The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World by David Sax

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World by David Sax In The Future Is Analog, David Sax points out that the onset of the pandemic instantly gave us the digital universe we’d spent so long anticipating. Instant communication, online shopping, virtual everything. It didn’t take long to realize how awful it was to live in this promised future. We craved real experiences, relationships, and spaces and got back to real life as quickly and often as we could. In chapters exploring work, school, religion, and more, this book asks pointed questions: Is our future inevitably digital? Can we reject the downsides of digital technology without rejecting change? Can we innovate not for the sake of productivity but for the good of our social and cultural lives? Can we build a future that serves us as humans, first and foremost? This is a manifesto for a different kind of change. We can spend our creativity and money on building new gadgets—or we can spend them on new ways to be together and experience the world, to bake bread, and climb mountains. All we need is the clarity to choose which future we want.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, people. The Big Ten on the podcasting. I don't know what. Welcome to the big show, people. The Big Ten.

The Big Ten on the podcasting. I don't know what improv here on the ramble, but it's not working. The Big Ten on the podcasting iTunes, Apple site, whatever the... Anyway, guys, welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. We had an amazing, brilliant business author on the show. He's going to be talking to us about an extraordinary amount of stuff. And we're going to learn so much. Just like it says in the beginning, you're going to be sexier better looking intelligent and all those things and certainly for most of you especially for people like me

we need as much as we possibly can to be sexy as we there you guys go to youtube.com for this christmas go to goodreads.com for this christ says, Chris Voss, see the big 130,000 group on LinkedIn, our big LinkedIn newsletter. We always like to promote that. That's always fun to look at. Any place else you want to find us on the interwebs, we're actually trying that TikTok thing, trying to be cool like the kids. Anyway, guys, we have David Sachs on the show with us today.

He's the author of an amazing new book, and he's written a lot of books. He's pretty prolific at it. We'll have to talk to him about those. new book is out november 15th 2022 the future is analog how to create a more human world we're going to be talking to him and what are these humans he speaks of and get to know more about what he has put into his amazing study david sacks is a journalist writer and keynote speaker specializing in business and culture. His latest book, The Revenge of Analog, that came before this one, looks at the resurgence of analog, good ideas, and stuff going on during a time when we assume

digital would conquer all. And he is on the show with us today. Welcome to the show. David, how are you? I'm great, Chris. Every time I come on the show and I hear. Welcome to the show. David, how are you? I'm great, Chris. Every time I come on this show and I hear that intro, I am just blown away. Blown away by the Sunday, Sunday, Sunday-ness of it all. Every other podcast is just like, hey, you know, I love how you've gone with this. It's great. It's so unexpected, and it just wakes you up. It does.

It does. It does a beautiful thing. We call it the KISS intro. If you're a KISS fan, you recognize the intro. You wanted the best. You got the best. That's where we ripped it off from, so homage to them. But, yeah, it creates a pace.

You know, I believe in doing a show and not a podcast. And if it's not a show, well, then I'm going to OnlyFans it and I'm going to get up and show people. So you better tune in, subscribe and for the show, your family, friends, relatives. Welcome to the show, David. And I referenced, cause I pulled your Amazon, your Amazon thing, the revenge of analog, but we actually had you on the show for your other prior book, the soul of an entrepreneur as well. And you were on the big show for that. Yeah. About a year or two ago, I recall. Yeah, that book came out in April 2020. So, still birthed into the pandemic, as I like to say. There you go. So, did you dodge us for Revenge of Analog, or did that come out before that?

Revenge of Analog came out in 2016. So, don't believe everything you read on the internet. All right. I was just making sure, man, because my feelings would be hurt if you skipped this on one of your books how many books you written sir this is my fit there you go there you go and what's it.com where do you want people to find you and stalk you on the interwebs oh gosh you know you can find me on linkedin i guess under my name i don't even know how that works. I will not post stock photos of people looking at reports or whatever one does on LinkedIn. And then I guess on Twitter at

SaksDavid, S-A-X-D-A-V-I-D. Or you can just email me, SaksDavid at gmail.com. And share your thoughts, hopes, dreams. There you go. Can I send you recipes and I don't know, what's going on with my horoscope? Is that cool too? Recipes, yes.

Horoscopes. You kind of went into a thing. Send me your thoughts and dreams. It's like hopes. Hopes and dreams. Well, I mean, those are thoughts, wouldn't they be? David, this is the premise for your book. I'm just giving you ideas.

