Good Life Project - Jordan Harbinger: Hacking Human Interaction (can it be done?)

Episode Date: October 9, 2017

Jordan Harbinger is the co-founder of The Art of Charm, a renowned social dynamics expert and host of the top-rated Art of Charm podcast, where he interviews leading entrepreneurs, celebrities, authors and experts on psychology, human performance, behavioral economics and success..Harbinger helped develop one of the leading self-development programs in the world, co-created the Mastering Social Interaction 30‑day challenge, leveraging his expertise in social capital, relationship-building and authentic rapport.A former U.S. State Department employee and Wall Street attorney who speaks five languages, Jordan has traveled extensively and found himself (on one occasion, not entirely voluntarily) in the employ various government agencies and NGOs overseas, traveled through war zones, led several trips through North Korea, and been kidnapped—twice.Underneath it all is a through-line that took some unraveling during our conversation. Harbinger, it turns out, is obsessed with decoding complex systems. His fascination led him first into technology and eventually into maybe the most challenging system of all; human social interaction. His pursuit of answers has led him to both big discoveries, and profound moments of personal and professional reckoning. That's what we explore in today's conversation.Rockstar Sponsors:Audible has the best audiobook performances, the largest library, and the most exclusive content. Learn more, start your 30-day trial and get your first Audible book free, go to Audible.com/goodlife.RXBAR Kids is a snack bar made with high-quality, real ingredients designed specifically for kids. It contains 7 grams of protein and has zero added sugar and no gluten, soy or dairy. Find at Target stores OR for 25% off your first order, visit RXBAR.com/goodlife.Are you hiring? Do you know where to post your job to find the best candidates? Unlike other job sites, ZipRecruiter doesn’t depend on candidates finding you; it finds them. And right now, GLP listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for FREE, That’s right. FREE! Just go to ZipRecruiter.com/good.MVMT Watches (pronounced Movement) was founded on the belief that style shouldn’t break the bank. Classic design, quality construction and styled minimalism. Get 15% off today —WITH FREE SHIPPING and FREE RETURNS—by going to MVMT.com/good.Support for this podcast comes from abc, presenting the new drama “The Good Doctor” from the creator of House. The Good Doctor premieres September 25th, with new episodes Mondays at 10/9 Central on abc.Support for this podcast comes from abc, presenting “Kevin Probably Saves the World”, the new drama that will change the way you feel…about the Universe. New episodes every Tuesday at 10/9 Central on abc. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Getting expelled, no big deal. The cops, no big deal. The FBI, not as big of it. My parents being like, oh my God, our son's a bad person. Worst feeling ever. Imagine being around 14 or 15 years old, getting a knock at the door, opening up and seeing the FBI standing there saying, kid, we got to talk. Well, that's pretty close to the scenario that this week's guest, Jordan Harbinger, who also happens to be now the founder of the Art of Charm and the Art of Charm podcast, which is this massive, massive podcast. That's the place he found himself in as a kid. Turns out he was fascinated. His brain works in this really interesting way with how things work.

He's a puzzle solver. He wants to deconstruct, to reverse engineer, and then rebuild. And his focus when he was younger was on computers and technology, and especially communications devices, which ended up getting him in a little bit of a squeeze with the local authorities and then eventually the FBI. But instead of causing problems, he was so advanced and complex in what he was doing, he ended up actually sort of working with the FBI and advising them at a really young age in his teens. He moved on eventually, went to college, went to law school and started practicing law. And in the practice of law, realized that there was actually this bigger problem that he wanted to solve. He wanted to understand how human socialization works.

And he's now spent pretty much his entire adult life deep in that world. We track that journey. We go through how he started, how he's developed his ideas, his methodology, how he started to figure out why this mattered and how it worked. How do you actually, how do you code for human interaction and what happens if you overcode and try and manipulate? And then what he's doing with these ideas and these technologies as he builds a company that trains everyone from military to those who may be struggling on the Asperger spectrum and pretty much anybody else who wants to learn how to interact with other human beings better. We also dive into, we spent a little bit of time talking about the world of radio and podcasting. He was one of the originals in the world of

podcasting before anybody knew what it was. This is over a decade ago now, then jumped to satellite radio and has now become a huge force in podcasting. So we explore a little bit, you know, what's going on in that space. Really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. swimming or sleeping and it's the fastest charging apple watch getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes the apple watch series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generations iphone 10s are later required charge time and actual results will vary mayday mayday we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman i know you're gonna be fun on january 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him! We need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. So this is actually not the first time that we've recorded a conversation.

The first time was, ah, it was years ago at this point, right? Seven years ago, maybe? Six years ago. And we had this conversation. And then after it, I guess we both kind of knew like something wasn't right. I ended up not airing it. But then like, it was years until you came back to me. You're like, dude, there's actually like all this stuff going on in the background. Like I should have just called it off.

I should have. What was going on at that time was, and it's weird because it was 2020 hindsight. In the moment, I was just like, why am I sucking at all the things that I'm doing? And it wasn't just that interview. I remember going to the gym and not working out that hard. And I remember going to social events and being like, I'm so tired. And even though I hadn't done anything that day. And I remember sleeping till 4pm on weekends, which I don't do. I like going and doing stuff. And I realized years and years later, I was in some sort of probably stress-induced mild depression. And it wasn't like, I should just jump off the roof of my building. It wasn't anything like that. It was just, there's an analogy here that I might miss, but it was just enough where I was like, this is normal, but it wasn't at all. And I only saw it, you know, you can't

read the label from inside the jar kind of thing. I only saw it afterwards when I had moved to a different place, gotten into different hobbies, gotten a different circle of friends and gotten in different shape and started eating differently and all these little changes, I looked back and I went, how did I live like that for 18 months or more? I don't even know. I can't even put a start and end date on it because depression, I think for a lot of people who don't have it or never have had it, and I don't normally suffer from that either. It looks from the outside like everything's normal, everything's normal, you hit the bottom and then it's like, what happened to Jonathan? He's such a weird guy now, never leaves his house. But if you're in it, it's just like this sine wave. It's just a regular wave. And it looks

like you're in a normal downslump to other people, maybe, or not at all. And to you, you're like, this is normal. I'm fine. And then when you get on it back to your actual normal, you look down and you go, how the hell did I deal with that and put up with that and live like this and eat like that and not exercise? I mean, how did I let myself go that far? So now I try to catch it when I sense it may be happening. And now it's almost never again. But now if I go traveling and I'm eating like crap and then I come back and I'm jet lagged, I just realize this is how that starts. Some sort of external trigger, somebody does something or something happens in your life or you just travel and you're on a weird sleep schedule, a weird eating schedule, it can really start to swirl the toilet pretty quick if you don't catch it and go, no, I'm getting up at this time.

