intent.

Whenever you go to the computer, I'm like, she's on a mission, she can be stopped. Anyways, Juan, continue. So it was for charity, right? This was going to save Cleveland's reputation.

And I think that certainty is what disarmed the safety mechanism of thinking farther. ahead. When you know you're doing good, you stop looking for evidence you might be doing wrong. That is so smart. That is so, that is like, I think you can distill 99% of human history into, I thought I was doing something good. Right. Exactly. So many examples of that throughout. And second order thinking requires doubt and people don't like feeling that. doubt feels like disloyalty to the cause, right? So when you're naysaying something in the moment and how much,

how many times does this happen in like any board meeting that you've ever been a part of, right, or any meeting at all where, hey, somebody says something and you want to agree first before you disagree. If you have disagreement in certain context, you can be very concerned about that perception in those spaces, especially when a lot is on the line. Yeah. My favorite thing to do these days is really you didn't put me onto it necessarily, but once I realized you were digging into mental models,

I started looking into it on my own before you ship the cards and everything else. And it's a very common business practice, obviously, but I don't read a lot of books, so I don't know a lot of stuff. But now one thing that I try to do in every situation where like a big decision of being made is a premortem. Like instead of going into it, be like, how's this going to work out? It's like, how's it not going to work out? That's going to fill more gaps and you're thinking then how it will work out because we'll

work out is wishful thinking sometimes. So, yeah. A hundred percent agree. I mean, and that I think is like the the through line for essentially these stories is what could you have done differently? How do you think differently? I think that's the point. And I actually love that you did a lot of research on your own mental models and the premortem is a part of your, you know, now play. book, right? That's awesome. It feels like it was like I was looking for things that helped me, honestly. It was more sort of just like I needed things to help me think more critically instead of just yes anding myself in the decisions that get me in trouble. And like,

what are the ways I can put a little rake on myself? And that was that was one of them. I mean, that's the kind of change that most people need, especially right now, where you're essentially force-fed information from all of these different angles. And a lot of them, you give permission to have, you know, avenue into you, right? And so how do you get better about thinking first, right? It's something that I continue to see and it scares me about the way that we're allowing ourselves to feel first rather than think first. So, yeah, there's a huge, I think that's commendable that you're doing that.

And it's important work to continue to tow that line where you're unwilling to just say yes or work without a strategy first. Yep, yep. No, I appreciate that. How did this all end? I'm sure there's like a post-mortem to this, right? Oh, yeah. So, well, so you don't ask, right?

After all of this happens, people aren't asking. And they didn't ask. And now the wind shifts, these two. men drown, and that pattern is pretty much everywhere. And by the end of the day, you're going to see it running through your own decisions, right? And so, you know, you've already seen it because you've done this. Not with 1.5 million balloons, not with two men drowning in Lake Erie, but the same pattern, that same certainty, you've planned something, thought it through, tried to help, and watched it go sideways. So like in historically for this event versus you know how we all live in reality,

right? This is something that is it's not because we're careless. It's because you were sure. And here's the question. Yeah. Don't understand why. I guess like just because it's pretty, it's pretty. Oh, the balloons? Yeah. Like I don't like I feel like I'm missing. fundraiser for Cleveland. Yeah. It's always something like, I mean, okay. Listen, listen, I'm not trying to cast dispersions on any organization here, but why there was this, man, I can't remember what it was. It was something, I forgot who was on Ellen DeGeneres to show back in the day where they're like, if you guess the answers right on these three questions, then we're going to donate $50,000 to the breast cancer awareness.

And it was like, can she's giving the money anyways? Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's kind of where my head went with this conversation with like, I don't know. Like, did you have to? It's like with fun runs, but it's like, like, you know five, K, 10. K's like, I know you're trying to give a reason for people to show up. But like, can you just give them money?

I know. And I guess, I guess also that's like kids across America as well. Like, you don't just give me $10. You don't have to hold hands. But it's like fun to say that you were a part of something that was like super cool. And like, God, I just really feel stressed out thinking about being like underneath those balloons, blowing them up. like one by one. Wait, Taylor, this was 65, wasn't it?

Or 86. 86, yeah. 86. Okay, so they probably had cash on delivery here where, like, they were probably mailing checks in the donations for these balloons or somebody were like, they quite had a weird transaction methodology. How do you get that many donations? Like, it's got to be like a, somebody shows me your door and here's your balloon

certificate, and then you give the mailman. money. I think so. I think so. I still give $5 a month to Greenpeace every month because some cute little girl, like, came to my house while I was on maternity leave and asked for $5 a month of Greenpeace, and I gave her my freaking checking account number and rooting number. I think that same girl came to my house after your house because around the exact same time that you're talking about someone also showed a cute girl showed to my place. I'll give you whatever you want. What do you want? I know. And I like, I was a very, originally like $15 a month and I was like I can't what am I doing?

And then so I like tried to go on the website and cancel it. And all I could do was get it down to $5 a month. And I was like, find you win Greenpeace. I'm there. I'm been there. Anyway, sorry, Juan. We're derail. No, it's fine.

And now both of you pay Greenpeace every month. No, no. I actually did cancel Greenpeace. I do pay Morgan's the disabled amusement park. I still do that. And I do another, whatever. I have a few things that I've donated to her. I give Wikipedia $4 a month.

I could give them one. Yeah, that's nice. They don't deserve it. I'm kidding. I love you, Wikipedia. Oh, my God. Are you kidding? Don't talk about Wikipedia that way.