I'm feeding you ideas. So anyway, guys, make sure you look him up on the internet. Make sure you spell his last name Saks right. S-A-X because I didn't. look him up on the internet. Make sure you spell his last name Sacks right. S-A-X, because I didn't. I ended up on OnlyFans. So, David, give us what motivated you to write this book, my friend? This book came out of the experience I had when I was launching my last book, The Soul of an Entrepreneur, the one we talked about in April of 2020, which, as you may recall from that time, there were things going on in the world. And as many requests as I was getting to do interviews about that book about entrepreneurship, we should sort of reclaim it. I was getting a lot more requests to speak and do interviews with media all over the world about

this, the previous one, The Revenge of Anil. And that book looked at why we had seen the resurgence of non-digital goods and ideas. You you know why were vinyl records and bookstores and film cameras growing again when everybody assumed that these things were dead and gone that digital technology and turn them on and and these journalists were asking me you know well now that we're living in the digital age now that everybody says this is the new normal and we're never going back to offices schools theaters grocery stores what does this mean for the future of analog and i just kind of reacted against that assumption. What do you mean this is the new normal?

Who said that? Someone on LinkedIn wrote an article about that. Someone said that on, you know, It was on Twitter. It was on Twitter, right. You know, the head of Zoom said that this is the new normal. No, like I'm not buying that. And actually the experience that I'm going to says the opposite,

that what I'm seeing is people are realizing the value of the non-digital, what we call analog, spaces and places and relationships in our life. And this is sort of a learning moment that we're having that we come out of and reckon with for the future. So this book is kind of, it's an essay. It's an argument in many ways. It's saying, it's not a prediction that, oh yes, I believe the future is analog. It's like the future is analog,

man. This, it is, or we're doomed. And, and it's kind of a, a call to arms in a lot of ways. What were you saying?

I was looking at my phone, checking my DMs. No. So let me just see right into those and tell you where it can stick those DMs. Chris, I think I have David sex on the, from the only fans on the DMs.

He slid in there. So go ahead. So what do you feel? You feel that we've gone so far digital, it's time to come back and realize our humanity and we're missing? You say that very skeptically. I'm very skeptical on this. I'm not putting any bets on humanity anymore.

That is, yeah, that's a separate thing. I'm Charlton Heston on the beach going, you fucking animal, at this point. Well, I'm Charlton Heston on the top of Mount Sinai, and you've just shown up. I showed up at the Ten Commandments, and you're worshiping a golden cat. All right, well, good. Moses! There's hope. hope is the human way so i i think it's it's look look look to your own experience during the sort of height of the pandemic when no one left their house and everything you did work your children's school, shopping for groceries, getting some sort of entertainment or seeing a show, going to church or synagogue, getting exercise, interacting with sort of a community.

All of that was done through your laptop or your phone or your tablet or your TV. That was sort of this end game of the digital future that we've been promised, that you could sit at home in your comfortable sweatpants, in your big old easy chair, and you would never even have to get up. That you could tap, tap, tap, and the world would be brought to you. And wasn't this kind of the goal? I mean, growing up the past 43 years, this was what the future was supposed to be. Gadgets, robots, drones, you know, everything anywhere. And all of a sudden we had it, but that's all we had. And for most people that sucked. Like it was interesting for a week or a few weeks or whatever, but like, my God, like we, we craved the things that previously we took for granted. People were, I had people who were like, all I want is a boring meeting in the office.

Like I'm dying rather than eight hours of Zoom a day. All I want is for my kids to just like go to a classroom and sit with their friends and not even learn, like just play around for an hour, right? All I want is to have a conversation face-to-face with a friend and not another one on a FaceTime call or a phone call or whatever. It showed us that there is a limit. And basically the way you have to think about that period of time, whether it was months or even years, depending where you lived, if you're in China, still happening, you're still

locked inside your house, depending on what city you're in. What it was, it was an experiment, right? It was a test drive of the promised digital utopian future taken to its extreme, right? And what did we learn from that test drive? That's what I'm asking. Do you want us to learn something? No. These creatures? No, it's a valid point.

Yeah, I found myself just even more so overcome with wanting to be around other people. I missed all my having coffee with my friends, having a beer with my friends. I missed going to big, huge events that we do. We've got CES coming up here soon. And just kind of the freedom to be able to go do whatever you wanted. But yeah, the human interaction, just being able to go, you know, out to dinner with people, out to eat, just the commingling of just being humans. I mean, that's kind of what we, we're tribal, so we kind of, you know, we like community and things. And yeah, maybe it was a good, in some ways, it was a good way to push us too far into what we thought would be

a great world. And we find out it wasn't. Yeah. I mean, that, that's, that's the essence of it, right?

