The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 259. The Elusive Son | Julian Peterson

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

In this episode, Mikhaila Peterson interviews Julian Peterson and Dr. Peterson. Julian introduces himself and we have a conversation about life, family, and our new writing platform, https://essay.app. Sign up to try Essay: https://essay.appDr. Peterson’s writing guide: https://essay.app/guideJulian’s EP ‘Sight’ and other links: https://linktr.ee/julianpeterson—Chapters— 0:00 — Intro1:48 — Julian & Privacy3:49 — Software Testing6:51 — Dvorak Keyboard10:50 — Benefits & Challenges Due to Jordan’s Fame11:49 — Julian’s Academic, Artistic, & Personal Pursuits16:54 — Long-Term Committed Relationships19:12 — Negotiation 22:44 — Trust in Relationships25:57 — Thesis Topics28:32 — Using Essay 35:51 — Applications 37:45 — Writing as an Iterative Process39:01 — Motivation for Writing41:33 — Facilitating Thought & Clarity44:07 — Essay App Design 47:52 — On Keeping a Journal49:47 — Neuroplasticity & Writing51:30 — Remaining Competitive in the Marketplace52:56 — Writing & Trauma56:17 — Writing About What Matters#Writing #Essay #Motivation #Communication #Productivity 

Welcome to episode 259 of the JBP podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson. This is a fun episode. After years spent in hiding, shirking in darkness, he emerges the elusive Julian Peterson, my little brother. I actually interviewed him and dad to have a discussion about Julian's new writing app, SA, which he's been developing and testing with dad for years. And a more casual conversation with Julian about family and music and his aspirations. Dad had really interesting things to say as usual about the connections between writing and trauma, neuroplasticity and effective communication

up and down a chain of command. If you want to check out essay and learn how to write more effectively, check out essay.app or check the links in the description. Julian and dad, it's good to have you guys here. Hey, we're pretty happy to be here in Nashville talking about this. Yeah, pleasure. Julian, the elusive Peterson finally cornered into a podcast. I know, Ed. It's been a while.

It takes a lot of work to corner him. A lot of work. I think, yeah, I don't know if this was cornering, I think. Yeah, the least cornerable Peterson person. Yeah. That might be saying something Who's the most cornerable Peterson? Elliott For now for now for now. Yeah, yeah

Definitely yeah, okay, so today yeah, it's not my dad. It's not your dad. No, no. Yeah. Okay, Ellie. It's not Scarlett. No. It's Elliott from now.

Yeah. For now. So today we're going to talk about essay mainly. And then I'm also going to throw in some questions because I think people are dying to know everything about you. Oh my god, that's a lot of fun. Yeah. What do you think about this, you know?

Okay, yeah, we'll see how that goes. But for now, we're here to talk about essay. So let's start off with what is... The real blush? What is essay? Julian. essay is a writing platform that I've been working on for the last couple of years that basically turns

Dad's writing philosophy that he used to teach to a students and continues to talk about into a web app that's usable for the average writer and makes it easier to follow the philosophy and learn to write. So, where did this come from? You said Dad's philosophy, where did it come from? Yeah, so there was this document that Dad produced for his university students long time ago.

I don't know exactly when it was 15 years ago. And he would give this to first year and second year students to help them structure their essays because most first and second year university students don't really know how to write very well. And they've never been taught by someone who knew how to write. So maybe they were taught grammar in an artificial manner, but I looked at how I was grading essays and then formalized it.

And I realized I was grading word choice, phrase choice, phrase organization within sentences, sentence organization within paragraphs, sentence organization within paragraphs, paragraph organization within chapters, and then the impact of the whole. I thought, well, that's also how I edit. And so I wanted to write a practical writing guide, not not one that focused specifically on grammar. And so when Julian and I started talking about this, first we were going to just publish the essay guide guide which we did We made that available freely online, but then we were thinking through the problem of how to teach people to write and

The hard thing about that is that usually people write and then submit it for grading and that's extremely expensive and cost and time intensive. So expensive and cost and time intensive. So yeah, so basically we were attempting to turn this document into something that people could use and they could improve their writing in a more structured manner, but that it would be more natural than reading a document and trying to do it in that way and taking bits out of the documents and trying to integrate that philosophy into their writing. And so we did a number of iterations trying to turn it into, instead of kind of a step-by-step guide, a more kind of contains application that would integrate the philosophy and the tools that were written in the document into something that you could just use and it felt natural.

And as you were writing, you could kind of integrate these practical tools and it would just come together and improve. Yeah, instead of writing in a word processor and referring to this document, we just integrated the two so that you can so that you can write and focus at different levels of analysis with each tool. And so there's a tool that is optimized for producing a first draft, where you just read what you need to read and take your notes, watching what you think,

and maybe thinking out loud and trying to capture that loosely as rapidly as possible. And then there are other tools that follow on from that. Yeah, yeah. So basically we put it out into the produce tool, the outline tool, the rewrite tool, and reorder. And basically the structure that someone's supposed to follow when they're using this app is they outline their essays. They decide what they're going to write about. And it doesn't have to be an essay. It could be a document, it could be an email to somebody.

And so you basically come up with your main idea and then you break it down into sub topics. And then you go to the produce tool. And that's where you're supposed to kind of fill in your ideas in a rough way, which is what Dad was talking about. He's kind of right, and you're not supposed to edit. You're not supposed to do anything. You're supposed to get your ideas on paper, try to use the research that you've done and produce whatever you're able to produce.

A loose, a loose first draft. People often try to write a good word and a good phrase, a good sentence, in a good paragraph, right during the first draft so that when they're done drafting it once, they're finished. And the problem with that is it's actually way more work because you can't do all of that at once. And trying to just makes it almost impossible for you to think. What you want to do is, well, first, you want to ask yourself a question that you really want to have the answer to. So you have to be motivated. And that's an important first choice. Even if you're writing a document that someone wants you to write, you have to find a handle

on it that you're compelled by. And that should be stateable in the form of a question. What question are you essaying, which means attempting to answer? It should be one, you have a reason to answer. And then you break it down, as Julian said, by the outline, well, what topics are your sub topics? Are you going to hit? Outline topics? Are you going to hit while walking through this? That's a preliminary plan, you know, because you're gonna reorganize at the level of the outline too. And then maybe you go do your reading or your thinking,

and while you're doing that, note what you're thinking and write it down, say it out loud, capture it, don't edit, capture. And so maybe you're aiming to produce one and a half or times or two times as much written material as you'll need in the final analysis. Now people don't like doing that because they fall in love with a right with what they write and it's hard to do it, they think. But it's way easier to just give yourself the freedom to jot down and note everything you're thinking. And then

well, then you go into the well, the next tools. Yeah. And basically, the next tools are editing tools. And so, the idea that we made, whether we tried to capture in this tool is to allow people to produce variations of their writing and to quickly restructure it. So, like, variations of sentences or paragraphs? Yeah, variations of sentences first. And so what you do, if you were writing a relatively long piece in this, is you'd go through it sentence by sentence. And we have a tool that shows you your full documents on one side and then a broken-down version

of it sentence by sentence on the other side. And basically you can go one by one through your sentences, produce as many variances as you want, and then see them in context to your document. Okay, so that's a Darwinian approach to creative thinking. So, because in the Darwinian evolutionary process, creatures generate variance, that's mutation and sexual recombination. And then the environment selects from among those variants for the most fit, combination, and then the environment selects from among those variants for the most fit the particulars that are most fit at that time. So this tool, it'll show you your sentence, correct me if I get this technically wrong.

It'll show your sentence, you click on it, it'll duplicate the sentence, then you can write a variant of that sentence, you can do that indefinitely. And then what you want to do, write shorter sentences, longer sentences, shorter is usually better. People can improve their essays radically usually by cutting the sentence length by 15%. That's a good first pass attempt. But you look at all these variants, choose the variant that's better and substitute it. You do that with every sentence. That's fine-grained editing, not as fine-grained as word choice, but you'd be doing some of that at that point as well. How much can you put into this?