We need it. This is what's going to get me canceled. Anyways, back to the story, Juan. Well, so I'm going to head back to Cleveland, but now with the new lands. So it's 1986 and the city is struggling. The economy's depressed. The reputations tarnished. The Cuyahoga River had caught fire twice.

Cleveland was the punchline of American cities. Tell me more about the river catching on fire. Apparently, that river had caught fire twice. I actually don't know exactly why it had caught on fire. I assume it's related to the pollution. It's hilariously bad. Yeah, there's no Bueno. Cleveland had a bad story going on and I think they were trying to write this ship.

And the United Way comes in and was like, spectacular time. Something will put Cleveland on the map for the right reasons finally. What does the United Way do? Yeah. What does the United Way do? Do you know? Is it just like... I don't.

Housing? I have no idea what it does. Certainly not the environment. Rachel's dad listens to every episode and he's lived in Cleveland for a very long time. I'm sure he will write back and tell us why the river kept catching fire, which I will update you all in Slack.

I want to hear. Yeah. So the United Way decides to do this thing. And the man from the United Way who dreamt this up had been marketing at Procter & Gamble. And he wanted to rebrand Cleveland as cool. And, you know, as an organizer later told Gizmodo, which is much later, Cleveland had cleaned up tremendously and wanted to change their image. By polluting there. Yeah.

So there's this balloon release, the biggest ever. And you have a Guinness World Record. And it's all for charity. And they planned it for months. They built this massive structure. They recruited all these people, right? And what they didn't plan for was the weather. And the original release time was later in the day, but a rainstorm was approaching.

So they released it early at 150 in anticipation of the rainstorm, hoping the balloons would rise before the front arrived and they didn't. And so this cold front pushed the balloons back down. Instead of rising and dispersing and eventually biodegrading somewhere over Pennsylvania, 1.5 million still inflated balloons. balloons descended on Cleveland in the surrounding area. I love that Ohio was like, well, fuck, fuck Pennsylvania. Like, it'll go over there and we don't have to worry about it again. There's some college rivalry there. I'm not even privy to come out from that area that has to do with this a positive.

So the airport shuts down for 30 minutes. Balloons are covering the runways. Traffic accidents spiked across the city as drivers were distracted or blinded by this descending swarm. And then in Medina County, you have the horses that panic and the balloons washed up on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie for weeks. So, you know, it's gross and coming back from, you know, nature. Oh, there was something hilarious.

Oh, I think like this week, a cargo ship that was full of French fries like crashed. And then there was a beach that was like covered in French fries. That's so much better. Just like potatoes. I'll cook if they say in the sun long enough. How, I feel like I would, I could like lay on like a beach of Frenchress and be quite happy. I think that's your retirement. That sounds awesome.

Yeah. So I think the real question is like what story did the organizers tell themselves, you know? That's the, that's a challenge, the permission they had. And so this is, and I think this is just the ending of this story, but it's first order of thinking and it's a travel. the most of us live in. And this feeling... Wait, the second order thinking. No, no.

The first order is a trap. Second order. Second order thinking is when you would have solved. Yeah. Oh, is that a separate card? No, there's no first order thinking card. Okay.

Because you don't want to think with first order thinking. You don't need the card to tell you the first order think. Ouch. Sorry. Wow. Wait, no.

No, no. No, I'm just... Wait, that wasn't an insult. I'm just that. Don't we by default first order thing? That's correct. That's right. You're changing the bias in regular default.

I'm just messing around. All right. So we have this well-intentioned system optimized for a visible first step and blind to what followed. And so that's the balloon fest. So now let's move on to the biosphere two. Oh, my God. Okay, I'm sorry. I probably sure, right?

I fucking loved the idea of the biosphere. I thought it was like the fucking coolest thing that you could possibly think of. I'm so excited to talk about it. So it's 1991. The Arizona desert near the town of Oracle. Eight people seal themselves inside a 150 million glass structure called Biosphere 2. Wait. Wait.

Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. I already have questions. It's the only last time I'm going to remember how much I liked it. Was there a biosphere one? What happened to that one? I have no idea what happened to biosphere one. Is it number two or is it also?

It's the number two. Okay. Is biosphere one the earth? Oh my God, yes, of course. Okay, continue. So we have three acres of engineered ecosystem under crystalline dome. The mission proves humans can live in a closed, self-sustaining environment, a test case for the kind of life support systems that might one day sustain colonies beyond Earth.

Dumb. Oh, that part's dumb. That's my Dan Carlin. No, that was good. I'm sorry. Are you going to put the sound effects afterward? Do you insults each other by accident? Do you now get how easy it is to happen?

Oh, my God, Forrest. I'm sorry that you felt bad for some of the days at me. Now you're making her apologize? guys. Like surfing gas lighting here. Just like absolute primo gas lighting.

Oh my God. So the folks in this biosphere, they had everything modeled. A rainforest that pushed against the glass, a miniature ocean, savannah, marsh, desert. It's all under that dome. Agriculture to grow their food.

Air recycled by plants. Water purified by natural systems. And the whole goal here is two years of complete and total self-sufficiency. And the ambition of it is honestly like staggering, right? They're going to recreate Earth in miniature and prove that humans could manage a planet. Oh my God, you know what it's like? It's like Zootopia.