It is, it was this, this, you know, what's it's in Dante's Inferno. You had this thing, I think it was called a contra contra Paso. And it's like the punishment is the thing you love to death right so the most the

best reference most people will get to it is like there's the episode of the simpsons where homer goes to hell the devil's like so you like donuts eh well you can have all the donuts you want it's just like feeds homer i think he keeps eating of course but that that's that's it it's it's the it's the uh full sort of overexposure to this thing that we thought we wanted we thought we loved screens well here you go endless screen time and even my kids who love their saturday morning cartoons and their time with the phone and playing video games and whatever like they were going batshit crazy they were going bananas they were jumping off the walls they hated it they wanted to go back to school right

like when a kid's like i just want to go to school yeah that's something else you know something's up yeah you know contrapasso let's you've you've i might have misquoted it but i'm dante's okay so but yeah that's really interesting and it's basically where you you get overexposed you suffer the opposite which is kind of interesting. You know, what you described of wanting something and then being immersed in it to a point of hell, that sounds like most guys I know get married. Oh!

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ah, sutured. Anyway, no, we kind of enter this world, you know, it's kind of funny things have flipped on their head. Like, people are surprised when I call them. Like I call my close friends and still have phone conversations with them. And, you know, people are like horrified too if you call them sometimes. They're like, oh my God, what's happening?

And, but you know, most of my friends, we call each other. And we actually called each other more and got closer more over COVID. The other thing is too is usually when I market or when I talk to people or interact with them on social media, I usually write something like, hey, this is a hand-generated note, or this is something I'm personally sending you. Let them know that, hey, I'm not just, this isn't some sort of bot or spam or some sort of machine that's doing this. No, I actually sent this message and I'm genuinely interested. And then people are even more surprised when I reply with a personal thing, go, Oh, that's, that's really cool. I'm really

interested in what you're doing. And I looked over what you're, what you're doing and, and yeah. And it's, I've almost found that it's become by being able to do that, it's almost become so unique and it's appreciated. Like it used to be when I grew up in sales, if you called, you know, if you called the sales off or the guy you were trying to sell to, you know, he had the, the executive secretaries that were there to block you and, you know, you'd have to overcome them. And, you know, he got like 50 calls a day. Now no one calls. So when you call him, he's like, oh wow, someone to talk to. You can kind of excel with it. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when it gets to that question in the future work, which is the big idea, like, yeah, there's obviously going drink or lunch with someone, going to a conference and

meeting people, not on a level of like, hey, I want to tell you a thing, but like building a relationship with them as a human being to human being, maybe a friendship, maybe, you know, a mentorship or something like that is still the foundation of how we interact with the world, how we build trust. And those trusting relationships ultimately lead to, you know, opportunities. There are countless things that I think about, even for the way I've been promoting and marketing this own book. I went to New York for two days and I, you know, pressed the flesh and met with editors and talked to people and stuff came out of that because I showed up.

I was there. It wasn't just an email I was sending with an idea or asking for something. I put in the work and I deepened that relationship with that person on a one-on-one level. I just roll and say, here's what I want to do. We sat, we had a drink, we had lunch, we talked about our families, our lives, you know, whatever. Right? And we related it as human beings not as bots and there's something about the inner interpersonal play of human beings being around each other there's probably some chemical stuff that goes on too around other human beings it's healthier for us maybe i don't know i mean we have evolved over the course of 300000 years as homo sapiens and a couple hundred thousand more before that is slightly dumber apes. Mostly physical, right? Yeah. I don't know about the mental part.

Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. And really, like mentally and physically, we haven't evolved that much in the past tens of thousands of years so our bodies our minds our social structure is designed around groups and interpersonal meeting and face-to-face and being physical it's not designed to to go on linkedin and interact with humans through this flat piece of glass and this piece of software that you know moves things around based on algorithm and different settings. I mean, it's just- Yeah. Everybody knows that.

You're supposed to do that on Facebook. Yeah. Facebook. Everyone loves Facebook. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second.

I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you listening to the show and be sure to check

out chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. No, you know, the thing I love about, the thing I loved and realized that I missed, maybe this is the true human experience, is when you do all these Zoom calls all day long and accompany things, you're sitting there and you're going, I'm pretty sure that person's a fucking idiot that's in the thing.

I think I'm, did I just steal a bit from car from carlin but the great thing is when you go meet them in person you can go that person is a fucking idiot yeah you get a very clear sense right away there's there's a real joy in there's a real the accomplishment of that you're like i thought they were an idiot but i couldn't tell over the screen but now that i meet them in person i have been been confirmed. They are a fucking idiot. Within three seconds of speaking to them. That's what most authors that come on the show think of me when they get here. But, yeah, what was the

sorry, George, for ripping you off George Carlin's bit. They're full of shit. Remember that bit? You meet them and the more you spend time with them, the more you go, Aha! They're full of shit. Kind of're full of shit. Kind of ripping off of George.

He's going to haunt me in my dreams. That's a good haunting. Yeah, it's a good haunting usually, except when he does the OnlyFans thing. I don't know what that means. It's a dark thing. I just go on some dark OnlyFans places with the jokes here today. The callback is just killing me.