I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to drink enough water or whatever. And sometimes it can be really that simple for me yeah which is so interesting because i you know we've come to know each other a bit more over the years now and but i had this i think this is the first time we'd ever spoken also we got and so i didn't know what your i didn't know what your normal was but but i remember because i remember there have been a handful of interviews that i wonder if it was even for a book I was working on,

but no, but because the plan was to air it. So it couldn't have been, it's funny. I can't remember exactly what it was for, but, but I just remember like after the conversation, I was like,

something was really off with this. Yeah. And it wasn't, it wasn't, I was like that. There's just something about it where I feel like I can't air this. Yeah. I'm glad it never aired.

Cause it would have been one of those things where I'm like, Hey, can you remove this from your website? You know, 10 years later, it wouldn't have been interesting though, to sort of like look in hindsight and sort of like, you know,

like years reflecting back now, sort of like hear yourself in that state from the outside, looking in now, like being in a different state and saying, huh, like, could I really sort of like see and pick up, um,

like how different I was. I think I can still probably do that by listening to old episodes of the Art of John podcast. You know, we're on episode 800 something. So, and not even in the numbers, just cause the numbering is different. So when I, when I really want to punish myself, I just listen to old episodes of the show. I feel like anything creative is probably like that. You look at your first thing and you're like, what the hell? There's no doubt about it. I look, I look at like the first thing that the first book and I'm like anything creative is probably like that. You look at your first thing and you're like, what the hell? There's no doubt about it. I look at the first thing, the first book, and I'm like, hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Even with a book? Yeah, even with a book. And that's out there. That can't change. You can't pull that toothpaste back in the tube. That's there forever. Let's take a step back in time with you.

You have what seems to be a lifelong fascination with, I'll describe it as social engineering. But in the early days, when you were a kid, it seems like that expressed itself in much more like a technological outlet. Yeah, good observation, especially just so everybody, you're not looking at any notes. So that's pretty cool that you remembered that, or even if you looked at it before this. When I was a kid, I wasn't, well, I am an only child. I guess you can't say was. I guess I'm no longer a child. But I was an only child and I was bored a lot and I started skipping school and things like that because I hated being there. It was one, boring. Two, I started to develop, and this is a working theory here, but when you're really bored in school,

you start to do other things, get in trouble, or my mind anyway was off doing something else. And so that would get me in trouble with teachers. But then sometimes it was like, oh, maybe I should be doing something else, or I've got to be looking at other people's behavior. And that got me micromanaging my own behavior, which drove me insane. And how old? 13, probably. So you've got like this meta awareness at the age of 13, which is pretty unusual. And it wasn't very healthy at the time, frankly. It was more like, okay, if I'm looking at everyone else and thinking about what they're doing, oh crap, everybody must be looking at me and thinking about what I'm doing.

Oh man, that's really uncomfortable. Oh man, I've got to look this way and I got to sit up this way and I got to look that way and I got to pretend that this is happening and I got to be popular and I got to be funny and I got to be cool. And the teachers were like, hey man, what's your problem? You're a punk, you know? And so that didn't work for me. And then I started skipping school and I got a computer, which is awesome and terrible at the same time.

And I would go on the internet and I would... And this is the internet then is not the internet that we know now. Right, it wasn't the worldwide web. Like you had to be pretty much on the geeky side and pretty wired for tech. Right. It was dial in on your modem to a library and then the library would let you search through this thing called Gopher, which was like, you can search other universities' libraries.

They're all on one network. And other libraries, I remember one at Emory University had an IRC, Internet Relay Chat Client, which is like a chat program with people from all over the world. And this is the first time that you could talk with somebody from all over the world that you didn't know online. It was a massive experiment. Universities had to have a server that would connect to this chat server. And I would look around in there and go in all these channels.

And it was hashtag whatever the channel name was. So you could go and look at like, there was everything from, you know, sex, of course, which the first probably thing I'd search back then. And then there was everything. TV shows all had their own. Hackers had their own. Guys who hacked with the phone system, which is where I ended up. We had our own. Stolen software, all that stuff. Everybody had their own channel and you could join as many as you wanted. And

it was real-time chat. So I would sit in there all day talking with university students and adults, really. And we would be sitting there talking about things and rarely was it on topic. But I started to learn things about cellular phones and hacking. And I thought, this is really cool. This is like a portal to another world where nobody cares what I look like. Nobody's micromanaging my behavior. And they're talking about things that are interesting. And you're like 13, 14 years old. 13, 14 years old. Yeah. So I got obsessed with that stuff. And that was really cool for me because I started to learn how to take that same portal of information and bring it with me because I learned how up those green boxes you see on the side of the road. You live in New York.

I don't even know if those are here. But everywhere else in the country, there's these big green boxes. And if you open one up, which you need a special wrench to do, there's different pairs of screws. And each pair of screws is someone's phone line. And if you want to listen to the phone call, you literally just take one of those orange handsets, which you can get anywhere. And you take the alligator clips and you attach them to the set of screws. That's how much your privacy is protected on a landline. There's a weird wrench that you need to open it up and now you have everyone's landline. And so I, at least back then, now maybe it's digital, but I doubt it. I doubt it. Why replace it? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

So I used to listen to all these phone calls and not thinking I'm wiretapping, right? Which hopefully this statute of limitations is run on that. But you're just thinking, oh, I'm bored. And I'm going to listen to someone's conversation. Yeah. I mean, was it that simple? You're just like, I'm a kid. This is cool.

It's and I'm bored. I'm just like, totally, totally killing time, essentially. Yeah. And I built a small wireless FM transmitter, which was actually surprisingly easy. You could order plans on the internet, go to Radio Shack, which also probably doesn't exist anymore, wherever we are listening to this. And I programmed the FM transmitter with alligator clips, hook it up to a pair that was really interesting, put a battery in there, a couple of batteries wired in, I forget what it's called

now, series, I guess, or something like that, and make it so that one would sort of take over when the other one died. And these things lasted forever. All I needed to do is bike over there, open it up and change the batteries. So I bought rechargeable batteries and this FM transmitter would transmit the conversations to an unused station on an FM radio. Basically, some poor guy had his phone conversations being beamed over FM to my house. I mean, it was short range. It wasn't the whole city of Detroit listening. What's the motivation behind that? So this guy was really interesting, this one particular guy. He was getting a divorce. And so he was talking on the phone with his soon-to-be ex-wife, his mom, his sister, his friends, etc.

And I could not get enough of this person's conversations because when I was a kid, and I think this is probably true for any kid, adults are two-dimensional Charlie Brown teachers that just say, and all they do is feed you, yell at you, give you homework, drive you places, or they're your parents and they're mildly like 1% more complex than that, but not by much, right? They're the ones you know best, but there's not, you're not really sure what else is going on because you're a kid. This guy was my first exposure to adults having feelings, complex emotions that are more like

mine. And I found that I couldn't really relate to this guy because he was a grown man getting a divorce and I was 13. I never even had a girlfriend or anything close to it. But I thought, wow, you know, when he talks to his soon to be ex-wife, he's definitely exhibiting all these weird characteristics that are antagonistic and not nice. And then he talks to his sister and he's a different person. He talks to his friends and he's like this macho guy, doesn't care. And he talks to his mom and he's this little boy. And I remember thinking,

if he talked to his soon to be ex-wife the same way he talked to his mom, he might not be in this situation. But he just couldn't do it. But at the age of 13 and 14, you're thinking that. Yeah, I'm thinking that. And I'm thinking, like, what causes people to do this? In retrospect, obviously, the answer is ego. But I didn't know what that was back then. I didn't have a clue.