You know what in Zootopia? There's like desert land where like camels live. And then there's like water animals live in like waterland and like the polar bear land. So it's kind of like that. Okay, I'd have another question. Why would you need to do that? Like couldn't you just be like, let's pick our favorite of the. the ways the Earth is and just do that.

Well, I think that they were trying to create the entire concept so they'd say, oh, we can build all of the ways in which we need to exist in this other space. What was the point of it? When you go to another planet? What was the point of it? To test whether you can live for a couple of years in a biosphere so that when you go to another planet, right, if you head to Mars, you're going to need an ecosystem to exist. Who's going to be?

to build what? The biosphere in Mars. Well, currently, it sounds like Elon wants to be the first one on that. But like, someone has to get their first with like their tools. I don't think Juan was researching botanist on Mars for this episode. I feel like we should watch biosphere later. Dude, bioterror was not bad. I'm all in.

Is it a Baldwin? Is it probably sure we're in a Baldwin? There's a documentary, too, about the real thing. spaceship Earth, right? Oh, fun. Sorry, back to the story. So four women and four men entered the airlock on September 26, 1991. The media was captivated.

Time Magazine ran all these features, and the world watched. And the real crisis was invisible and creeping. So several months in, the crew realized their oxygen levels are falling, not quickly enough to notice day by day, but the instruments showed. Oxygen's disappearing. Rather than immediately pumping in outside air, which would have violated the entire premise of this experiment, they decide to study the problem. And so after 16 months, these oxygen levels have dropped to well below normal standards, which is 20.9%. And they go down to around 14%.

And it's the equivalent to living at roughly 15,000 feet above sea level. It's higher than most cities in the world. where I need them dating. They probably talk together. Yeah, of course, obviously. Yeah. I have no idea. Do they smoke cigarettes?

Probably not. But maybe. And then... It's make a lot of appearances on our episodes, don't they? I think about them all the time first. I think that's probably what. And then what... Were there just like big oxygen tanks outside?

I think you're supposed to like bring those... oxygen that's pumping in here. Okay, but something's wrong. Oh, but something's very wrong. They're losing oxygen more than they thought they would. And so the idea that this thing is going to replenish itself isn't occur. So the crew's fatigued. They have difficulty concentrating.

They're struggling to perform regular tasks. And the carbon dioxide levels are spiking. And, you know, some accounts put it at many times the normal of outside concentrations. So things are going on here. and the ecosystem is collapsing around them. And the morning glories are taking over the rainforest, and they're blocking lights from other plants. And invasive ant species are killing off most of the pollinating insects.

And most of the vertebrae go extinct inside the dome. And the ocean is turning acidic. And still the oxygen's dropped. So finally, these tank trucks come over, and they start driving up the access road, and they pump tens of thousands of pounds of liquid oxygen into the system that was supposed to be self-sustaining. So the experiment continues,

but the entire premise at that point is over. It's broken. Can I... Wait, I think, Taylor, you were going to interject. Why did they bring animals? Are they, like, eating them? No. Like, are we being deer to mars?

Like, why would you bring animals to Mars? Okay, that question, Juan, before you answer, because I know you don't have an answer to that. Before you answer, this proves that, like, people back then, like, music peaked. You could do whatever the fuck you wanted. But that was it. Like, we were so, like, we really needed to, like, do this whole experiment, then billions of dollars, do whatever it was to prove that humans need, like, an enclosed atmosphere and space with oxygen and, like, food and water.

Like, it's like, everybody knows this. Like, why are we doing this? Like, why are we, course, these people? to have sex with each other, but they don't even like each other. They definitely don't like each other afterwards, you know? And then like, what if there's like one definitely not hot one or were they all hot? Like, what happens to that guy? Yeah, well, do you know that?

Was that part of your research when you were looking this up? How hot were they? That is a great question, and I have no idea how hot or not hot they were. Or even what story they told themselves, you know? they were building a closed system and they modeled it and they accounted for variables. And the ecosystem should balance itself out. They just need to engineer it right. And the permission is the expertise equals certainty.

These complex systems can be engineered like machines. And they treated a living ecosystem like a watch as if understanding the parts meant controlling the whole. Could their family visit them outside of the dome? No, they couldn't leave the dome. I mean, like this. Did they look in? I'm sure they could. I don't know if they did.

It looks pretty nice. On the inside, yeah. Yeah, I can only find one person. He's not hot. So I think Marcus, he'd be the guy. So wait, what was those? I don't think that's why they were selecting people.

That's, I don't think, either. Why, actually? They're there. So what is the doing to fail part of this? There's a bald guy. Oh, there's one tall guy. There's one tall hot guy. What's the doom failed part about Biosphere 2?

There are a lot of hot guys. The entire experiment fell apart. Oh, what's the doom failed part about looking at the hot guys? That is a good question. There's one, I think, standout hot girl and then one standout hot guy. Then there's a bald guy. There's an old short guy. Jason

Maybe they had nice personalities Yeah, a lot of us have to develop personalities For bates You're not bald yet I'm working on it Do you use the chew? Do you do the finasteride? We're being recorded one

I don't do anything because I'm confident my baldness Okay, okay All right So back to back to the mental model. Which mental model am I finding now? So first thing is, no, no, we're remaining. So the mental model remains second order thinking.

Oh, the whole story is about second order of thinking. Gotcha. So we ask and then what and we trace the consequences. And the biosphere two team had the tool. And they understood the systems and they should have been better at second order thinking than anyone. And so you have to ask, why didn't they use it? Because expertise created a specific certainty and the belief.

that they'd already traced the consequences. They'd modeled the system. They'd accounted for the variables. They'd done that second order thinking in advance or so they thought, but this is the closed system trap. It's one of the most dangerous ways certainly disarms the safety mechanism. A closed system has no exchange with its environment.