Like, could you edit a book? Theoretically, you could edit a book. It would help in some ways, because we have the outline tool, which allows you to quickly jump through your document. We've had some... So what do you mean? Well, in that outline tool, you have written your sub topics. And then what it shows under each sub-talk at topic is a truncated version of each paragraph that you have within the sub-topic. And so it'll show like, I don't know, a five or six sentence or not even, probably four sentence version. So you can quickly toggle through your essay. And so it'll get an overview of it. Get an overview and you can click to scroll.

And it really allows you to navigate a relatively long document pretty quickly. Yeah, likely what would happen is if you're writing a book, you'd use it for each chapter. Yeah, probably. And rewrite the chapters and then maybe use a standard word processor to move the chapters around. It depends on how long the book is, but for lengthy essays, even multi-part essays with multiple subtop topics, it'll work just fine. Yeah, so. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, well, we can return to the original, let's call it, principles of writing. You remember, when you're thinking about a document, you think you build it word up, but that's, or do you build it letter up? I hope not.

Right. Right, exactly. Well, by the time you write, you've already automated the letter typing process, right? So, but then you have to think about the word in the phrase in the sentence and the paragraph, and the paragraph sequence and the subtopic sequence. And the tool is designed to help you learn to think like that at multiple levels of analysis. So you don't have to think like that.

That's kind of the point of it, right? Is to break the thinking out into software so that you naturally think that way when you're writing. Yeah. And so that's how you thought writing. That's how you write, right? Well, it was an iterative process because, well, I was grading and then trying to teach

people to write. I was thinking about, well, what am I doing when I'm grading? Now, I'd already written a lot by then. But it wasn't until I wrote this document that I really started to understand this idea of multilevel, simultaneous, multilevel processing, which has been very useful for other things I've been thinking through. It's like, well, where's the meaning when you read? Well, is it in the words, the phrases, the sentences,

the sentence organization, the paragraphs, et cetera? I don't walk through that again. But the answer is it's all of those simultaneously, and it's even broader than that, because you might think, well, the essay has a whole, that's a level of analysis, but there's the broad as possible level of analysis. But it's not.

The question you're asking is broader level, because the essay for it to be a real product, a product of your imagination and thought that will be useful to you practically and also psychologically, let's say, it has to address something that you regard as important or the whole bloody exercise is a lie.

And I would recommend if you're bored by what you're writing, then you haven't, you're not trying to write it, you're not trying to answer the right question, or you haven't formulated the right question. What do you do though? This is just side note. What do you do if you're in high school or university and you're assigned a topic? You find an angle that makes you interested in it. You have to wrestle with yourself to begin with.

Maybe you write something critical. When I think it's a rare teacher that if you suggest something that's similar that you are interested in, they'll say no. Okay, so that's a try that maybe. I think generally try to write something, approach your teacher and say, I'm actually interested in exploring this topic if the teacher says You're not allowed to explore a topic you're interested in then they're probably not a very good writing teacher And maybe you don't care about

That's how they feel about your writing It's a good point man. It's like don't let people mess with your words And you don't you don't lose the, you know, if you do enjoy writing, you don't want to have that taken away from you by someone who's going to put you in a box so you don't want to be in. Yeah, and so if you really hate the topic, write something that's subtly satirical over the top. Like you have, look, man, writing his hard work.

It's hard just like thinking, but it's not as hard as doing neither, because then you're a mess, you're anxious and you're without purpose and goal and you're inarticulate and you're weak, you lose. And I don't mean in this, you win and someone else loses matter. I mean, in and everyone loses matter. And so when you sit down to write or think, you have to be motivated. And if you're not, you're not doing it right. And that's, writing teachers should stress that above all else. You know, they should help their students identify something that they can hardly wait to write about because it's so important to them. Well, then you've got the motivation. And each word starts to matter because your life depends on

it. And if you think your life doesn't depend on your words, you just don't know anything about words. And so it is definitely the case. Let's take a business example. If you're constantly being forced to write things that great against your conscience or that you find yourself bored to death by, then it's either time to stand up and say something and then you should use the writing program

to figure out what you're going to say. Or it's time to get a new job, in which case you should use the writing program to figure out what you're going to do. Or it's time to get a new job in which case you should use the writing program to put your CV and your resume together and maybe write yourself something like a statement of purpose. Like, this is no game. If writing is thinking, which it is and thinking sets your life in order or not, then you don't let people mess with your words. You want to get them on order like soldiers. And that's partly what this writing program is designed to help people do. And that's not so much we're trying to teach people to write. We're trying to facilitate their thought and their clarity of communication. And writing, this is another thing that isn't taught well to students.

Well, why should I learn to write? Well, how else are you gonna communicate with people as you ascend up a hierarchy of competence? Like some of the toughest guys I know, Jockel Willink, for example, knows, lays tremendous stress on literacy. Even as a soldier, he had to communicate orders, let's say, to the people that he was in command of,

but he also had to communicate up to chain of command and if your words are well structured and and inspired and properly motivated and aimed like an arrow, you're unstoppable and I don't understand well, this is so many people are taught to write by people who don't know how to write or why to write or how to think and That's partly what we're trying to address here. So we hope people will find it extremely useful. It's also like knowing how to write a good email to even if you're not interested in essays specifically, knowing how to write a good email can change how a company is run. Absolutely. Well, it can change people's lives, right? You need to write an email to someone

you want to get a job from or landlord to try to get them to not increase your rent. Right. City Councilman to try to get them to do something that needs doing in your neighborhood or a politician to get them to change a law, you're going to be making your case in front of people badly or well your entire life. And so I don't know why we don't teach people that this arms them while we won't use that language,

because we think everyone should be cooperative. And yeah, it's a complete bloody mess. But we did decide, though, we've been trying to crack the problem of scaling education. And we have a bunch of ideas about that. And Julian and I were working on a broader online university project when I got extremely ill and it folded back into this writing program, which turned out in some ways to be an okay thing because this is actually,

it hopefully it will address a very serious issue. And we could do it instead of the other one, which was pretty broad. It was. It's a better bridge that failed problem. Yeah, well it instead of the other one which yeah, yeah, the other one was pretty broad. It was Yeah, broad. Yeah, which is why it failed probably yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, part of the reason it hasn't failed yet. It's just been sequenced differently fair enough. So so an academy is coming. Yes. Yes, yes, and we're we have online courses and we're working with people in the broader educational sphere. So who knows what'll happen? She talked about the design a little bit because it's quite elegant. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so we spend a ton of time building the design out.

I mean, we did a number of iterations at the beginning that were very, very different. My wife's a product designer. And I'm a front end developer. And so we're both very concerned with UX and making things that people can use naturally and that feel good to use. And so a lot of people don't like to write.

And that's an issue, right? As if we want people to write and we want people to learn to write better and think better. Then when you go into a new application that you have to learn, it has to be very comfortable. And so we wanted to make the design very modern, very clean, very intuitive. Yeah, self-explanatory, right? Because a hallmark of good design is that you don't have to refer to a manual to figure out how to use, let's say, the tools. Well, and these are different things, right?

We're trying to teach people to interact with a word processor differently, which is a big ask in a way to the user, right? Because, well, because almost everyone writes using something, right? And people use word or Google Docs or whatever, whatever they use. So we have to make it easier for them to write using this at least easier. Well, the payoff has to be there. Well, that's the payoff. Also has to be there. Because it's a bit more work.