I just thought, like, hey, man, real simple solution. Just tell her what you think. You know, the rom-com solution to the problem. Although, of course, in my mind, his whole life was only happening on those phone calls where I'm sure they, their relationship had gone downhill over years and years and years through inaction or negligence or whatever. And so that was really interesting for me that those conversations were fascinating for me because I couldn't, I couldn't really get enough of it, and it made me look at all adults differently forever, probably. It's like you're covertly just sort of snooping on all these conversations. Yeah, and now I look back and I'm like, what a – that's not nice.

I should not have done that. Yeah, but what's interesting is, I mean, beyond the legality of it, it's almost like you become a social scientist at this really young age. You're, like, devouring data on how people relate to each other in all different contexts of all different ages. Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, you're skipping school. You're not, like, you're basically withdrawing socially from face-to-face conversation from all these things in person. Yeah, good point. And just like opting – you're opting out of that in your own life, but you're opting into being the voyeur for other people.

Yeah, which is super creepy when you put it like that, although it's totally fair. Like the way you talk about that right now is completely fair. It was very voyeuristic, and I really enjoyed that element of that. Thankfully, I grew out of that as an adult. Otherwise, I feel like that's where weird fetishes come from. They come from things like that. I don't have that because I know some people were wondering right now. So I'll just throw that out there. But I think it did end up being something I really enjoyed because I would spend long nights on listening to the FM thing, listening to hackers who do these things called teleconferences,

which are just what teleconferences are now, except for somebody would figure out how to get into a company's private teleconference bridge, you know, MCI or IBM, and hundreds of us, or dozens of us anyway, whatever the maximum was at that point,

we would all dial in there. And it would be like what we were doing on the chat, horsing around, telling jokes, being jerks to each other. But all these people were adults, and there would be people from the UK, Israel, US, Canada, all on this line for eight hours at a time. And I would listen to that whole thing while watching a movie or reading or sitting on my computer talking with some of the same guys that were on this call. So we created virtual worlds online as hackers and as computer geeks well before anybody had thought to formalize those same worlds into Second Life or social media. Yeah. You're just kind of piecing it all together yourself.

Yeah. Was this a workaround for real life though? Definitely. Yeah. It was kind of like, hmm, having trouble. It wasn't that I had trouble making friends. I had friends. It was just kind of like I didn't feel – saying I didn't feel cool is an understatement. I didn't fit in at all, and this kind of behavior was not helping. What would have been really good for me is being forced to join some kind of sports, go out and be normal. But that wasn't really in the cards for me

because my brain wanted more stimulation, but I got it in kind of an unhealthy way. And at this point, my dad was working a bunch. And it's not like he didn't care. He's just working all the time. And I would imagine, I don't have kids. So I can imagine when you do have kids, you find that you don't always really know what the hell they're doing. It must be even more complicated now with the internet because anything could be happening on these little devices. But he just thought, he's nerding around in his room, who cares? He's doing kid stuff with his buddy.

Wouldn't this have also been not too far from the time that the movie War Games came out? It definitely was. War Games 1984, it was probably almost games 84 somewhere around there it was probably almost a decade it was a decade after that but a decade now is a lot longer than

a decade in the 80s and 90s and that's not i don't think that's just my my generational stuff technology and everything is moving so much faster 84 they had modems 94 they had modems. 94, we had modems. But 10 years ago from now, 2017, it's like you didn't even have the iPhone just turned 10. Because I'm just thinking there, you're doing a lot of the same stuff as the main character in that film. And my recollection is that your exploits, I'm making quote marks with my fingers now, kind of ended with a knock on the door also. Oh, yeah.

So that's for sure. I forgot that you knew about that. Okay. So what happened was my boredom reached peak troublemaker and my social life in real life had reached peak hopelessness. And so those two sort of waves of me being like a capable hacker nerd had crescendoed along with me being a completely incapable, normal kid, incapable of being normal kid, right? And I had no hope for being cool or popular or anything. So I decided, I'm going to throw a Hail Mary and pull a prank. And this prank is going to be ordering pizza for the whole school using credit cards that I got

from the internet. Well, actually, I generated them using a program that I'd helped create. Because we found some math guys that looked at the check sums on credit card numbers, and they were predictable. Now, I don't think they are. But back then, you could just sort of put in one credit card number or two, and the program would figure out what the next set of numbers would be. And this wasn't real-time checking of credit cards. If you ran a business, you would write it down. You'd put the expiration date down. They didn't have CVV2 codes.

And then at the end of the day, you'd probably turn them into your bank, which had a merchant account for you, and they would run them or you had to do it somehow. It didn't check it against a server. They just assumed they were going to get paid. And so I would generate, I generated a bunch of numbers, ordered a bunch of pizza, knew what time lunch was, told the guy to come in the van, knew the assistant principal was going to say, what are you doing? So he was supposed to say, happy birthday, Mrs. Jacobson, when she confronted him about it. And so, and it worked, it went flawlessly, but I had made the mistake of talking to my friend who I ran into on my way home from the pay phone where I had called for the pizza.

And I told him about it. And he told the freaking whole school. And when it actually went off, it was the talk of the town, right? Who ordered the pizza? And for weeks, nobody knew. Nobody knew. And then finally, they had nailed my other friend. And he was a troublemaker. And they just decided, well, nobody knew. And then finally they had nailed my other friend and he was a troublemaker and they just decided, well, we don't know who did it. So we're just

going to blame Mike. And this guy, Mike was like, I didn't do it. And they were going to expel him from school. And I thought like, oh man, I can't, I can't let Mike get expelled. He's done a lot of bad things. This was not one of them. So I just come clean so i came clean and what happened was surprising first of all the assistant principal and the principal were shocked because i was a quiet kid who got good grades and or okay great it's not good i wasn't paying that close of attention but what was really interesting was they went okay well the police want to talk to you about how you did this because you're 13, 14 years old. How did this happen? Whose credit card was it? And they were saying things like, well, we can't reach the owner of the credit card because she's on vacation. And I remember thinking, no, you can't reach the owner of the credit card because it's a name I pulled out of my b-hole

and you guys have no idea that I made this crap up and this number was mine. I wrote it down on a piece of paper after I generated it using a program on my 486 computer. Come on, get with it. You know, so I was telling the police this and they went, well, you know, this name matches somebody in Florida. So it's going to be an FBI thing. And I felt like my life is over. The FBI is going to come in and do this. And I remember the cop saying, I, I feel bad for you now. Cause this is like, we have to call the FBI. And we weren't even going to, we're not going to prosecute you for this, because you're getting expelled, most likely. But this is really strange. Like, we have to, I mean, it's not our jurisdiction,