You can't model it completely. A watch is a closed system. A car engine is a closed system. You understand these parts. You understand the whole. An open system is a complex system. It has feedback loops. It has a mercedes.

properties and nonlinear interactions. And small changes cascade unpredictably. An ecosystem is an open system. So is a market and so is a team and so is a fam. And when you treat an open system like a closed one, you stop asking and then what, and you assume you've already answered that question. And your model is the answer. And that's what happened in Biosphere 2.

They asked what happens when we seal the dome. They answered the ecosystem cycles and plants produce oxygen and systems balance. And they never asked. And then what happens with the soil bacteria? And how does that interact with the atmosphere over 16 months? And then what happens when the concrete absorbed CO2 at rates we didn't anticipate. And then what happened. That's what they're supposed to do, right?

They were. They should have. What could go wrong? Yeah. And they just didn't go far enough. Guys, I would 100% live here. I would live in the bottom. My good news was you can visit.

We should go. It looks cool. Yeah. It looks really fun. Yeah. Well, now that it's. open. Well, yeah. Is there oxygen in it or?

Yeah, they just let that come in freely now. You bring your own oxygen. When you walk in, they closed out all of the air. So the failure here was really like the oxygen system broke and then they were like, we're done with those masks because we don't know what's going on. No, no. They kept the charade up, but they brought in the oxygen so they couldn't create a sustainable ecosystem. So essentially everything's dying in there. The ocean are acidic, so everything has to essentially get pulled in from a resource perspective to be able to sustain, which ultimately is like the opposite of what they had intended. It was supposed to be

closed so that they could prove that they could live somewhere without necessarily needing the earth to supply additional help. Got it. Got it. Fun. It does look cool. Like I, it's kind of my dream life to like live in like a safe jungle. I can. I could go with us. I guess I get why they need bugs, but I don't really get why they need other animals. Like, I don't get why you need an ocean. Like, water is heavy and also oceans are salt waters.

Like, what's the point? Well, it's an ecosystem. How are you going to create an ecosystem without the same things you have on Earth? Right. Ocean. But is the way we have on Earth the right way to do it? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a valuable question.

And I don't think that they ultimately were able to answer whether they could even replicate an ecosystem. system, period. Well, I definitely want to go. If they just figured out the oxygen thing, do they really have to figure out the rest of it? I feel like that's your number one. Well, they didn't. So the microbes were producing CO2 far faster than the plants could convert it back to oxygen,

which is why the imbalance occurs. And the system was off balance from day one. So they just had mismanaged their thoughts about what would happen. And that mystery stumped them. So where was all the carbon dioxide going? If the bacteria were producing that much CO2 and the plants couldn't keep up, the level should have been even higher. So something was absorbing it, and that's the concrete.

Oh, okay. So the unsealed concrete throughout the structure absorbs the carbon dioxide and converts it to calcium carbonate. And the concrete's literally eating their CO2, which sounds helpful except the process, also locked away the oxygen. And so the missing oxygen wasn't missing. it was trapped in the concrete as calcium carbonate. Got it. So they built to watch.

They got a wilderness and the wilderness ate their air. And not because they forgot to ask and then what, but because their expertise made them certain they'd already answered it. They believed that they thought about all those consequences, but they didn't. And they couldn't see that coming. So the question really becomes like where in your life has expertise become the reason you stopped asking questions, right?

because ultimately that's the closed system trap. And it's not the only way certain he disturbs the safety mechanism. We'll move on to the WHO versus India. Okay. It's the 1970s. Wait. It's the 1970s. You don't think of that.

I'm just kidding. Keep going. I like that. Just kidding. I thought you liked in Carlin. I thought you liked in Carl. I do. I do. You could do it.

What, did I not sound carliny enough? No, you did. One, actually, just to be honest, like when I'm editing, these, like, audio spikes, tell me when one starts and it's actually helpful. So keep doing it. 1970s, India. The World Health Organization arrives with a mission, eradicate smallpox from the last and largest stronghold on Earth. The stakes are almost incomprehensible. In the early 1960s, India accounted for nearly 60% of all reported smallpox cases in the world.

The virus, variola major, killed one in four who contracted it. More than 300 million people died from smallpox in the 20th century alone. This was a genuine plague, and India was ground zero. Thanks. Boom. Thank you. Thank you. I knew you're waiting.

So the WHO has the vaccine, and they have the plan, and they've already succeeded in Brazil. In Indonesia, across most of Africa, mass vaccination works. Find every case vaccinate everyone around it in a ring, and the disease dies out. Ring vaccination. The strategy is simple, proven, and backed by full institutional weight of the WHO, and it runs into resistance they never anticipated. So in some areas, vaccination teams encountered significant pushback. You know, parents hit children, communities were deeply reluctant to cooperate. There were these logistical nightmares and access problems and reporting gaps and administrative failures.

And there's this fear and distrust that runs deep in many of these regions. And the WHO responded the way institutions often respond when plan meets friction. They intensified their efforts, right? they're like, this is for the good. So beginning in 73, an aggressive campaign launches. Vaccinators went house to house. In some areas, police escorts accompany them. There are accounts of coercive tactics.