It's not just a blank sheet. Right. There's more work to do. You actually do have to learn to use it. Well, that's the panel. Foleso house. Yeah. But these are just a blank sheet. Right. There's more work. You actually do have to learn to use it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But theoretically, and from our experience, the tools are worth learning curve. And we've tried to make the learning curve as minimal as possible using good design. Well, right. The other thing we did, and this is a design element too, is that while you're learning to use the tools, you're also learning how to go about thinking at the same time. So you're not only learning how to use the writing program, you're learning how to think about thinking. And that's extremely important, just knowing, for example, that you do multi-level processing and that you can edit and reconsexualize it all

those levels. That's extremely useful, formally, to know about how you processing and that you can edit and re-conceptualize at all those levels. That's extremely useful, formally, to know about how you think and why you think so. Yeah, that's a nice thing about the tools and generalists that they're not specific tools to the app, right? You can use them in context to the app, but if you're writing an email in just in your Gmail

or whatever, then you can still go through it and improve the sentences and improve the structure of the paragraphs. You can use the tools that you've built and practiced using the application. Now you turn a lot. Yeah. Because then you can use them wherever. Yeah, when you're thinking you're talking as well, you know, in a sort of faster way. But they're generally useful things to understand.

Right. So my impression going through, I kind of had to learn to use this app in the last few months, because although I was involved in the learn to use this app in the last few months, because although I was involved in the design to begin with, when I got sick, I forgot a lot of what the app did and why it was produced the way it was. And so I've had to relearn it, learn how to use it over the last couple of months. And it was very straightforward to learn, but what I was even happier about was the fact that learning to use it does not waste effort. If you learn a program like Photoshop, you can use Photoshop that Photoshop skills you've

learned on Illustrator and other Adobe products, but it doesn't really generalize outside of that domain because this commands are so specific. With this, you could use essay for a year and then hypothetically never use it again because you could do what you tell people. Don't tell people that. You go like, I'm the only one who's going to test one.

I'm the only one who's going to test one. I'm the only one who's going to test one. You're not going to need it. You're not going to utilize it. Throw it away. I wouldn't recommend that because I think that once you use it, you know what's not in our marketing too. You'll also find it a good place to keep track of your essays and all of that, to

build an essay bank. And we're going to be. That's cool. That's a good idea. Yeah. So, so we've thought about the, well, the problem of what do you do with what you've written? And that's also relevant to something mentioned earlier. If you write an essay and your first draft is twice as long as it needs to be, and you cut a bunch of it out, keep what you've cut in another document because I've almost never written anything that was wasted. It might not have been useful precisely in the context that I wanted it for at that moment, but keeping a log or a collection of written material, especially by topic, is

extremely useful as you progress through your life. And you'll find a useful. Okay. It's useful for writers. It's also, you know, I play music and I've done that with songs, too, right? You can write song lyrics and just write poetry or whatever you're writing. And then you can, you know, that's how a lot of great songs been written. Little pieces here and there of different, you know, thrown away songs that people stick together. Yeah, the Beatles do that all the time. But yeah, so it's not just for writing, but for artistic things as well often.

No genuine work is wasted. It just doesn't fit necessarily with exactly what you're doing at the moment, but first of all, the skills you learn while you're genuinely working generalize, and also the products, if you keep them, I had some poems I wrote, horrible poems about children. 15 years ago. We don't need context for that. That's okay. 15 years ago. We don't need context for that. That's okay. Yeah, it's so funny. Yeah, when I was doing my clinical work and I needed to blow off some steam, but all the awful things I was seeing. So thank you very much. I wrote those 15 years ago, it wasn't till this year that we started working on having them illustrated and the whole sequence of creative projects emerged from that. So you have to realize that

when you're writing, you are literally changing your brain. So be careful about what you write about. Well, it depends. You want your, do you want to program in garbage? Because you're actually producing automated circuits in your brain when you write. And so if you write something you don't agree with, you can do that as an exercise to stretch out your intellectual imagination, right? And to develop your argument, let's say on the contrary argument as part of thinking. But if you write a bunch of lies for someone that you don't trust to do something you don't like, that will change you in that direction. If you do that a hundred times, you'll be way different than the person you were.

And you may be bored, miserable, angry, unhappy, resentful, a motivated, tendentious, inarticulate. But otherwise, fun. Yeah. So mess with your words, man. Yeah. So how does that work for running out trauma, then? Isn't it? Because it's supposed to be therapeutic but

How is it not strengthening memories associated with trauma if you're that's an excellent question and there's actually a whole Research literature on that which we drew on when we formulated the self-authoring program especially the past authoring program well James Panabaker tested that so imagine two two theories. One is just write down everything that you can remember about the trauma and cry and be miserable and depressed while you do that. And that's cathartic. Okay. But then imagine that you write down everything you remember around the trauma. And then you go through a process like you would go through with our writing tool, where you organize it and you reduce it and you make it clear and

Comprehensible and you weave it into a narrative and you strip the emotion out of it while you're doing that because you start to Understand what happened and it isn't catharsis James Pentebaker tested this so he had people right about their traumatic experiences It usually made them feel worse for a two-week period afterwards. But six months later, they had visited the physicians far or less frequently. So it's out of tyranny into the desert and then into the promised land. So there's a cost that you pay when you first confront things that you'd rather avoid. And that's obviously why would people avoid them if there was no cost? And you might say, well, that's dangerous.

And ruminating involuntarily on traumatic experiences doesn't help get rid of them. You have to confront them voluntarily. And then it isn't expression of emotion that cures you. It's organization of the memories into a narrative that specifies the causal pathway. Why did this happen? When it happened. Why did it happen to me? And then is associated with rectification of that vulnerability. And so, Pentebaker tested, did people use more words indicative of expressed emotion, or did they use more words that were indicative of cognition and comprehension, and which of those predicted

the best outcome? So like, like what? Understand, comprehend, came to know. Angry sad, hurt, upset on the other side, the more their written product revealed the cognitive processing, the better the effect of the traumatic narration. And you see this, you see this when you talk to people who have had a traumatic experience if you, if you talk to them carefully and listen carefully as they work through it. They want to know exactly what happened in detail so that maybe they can set up their life so that won't happen again. So you know, you were traumatized as a child, but you're a lot easier to take advantage of if you're a child.

Now you have all those memories about being hurt. Okay. As the person comes to understand their trauma, the time it takes to recount it shrinks dramatically. And that means they've pulled out the gist, right? The central issues from the experience, and they can use that as a practical guide to the future. That is exactly what you're doing, by the the way when you're writing an essay. You think, well, it's not a trauma. It's like, well, if you pick a question that's interesting to you, it's interesting because the fact that you don't know it is a problem. And so one of the great ways to figure out what to write about is, well, what bugs you? Notice that. That's that involuntary rumination. That's the manifestation of underlying complexes from a psychoanalytic perspective. So something's on your mind poking you, bugging

you. It's like chimney cricket in Pinocchio. That is really annoying. I knew that would bug you. So it was positive. You know, so anyways, you find something that bugs you. That's your problem. You might say, well, why should I have a problem? It's like, hey, it picked you. It's your problem. It's your destiny. It's something that would compel you to solve.

It's your adventure. Your adventure can be found in what bothers you and won't go away. Well, that's your topic, man. That's your life. Delve into that and use this program because it'll help you figure that out. It'll help you figure that out. Write about things that matter.

You say, well, my life has no meaning. Nothing I write is meaningful. Well, you're not writing about something that matters to you. And that first step that we talked about when you specify the question, the program says this quite clearly, specify the question you're trying to answer. You have to want the answer. You want to be motivated to write. It's like, this is a hot question for me, man. I'm going to go read some things about it because I need to know. Well, that's what you want to write about. That's where you find your passion to use an overworked cliche.