we have to call the FBI, they have to handle. And he just felt, he looked at me like, damn, I hope that they go easy on you. And I felt bad. He felt bad for me. I felt bad, obviously. My parents were pissed and they were sad, which was the worst. That was by far the worst. Getting expelled, no big deal. The cops, no big deal. The FBI, not as big of it. My parents being like, oh my God, our son's a bad person. Worst feeling ever. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So what happened was they called the FBI and the FBI came in and said, and they said, how did this happen? What happened? And I told them everything. I said, look, we generated a credit card number. I didn't use a clone cell phone to call. I used a pay phone because I knew that that would lead to a dead end. If you found the clone cell phone, you would notify the owner of the clone cell phone. Then you could probably find me if you wanted to triangulate where I was,

and I'm using this phone, which I should give you. And they were like, well, we can't take it, search and seizure, Fourth Amendment. And they're like, but you shouldn't use it, and you shouldn't tell us you're using it. And I remember thinking like, wait, what? And then the FBI was writing all this stuff down, the Detroit office that had to drive up to where I lived and my school, which is where they interviewed me because I'm a kid. No lawyer, nothing at this point. And then they had to call that all into D.C. because there was no cyber anything in local branch offices. The only D.C. office, HQ, had it. So whoever was over there in the cyber office was like, hang on.

This is a sophisticated crime for a 14-year-old kid. Where there's smoke, there's fire. What the hell is this kid into? So they started talking with me directly via the Detroit office, I should say. Directly and indirectly, via the Detroit office. So this guy, Agent Forster, was like, look, they think that whatever you're doing, they need to know more about it. So not only did I not get expelled, they let me use a cell phone in school because they would call and ask me questions about things. So you become essentially like an advisor. Yeah. I was, at this point I was starting, I was 15 or 16. Like this, this took place over a longer period of time. I didn't get expelled though. They were more like, well, let's hold off on the punishment thing until we figure this out. I got community service, you know, from the social workers, I guess. But the school was kind of like, hang on. Real talk, he ordered pizza. Yes, he did it with a fake credit card. Was it a disturbance? Kind of, yeah, but not really enough. Like, do we need to ruin this kid's academic career slash life? It's such a sophisticated issue and crime that ended up being victimless because I paid for the pizza that they,

I think the assistant principal, his wife was my math teacher and she loved me. So that I think went far. But I think the, the principal was just kind of like, all right, I feel embarrassed about it. And so the, her ego needed to take me for a ride because she was the one who got embarrassed by the whole thing but i think that it didn't come down to real academic punishment because the fbi was like this is interesting and the cops were like look whatever he didn't vandal he didn't even vandalize anything which you don't get expelled for that either so you find yourself at like 15 16 years old essentially working with the FBI on what? Yeah. So good question. So the first thing that I worked on them with was the credit card stuff.

They knew that obviously you could calculate a checksum and use a credit card, but they thought, oh, well, with real-time verification, that's not going to be an issue anymore. Well, hello, most businesses don't use real-time verification. They do now. When you stick your card into a machine or you swipe it, it's connected to the internet. It goes to a database. It verifies the name, the address, and the zip code or whatever, and it real-time verifies it. Before the internet, remember when you used to buy something with a credit card and you could hear the modem calling into the place? Most places didn't have that. Macy's had that, but Papa John's Pizza didn't have that. Each of these little branches, they didn't have that a lot of places didn't even accept cards. So I told them, yeah, this is going to work with asymmetrical information, you have to make the numbers random. And they're like, okay, yeah,

so they they, and I don't think this is my doing. I'm sure they had an advisory group that worked with the credit card companies and told them things like this. I was like, also, even if all you have is an encrypted database that has numbers of people in a local area and expiration dates, and those have to match, you could download that to a computer encrypted, and you could check those against it. And that would stop 99% of the crime, because if you can make up all the numbers, you got a problem. But if it has to be a certain number in a certain format, and it has to match an expiration date, you're good. Right?

Most people aren't going to match those two things. They're going to have to steal a card to do that. Yeah. And if you steal a card, you get a whole different problem. What is it about the way your brain works that makes you – because as you sit here talking with me about this, this is now like decades removed. Yeah. You are like fiercely animated. Oh, yeah. Yeah. purpose is something that is, there's something about you that hooks onto that and lights up.

Yeah, it's strange. And I think it's because it's not really a competitive thing. That was my first thought when it came to this, like, ha, I figured your thing out and I'm going to break it. I don't really do that. I'm more like, oh, I figured out how this thing works. And that in itself is rewarding. As a kid, though, you want to use it. In fact, as an adult, too, you want to use it. Back then, I didn't think about other people's consequences for me using those things. Now I think about, obviously, other people's consequences using those things. But I think it was because knowledge back then came from teachers. And if you were lucky, books, if you had the attention span to read those things,

and I remember looking for different books in libraries and thinking, I need books about how computers work. And I need books about how radio signals work. And the problem with books, even now is you go to a library and you get a book from 1978 about how radio signals work. They don't mention cellular phones. I want to know how cellular phones work. Oh, well, you can't really do that. And I remember when I joined a gym with my mom, powerhouse gym at age 14. And there was a guy who had a cell phone company shirt logo, and he would work out in that. And I would say, I went up to him and I went, hey, so you work with cell phones? And he goes, yeah. And I said, so do you work in like the store? You work in the, and he goes, no, no, I work for the carrier. You know what a carrier is? And I said, yeah, of course I know what a carrier is. And I said, so are you guys using CDMA? And he goes, yeah, America uses CDMA. This is Sprint? How does it know what to pair the signals, right?

Because you have an incoming signal and you have an outgoing signal. How does it know to pair those? And he said, well, it pairs them. I don't remember the details, but it was something like it doesn't really matter because they're simultaneously. They're kind of independent and all this stuff, and your phone knows which one. And I said, so all the signals are going through the air all the time no matter what. How does it know what cell you're in? And he goes, well, the phone checks in with the tower. And he goes, wait a minute, how old are you? And how do you, how are you asking me questions

that my engineers don't even know to ask me depending on what department they're in. And I was like, oh, I'm reading this stuff on the internet. And he goes, well, why? And I didn't have a good answer for that. And I just remember every time I'd see him at the gym, I would say, okay, so you have the pair and you have this. What's to stop somebody from making a radio that tunes into this frequency and listens to this particular channel? And that was how I got the idea to start listening to cellular phone conversations and turn a

certain type of cellular phone into essentially a scanner because it's just two channels. One's outgoing and one's incoming. So you could hear half of the conversation on one of the channels. And I would just sit there and listen to those all day. So this is like a giant puzzle for you. It's a giant puzzle. And you are, you are the guy who's obsessed with solving puzzles.