You know, they're being pressured. There's some intimidation. And there's documented cases where there's forced vaccination. Now, this doesn't happen all across the board, but this is happening because they think it's at the behest of the population, which ultimately it probably is. but the way that they're going about it is ultimately quite wrong. So academic research acknowledges these methods generated local resentment. You know, the harder these people campaign, they get pushed into, well, the harder the campaign

pushed into these resistant areas, the more some communities evaded the teams. People hid their sick and the trust eroded. The campaign eventually succeeds, and the last case of naturally occurring smallpox was recorded in Somalia in 1977. And smallpox becomes the first human disease ever eradicated. Good for humans. It seems good. This reminds me one of when the CIA was trying to find Osama bin Laden

is they did like vaccine programs in that part of Pakistan. These are trying to like get people to like get their blood to figure out who's related potentially to him. And now like nobody in that region will ever take a vaccine never again. Or it was a red cross. Sorry, it was like the red prospect, I think the CIA embedded or something, whatever. I don't know the full story. But yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And in those resistant pockets in India, success didn't come through that pressure alone. It came when they shifted, right? So when someone started asking a question that had been overlooked by a lot of these folks that were pushing hard, why are they resisting? You know, what story did the WHO tell themselves in those difficult regions? We have the vaccine.

We have the plan. we've done this. And so, you know, the permission that they gave themselves is their maps accurate. And if reality doesn't match, push harder. And they weren't wrong about the vaccine. They weren't wrong about the epidemiology of it. They were just wrong about assuming the territory would simply comply with the map. Right.

Right. So the safety mechanism, ask, and then what? Trace those consequences. The WHO, just like in all these other instances, had this tool. They were epidemiologists. They eradicated smallpox in other places, right? And they understood the disease transmission and the vaccination coverage and herd immunity. And they should have been better about thinking about individuals.

As a resident brown guy on the podcast, um, logic holds no sway over cultural things, values and ways things are done. So I can, um, I think the fallacy here is thinking that the things that you care about are what the other party might care about as well, which is not getting sick. And sometimes some of those cultures hold other values higher than that. Yeah. I mean, when the WHO and local health officials investigated why certain communities resisted, they learned about Shatala Mata. And that's the cooling mother. It's a Hindu goddess associated with smallpox and other pox diseases. In temples across India, you'll find her image.

This woman riding a donkey carrying a pitcher of water and a broom. And for many traditional Hindus, smallpox wasn't purely a medical event. It had spiritual dimensions. The disease could be seen as a visitation carrying meaning beyond biology. And so for some, the vaccination felt like interference with forces beyond medicine. I just sighed my face off because religion is so fucking stupid. Like, of course, you would make something up to make you feel better about having this terrible fucking disease, you know? We are tolerant people here, Taylor.

People are going to believe what they want to believe they are not stupid for their beliefs. People are different and we tolerate people. We tolerate people. I'm in the stupid part. Some first order of thinking going on over there. It wasn't the only gap. It's just one of the gaps. There's past dynamics, too.

So in certain communities, people would only accept care from individuals they consider socially appropriate. And a vaccinator from the wrong background touching someone could be deeply offensive. And they learned about Perta. Among some Muslim families, male vaccinators couldn't examine or vaccinate women. Access required female health workers. So they learned about trust. In a country with complex history, strangers arriving with needles accompanied by police triggered suspicion that had nothing to do with the vaccine itself. And the map was medically correct, right?

Everyone thought it's just that the territory was socially, religiously, and historically layered in the ways the map didn't capture. And the campaign success accelerated when they adapted to the territory. So ultimately, they do make all of these choices and changes. Local health workers from the same communities, sensitivity to caste dynamics, female vaccinators reach women in conservative households, integration with local leadership.

they end up doing the right things. It just takes them a while to get there. And the cost is time. Eventually, India declares smallpox free in 1977. And it's not because their map got better, it's because they finally applied second order thinking to the territory. Their map had simplified. So that's the map trap.

And it's a third way certainty disarms this safety mechanism. So that's the three domains. same permission structure, balloon fest, good cause means exempt from scrutiny, biosphere, expertise meets certainty, WHO, our map is accurate, reality should comply. But this isn't just history, this pattern is everywhere. It's in prohibition, right? 1920, the 18th Amendment, alcohol is destroying families, fueling violence, corrupting society, and the solution is ban it.

The noble experiment, right? outcome, of course. The term organized crime didn't even exist really in America before prohibition. Like the concept of organized crime obviously does, but the idea, like the same way that we have like the, you know, the idea of a bucket list now. And that was a creation of the movie bucket list from, you know, the Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson picture. So.

More silly an example is the cartels. who only exists because of the prohibition on drugs. Right. And Al Capone was pulling in $100 million a year by the mid-1920s. He was spending $500K a month in bribes to police, politicians, and federal investigators. And alcohol didn't disappear. It went underground. And it's less regulated.

And it's more dangerous. And you have these, you know, the bathtub gin killing people and speakeasy's flourishing. And desperate drinkers switched to whatever they could find. and it's opium and marijuana and cocaine and, you know, medicines with dangerous additives. And this experiment became the only constitutional amendment in American history to be repealed by another amendment. And so the 21st undid the 18th.

You know, the road to speak easies was paved with temperance. Yeah, because a lot of women were like, my husband gets drunk and beats me. Exactly, like every fucking day. And we didn't think about it. And then the only reason prohibition passed in the first place was because women were larger vote because that was the 17th, right? Oh, 17th is that you get two senators. That's boring.