Okay, Julian. Yes. Why did it take you so long to agree to talk to me over the interweb? Well, I'd like my privacy. I've always liked my privacy. I think that's most of it. I don't really have a lot of interest in being a public person. If I am public in any way, then I generally, well, I'm quite sure that I prefer it to be about something that I've done. And I didn't really feel like I had done anything. That was particularly useful, let's say, to talk about to other people. And so I have a really nice life, and I like my little family and the fact that it's

relatively contained from the world. And, you know, I don't really ever want to give that up. But I do have interest in sharing things that I've done that I feel like are going to be meaningful for for other people, whether that is, well, this application, which I'm really proud of, or, well, the album that I released last year, I didn't really talk about that. We're going to talk about that. But I think that's why mostly is I'm... You wanted to wait till you had something to say. Yeah.

Yeah, well, the problem in your position is that people would be interested in you in some sense for peripheral reasons. For sure, yeah. You could certainly... Yeah, for sure. And you could say that demand if you felt like it, but it seems to me that waiting until you have something... I don't feel like it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no kidding. And it's been good to see that your life has been protected from all the storms that have gathered around us. And that was a good decision, I think. And this is a good thing to talk about because this app is good help a lot of people. Yeah. Well, and we talked a little bit about it. It's testing, too. One of the things I realized years ago and had drummed into my head as well by people who have built successful software programs. And market at them is that you should be in dialogue with your audience, your customer base.

Let's say, well, you're building it. You don't build something and then launch it and hope everyone buys it. You have to be testing it step by step with the market with the environment to see if not only do you have the ideas right, but you have them right at the right time in a way that can be communicated to people that they will want to purchase and will purchase. And so you tested this with the Act in Academy, for example. Yeah, yeah. So we tested this with like a number of different groups over the last couple years, with private groups on Reddit, with people who signed up to test it with students, MBA students at the Acton Academy, using user

testing.com groups. You know, we tested it constantly as we were building it to make sure that our design was consistent, that people understood what it was for, and many times they didn't, which is often what you find when you test software. Yeah, well, you get familiar with it, and then you think it's obvious because it's now obvious to you, but it's interesting watching people often use a piece of software that you've designed and see where they don't get it. Yeah, and that what they did with one of the first

Macintosh computers, right? They would bring grandmothers, I think, people over 60 to come in and they would just put them in front of an Apple computer. Right. And not tell them anything. They would just use this thing. And they'd pick up the keyboard and do all sorts of stuff with it.

Could they figure it out? They'd try to find the NDP. Sometimes. They'd do all sorts of things, right? But that was how they did the testing. Either you're supposed to give people a task, or you just want to see the natural interact with it. And we did both of those things.

And you helped me a lot of improvement based on them. You have to be aware of the assumption that people should be smart enough to know how to use this. It's like, no, if they can't use it, because it's a stupid design. It's not for sure. If people were just a little smarter, they could figure this out. It's like, yeah, good luck.

That's how you fail. Yeah, that's how you sell your product to three software engineers. Yeah, exactly. And they want to use it just because they want to show a smart thing. Yeah, no, that's a very bad design philosophy. If someone can't use it, it's your fault. It's the right attitude in business. That's why it's not so much. Yeah, it's like websites when every single website has a formula and looks the same and one other website is, oh no, no, that logo or that button should go in this other corner.

Yeah. Well, that's the modern internet, right? Like, is that everything looks the same because, well, then people can use it. Right. You build in redundancy. Yeah. And, yeah, and you violate conventions at your peril. You know, we could have insisted that everybody use a divorce act keyboard for this writing

program. And that's a way more efficient keyboard keyboard because the letters, the alphabet letters are spaced for optimal speed when you type, but you don't see people using Dvorak keyboard. Well, one of our developers did. Yeah, what is this type of, I was nodding a little bit when you were talking about, but I don't.

There's a keyboard that's more effective. Oh, a way more effective, yeah. Well, yeah, because at least, we're not telling you about it, because you have to keep using Quarty. No, I don't know. Right, I have this. The Quarty keyboard was developed at least in part

to slow you down when you type. Yeah, for typewriters, right? With your mechanical typewriters, before electric typewriters, the keys would jam if people got too fast. So they slowed them down. So now we use a keyboard that artificially makes typing difficult.

So what's the other one look like? The most common letters are together. Or where they should be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look on a quarter keyboard, the most common letters are spaced out as much as they can be. Because I can type really, I'm very proud of my typing. I can type really fast. Yeah. But you think it'd be worth a lot of time. Well, it does. Learning this like it because people, people, there'd be a struggle at the beginning. Yeah. That's right. You'd have to re-automatize your, but yeah, yes, yes, it would be faster eventually. Would it save me time if you add up all the time

spent learning and then... Yes, I think people would. I'm doing it. But can you buy computers like that, like MacBooks? You can buy keyboards like that. But you can't buy that. You don't have to have a separate keyboard. What's this called?

Dvorak is one, DVORAK. Yeah, it shrinks off the tongue, you know, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The point you made earlier, I hadn't actually thought about this. I've got an issue storing way too many Google Docs and Sheets and Google has a like terrible storage Google drive. Yeah. So the fact that you can actually store focused pieces of writing, that's pretty interesting.

Instead of putting all your spreadsheets in everything in one area, you could put everything that you focus on in one area and then look back on it. Yeah, well Google Drive is obviously great, but it's because everything is there. And that comes with... If any loose things.

With a cost, for sure. Yeah, you lose things all the time there. Yeah, and that's not something that we've solved completely with a car, for sure. Yeah, you lose things all time there. Yeah. Yeah. And that's not something that we've solved completely with this program, but it is a good place to store the things that you've endeavored to write. So, cool. There's we have what three patents pending on it. Yes. So that's fun. You know, it's a... So it's still stealable. How are you saying?

It's still stealable, yes. Well, virtually everything is stealable, and the way you succeed in the market place is becoming, getting there fairly early, and then making a product that's better than everyone else is then keeping it better. If you want to rely on legal protection, even patents, it'll just wear you to a frazzle. It's not the, I mean, look, you have to keep people from stealing your intellectual property and patent protection and legal protection can help, but in the final analysis, the way that you remain competitive in the marketplace is to stay not only ahead of your competitors, but ahead of your previous product. And so otherwise,

you get into this defensive mode where you're fending everyone else off, trying to protect your thing. It's like the thing you developed in all likelihood is alive and you should stay on the cutting edge of its development, but it's still nice to have the patents. Yeah, for sure. So they're hard to enforce.

You have to take them out in all sorts of different countries. You know, you get tangled up with lawyers, but it's no one wants that. No one wants that. Yeah. No lawyers can use our program. No, I don't mean that lawyers are very useful in their proper place. It's definitely not everywhere. Yeah. So you mentioned this album, you put out an album last year. Yes. So what is this? It's called Sight. It's a very short album.

Technically, it's actually a single, which I was disappointed about when I read the definition of single. What? Apparently, a single is, I think you have four songs in a single because the definitions came from when you'd put out records. And a single was just, well, anyway, it was a certain length of record, basically. What?

Yeah, and so my song, I have three songs, and I think you have to have five songs or a certain length, I can remember the number of minutes to make it an EP, so it's not, but it's a single, and it's a three song single. And there were songs that I've written over the last, well, that I had written between four years years ago, up to a couple years ago, and I'd been meeting to record them.

And yeah, eventually I went to the recording studio and hired some session musicians. And it was great. It was a really, really positive experience. And it's, well, it was fun to put music out into the world that, you know, were a piece of me and that were a piece of my history. Because that was really meaningful

and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Yeah, it's called site. It's on Spotify. I'll link it. Probably do some music in the back. Yeah, we'll go over your talk. Yeah, it's really about stuff. I've been working on a musical project too.

Well, and with Tammy. So that's been fun as well. So more on that later. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna ask some fun questions too. Are you ready? It's gonna involve Julian talking a bunch hopefully. Okay. Shifts uncomfortably in his season. Not even made me shift. I'm waiting to see what it happened. it shouldn't make you shit, don't you, Emily? Well, you might say something embarrassing. You might like to. I'm actually not that worried about that.