Yeah, I think so. Back then. Yeah. But it's not just back then, right? Because back then it's technology. Yeah,

that's true. It's the relationship between social dynamics and technology. We're going to kind of like take a big zoom forward. So you end up – you get out of high school. You go to college. You end up – and we have this like really kind of like interesting history also in that you end up essentially from what I recall working in the State Department but also going – you go to law school. I did. I went to law school, yeah.

Right. And then you end up practicing law. Well, no. Wait. But you didn't practice for very long. Not to law school. Yeah. three languages, political science and economics, and I couldn't get a job at Best Buy. They were like, weren't hiring. And I thought, well, wait a minute, I'm totally screwed. And I remember, I think it was my aunt combined with some other people said, oh, you should just go to law school. You can get a great job as a lawyer. And so I applied to law schools and I got into some. And then I ended up deferring my law school admission because I got into Michigan for the year after that. And that was a good law school.

So I deferred that and I went to go teach English in the former Yugoslavia. And so – but before that, yeah, you're right. I had worked for the State Department in Panama at the embassy as an intern. And I was just always trying new things. It wasn't like I had this firm career path. When you look back, it's like, oh, these things prepared me for what I'm doing now. But really, it was just like, throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks. But it's like this voracious curiosity to understand how things work.

Definitely, yeah. And it's sort of like, let me try this experiment. Let me try this experiment. Let me try this experiment. Yeah, my mom couldn't buy me any electronic device if she wanted it to last for more than a few minutes. Just take it apart. I would take it apart. I would take it apart. I would take it apart. There was there was one time where she said I'm not buying you any new tape players or anything because they always ended up in pieces no matter

what. And there was a tape recorder that we had that she had that I knew I was definitely not allowed to use because she was a speech therapist. She needed it for work. So that's the tape player I'd have to borrow from her every time to listen to Michael Jackson or whatever and then put it back. And then I knew that I was on to something when I finally was able to reassemble a tape player in working order, and then I didn't have to ask her for a new one. And that was around 14, 15. It's kind of weird. I'm programming cell phones, but yet if you take a tape player apart, how the hell does this thing go back together? Then if you have the cassette, as long as you have a pencil nearby, you're good.

Yes, exactly. So you end up taking kind of like this voracious deconstruction, reconstruction puzzle thing. You last a short while in the law. Yeah, like a year. Right. What was the catalyst for you moving out of that? So when I started, when I was in school, I kind of coasted on, well, I can't really pay attention, but I can take the exam and I can get a B plus or even an A just by

figuring it out on the test. And then when I got to college, everybody was smart. I went to Michigan, everybody was smart, but they were getting drunk every single day. So all I had to do is do the work and I could get A's and B's. But then in law school, there was a certain contingent of people that were working hard and everybody was very smart. But there was also a certain contingent of people that were still drinking and farting around. So I was able to outwork those people. But then you get to Wall Street. Everyone's working really hard. Everyone's very smart. I'm not sure how to make myself smarter. And you are working as hard as everyone else. So I'm like, crap, my competitive advantages evaporated. And

I don't know. I don't know what to do about it. So I had started to, I got hired by this guy named Dave. And Dave told me that, well, first of all, Dave was never in the office. And I asked him why did he work from home? What's the deal? He's a partner. I don't understand how you're not here billing hours with everyone. Because all the lawyers were He's a partner. I don't understand how you're not here billing hours with everyone. Because all the lawyers were always there three o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, lawyers are in the office. Dave was like, Oh, I bring in new business for the firm. I bring in all the deals. And I said, Wait, how do you do that? And he's like, Oh, you know, network and talk with people. And I go to events and I make connections. And I felt like, okay,

I've got to figure this out. Because the regular system, I have exhausted my competitive advantage on these different angles that worked for me in the past, I've got to figure this out because the regular system, I have exhausted my competitive advantage on these different angles that worked for me in the past. I've got to figure out the networking and relationship angle. And so I worked on that. I got obsessed with that. Body language and eye contact and nonverbal communication became the focus because I started by taking a Dale Carnegie class because I felt like, oh, how to win friends and influence people. Classic classes so many of us. And it wasn't terrible, but it was kind of like it just peaked at level one right out of out of 100. And what I mean by that is there's a guy at the YMCA in a sweater vest telling you have a firm handshake, look people in the eye, how to remember

people's names, how to state your name confidently. And I thought, okay, Dave's bringing in multi-million dollar law deals every quarter. It's probably not because he has a firm handshake and good eye contact. And if people don't like you, it's not because you don't have a firm handshake. There's other things going on. And the Dale Carnegie guy isn't really able to explain these things to me. So I started to study salespeople who are really killing it, read a lot of books on persuasion, interrogation, nonverbal communication, things like that. And the internet, it just really kicked off around this point, 2005. I know it was around a long time before that, but now everything was online and you could buy books in PDF format, I think, I think at this time, at least some.

And I started to devour all of that information. So you found your new machine. I found my new machine, yeah. It's like basically the social brain becomes your new complex machine to try and deconstruct and engineer around. Yeah, that's a good point. I did. I found the new machine. And it was kind of the ultimate machine because you're dealing with people all the time, no matter what. They're always going to be around. We're not going to be obsolete probably anytime soon. And even if we are, we're still going to have to deal with each other. So it's kind same around the world. And sure, there are cultural influences,

but it's infinitely more complex than a tape player could ever be or a cellular phone. So that became much more interesting for me. And I started talking about that with my business partner, AJ. We started recording those things. We put them online at the Art of Charm podcast in iTunes, you know, podcasts were brand new, 2006. And so we started to put those discussions online. And that's what started the business that we have now. But really, it was just a vehicle to discuss these really complicated topics of human interaction, which are still interesting to me. Yeah, which which tells you something, right? Because the other stuff, it's kind of like, got it nailed it, got it nailed it, got it nailed it, moving on, moving on, moving on. Now you have this one machine. And you know, and some 11 years later, as we sit here and record this, you're still deep into it.

Still deep into it. Are you genuinely still deep into it? Yeah, I'm still deep into it. I just shifted focus because originally it was, all right, I got to network to get to the top of the law game. Then it was the law game is hitting a wall because the economy is tanking, and people didn't want to buy networking skills. They didn't care about that, at least the way we were selling it back then because we were in our 20s. Guys in their 20s and women in their 20s weren't like, I need to network and create relationships for my future. It was like, no, old people do that.

I don't care. So we started to use the stuff to go out and meet people and have social circles and create and do dating stuff was really hot back then right so that's when when i my first introduction to you was like this guy is actually a guy who's gone deep into social dynamics yeah in the quote pickup artist world yeah yeah right which is pre-creepy pua stuff in my opinion right so and then you but then you kind of like became and started rolling with sort of the, quote, bigger names. And then shortly after, the game comes out, and the whole world has this really interesting association with it. But what's interesting to me is that as I've come to know you a bit more over the years, and understand that for you, that wasn't really what it was about. And it was like this, it was marketing because you're like, I want to understand the complex social dynamics of how people get into other people's heads and influence them and interact with them in a way where we can create some sort of interesting mutual benefit.