So, David, what else did you realize in the book or what else can you tease out that, you know, we should really start thinking about our lives and digital and analog and so? Well, you know, I think one of the things is looking at things in a way that's less binary and sort of beyond that, right? You know, for work, like everyone's like, what's the future of work? You know, is it three days in the office or two days in the office? You know, how much office space? It's like, you're asking the wrong question. Like, that's what we actually have to ask is like, what, what is the most valuable thing about work? And what do we mean by productivity? Cause we're kind of looking at it as like, well, how many hours do we get people to like sit in a desk? It's like, it doesn't matter if you do it, if you're doing

that, it doesn't matter if they're sitting at home or sitting in an office you failed already how can we actually say what is it the humans get out of work and what do we need out of them right is it just the hours or is it actually ideas creativity thoughts especially if you're in a knowledge-based field like i don't know accounting or law or you know marketing right it doesn't really matter how many hours someone work people are always like oh uh will you do consulting for us i'm like sure it's like well how many hours i'm like hours what are you talking about they're like well you know we have to pay by the hour like i'm gonna come up with a number and then i'm gonna divide it by some hours but like it's still gonna be then i could just end with so how do we move past this kind of static binary model of what we think is important?

Or measurement. Yeah, exactly. Because we're so obsessed with quantification. And, you know, Americans especially, you know, and education, it's like testing, testing, testing, testing. America has one of the worst ranked education systems in the world, and yet it keeps doubling down on standardized testing, even though everything shows that's kind of the worst thing to do. What about teaching people how

to be creative? You know, in Finland, what they do for their education system, which is constantly ranked, constantly ranked as one of the best in the world, it's like, it's more like kindergarten, even as you go through. It's about open ideas and inquiry and building relationships with trust. But these things aren't as easy fixes. It's not like saying, oh, well, here's a piece of software. Here's every kid gets a tablet or, you know, the future of our company is all AI. We're going all in on that or crypto. Right. And so it's moving beyond these simplistic solutions to really think more deeply about what it means to be human and what actually gives us value and especially in a world where computers are going to grow more powerful with artificial intelligence they'll be able to do more tasks and things like what are the things they actually want people to do where is the value of people being there showing up and doing what they do in that

sort of human way and maybe especially with like ai because I see a lot of us disappearing with AI and in the humanity of us. And it almost puts a premium on us. I mean, there was recently this, I've seen the artwork coming out of AI and it's extraordinarily beautiful. And recently someone took an AI painting and put it into an art contest and it won.

And then they disclosed that it was a it was an ai done thing and people were pissed because you know there was sans the humanity but as ai gets more powerful and does more of these things and kind of you know i i sat there and thought jesus what if ai just takes over the art world and puts all the humans out of business? And, you know, more and more, like you say, we need to address and value our humanity and what that really means and the contribution that's there, because maybe we're sidelined a little bit until Skynet arrives. Well, that's it, yeah. I mean, that whole enslaved by robots thing is one thing.

But, like, let's talk about that, right? Because I got asked, I've been asked on podcasts and interviews, like, what do you think about GP2 or whatever the hell it is? The writing AI. Aren't you worried about your job? And I'm like, what are you talking about? You could feed everything I've ever written into a computer and it's going to spit out something that sounds like me, but it's not going to be my thoughts.

It's not going to have new ideas or interesting ideas that I'm going to come up with in the same way that I could put every Chris Voss show into some program and it'll just like spit out some deep fake version of this interview. I just be like one word. Yeah. And maybe the interview would sound like the interview. Hell, maybe it'd be better, but it's a pretty low bar to go above. But, but it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be you.

It wouldn't be the thing that makes this show this show it's just it's just copying what was previously there and simulating this thing like that's it's not it's not the magic so even these this like great ai art that's coming out like technically interesting and kind of cool but like it's not an expression of anything it's just it's not it's not is the computer is not expressing its ideas or thoughts it's taking something that someone fed in a unicorn riding a cat and blah blah blah or whatever on as done by rembrandt and it's like here you go. And it's not someone actually expressing an idea of what great art is. Like Marcel Duchamp, you know,

a hundred years ago or more, put a fricking urinal on the wall in Paris. And that was like the most amazing thing. No computer is going to be able to do that, right? No computer is going to come up with a statement that makes you question your place in the world, which is what great art does. Is there going to be a lot of, like, bad hotel art?

Like, the art you get in, like, a, you know, Marriott by Bon Jovi, you know, in Wisconsin. Or with the Marriott sponsor. You know what I mean? Like, that, like, generic art that you're like, Oh, I've seen that. Oh,

the Brooklyn bridge. Great. Oh, a bunch of leaves. Like that's, that's it. It's the same thing with music. I know someone who had an AI music company.