Hopefully you'll do that on purpose if it happens. It's not any luck. Yeah. What has been the biggest challenge of having dad shoot to fame? Yeah, well, there have been a ton of challenges, benefits and challenges. I think mostly, there's a couple of things. It gets you involved in a battle that isn't your own, which is interesting, right?

Because of the way that you became popular, which is about political topics and philosophical topics that were contentious generally. And so then people start to assume that you hold the same opinions as your father, which to a certain extent, I do, obviously, right? Like, I mean, there's some things that, and plenty of things that were aligned on, but there's always, you know, you never have the same views as your father. I mean, if you do, then you need to think more probably because,

well, you're generationally different and all sort of my opinions. Yeah, that's what every father thinks. Yeah. That's a program. Essay program. Yeah. So that was one of the challenges and, well, just being public to a certain extent, you know, people know who I am,

even if I have maintained relatively private, I've been asked for selfies before, which is very strange because I'm just a regular dude. But that's the selfies. That's the selfie with us. And I'll see. Yeah. Oh, well, you're approached to that, I think it's been interesting. That's the selfie with us. And usy, yeah. Yeah. Oh.

Well, you're approached to that, I think, it's been interesting. You know, people get it. Random, like, free guy reference, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I can't talk from it. Took me a say, asses.

It's like, well, just keep up, man. This is a quick, moving conversation. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that's been that your situation has really highlighted for me is the danger that's posed to people's mental health and maybe even to social stability when people get fixated on things that are too abstract. You know, you say, well, we should only pay attention to the important issues, climate

change, for example, which is about everything. Why aren't you worried about everything all the time? And that's what you would be worried about if you were a good person. It's like, well, no, you need to parcel off part of your life that's private, that consists of the specific things that you're involved in, your specific wife, your specific children, the specific projects like this essence. Why was I always like to be preferred to that? Yeah.

And this is my specific wife. Yeah. Yeah. Generic lives are good. Don't ask me any more questions. Yeah. But it's a strange thing because you could be more concerned with generic lives than actually having one, you know. Yeah. So you've maintained that specificity.

And that's made your life comparably much more peaceful and for that for sure. Yeah. So it's easy to get dragged out into the general fray. And it's hard to protect yourself once that's happened. So. Okay. Here's another one. So when, how old were you when you got married to jail? 25.

And then when did you have Elliott? 26, I guess. 26. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'd say compared to the general debatuous population, you've even compared to me, definitely compared to me. You've had your, you've organized your life so it from the outside anyway, so well that it it's hard it's hard to believe. Well, thank you. That's a really nice compliment.

You went to university. You got a bunch of educate. What was your what did you do in university? I did a bachelor of arts, which everyone thinks is the best thing to do. That's no, but I did a cool one. It was I went to University of King's College in Nova Scotia and did a highly recommended place. Yeah, great university and did a great books program called The Foundation Year Program. So one year program where you read kind of the history of great Western thought.

Yeah. And so I did that to begin with and then I did my general degree in philosophy and music. And you wrote your thesis on degree in philosophy and music. And you wrote your thesis on Heidegger and the psychedelic experience. Yeah, that's right. But that was a common topic amongst students. Yeah, of course. That is the fact.

Face. Yeah, well, and one of the things that's interesting, I worked with a lot of high performing lawyers, and this was especially true of the women. They were hyper conscientious, and they were overachievers, which is a horrible word, in junior high and in high school. That's two words. No, it's one. It can be. It can be hyphenated. Anyways, they were the top of their high school class, then they were the top of their undergraduate class, then they went to law school, and they were the top of their class, and then they got picked up by a big law firm,

and they shot up through the ranks and became senior partners. That's why I'm right. Aw. No way, no. Yeah. Yeah. And then when they got to be senior partners, they generally concluded that they didn't want

to work 60 hours a week like all these other guys and although they were women. And they wanted a more balanced life. But they had never really stepped outside of this single-minded track, you know? And it wasn't until they hit the pinnacle of what they were aiming at that they sort of woke up and realized, well, maybe this isn't what I wanted to be doing all along. And the interesting difference with you, I think, is that well you've been organizing your life in a pretty consistent manner and in a traditional manner, I would say, you've also pursued your artistic pursuits simultaneously.

And that makes it different because that's a place where you can have freedom within the context of discipline and where those things actually work very well together. You told me that we were walking the dog in the park like a couple of months ago and you were like, what do you want for yourself in five years? And I was like, well, I want to have a good family life and I want to have a career that's meaningful and you know, good generic answers. But you were like, oh, so you have feminine goals. I guess? Yeah, well, that fits very well with the story. Yes, I'm a high-achieving woman.

Yeah, well that could be worse. Yeah, I'm happy about that. I was offended. I just got pretty slow surprising. 40. Well, I mean, time will tell. What if you do, please keep that private. Well, yeah. I won't be keeping that private.

It's funny. Anyway, my point was, I guess, do you have advice for younger people about how to... Like, are you happy that you're settled down now with a kid? Yeah, for sure. There's... Well, I wouldn't really have it. Freedom's or anything? Well, yeah, obviously, in some ways, it's limited freedoms. But, well, I feel like when you get into your late 20s or even mid 20s, you've probably been

hardying and doing random stuff and living with roommates for quite a few years already. You know, I mean, it doesn't, I don't think it remains interesting for that long. And even with, you know, people I know that are around the same age, everyone at around this age were not everyone. But a lot of people end up settling down to a certain extent. And whether that's, you know, it's needing a change of some kind, whether it's deciding to travel the world or switch careers or go back to school or something, you can't just stay on the same kind of young person schedule forever. And well, I found someone who I fell in love with. And I always was attracted to women who wanted a family. And I always wanted a family. And so it fit in well for me. And I

think that's fairly uncommon with young men. What do you think? Do you mean one of my observations of you and now you are very private. So I don't know all the details. Thank God. Is that you tended to you were very private, so I don't know all the details. Thank God. Is that you tended to mostly have long-term, pretty committed relationships. Yeah. And you know, that was the case with me too, generally speaking.

Do you think that was associated with this conscious desire to have a family? I don't even know if it was. I think that I normally just chose women girls that I liked. What do you want to go out with a girl is like, I hate children? That's super attractive. I never want to be like, I'm just, that just shouts infertile. Yeah, well, it's not so bad if you don't want children and if you only regard them as an impediment. But if you're shouting it, that's definitely a problem. Yeah, that, it's not so bad if you don't want children and if you only regard them as an impediment.

But if you're shouting it, that's definitely a problem. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah, if you're shouting that on the street, probably you should be disappointed. Yeah, but I don't know. It's just kind of how it worked out for me. Well, I was really lucky. I met someone who I was extremely compatible with, very young, and our relationship is only improved with time.

How did you know, how did you know that that was gonna work out? Well, I didn't. And we had ups and downs, right? Like we, well, yeah, we had our ups and downs. And I didn't, yeah, I didn't know until, really until we were married, I guess, weirdly enough. Like, maybe not.

Well, maybe, maybe that's fairly normal. But even when we were engaged, I feel like we were still kind of feeling each other out to see if it was really the right path. And we went through growing pains and all sorts of things that all couples go through. We fought a lot at times. But the thing that I guess made me realize

that it was a relationship that was built to last was that every time we did our relationship improved. And then it was happening less and less. Where do you fight? It's whether you reconcile. Yeah, for sure. That's what it's all about. Right? It's all about finding someone that is willing to put in the effort to improve the relationship, over the years, because people change, and their needs change, and their interests change, and you have to have a partner that's willing to listen and keep up with you, as you as a change.

Are you good at negotiating? Yeah, I'd say so. That's one of the things that we practiced a lot as kids. And that was one of the things that made our childhood somewhat unique, I would say, was that we spent a lot of time being taught to negotiate. And so, yeah, I definitely one of my, one of the skills that I'm, that's very useful in relationships, I guess, that I have. And useful in other ways? Nope. We did.