But like you said, the average person that you were hanging out with in their 20s, not so interested in that conversation. So where's the relevant hook for that particular age group? And that was like, what I didn't realize was that for you, that was just like this entry point where people happen to be interested. And that was a starting point for you that you've kind of moved vastly. You still have developed all this programming curriculum around social dynamics and influence and all this stuff, but the application now is so much broader. Yeah, it's – looking back on that stuff, it was kind of like – we called it hiding the broccoli because if you want to get a baby to eat broccoli, you have to pour cheese all over it. And the danger where we had then started to fail was we were just at that point selling cheese. And there was almost very,

the very little, it was like broccoli scented cheese, right? There was very little broccoli to be had. And I think where the pickup guys really went off the rails is they just went, screw the broccoli. It's all about the cheese. Let's just make fake, you know, cheese whiz is too real for this, these, this group of guys. So let's just make this fake stuff. And we, we kind of didn't want to do that. But the problem is, it's kind of like, imagine, and this is a weird analogy, but imagine you sell this like very organic marijuana that's for cancer patients and people to relax. And then some other guy who's a crack dealer is like, oh, yeah, I'm in that business, too. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're not, you know, and you can't,

but you're still associated in certain people's minds. So we kind of went, no, no. No, you're not. But you're still associated in certain people's minds. So we kind of went, look, are we going to try to constantly be swimming upstream, trying to rebrand ourselves as like these white hat pickup artist guys? Or are we just going to do something else? And the answer was do something else because we weren't really interested in the dating stuff anyways. Everybody in the company has been dating. I'm married, for goodness sake. It would be kind of weird for me to be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to teach you how to pick up girls. I just, it's, it's not something I'm that interested in. It's definitely something that became an unhealthy

obsession for so many of the guys that got involved in it. It became zero sum for a lot of guys too. It's like the woman has to lose something for you to gain something that all these negative outcomes were totally avoidable, in my opinion. So we just kind of said, look, if we can teach people to be charismatic, which we can, influential and persuasive, and we screen for the right type of listener and the right type of client, we're going to have a better business. It's going to be more fun. It's going to be more in line with our values as well. And that's what we do now. So for years, we had to spend a large amount of time screening out people we thought were going

to misuse the stuff that we teach at Art of Charm on the show and in the boot camps and things like that. But now we don't really have to worry about that because frankly, people who are just looking for quick wins, and I put that in air quotes, they're just like, I just need to sleep with as many women as possible. They're not even interested in what we're talking about on AOC. They're not interested in an interview with you and Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson about the nature of, it's like, they don't care about that. It's too much broccoli. It's too much broccoli. Exactly.

So they're just, we don't even have to worry about it anymore. Yeah. It is interesting though, because a little while back I had a conversation with Marie Connico. I don't know if she's been on. Yeah, she's great. Right? The Confidence Game.

She wrote this book about the long con, grifters. And it was a little unsettling for me because, you know, when I look at the greatest entrepreneurs and the greatest marketers, it's all the same tools. It really is. And I had this conversation with her. I'm like, so you're telling me that essentially, you know, like Steve Jobs, you know, like the greatest persuaders of all time in business and art and science, they're all doing the same thing. The only real difference is the intention behind the outcome. Yeah, that's a good point. It really is. It really, there really is a lot of that involved. And I think we wanted to distance ourselves from the people that just clearly had negative intentions. Because it's, it's kind of like having explosives and then only thinking

about what you can destroy with them. It's like, why? The 1% of negativity that can come from that, why focus on that? So we just figured, we don't want to have to screen out people all the time, let's screen in the right people. And that was really, it was funny because with this huge problem in our business was solved simply by doing more of what we were interested in on the show and less of what we weren't. And it's like, it was like, we're swimming upstream so hard. And instead of becoming a stronger upstream swimmer, we just went, actually, let's just swim downstream, but we're going to take the right side of the fork instead of the left side of the fork. And it's like, oh, this is so much easier.

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Yeah, was the immediate reaction, I mean, because, so you're kind of like in the podcast space, or you're kind of like one of the OGs. Yeah, yeah. Because, and you also, you started in the podcast space, or you're kind of like one of the OGs. Yeah, yeah. And you also, you started out also. Did you start out podcasting and then go to satellite radio and then come back? Was that the sequence? Yeah, it was podcast for a year. Nobody knew what podcasts were.

That was like in the days where it was just this weird thing that nobody was paying attention to. I mean, you had to have, and then iTunes finally built it into the desktop client. There was no such thing as an iPhone still. And so, and then I remember we got a guest spot through a friend on a SiriusXM satellite radio show. That guest spot turned into us meeting the station manager because he happened to be air checking them at the time, which means listening to see how the show is going.

Then we went up to his office to chat with him because he was like, this is really cool stuff. I never heard about this. And he was this cool, normal guy, married, whatever. And I said, we have a podcast if you know what that is. And he goes, yeah, I actually do know what those are. Those are kind of hot. He was one of the five guys. One of the five guys listening to the podcast. And we had these crummy like Vistaprint wannabe cards. And I was like, here you go, listen to it. So I gave it to him. And I emailed him two weeks later, thinking he's not even gonna reply to this email. And I said, Hey, we were on before. And, you know, I was wondering if you listen to that podcast. And he replied right away. And he goes, I have been listening. It's really interesting

stuff. You should have your own radio show. So we went back to Sirius XM every week and did a show. And everybody said, don't do the podcast anymore, because you don't need to. And I said, I'm just going to keep on doing it, because I enjoy the different format, slightly different format. So we did the podcast, and then we did satellite radio simultaneously for three and a half years. And then when that show stopped, we had been doing the podcast the whole time. Right. So you just doubled down on the podcast. Exactly. And I know you mentioned the name, but for those who don't know, you know,

we're talking about The Art of Charm, which has been consistently now as podcasts has exploded over the last three years or so, you know, it was built into this sort of like empire

where, you know, millions of people listening and you guys are producing at a high level for years and years and years now and sort of like you have this, to a certain level for years and years and years now. And sort of like you have this, to a certain extent, first movers advantage, but it's also,

when you look at what's happening, I want to shift gears a little bit. Sure. You know, so the Art of Charm became, it was a show, and you're having all these conversations and doing these interviews and figuring out a lot of other things. And this is fueling the bigger business model for you, which is also essentially like an educational program. It's like, you know, like your own social dynamics Institute, which continues to be the business model from what I know. So as you're looking at what's happening with podcasting these days, which is rapidly changing, it's still, still, I mean, it's kind

of funny because you're 10 years, you're 11 years into it now, and people are now saying, well, yeah, but it's still just the beginning. It's the wild, wild west. What's your sense of the space these days and just what's happening in it? Good question. I think it's probably still wild-ish in that the barrier to entry is zero, which is always kind of a wild, wild west trait. The other thing though, is that there's, despite there being a clear current winner, namely iTunes in the distribution category, Apple's been pretty damn slow to figure out where podcasting is going to end up. They haven't given us any analytics. They're not really figuring out how to fix the discovery problem. They're just kind of like, they just kind of let us do our thing, benign neglect. But other services like Spotify, and these different