We spoke at a conference in Korea and he's like, he's like, I'm not putting musicians out of business, but you know, it's like bad music for the intros of podcasts that people need cheaper for some sort of like b-roll on a video because they can't get the rights to something but it's not going to put you know taylor swift out of business or the local band and so it's again it's like what are the things that we do best as humans is we do the things that are surprising

and interesting we we relate to the human experiences. Only humans can. And computers can't. Until AI figures out we have that attitude and fixes this. Lobotomize. Lobotomize. I mean, what's the old thing about AI? The worry is that they're like, well, with human beings they always get sick. So one thing we could do is we could come up with a cure or we could just kill all the human beings and they'll never get sick. So one thing we could do is we could, you know, come up with a cure, or we could just kill all the human beings and they'll never get sick. Ah, problem solved. You know, it's an interesting, dicey sort of situation. But I like your attitude towards the future and

being more analog. To me, the human experience is everything. But sometimes I wonder if, you know, my problem is I grew up in the generation that appreciated that you know these these kids nowadays these kids on my lawn you know nowadays they didn't grow up outside of you know looking at these screens and having this be their whole life and that is that is true but that is also a big misunderstanding a generational misunderstanding right in the in the previous book that i wrote the revenge of analog you know I looked at the return of vinyl records and the boom of them over the past 14 years. I looked at the growth of independent bookstores and why books have been resilient paper books, despite the, you know, possibilities of eBooks and digital books and all the sort of

money and distribution behind them. I looked at things like paper and Moleskine notebooks. I looked at film photography, Fujifilm, Polaroid, the return of like film cameras, even Walkmans and these things. And you know who's driving all those trends, Chris? It's not baby boomers. It's not people who grew up with these technologies. The baby boomers love Zoom. Nobody loves Zoom more than baby boomers.

It's kids. It's people who are in their early 30s and 20s and teens. My kids love the Fujifilm Instax camera. They blow through those pictures like money is no object. They think it's the coolest thing. Why? Because they're judging it on its merit. They're not judging it out of any sense of nostalgia.

You know, it wasn't parents who were like you're going back to school and the kids are like no i want to stay at home and look at the ipad the kids were more than happy to go back because they experienced the limits of that and they're like this sucks you know they had to live with their parents 24 7 instead of going to school so exactly yeah they didn't get to play that you know i remember one day my daughter was crying because she didn't want to go back to school on the off bat. And I'm like, oh, well, you know, it is school, honey. And our mothers would kick us out of the house and put a sign on us, pedophiles pick them up. You know, I mean, don't come back till dinner and until you hear mom screaming. And then suddenly you had to return to home once you heard her screaming. You'd try to ignore her for the first half an hour.

But, you know, that's how we were. The golden era of child abuse. The golden era of child abuse. It was great. Benevolent child abuse. It built, it built a sense. But no, you give me hope that the young generation

that, that, that got through, you know, appreciate these things, but maybe the, is it, is it maybe that they appreciate them

because of that humanity, that tactile humanity? They're humans. This is the thing we all forget. We see it. Gen Xs, Gen Zs are humans? All the gens,

except for the one that comes after the robots I've killed and taken. That's alpha. Yeah, exactly. You know, this is the thing we forget, right? We see a kid playing Minecraft or whatever on their phone and we're like, well, this is all this child wants, so let's just give them everything digitally. But they're human.

They have limbs and bodies and they desire connection as much as anyone else. They might relate to the world. I mean, you probably watched a ton of TV. I watched a ton of TV. I don't watch it as much anymore because I realized it wasn't good for me watching that much TV and it didn't make my life better. It made it poorer. And I still have human needs. I still need to go outside and breathe fresh air and feel better when I go for a walk and when I sit inside on my ass and look at the screen all day. Yeah. It's funny funny i grew up in the area where your parents would scream if you sat three feet in front of the tv like if you went

off the couch three feet towards the tv like you're gonna go blind sitting that close to the tv yeah and now what's mark zuckerberg trying to sell us he's literally trying to sell us a tv strapped to our eyes yeah but you know the funny thing is they probably were right considering the radiation and the bestest and god knows what else was in those things you know the funny thing is they probably were right considering the radiation and the bestest and god knows what else was in those things you know all the dials had that radioactive stuff on them that they that you know killed everybody you know you're like hey why does that glow you're like why does the ceiling sparkle grandma can't be a bad thing i'm sure it's just fine but welcome to our worlds so you know when i, you know, when I wasn't chewing on lead paint chips like gum,

I was looking at her ceiling and poking at it going, I wonder if I can read this, and there was that. But I guess we all have our poisons. What other sort of things do you find? It lays out the title and saying how to create a more human world. What are some of your suggestions or your demands, my sir? I think there's two things, right? One is, you know, look at your own experience during those weeks and months and even years when digital was all you had during the pandemic and treat it as an experiment, right? Reflect back on it and say, all right, what were the parts that worked for me?