I have a question. A curse leaps to mind. When you have arguments and negotiate, we had a podcast last year with an FBI negotiator. And his take was that you either agree to something and the other person kind of meets you there, but you don't meet in the middle. What's your take on that? Like when you guys have disagreements, are there things where you're like,

okay, I'll give a little and she'll give a little. And then- Yeah, I think eventually that's what happens. But I think that when you- I think it's a Higaliant synthesis. Yeah, I also don that's what happens, but I think that when you I think it's a hegelian synthesis Yeah, I also don't know what that means. Well, how did you know that synthesis? Right synthesis, okay, not negotiated middle Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, that's what I was gonna say

I was gonna use exactly the same words to yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's no way of knowing that I wasn't going to But yeah basically, you know, I think I feel like one person has to basically give in a little bit at the beginning. And then the other person will meet you somewhere along the way eventually once the negativity or the emotion goes out of the situation. Right, I think it's very uncommon that people reconcile at exactly the same time, right? It's almost always one person decides that it's you know, either understands what they've done to contribute or is willing to put that aside in order for You know to have a real communication with the other person And then you know, and then once the once the emotion comes down and and can see more clearly, then you meet somewhere

down the road, I guess. Down the road. Yeah. Well, I think that initial willingness to give in isn't that. It's, I'm willing to change as a consequence of this conflict. Now that means I haven't specified the direction of change, but you would do that hoping that you could both attain something better as a consequence of the negotiation. And you can almost inevitably. And that's what you can aim for. It's like,

let's make this better, not average, not miserable in the middle, but better for both of us. That's the point of a successful negotiation. It also means that the negotiated agreement will be stable because if you have to give in, let's say, and compromise, well, then you're not really pursuing what you want to pursue. And so you're going to work at a counter position to that subtly and maybe not so subtly. But if you see, oh, this is this solution that we both generate is way better than either of the things we were doing before, that'll just sustain itself. One one person has to trust that the other person is going to do the same thing, right? I think that's where it is because people fight like an actual fight in a relationship when the trust disappears about something, right? Yeah. You know, you assume that the

other person isn't going to be able to move past it in some way or isn't going to be able to apologize in a meaningful way or whatever it is. But they were motivated in a way that wasn't, right, it was untrustworthy in some way. Yeah, that's right. That's where it is. And then, you know, one person at least has to decide that there's a, you know, a spark of trust that will come back, right? That's not in the other cheek thing. Yeah, exactly. And you don't have to think that the other person's right or anything. You just have to think that they are willing to actually come to a compromise of some of that. Yeah, yeah, a solution and to go, yeah, certainly,

I mean, one of the things that your mom and I have going for us is that fundamentally we trust each other. Like I really trust her to do her best to do the right thing. You know, and that can be rocky on the road there, but I know she's working, man, she's working. And hopefully she feels the same about me. And so we decided when we got together, I had already decided that I was going to try to not live

by lies, let's say, at that point. And I made a concerted effort to do that for a number of years. And when we first got together, that was part of our agreements, like no lies. And I don't, I don't, I don't think your mother's ever lied to me. So she really stuck to it, man. Once she said that was what she was going to do, she was impressive. Yeah, yeah, it really has. It's when she commits to something she's going to do. It's impressive. Yeah, it really has. When she commits to something she's committed.

And that was so useful, especially when things got really rocky in our lives when you were sick and when I was sick and when she was sick. Because we could trust each other. You weren't sick. I was just off the side. I was wrong with you anyway. I'm not sick. Look at me over here. We don't have time to look at you.

That sounds about right. Yeah. I told you that when you were, I don't know how old you were, 10, something like that. When Michaela got so sick, I remember talking to you and saying, look, kiddo, we're up to our neck here and you're going to have to be sensible and you were. Cause it was cool. I almost got it here.

Wow. You're my feminine temperament. My feminine goals, your feminine temperament. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I'm sitting out of the, out of the pokes for this.

I'm sitting here quietly. I guess we can. I think you were too hard on yourself about relationships that are kiddo earlier comparing yourself with Julian. That seems like a backhanded novelman. Torin too. I feel like I just, I, I just met in comparison to me. I didn't, I'm not hard on my, I don't think I did something necessarily.

I think I did my best. We're in an exterrace and extenuating circumstances over here. I'm like, it just didn't turn out. Yeah, you also had good relationships in the past. It's not like you've had terrible relationships. That's not how it's going. No, no, it was hard. So it has been hard. Yes.

I think we should wrap up. So I've just got one more question. And I'm going to post all the relevant links and things below. So that'll, anything you're interested in. Oh, I have another question too, though, before we close. Can you go first? Well, you did, the most protracted writing you did was your thesis. So why did you pick the topic?

And what did it do for you to write that? And what did it teach you about writing? Yeah, well, when I was in my fourth year of university, I was pursuing a music monitor and writing my thesis. I was actually taking, I think I was taking six courses, working two jobs and writing my thesis. That was too much. Mm-hmm.

But it was interesting, right? I mean, and one of the things that, you know, one of the things that you always say to people, but you said to us as kids, it's useful to see how much you can work and see where your limits are to a certain extent. And that was one of the things that did to me that or for me that year, was that I was really going at full capacity doing all those things. And it was great. It was writing a thesis was definitely the most meaningful part of my university experience.

And I chose the thing that I did, partly because it was very interesting to me, you know, to go back to what we were talking about earlier, about finding a topic that compels you. It's, I thought it was, I'd been reading a lot of Heidegger because that was part of the degree that I was doing was focused on kind of that era of philosophers. And I found his philosophy extremely interesting. And then I was also reading Terence McKenna at that time. You would give me a few books that were about the psychedelic experience. Like foreathers do.

Yeah. That's a normal thing that people... And I kept seeing parallels and maybe that was the psychedelic stuff. But in any case, I decided they were really there. And so I just wanted to explore that because I didn't feel like I'd ever been explored properly that relationship between a fairly mainstream, I suppose. Well, yeah, mainstream philosopher and kind of out there thinkers like Terence McKenna or like, yeah, the other thinkers that I integrated into that paper. And it was just, I wanted to do something unique.

We're all agreeading lists. We are. 50 books on that Oh, is that paper like could that paper be put up online so people could read it? It could all but put it in the essay app Yeah, I think you should put it didn't we decide that you're gonna put it in the essay app now that probably needs to be edited Oh God, well you Use essay. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, It turned out quite well. I was proud of it.

For sure, I could put it up so people could rate it. What was the act of writing that? A thesis is a capstone. You move from your undergraduate degree to mastery. What did the thesis do for you psychologically? The fact that you went through it? It was my greatest accomplishment at that time, right? I mean, it was, it was just the ability to complete something that major, that's major,

just a major project and anything, but especially one that is unique and you put a lot of thought into it, a lot of yourself into, well, that's why they put it at the end of the degree, right? And so you can use everything that you've captured while you've been learning and put it into something that's creative and new and hopefully teaches yourself what you've learned and can teach other people as well. So if you do a PhD thesis, it's usually something approximating the length of a book. And then you go for your defense. It's in there. Mine was like the length of a Dr. Cthespa.

Yeah. A long Dr. Cthespa. So how long was it? I think it was 29, maybe 30 pages. Right. Right. And so a Ph.D. thesis, which is a normal like undergrid philosophy thesis, like history thesis, generally like 70, 80 pages.

Right. undergrid philosophy thesis, like history thesis, generally like 70, 80 pages. Right, right. So a PhD thesis would be a written for research scientists would be 150 pages or something like that. And then you go for your defense, and there's a few people on the committee, maybe five, your supervisor, an outside reader, and a couple of people from the department. And they're really the only people that read it.