podcatcher apps are really gaining a lot of traction. Spotify, of course, has a ton of traction. And that's only the beginning, right? Most people, younger people listen to things on Spotify. Spotify has a few hundred podcasts, I think now. But eventually, there's going to be a clear winner where Spotify is the go-to place for podcasts. Or Apple's going to go, you know what, we're going to break this off into its own thing, which they already have, Apple Podcasts instead of iTunes. And we're going to figure out some discovery stuff. And we're going to allow advertising into the podcast environment. And we're going to make suggestions based on people's preferences on their phone and listening habits. That may happen. And if that does, it's going to, it's sort of anybody's guess who's

going to be on top. And we also kind of have to figure out, and by we, I mean, just podcasting in general, possibly Apple or Spotify. Do we care more about indie shows, which is what a lot of lip service has been paid to over the past? Or are they secretly kind of like, all right, these ESPN shows and this show from this famous person and this sports show and this news program and NPR, these are really what we want now. Because before it was like indie, anybody can do their own thing. This is great. Now it's kind of like, if you have corporate backing, you can get in stay in the top 20 and nobody's ever going to touch you because they have money and they can drive traffic and that's the end of it. So they kind of have to decide whether or not they care about the indie creator getting discovered or if it's just like you can be on the platform as an independent creator. However, nobody's going to necessarily care. You have to do your own marketing and it's BYO audience, right? And in the meantime, 30 for 30 is going to be number one and NPR, everything is going to be the rest of the top 20. I mean, there's a really interesting window. I know both of us get asked about the space and

stuff like this all the time. I just want to kind of like, since we're sitting down, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this also probably were of you. I want to go into this space a little bit because last stat I saw, there was something like 400,000 shows in production at this point. And at the same time, the average person, again, this is like stats that I've seen over the last month or so, subscribes to something like six shows and listens to five shows a week. So you're like 400,000 shows, thousands more coming in every month. But the average person has the bandwidth to subscribe to six and listen to five.

Yeah. And maybe half of those five episodes, right? So it's really interesting because people are still saying mass opportunity, you know, like 70 million people listening, it's going to triple, quadruple and all this stuff. Yet, you know, when you look at the universe of TV shows people listen to, it's a couple thousand. When you look at the universe of movies, you know, it's hundreds that come out every year. And, you know, like they're choosing between them. But the universe of podcasts, if you go really deep into it, is hundreds of thousands, you know, probably soon enough bordering on,

like half a million. So we're in this really interesting moment in this space where people are asking me all the time, like, should I start a podcast? And I really hesitate to be like the person who has an answer to that. I generally tell them like, what is it? It's funny. You do the same thing I do. Like, you got to be the interviewer or else you're like, you got to ask the questions also.

Oh, yeah. It's so hard to turn that off. I know. It's like we've both been on the other side of to ask the questions also. Oh, yeah. It's so hard to turn that off. I know. It's like we've both been on the other side of the mic for so long. That's true. I'm curious what you tell them. What I tell them is tell me why you want to do it. Yeah, that's the best.

If there's just something that you want to get out, if this is your art, do it. Rock it out. If it's your form of expression, go do it. If you have a very specific business intention behind it, it's a different conversation. And I do still think there's tremendous opportunity in the space. I agree with that. I think the best – what I usually tell people is if you don't care if anyone listens to it, then you should do it. And that usually screens out people who think they're going to get rich doing it.

But the problem is, of course, and I'm so guilty of this just like everyone else. they go, well, yeah, I mean, of course, you'd say that. And that's good advice. But of course, people are going to listen to my podcast. That's what every sort of young go-getter or not so young go-getter thinks is like, oh, I'm going to be able to develop an audience in that. But I think you're right. I think you're very correct. If you want to start a business doing it, there's a lot of other ways to start a business and build an audience that are far more effective than spending all the amount of time you have to do recording audio and doing it right and then producing it. This is like the worst way to make money, podcasting. It's like the worst thing. It reminds me of what writers say,

and you're a writer, I'm not, but a lot of writers are like, nobody ever says, I want to become a writer because they know it's like, what is it to say? But most writers are like, this is a terrible thing. Don't ever do it if you can avoid it. They feel like they have to. It's like Seth Godin says, he's like, if you want to get rich, don't write books. Yeah, it's like a disease. A lot of writers say it's true in an interesting way. What problem are you – like you continue to call it, is something that can be taught, learned and taught and mastered by anyone. And that doesn't mean everybody's going to turn into 007 after listening to people confidently or, man, it must be really great to be like Dave from the law firm who can bring in law deals and doesn't have to have this miserable lawyerly lifestyle like a lot of these other attorneys do. Or, man, it must be really great to not care what people think about you and have fun all day at school like my friend Matt. There was always things like that, and I realized so late in life that you can just fix those problems by learning social skills. And a lot of folks who come through the program, be they guys on the Asperger's autism spectrum who think like, oh my gosh, I can learn this stuff. This is going to be game changing to the intelligence agents and green berets and folks like that, that we have coming

through the program who think, all right, I might get a half percent edge, but if that half percent edge saves my life or makes my job easier or save someone else's job or life or a sales guy who were 1% increase means $10 million over the life of his career, those are big gains and those are big problems that are being solved. But it's not just how do I solve this problem? Most people realize or most people, I think, assume that if they have an emotional intelligence deficit, if they even see it, they're not sure that there is a solution. And so what we're trying to do is make people aware that this is a problem that can be solved and that we have at least some of the answers to that process. And that's huge because it's also a terrible business in that you have to educate the market, right? Because a lot of people listening, they go, you're either born with it or you're not. And it's like, well, scientifically, patently, objectively not true.

However, changing people's feelings on an issue is not the same thing as saying, this frappuccino is going to be delicious. People go, well, yeah, it looks pretty good. That's a better business model. You chose about the most complicated machine that you can try and both have a conversation to persuade someone to be open to the fact that this is a buildable skill. It's interesting.

The conversations that we've had, the many conversations I've listened to you have through the interviews that you produce and things like this, one of the things that I've sort of seen is you tend to be really consistently in your head. Yeah, absolutely. Which made me curious, you know, like, are there, just about you and sort of like a deeper emotional connection, like, when was the last moment that brought you to tears? Are you cognizant of the amount of your life that you spend in your head versus in your heart? Is there that heart side a lot in weird ways like watching a youtube video or something and if i'm like that dog is so cute it's it's weird and a lot of people jenna laugh at me she'll go why are you tearing up and i'm just like it doesn't even have to

necessarily do with the video it's just i think my probably my body is so die just dying to get out of my head sometimes that it's like just go go for it. Oh, it's Memorial Day and you see something sappy on TV. I'm going to let loose the waterworks. I think it's just like, it's always so long overdue that I let it do that. She'll play a video that's like a little girl yelling at a jogger, you're winning, you know? And I'm like, oh, that's so cute. And I'll just let it go. But it's pretty rare. It just builds up enough to where anything can set it off. Not to the point where I look like a crazy person, I don't think, but it can be pretty simple. I could be watching the news and I could be like, that's such a nice thing that person did. But I think that if I was more in touch with everything else, I probably would have a more balanced, like you said, balanced output. Yeah, and I don't even know if that's healthy, but it's just an observation that, you know, sort of like over the body of work that I've observed in conversation with you all the time. It's, you know, there's so much going on in your head constantly. And at the same time, one of your obsessions is social dynamics and emotive technology, basically, between people. So it was interesting to see sort of like this play out.