Women's right. Seriously, that's the 17th? Really? Some of them were dumb. 19th. 19th is women. So 19th could be prohibition. Dakota's get that.

Like, I don't, good for them. 18. Oh, yeah. 18 is, prohibition. 19 is women. That's interesting. Maybe I'm wrong on that.

Well, let's flash forward. So, same thing's true when you think about Facebook's move, fast, and break things. 2012, Mark Zuckerberg writes this letter to investors, Facebook's internal motto, move fast and break things, right? The idea he explains is that if you never break anything, you're probably not moving fast enough. And speed equals innovation. disruption equals progress, break things now, fix them later. And the outcome is election interference in 2016 with the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal. And there's 87 of these profiles without

consent and misinformation pandemic that preceded the actual pandemic and a teen mental health crisis that the company's own internal resource documented, but didn't address. And so you have in 21, this whistleblower, Hogan, released internal documents to Congress. and their studies on teenager mental health alone. And the company's own research found that Instagram harms teenagers, especially teenage girls. And the company knew it. And then you have, you know, Cammath, famous, you know,

former vice president of growth, one of the people who built the platform said, the short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth. After the 2020 election, we all know what happened. The company disbanded its civic integrity team, the team that monitored election interference and political extremism. And then you have a 2025 study that found that only eight out of 47 think that there's teen safety features on Instagram actually work as advertised.

You know, they moved fast and they broke a lot of things. And democracy, mental health, the information ecosystem. The company dropped the motto in 2015, but the breaking continued. It's the same pattern. or at least good sounding justifications. And so your first order thinking is there, but you have catastrophic second order consequences. So I have opinions.

Yeah. I think that we are in the midst of human evolution towards tech. And I think this was all inevitable. What? I think that Facebook is dangerous? I don't know if I call Facebook dangerous. I think that anything that is, I think we were going to end up here anyways. And I don't think that, I think the natural endpoint of AI isn't more connectivity. It's going to go further towards silos.

Yeah. Because then you can create every. you think is a silo of a subculture of a subculture of a subculture like you don't need things like social media but like this is like the first foray into that but i don't think that's just like i don't know i feel like we're part of like this is like a evolutionary thing yeah i agree i mean technology technology certainly exists in that way uh can you work on how to do things better I think there, of course you can, you know, and so speed can often be to the detriment of decision-making, which can lead to worse consequences.

Yeah. Are there scenarios where social media could have done more better? Of course. There's no doubt you could have changed. that narrative and made it less dangerous for certain aspects of societal change. And then it would have been like less addictive and they would have made less money. Right. Persuasive patterns.

Absolutely. Yeah. So it's like, well, we're going to do this. Anyway. I guess. Like they don't mean that's, I don't think that Facebook has good intentions. Like I think maybe. I guess it's the point.

If it wasn't them, it's somebody. I think like, again, like, humans are always going to, like, the root of the core of our brain stem is a need to progress and do things and change and innovate and move forward. And you don't know what you're innovating into. You don't know what the vacuum you're going into is until you're inside of it. And then you realize, oh, this vacuum's huge. And now I've got to start building blocks and barriers here and there and do whatever. Like, I don't know. I don't think it's a good and evil.

I think it's a matter of, like, anything that pushes. the boundaries or changes fundamental human interaction and dynamics is going to implicitly it's going to, by its nature's going to introduce dangers that you can never perceive because it's not whole and it's new.

That's literally why AI is going to kill all this, by the way. Yeah. I mean, I guess you couldn't have invented cars without like knowing people were going to die in them. Right? But you're like, oh, but like the good outweighs the bad.

Right. The end justify the means in those, it's just how certain are you of that and how realistic is it to think that we're better than that? And then how many Ralph Nader's do you need to fix some of those problems? Right. Because ultimately, it's not like the car companies were clamoring for seat belts. That ended up being someone else. And so you do need those folks that are going to help write the ship in those scenarios, especially if people are going to be ignorant or be unwilling to, do something the right way. And to that point, I think that if you have people that are reckless that are driving, right, not to continue this metaphor, then you're going to end up in scenarios that can be really problematic for society. And you're absolutely right. Everyone's like, hey, the race is on. We can't stop because we want to win.

And it's a win at the expense of, to your point about it's the end of the world at the expense of humanity. And so are you willing to make some of those choices? consciously and think about those consequences before you're so far down the rabbit hole that you can't come back. And I think that's the same thing that happened with social media. So the reality is that we didn't know what the attention economy was going to do to us at the time. But there were a lot of signs pointed to some really negative end outcomes here. And then we're seeing now with the advent of AI, at least from my perspective, the introduction

of the manipulation age on a much larger scale, which is going to be much more challenging for us to navigate. It's half the reason why I built Remind. This card deck and this app is built as a way for you to detach yourself from the information that's coming from all of these directions. To your point, I mean, all of these things of election interference and, you know, polarization and ideology, those are all very well known. relatively well documented and yet they persist in nearly this identical format. And what did they do?

They removed safeguards. They didn't add more. So the companies that are at fault are removing and reducing because they believe that by doing so, they make it a freer place when the reverse can very well be true, right? Big question for you. Why is freer not always, always better? I don't actually think that's the framing, right? So I think the challenge with the idea of like, well, we took all the safeguards off and that makes it free. Why is it a bad thing if people want to post extremist content on social media? Why is that bad?