Now, sometimes if your thesis is particularly good, it's a research thesis, you can break it up into papers and they're published and far more people will read it. But often not even that many, they're it. And you might think, well, why write it? If no one will read it. Because it's a lot of work, three years of work. But the answer is, well, you wrote it.

Yeah, that's the whole point for sure. And that trains you. three years of work, but the answer is, well, you wrote it. Yeah, that's the whole point for sure. And that trains you. And plus, like you said, it's a capstone. You know, one of the reasons it's really useful to finish something that you started is because then you see someone, then you see yourself as someone who can finish what they started.

And you might think, well, what if I changed my mind halfway through, that's a good question. But the answer to that should be, don't switch courses halfway through unless what you've switched to is somewhat more difficult. Because you want to check yourself against the tendency just to bail out and rationalize when things get difficult when you're moving forward. And you do have to reward yourself with completion for your effort because it's really punishing to not finish something. For sure. You don't attain the goal. You don't, you don't move to consummation of the experience. But it's not if what you moved to is harder. Well, that's a good check against your own internal tendency to rationalize.

It's like, okay, I'm going to aim at this. I'm going to work towards completion. But what if I find out along the way that I'm wrong? Well, yeah, what if you find out along the way that it's difficult and you're not very disciplined and you're pretty whiny and you turn away in the face of difficulties, right? Because that's the opposite of that. Well, one check against that is,

don't switch courses unless you're sure that what you switch to is more challenging. And then you're acting as your own check against your potential that your weakness, your moral weakness fundamentally will compromise your move forward. I would also say too that another weakness, your moral weakness fundamentally will compromise your move forward. I would also say, too, that another aspect of moving towards completion that's useful is that you really learn at the end what it is that you've just done.

And then you can use that information to retool your next goal, because you could say, well, when you finished your philosophy degree, what did you do? I worked at a bar. And you worked at a bar, and then you went to a boot camp. Yeah. Okay, so how did that come about? Why did you work in a bar, and why was that useful or not, and then why did you move to the boot camp, and how did that work?

Yeah, so when I first started my undergrad degree, I was, I was actually going to do computer science at UFT. That was my plan. I was going to do this great books program. People often do this program. It's a one year program and then they go off and do something else. You did that online.

You didn't have a syllabus anywhere? The syllabus is probably online. The reading list would be online. Yeah, you could, I'm not exactly sure, but we could probably find a link to it. So it's a computer's an academy project Yeah And anyway, so I was planning to do that. I was gonna be good to you if to your somewhere else do computer science and Because I was always a computer nerd and

Turns out that I was well, I met a lot of good people including my wife and so I did the degree and and that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. But at the end of it, I, you know, with a Bachelor of Arts, I mean, how many people have Bachelor's of Arts, and don't exactly know what to do when they're done, pretty much all of them. And so I spent a little bit of time working and figuring out what I was going to do. And while they were software boot camps, which was an extremely straightforward way of getting into that industry.

And so I went to let has labs and learned to program in a more standard way and came out of that and started building user interfaces for racing yachts. Nice. Because what always happens. That one wasn't that we started talking about the online education project in relationship to your programming was while you were working, designing the user interface for these navigation systems. Yeah, for sure.

These were for like high end carbon fiber racing yachts. Yes. Yes. It's a rather niche market, you might say. It's a vet as niche as it gets. Yeah, they race and no one watches. Yeah. No.

And you worked in the bar for how long? I worked in a bar all the way through my undergrad, pretty much, from second year until about 10 months after I did. And why did you do that? And why was it useful apart from the money? Well, the money was great. That was obviously why it was a great job to have as an undergraduate. You know, you get to social job.

You get to work in a restaurant, which it's kind of, from my perspective, it's the best job in a restaurant because you get to have a social life while you're doing it to communicate with people at the bar. People want to talk to you. You have a lot of responsibility. You can also serve tables. Why did you like the responsibility? Well, I think when you're working in a restaurant, it's nice to have a position of some authority, I guess,

right? And the bar that I ended up working at was a bar at a best Western. And they were just opening the bar. So I was the first bartender there. So I got to kind of organize the way it ran. And so that was a useful one to do. That was the responsibility. Adopting that responsibility gives you decision decision making power and freedom as a consequence

Yeah, although I worked 14 hour shifts for the first like three months Because they were like we're gonna have an 11 a.m. To 11 p.m. bartender What and so that's what I did But then it took like two hours to just people would stay late obviously because it's a bar And then you'd have to clean up and so yeah 14 hours That was that was a little mile over time. Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, if you know if you got if you went over for your weekly. Yeah, yeah, I did I got over time sometimes Why they just hire more people they did eventually, but they didn't know what they were doing

Yeah, yeah, and then you know how busy was gonna be or anything and and so yeah, so did you What you ended up doing something practical, yes, engineering, essentially practical engineering. What do you think was the utility of having the great books context? And because you look back on that, you think it was worthwhile. Why was it worthwhile? Well, I mean, the biggest thing was that you are in a community of people who are reading things that they would never otherwise read that are extremely valuable, right? I mean, you're never going to read the epic of Gilgamesh out of the context of that sort of program, if you're why you just won't.

And so, and it was cool, it was kind of a bootcamp of its own, right? You have, you know, a couple hundred people all reading the same book and writing papers at the same time, living in the same residence area. And so it was a real community of, yeah, for sure. Well, it was designed after Oxford, yeah, Ken's college. Yeah, and that's designed on the monastery tradition. Yeah, so it designed after Oxford. Yeah, it can be called. Designed on the monastery tradition. Yeah. So it is a monastery. It essentially is. Yeah.

And so that, well, it was a fantastic community and gave you the opportunity to do something that you'd never otherwise get to do. And, and you know, in terms of the value that it gave me, I mean, there was the value of completing a degree. That's that that's valuable, essentially, no, essentially no matter, it's personally valuable, no matter what degree you complete. And then it taught me to write because you wrote research paper about these books every couple of weeks. It's pretty much the most intensive writing program that you can do. It's also related to this issue of the structure of essay that we started this conversation with,

because, you know, while you're programming, you're typing, and you're moving your fingers. This is how I program. Yeah, it's like this sort of randomly. It's very concrete, and you're actually building something. But it's nested inside an entire value structure, because there's a reason for what you're doing, and there's a reason for the reason that you're doing that, etc. All the way up to the highest level of analysis, and if you study philosophy, you study the great book's tradition, the canon, then it allows you the opportunity to organize your goals and your values at the highest and broadest sense. And that means that you can orient the practicalities towards a high end. And for us, the practicalities of your profession are oriented towards facilitating people's

use of words. And there isn't a higher purpose than that. And so you get organized the advantage of doing an undergraduate, I would say in conjunction with practical apprenticeship, is that you get good at what you're doing at every level all the way up to the highest level. So what about, would you describe yourself as religious or not? Not particularly. No, I mean, I think that I have a lot of appreciation for religious tradition and I've read a lot of religious text because of the degree I did. Well, I don't know, it's a complicated question.

I know. Dance where it like you do. Yeah. Yeah. I usually say more than that. Well, sometimes. Well, you studied these great traditions in the great books. Yeah, I don't think that I'm fully living. I guess, yeah, I don't think that I've fully, I don't think I have a complete understanding of my own religiosity, I guess.

I don't think that I do. I think that that's a work in progress for me and for my family. You know, it's something we talk about fairly often. It's like, how do you, I mean, we live in downtown Toronto and, you know, there's not an excellent religious tradition among young people in downtown. So that's just not something. So the community aspect isn't there. The traditions aren't like obvious.

And so how do you integrate that, the value that comes out that right like the community and the tradition and the monastery element? Yeah, it's not only that and so and so trying to figure out how to incorporate that into your family as a as a young person is Takes a lot of effort and it's something my wife and I do talk about fairly often and we've talked to our friends about it and I feel like a lot of people struggle with how to incorporate the pause developments of religion, of that tradition, into their lives. And what do you make of the fact that these religious, more religious ideas that I've been discussing, let's say, primarily from a psychological perspective? What do you make of the fact that they've been of interest to young people? Well, I think it's exactly the sort of thing that I just described.