Maybe I really hated going into the office anduting and working remotely. The best thing that's ever happened to me. Maybe I really don't need to go to a grocery store and actually really love clicking on Fresh Direct or Amazon or whatever the hell it is and getting my pears and chicken, whatever it is sent to my house right and what are the parts that weren't what are the parts that like i couldn't force you to do now if i asked you to do them through a screen like zoom cocktail party like can i get you to attend a zoom cocktail party are you that much of a freaking masochist no of course not it's horrible right what do you have against zoom parties show me the doll where zoom parties hurt you it's just the biggest you know what it is we're doing a zoom cocktail the first time i go i show we're doing a zoom cocktail the first time i go i show up i have a drink in my hand no one else has a drink i'm like oh fuck this is this is a conference call i've been invited to a social conference call kill me kill me now and then you have to sit there for like an hour and a half when people are like anyway i had that problem

without pants that was a given i mean this, that is one of the benefits of it. I think Jeffrey Toobin did that as well. Do that experiment, right? And be honest with yourself. And whether you or the company that... I think you rubbed people. Don't. You've been canceled.

You just canceled yourself. I just gave up on myself. He rubbed them wrong. Himself, yeah. Do that experiment and be honest with yourself. been canceled you just canceled yourself okay he wrote the wrong himself yeah you know do that experiment and be honest with yourself and whether it's you or whether it's the company you own or work for the organization we're like did that make us better did it make us more productive did it make us happier and if not then why the hell do you think that that's some version of the future so what are the things that you can do to make that? And then the other thing is like, set limits, step outside. My God, like don't force yourself to spend time away from these screens. You know, the best thing I did, I don't know, five, six years ago when I was working on

the book, as I installed a piece of software on my browser that limits the amount of time I can stay on any website. So I put in Facebook so i put in facebook and i put in twitter and i put an instagram which was the social media i had linkedin there's there's no work and only fans ask me for a friend i'm sure it does yeah and whatever other filth you're you found on it and after only one 15 minutes a day it kicks me off so i could be like in the middle of like conversations on Twitter or interactions or whatever, and then it's just like, you're done. You're done for 24 hours.

And then you're like, oh yeah, this was terrible. This was time not well spent. What else can I do? I don't have it for LinkedIn because LinkedIn is so beautifully boring. It's like going to a conference at a Marriott and you're like, all right, I'm done here. Please let it stay that way. I love that it's so boring. Yeah. It's great. I love, I love that.

It's so boring. I love that's why LinkedIn perfect. It's great. Yeah. I've gone over there now that Twitter is going down the toilet and Facebook is pretty much in the toilet. My friend of mine got suspended on Twitter for wishing someone happy birthday. Their bots did that like seriously.

And I got suspended for doing a joke that i was going to dress up as jeffrey dahmer for halloween and and got suspended for two days and 30 days for going live they're they're they're so freaking broken out of control now they're firing so many people the bots will get worse but so yeah i've gone back to linkedin here's the world's smallest fiddle for twitter okay yeah like and i use it and if it went away tomorrow i'd be like i guess or whatever who cares all my journals will be friends will be unhappy it's it's a great place for breaking news and i mean you you could find out stuff what's going on but that's about it and i don't know i'm sure elon will muck it up even worse but you know linkedin if linkedin

can just every every one of these freaking social media sites has become a dating app it's just everyone has become validation seeking thirst traps you know send me money dating out they really that's all they are if you really look at like instagram at its core it's just the dating and now they're gonna they're now they're copying only fans where you're gonna be able to pay for access to stuff which is not a good i keep referencing this only fans and i know it's a great callback joke want to know what it is but really don't the more you keep exactly yeah don't google it those people don't need any more money but it does make for a good callback joke but no it's it's a it's a world that you know even even then i i miss hanging

out with people and you know, you're full of shit. You are the idiot I thought you were across Zoom. But no, I miss the human spirit of it. When I first went to CS in 2022, I guess it would have been this year, even though, you know, everyone was worried about COVID and, you know, we were all wearing masks and it was kind of a risk they took with CS. It was so nice to be among people and just hang out and just, just be the feel of the crowd. Like sometimes there's a feel of the crowd, you know, who was it that I was talking to, or I saw on TV and talk recently, oh, it was Quentin Tarantino. We're trying to get him on the show for his new book. And he did an interview and he said, you know, I was sent over one of those movies that I thought I might be interested in and I didn't like it. It sucked. And, but I

was, I set up a screening room with my friends at a theater and I bought like 12 of my friends in and he goes, I had the best time, even though the movie sucked, because I was sitting with these 12 other people. And you could hear them cough. You could hear, you can interact. And just being in that group, the feel of it, being among other people. You don't go to concerts. It's like this giant sort of thing

where there's an energy to it, where we come together as a people, as a group. And it becomes bigger than than your experience or or or you know it just makes it enriches it in a way that that's hard to do when you're alone impossible today no i thought that was kind of interesting because i i love going to theaters and i started going to theaters like i never went to theaters hardly anymore there's not a lot of movies that really engaged me. But I remember when I first went back to a theater was to see the remake of The Godfather or the reissue of it where it was improved.