I don't understand that. Well, I think because like people, children and people can start like, like, but then they can consume the opposite content. They can, but it's not as sexy. It's not going to like, like, once you are watching. Why isn't it as sexy? Because it's someone like riling you up and like it's like that whole thing of the other. Like this person is making, like, this is the thing.

This is a reason that, you know, you feel this way. And this is a reason that like the methodology. Then the methodology of countering hasn't been discovered. But like, it's not inherently like there's literally, I remember when I was a kid and they banned Harry Popper. book for our schools because it was like witchcraft and not religiously associated but it's true

and like even then like I guess like what I'm saying is like wise censorship ever how is it ever good like people should have access to whatever they want to have access to they should but also like they're not that smart

like they're not going to like go out and find the other opinion like I don't You know, like, you know me. I live in my silo, you know. And like, I feel like most people aren't going to be like, oh, let me take a constructive view of this thing and look at both sides or other opinions. I think that there is.

So the world of ideas is an important one to have. Agreed. Full stop. There's no doubt in my mind that we should be able to listen to others and hear what they have to say regardless of good, bad, or otherwise. And in fact, there's openness. that needs to exist and occur. In some of these spaces,

I think there's power dynamics at work. A few actors can amplify messages, and that can become a cover for domination rather than open discourse. And there are challenging spaces inside these, inside social media, right? And every society already censored.

So we can pretend that there's, you know, something that's not there, but realities is that. Well, I think the censorship in most ecosystems comes from the gatekeeping apparatus to disseminate that information. Social media, in my opinion, has broken down those barriers. Like, it's not a bad thing, I don't think. Like, like, I don't, I don't want to have like an editorialized, corporatized view of the opinions of something going on in the world. If someone's on the ground, they can report it and post it up to social media and I can digest it in that format, then like, that isn't, that isn't what's happening. And it's not how information is being served to you, right? You're already algorithmically inclined to get the same media that already agrees with you.

you have already, by virtue of what you look at and how you look at it, have given it permission to give you certain kinds of information. The idea that you have some kind of... You do have the agency. Like, you do have the agency to go and look elsewhere. Like, you don't have to... But again, most people don't. Well, yeah, and most people...

But then you solve for that, not hiding the ball for them. Like, you solve for... Like, the problem is most people don't seek out the information on. both sides or the medium or the middle or whatever. I don't think the answer to that problem is you hide the ball from them so they can never get access to either one way or the other. Isn't the problem you're solving? I certainly don't think that's what was occurring.

It's if there is certain malicious or bad actors that are in a system, do you give them the same voice as anyone else? And I don't know if the answer is always yes. Yeah, I can't. debate that. I don't know. But I, of course you want, and this is where I think I agree with you wholeheartedly. Fundamentally, I believe in seeing all ideas.

I want to be able to see ideas, but you can have challenges within a system, and that's why guardrails do exist. And if you take off the guardrails, it can be challenging. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. I feel like I've derailed this so many times this conversation. No, no. I'm just, I mean, I'm just to know.

I've been scrolling through my Instagram and my feed is still all heated rivalry. So I'm on the right side of history. You are confused. You should look at cold. You should search cold friendships and see what comes up there. Cold friendships? I have no idea. I'm just making stuff up because either rivalry, what's the opposite of that?

I get it. Wow. So I'll bring it back home. And we're close here. So you believe good intentions matter. You know, you probably said it this week. I was just trying to help. And you judge people by their intentions.

And malice is different from mistakes. And we should give people credit for trying to do good. Intentions matter. But here's what I've noticed. When your good intentions backfire, you blame circumstances. You don't question your certainty. You assume your plan was right and reality was uncooperative. And the feedback that fell flat, they weren't ready to hear it.

and the project that failed, the market changed. And the relationship that suffered, they didn't appreciate what you were trying to do. You never ask was my confidence the problem. And here's that hypocrisy. You look at balloon fest with hindsight and think, how did they not see it coming? You learn about biosphere too and think, obviously, you can't model an ecosystem like a machine. You hear about the WHO and Indian think, of course you have to understand the culture. Of course you can't force vaccinate your way to compliance.

And then tomorrow, you know, you'll greenlight your own project with the same logic they used. This is a good cause. We've planned it carefully. What could go wrong? The gap between two things, the certainty with which you judge historical disasters and the certainty with which you plan your own. That's where the next disaster lives. You're not different from them. You're them before the wind shifted.

That's a good closer. You're done before the wind shifted. I only make good decisions, so I don't really relate to that, but I get it. Yeah, Taylor's never going to have to go past. Just kidding. I truly appreciated the thought you put into this one

because you intersected amazing stories with crazy consequences with the mental model concept. And frankly, what I'm thinking now, Taylor, is like, should we, like, be it, like, sub-episodes where Juan, like, dissect our episodes and it's like, here's the mental model. That'd be fun.

Like a little one? Like a little... Yeah, like a little blurb, like a five-minute, like, hey, Blan, like, here's a story, synopsis, and then you just like... You'll be like, you guys, this was obviously the Brumsfield Matrix. Or the... I feel like I know what that is. Reflex.

Or... the red queen effect. I like that. The red queen effect is so legit. This was obviously the peak end rule, you guys. Priming. Swaddle tendency. No, but I do feel like a lot of these mental models have

absolutely. There's fun applications. Yeah, obviously I said this was cheese one, which we talk about all the time with like plane crashes because like it wasn't one thing. It was a whole bunch of things aligned to make a hole. And then, yeah, so I think that they can really kind of pop out.

which is fun because you're like, oh, that absolutely, and like I also feel like maybe some of those bad decisions, I'm just looking through this, but like sunk cost fallacy, I think comes up a lot, especially with like Facebook. Like you're not going to stop doing Facebook because kids are dying. Like that's not something that you're going to even consider, you know?