Well, it has to be – it does cause – or it can cause problems, right? Because if you start to think of – and this is where the pickup artist guys got in trouble. They start looking at all human emotion and interaction as some sort of weird flow chart that you can solve. Yeah. And you can't because a lot of human relating has to do with just – you'll explain this than me, but has to do with just letting go of a lot of that stuff. And you can't really get it be intimate with somebody in a healthy way if you're always like, okay, so she said this and then I do that. You're just constantly coding and scripting. Right. It just doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, people pick that. It's like you create the uncanny valley in real life. Yeah, and it becomes like this creepy facade. And all of your – I will go so far as to say all of your relationships are doomed to failure if you think you can solve everyone. So that's not what we're trying to do at AOC.

We're trying to give people skill sets that they can use to grow and use to improve their relationships. But it's never going to be a replacement for getting yourself together in a healthy way. It's never going to be a replacement for, well, I never have to be vulnerable if I know how everyone else's buttons work. No, no, no. The strength comes from realizing what your shortcomings are and then being comfortable enough to wear them on your sleeve with people that you trust. Yeah, no, I love that.

And that's tough. It's really hard. That's the work. Yeah, that's really hard. That's the work. Yeah, that's the work. That's the work. Exactly. What's the conversation you're itching to have that nobody's asked you about? Really good question.

I don't know. Let me think about this. I don't really know. I get asked a lot of stuff. I'm trying to think. I mean, there's always more conversation I'm itching to have. What are you thinking about these days? What are you questioning that you haven't really had much of a public conversation about? You know what? FOMO. Are you familiar with FOMO? Yeah, sure. Fear of missing out.

Yes. That's something that lately I've – I never really experienced that. Sorry, that's complete BS. I experienced that a lot when I was younger. But now, recently, I haven't very much experienced that until very recently. A lot of my friends – this is the dumbest thing ever, but it's what triggered it. A lot of my friends invested in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and Ethereum. And some of my friends went from like, what should I do with my life to I bought a yacht in New Zealand. Do you want to come and hang out? And I'm like, what?

In April, you were broke. Now you have a yacht? What happened? And what happened was they bought 10 grand worth of Ethereum at $10 and now it's $400 or something. And they cashed out a lot of it. And I thought like, oh, my gosh. So I started getting really obsessed with this stuff. And I realized like this is such an unhealthy thing thing to have this FOMO and like this,

oh, I should have done that. I should have listened. And going back to the conversations you had in your head in April, I went, I went out to dinner with my friend in April at a sushi place and he kept checking his phone and I was like, am I boring you? You know? And he goes, no, sorry. I'm just, I'm checking Coinbase, this app that has Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin on it. I'm checking this like 300 times a day. I'm sorry. It's an obsession. I go, why? And he tells me, look, man, I bought in at 10 and it's at 25. And I thought like, it's going to go back down to nine or zero. And then I kept eating my sushi. And now I'm like, had I just invested then when he said to do it, I would have had this much. And I kept doing that and doing that and doing that. And I realized you can literally do that with every area of your life all day to – and the only thing that it will do is make you freaking miserable.

And yet I know so many people that do it. And whenever I've asked other people about what they do in this area and that area, nobody really seems to have good advice other than you have to stop thinking about it. And I'm like, well, yeah, okay. Easier said than done though. There's people that wish they bought Tesla stock at $8. There's people that knew to invest in Yahoo in the nineties, you know, things like that. I mean, especially because the information about everything that you could be doing, you know, other than what you're doing in this moment is pushed to you so easily now. And you like, you couple that with an addictive technology and a device that, you know,

sort of like sits against your body 24 seven. And, you know, the level of self-regulation that you need to resist just the constant stream of things that you might be missing is pretty high. You can open your phone. I can open my phone and go to the home screen, and this badge right here that says $193 is the current price of Ethereum. I mean, that's not healthy.

I've got to delete that. But whenever I go to do it, I'm like, oh, maybe I can just change it to something else, or maybe I can hide it. That's funny. And I have no willpower either, so I've just taken apps off of my devices. Bravo. Because I know that if it's there, I can't resist it. I'm going to be there. Let's come full circle. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer't know what my answer would have been before age 20, but it certainly has changed since, since my twenties. For me now, living a good life is, I've been obsessed with legacy for a while and like, what's going to be left over

when I'm gone? And Neil Strauss told me that it's a waste of time to think about that because your legacy is not going to last more than 50 years after you're dead. But I don't like that. I feel like that's an uncomfortable thought too, that isn really necessary or it doesn't serve me that well. So I've been working a lot on the craft of good interviewing. What can I offer? What can I bring to people? How can I build this and offer the most value, have the best guests on Art of Charm, including yourself, and get the best out of them and do a really good job? Because really, at the end of the day, the only thing that I really care about, aside from my family and my wife and stuff like that, and the people in my life,

the only thing I really care about is the show, because it's the thing that I really enjoy doing the most. So if I get to do that and other people get to enjoy that, that for me is kind of enough. Obviously, I would like to do it while I have nice things, but that is so far down the ladder. But in my 20s, it was all I thought about. I got to get a nice place and a good car and I got to have cool clothes. Now, I could probably walk around wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt with a hole in the armpit as long as I had my recording studio and was able to have these really interesting conversations. And when you start to strip all that stuff out

and you go, well, okay, I get the books for free from the guests usually and the microphone and everything that I need, you know, I already have. And I could probably do this in a car and it doesn't have to be a nice car, just has to have good acoustics. And that kind of thing is,

it's really liberating because you start to realize that you just need far less than you think you do to be happy, or at least I do so far. When I have kids, maybe that all goes out the window and now you need like tablets for everybody. Well, also the way you answer that question is very likely, it just, it all evolves over time. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. This is really fun.

Awesome. And as we wrap up, I want to give a final shout out to our awesome sponsors and supporters. Zip Recruiter, RX Bar Kids, Movement Watches, Audible. Hey, thanks so much for listening. Be sure to click on the subscribe button in whatever listening app you use so you'll never miss an episode. You can also help us continue to grow and bring more people into the conversation by visiting our amazing sponsors who help make what we do possible. Most important, if something has really resonated, don't just spin it around in your head, share it with others,

turn it into a conversation. When ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. We'll be right back. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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