And it was so nice to see that movie in the theater and just kind of be around some people and just have that experience and stuff. And I think the experience is some of it too. Is that part of it the experience going someplace and doing something right absolutely you know it's it's think about every time you ordered in a meal or some meal delivery kit or something first going to a restaurant like the first time you dined in a restaurant once restrictions were lifted or once waves had passed or whatever it It's this magical thing. I remember the first concert I went to, you know, last year was incredible.

A year ago, I went to my friend's stand-up comedy night. She'd organized a stand-up comedy night here in Toronto. And I laughed harder, even at like the mediocre comedians, and they're not great jokes, than I did watching Ali Wong on Netflix, who's hilarious, or an old Carlin special or, you know, Dangerfields, Dangerfield on Carson appearances. Oh my God. Right? Yeah.

My old Dr. Big Robots. And because I was there, it wasn't just the jokes that she was making or the other comedians. It was like other people were laughing with me. And that was this magical thing that goes back to like cavemen sitting around a fire telling a story about a mastodon. It's who we are. And the fact that we try to deny that and move away from it and make it more efficient is going against the very nature of our existence and our identity and what gives us meaning

in this world. So why are we fighting that? Why don't we embrace that and make that the center of our core and then use technology to do other things to actually enhance our analog selves, our physical selves, rather than kind of do away with as much of it as we can. There you go. Maybe LinkedIn should have smell-o-vision then or something. This smells like a Marriott ballroom. Smells like, smells like, I can smell Chris.

He's wearing the polo cologne. I don't know. I'm making up something. He's wearing, he's wearing that cologne and he clearly hasn't bathed for three days. Maybe smell-o-vision is a good idea for Zoom calling.

After all, I've seen it over COVID. But no, I love the concept and idea of what you're talking about. We need to embrace our humanity better and embrace spending time with each other. You know, right now, you know, I'm single.

I've been single all my life. And I came from the dating world where, you know, I can cold approach. I can get a phone number out of a girl. And no one does it anymore. And women are like, women online are like, hey, how come no one approaches this anymore in public? And part of it was Me Too and a whole other bunch of stuff.

But these kids nowadays, they're trying to date, they're trying to do their digital thing. We're seeing this rise of incels and some of these incels are acting out violently. It's kind of a problem, according to the FBI, that and white nationalism. And so I see these people struggling with dating. My nephew is struggling with dating. And I'm so, you know, I see these people struggling with, you know, dating. My nephew is struggling with dating and I'm like, dude, just go cold approach. And I've

been giving him coaching on like how just to go meet a girl in public, ask for her name. You'll see, you see a girl at the store, you know, and she, you know, she likes, she'd give her some eye, you know, flirt a little bit and then go ask for her number, man. And, and it's, it's almost like we need to get back to this human thing. You hear people going on dates. I've had dates where I've gone and the person's sitting there going, so what do you do, Chris? And they're looking at their phone the whole time. And you're just like, hey, over here, human beings, can we get human? So I think there's a lot of aspects of what you've talked about in your book that we need to get back to and

appreciate. And maybe our relationships would be better with each other if we did that. Of course. Yeah. One of the things I talked about in the book is, you know, the power of conversation face to face, right? And one of the biggest problems in the world right now is this rise globally of isolation and loneliness, especially among men. It's a major health problem. The CDC, the World Health Organization has said it's actually an indicator of leading causes of death

from all sorts of things, heart attack, cancer, diabetes, suicide, overdose, stroke, you name it. They can trace a lot of that back if someone is isolated or lonely, that they're at a much higher risk of that than the rest of the population. And a lot of this is created by the technology that we've used to isolate ourselves even if we're sitting in a restaurant we're isolating ourselves you go to a bar you're by yourself you'll just look at your phone and read the news or read social media

the whole time rather than take the effort to talk to someone. And it's killing people. And one of the most interesting treatments for this isn't, you know, antidepressants or drugs or a specific type of therapy. It's what they pioneered in the United Kingdom. Well, they pioneered a lot of drinking in the United Kingdom, I assure you that. But it's called social prescribing. And basically, if someone goes to a doctor and they're having health problems, and the doctor notices that there's someone that's really shy, and they ask them, you know, are you someone who's lonely? Do you have people to talk to? And they say, no, they prescribe them