So like that's like you're already, you're already doing that thing. You know what I mean. I was going to say. Game theory. Prisoners or Lama. You guys, if we go to jail,

I'm going to telling you literally immediately. So I just want you. you don't know. Then we know. You know that I'm going to tell on you. You know that I'm going to tell on you. So you do whatever the other thing is. And then you'll be out.

We go first. We both go to jail for like a small amount of time. I think everybody in this hypothetical. It's going to be a bank robbery. It's going to be a heist of the Louvre. And we're all going down for it. I'm going to make a deal. Guys, we got to wrap it up.

I know. It was awesome. Thank you for having me, y'all. Thank you so much. That was fantastic. Taylor, do we have to lead anybody lead off with anything? Well, I'll let you know how biosphere is. We're going to watch it later, Juan. Looking at you. And I think that that is it. I haven't had any. Oh, goodness. They caught Ryan James Wedding. That's the big news. Incredible. Okay. So we turned himself in. Daniel Shepard and Nadine both messaged us about this. So we got two of our listeners messaging us separately. about this. It was awesome. I mean, I'm like, that's crazy that I put out an episode on him on Monday and they caught him on

Friday or what he like turned himself on Friday. They were probably listening to us while they're in the helicopters landing in Mexico. So I put it on TikTok and then I put it on Instagram and I boosted it because I was like, this is exciting. You know, holy crap. So on TikTok, everyone was like, that's cool. This story's crazy. On Instagram, everybody, I told Nadine because Nadine lives in Canada. And I like, boosted it to Canadians because I was like, I think Canadians would be interested in like the episode. And the comments were so fucking mean. And I was like, I should boost it to Canadian women because the Canadian men were like,

this is old news girl. And I'm like, it happened this morning. What the hell? Like they're just, they're just beyond mean. And yeah. I was very impressed. I think that someone is a listener that actually is on the pulse or something. I think, and I said this in the last episode and it's stupid, but I feel.

feel like I'm just so close, you know? Like, that's crazy. I don't know. I've never heard of this guy. And then, like, all of a sudden he's caught, like, oh, my God. You were plugged in. One person did say... One person said, that's my husband.

Don't talk about him like that. Which I thought was hilarious. So, like, thank you that person for commenting. But no thank you to everyone else. Um, who commented. But anyway, we got more listens. It has like a whole, a lot exponentially more listens than our other episodes. And because people were looking.

so I hope that you've stuck around because that is super exciting. So thank you. And if you have ideas or thoughts, please don't leave me a mean comment. Keep that in your brain. But email me, doomed to fail pod at gmail.com, DM me on Instagram. I will talk to you there. Duneful pot at gmail.com.

Please do write to us. We do love getting those. Hey, thanks, y'all. Oh, hey, Juan Carlos, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. I know if you're like in the other room, but it's been fun to see you. And thank you for sharing your Remind deck with us.

And your website is Remind.comach. And right? Is that correct? And on the site, you can buy the mental model deck. It has like 100 mental models and like a card deck. And you can use it like a tarot card. Just like pull one out and like think about how you're going to use it for your day. And then you can also get, there's an app where you can look them up.

There's more mental models on the app. And then you can be there as well. So if you do end up buying the. the Remind deck and you put in your order notes that you heard about it on Doom to Fail. I'll throw in some Doom to Fail stickers because I am the shipping department. But I'm very excited to share this one. It's so cool that this is a physical thing that we have in our hand.

And your daughter wants to say something. Go ahead. Hello. She says hi. Hi. Thank you so much. So I'm putting this in the beginning. Is that right? No, it's the end. Oh, then.

Okay. Okay, I'm going to edit myself out saying this. Awesome. Thanks again. Thanks to both of you, three of you, sorry, Flo. And we'll get this uploaded. Again, write to us and doofl pod at gmail.com. Find us on all the socials, doofl pod.

I think that's it. I think that's it. Thank you. Stay safe, Fars. I know you've got some more winter weather coming your way. So stay safe in your winter event. We'll do our best. I can't wait to listen to this because it'll be like

listening to my favorite friends on my favorite podcast, but with me in it. And your voice is so buttery smooth. Everybody is going to be excited. They're going to say amazing things. I'm positive. Oh, wait. I'm so sorry. I have one more thing.

Okay. Yeah. I've read to tell you this. So when I was in fifth grade, we did a thing where we got to pretend that we were on a spaceship and I got to be one of the astronauts and there were like four of us and we went into a thing that was kind of like the biosphere. It was in a classroom and it was like a big tent and we had to be in there all day. And we had to like do science experiments.

and then do like the walk on those moonwalk shoes like in the classroom. And then like if you had to go to the bathroom, they had a wagon and they'd like pull a wagon up to the thing and you'd get into it. And the other kids would take you to the bathroom and they would like put it on it. Like it was a box.

And I just have really cute pictures of me dressed like an astronaut. And that kind of reminded me of the biosphere. If you have the pictures, they have to go on the instipose. It's real cute. So I will show you. We got to do it.

Yeah. Sweet. Thanks guys. I'm going to go ahead and put the, recording off.