through social workers, social time. So they'll put them in touch with a group that might have their interest. Maybe you're into gardening. They'll say, okay, well, we have a gardening club that meets every Thursday. Can you go to that? We will send somebody to your house to walk you there, drive you there. And they'll just do gardening with other people. And of course, being outside their house, being away from their screen, talking to these people, they're going to start opening up and building relationships over time. And that actually has made tremendous differences in people's mental health and physical health and, you know, the greater health care system. And so, yeah, this is what we need more of, right? This is, we've gotten so far away from the basic thing that we do as humans, which is be with each other,

talk to each other, look at each other in the eye. And of course, it has detrimental effects, whether you're talking about politics, whether you're talking about social health physical health things like you mentioned incels and and sort of you know violence and and and a lack of empathy and dehumanizing women for example because your only idea is what you read about them on 8chan or whatever you know good lord yeah i there was a video i seen that's trending over on tiktok and it was a young gentleman who's clearly an incel who the the statements he made to the police about a young woman he was stalking where he he framed them around well in porn videos i see women treated this way and right they respond and like he said it enough times to make you go, you really have a misaligned reality based upon your overuse of porn as to what.

And this is why this girl, number one, doesn't like you and you're stalking her. And, you know, the FBI now has gotten involved and had him taken down because he started threatening and being weird. But also on top of a societal factor. I mean, families, children, kids, marriage. That's the tax base of that. I mean, it sounds horrible. This is a tax base. But really, it is when it's a building block of our economy, of governments, families, you know, and a growing tax base in that. And if you see places like Japan that have a dwindling tax base, it's not good. And so, you know, having families and not having incels and having people, it's not good. And so, you know, having families and

not having incels and having people interact with each other and make kids and, you know, grow the economy and grow a population, you know, for a long time, America was the greatest country in the world because we had a very, we had the largest growing, fastest growing population in the world. You know, now that's, we're kind of going the other way. So anyway, I love the thoughts you put in here and I love the more embracing of humanity. I had a little bit bigger hopes and dreams coming out of COVID that we would be better human beings. And evidently a lot of us were to write back to our nature or our bad habits, but the more kicks in the head and more reminding we can have by folks like you and what you're putting out, the more we can hopefully change the course of where we're

going. No small task, but I'll do my part, Chris. There you go. out, the more we can hopefully change the course of where we're going. No small task, but I'll do my part, Chris. There you go. Well, I'm putting it all on you, buddy. It's you or nothing. You're carrying the burden of humanity. The burden of humanity rides on you. Better buy the book, listeners.

Exactly. Or else, like we began the show, I'm going to be Charlton Heston on the beach going, you freaking idiots looking up at the thing. Thankfully we skipped that part on the election. So there you go. So thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, David. Great to be back. Brilliant discussion. And please come back for your future books and make sure you don't skip me, you know, cause I was suspectful there, but I was wrong. I think you skipped us. I don't know, I'm just doing a video You skipped me even though we hadn't met

I have authors that do that to me and I secretly I secretly hate them No, I appreciate all of them coming to the show But thanks for coming on Give us your dot coms, where you want people to find you On the internet Saxdavid.com, S-A-X-D-A-V-I-D Obviously you know how to spell David

Sax is easy, it's like saxophone without the a-phone. SaksDavid at Twitter. However you find me on LinkedIn. Using my name, I guess. And I don't know, the book is called The Future is Analog, How to Create a More Human World. It is published by Public Affairs, which is a division of Hachette. You can buy it wherever you buy books. But I would prefer if you could buy it at a local independent bookstore

because those are places that are the core of your community and the core of humanity. And they've been growing for the past number of years. So your city or town or region probably has a great bookstore. And if you can't get to one,

if you don't have one, there's a wonderful site called bookshop.org, which is like that other website that sells books, but the money goes to the independent bookstore in your neighborhood. You can even pick which one it goes to.

And so you're going to get it. It's going to arrive just as quickly. It's going to cost just the same amount of money, but you're actually supporting your community versus some warehouse somewhere. Yeah. And that's really important too. You know, we had one author on who talked about Main Street recently, and he talked about how much we started really appreciating the restaurant,

the, you know, the local pizza place and our local neighborhoods more. And we started realizing how important they were over, you know, in knowing Joey at the, at the pizza counter, you know. Joey! Joey! I make the calzone just for you, Chris. Bada bing. So thank you very much for coming to the show, Dave. We really appreciate it. Thanks for reminding us of our humanity, whatever's left of it. And you kids get off my lawn.

Anyway, thanks for being here to everyone on the show. Be sure to order the book, wherever fine books are sold, November 15th, 2022. For those of you watching 10 years from now going, this book's been out for years, Chris. They do that for you. I've read this a hundred times. All the time. They do that for me. I've read this 100 times. All the time. They do that to me on YouTube all the time. They're like, you're an idiot.

This book came out 10 years ago. I'm like, get the date on the video. Oh, the internet. The welcome to the internet. The non-humanity of it. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time.