And people have a yearning for tradition and for meaning. And I think that I obviously was privy to a lot of these thoughts growing up. And so I was already asking these questions. And it was already interesting to me. But I think you just opened a lot of people's eyes about the sorts of value that they can get from old ideas, right, old and meaningful ideas, but what ideas that are very abstract and so you know, you were able to turn them into less abstract ideas. Like we did with the essay app. Yes, exactly.

So I think it made a lot of sense. I wasn't particularly, I mean, I was surprised on the scale of it, but I wasn't surprised that people were interested in that. That's what people have always been interested in. People who can articulate religious ideas out of abstraction. And what do you think, what ideals and values do you think guide you if you had to make it explicit? What do you aim at at the highest level? You think, I mean, and you talked about trust in your relationship. What do you aim at in your

in your day-to-day life? And Well, I think I tried to I try to do the things that make me feel well, it's I mean, it's a complicated thing to answer, right? You you follow the things that make me feel, well, it's, I mean, it's a complicated thing to answer, right? You follow the things that make you feel strong, I guess, or, I mean, but I don't really even feel like strong is the right word necessarily, but... Well, strong is not bad. Things that make you feel positively about yourself in the long run, I guess, and and I don't know I've always I've always struggled with setting

long-term goals, I guess right? I don't think that's ever been one of my strong suits like you know when I'm gonna I was always interested in being all sorts of things And I was a lot one professional hockey player But I was like I was this close, you know But I was like, that was this close, you know. Yeah, well, that's a problem of being interested in many things too. For sure. And, but that's worked in my favor because I do get to do a lot of things now. And so I think that, I guess that's my long-term goal is to do a lot of interesting things

and have a varied life. Where I have a feminine goal thing. Yeah, well, I think that night, I actually was like, yeah, that sounds about right? Exactly. And then, my name did perfection and women named it completeness or wholeness. And I think there's truth in that that instead of becoming

absolutely perfect at one thing, which is, which is a really useful practice if you wanna move up a given competence hierarchy in the broader context of your life. I mean, I certainly wouldn't have sacrificed my family for my career. In fact, if push came to shove, I would have done the opposite, even though I really loved my career, loved my career now. And so it is necessary to I love my career now. And so it is necessary to arrange an optimal balance. And that optimal balance is the highest unity towards which people can strive.

Right? You have to wander around through those diverse areas to figure out how to integrate them. But you aren't everything you could be unless you flash out your life. One I've also been fortunate in a lot of ways to be able to explore all these things that I like to be able to go to a undergrad and do that and feel free to explore producing an album. That's your privilege. Well, I think it is.

Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So I have a question for you related to that. So you have privileges that other people don't have. How do you think you best at tone for your privileges? Well, by taking advantage of them in a way that benefits other people as well as yourself, right?

I mean, that's the only way you can do it. You can't use your opportunities in a positive way. I think that's, yeah, because people are going to have different levels of privilege. But do you think that it's a guilty about it? Yeah, it's not very helpful. Yeah, and one guilt might be a decent motivator for some people, but. Yeah, and it's necessary, but it's easy to be overwhelmed by it, you know, because. Yeah, one, and it isn't necessary. That's generally the Gary and Throne. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I do think the answer to that isn't to feel so guilty and terrible about the fact that you have some gifts

and other people don't, you have some burdens and other people don't tell. So it's hard to judge that. But, well, it's just not, I mean, it's not useful. It's not like you can't really throw away your privilege, right? I mean, Bruce Wayne doesn't like, stop being Bruce Wayne when he goes off and,

and stop and, you know, becomes Batman eventually. He's always the same guy. He can't you can't get rid of your past and your opportunities very easily. Yeah, and it's foolish to throw them away. Right. Exactly. So it's you know, I mean the goal is benefiting. That's a good question. Yeah, agents of mayhem and chaos fundamentally and hopelessness. Yeah, no, you have to tone for your privilege and that doesn't mean to. mean to be taken advantage of your opportunities in a positive way. And that's yeah. And so that's what I that's what I try to do as much as I can. Making the most of them. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I think that idea of doing that in a way that benefits you and everyone else simultaneously, that's that's

sustainable in the highest possible sense. Okay. So I think we should wrap it up, although I'm definitely gonna convince you to talk to me again. When we're, yeah, it's gonna happen. But what's the piece of advice dad gave you that's really stuck with you? You have one? Well, the one I always liked best was the don't follow stupid rules one. Yeah. That's that's that's a great piece of advice that comes in handy.

You know, all the time. Yeah, well, I remember I think when we discussed that to begin with was in the context of your school's no snowball policy. Oh, yeah. So Julian and Michaela went to a school very nearby that was run by a benevolent fascist. And she was horrible. She was evil. She was quite the creature. Anyways, anyways, yeah, she was quite the creature. Anyways, they had a no snowball. No, no, is actually it was worse than that.

I know. It was no picking up snow. Right. Can you pick it up? Yeah. Well, you might. And so of course none of the children did Yeah Of course, so that made all of them instantly criminals by pursuing their own anyways I told them they could pick up snow if they wanted to and even make a snowball and if they wanted to hit the odd

Teacher who might deserve it in the game Snowball that probably be okay, too But that you have to pay the PCI love this guy. You had to be willing to pay for your crime, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's that one. And then, and then probably the advice that stuck with me, most of all is, is one from mom now, because she told me when I was caught smoking weed in like middle school. And she said, she basically said that you can, you know, you can explore the world, but you have to do it carefully and, you know, in a cautious way and not go too far. And that one always

really stuck with me because I always called me that. Well, you were there, you just, you just weren't listening. Yeah. Well, the way that your mother and I formulated, because we talked about this, we'd lived through the just say,

no, the drugs push from the regains, and it was, no. But it just didn't work for a long time. Well, it just doesn't work. And I also knew from the psych literature that kids who never explored and experimented were actually as bad off as those who did too much. Right. And so then the question is, it's like this compromise idea in some sense.

Well, is there a golden mean? And part of what your mom and I worked out was, and I think we told you this explicitly too, if you were going to smoke pot, for example, we didn't want to be able to see that you were stone. So like if you couldn't handle it, you were doing too much. And I think that's, I can't see how you can come up with a doctrine that's better than that. It's like, well, if it's interfering with your life, your social function, that's diagnostic criteria for abuse.

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, that would always stuck with me. I don't know. And well, that's, I feel like it's a philosophical, I guess, idea that works in pretty much every area of someone's life. And I think that's part of the reason why I do have the goals that I have is because I feel, I do feel like the best sort of life is one that is complete in a variety of areas.

And that's the same thing as not going too far, right? Well, in the, so forthering suite, in the future authoring program, we have people right about desired career or job. Like you're lucky if you have a career, but at least you could have a job. That can be a career if you do it properly. So I like working in bars and restaurants, no, because those are way more complicated jobs than people think. So are you as educated as your intelligence might require,

right? Do you have friends? At least one friend that you actually see now and then, do you have an intimate relationship? Are you working towards it? Can you govern your alcohol and drug intake? What do you do to optimize your mental and physical health? And do you use your time outside of your obligations, productively and meaningfully? And that's sort of seven dimensions. And you know, maybe you can't function optimally on all seven, but zero is the wrong number. And four might be enough. And one person might pick one set of four and another, another set

of four, but it's a good practical place to start. And I think you're much less likely to be miserable and resentful and unhappy and anxious and hopeless if you're firing an all seven. That's what they say, right? Fire an all seven cylinders. What about with regards to your son, what principles do you use disciplinary principles, and how do you negotiate that with Julian? Well, we talk about a lot.

That's the main thing, is making sure you're on the same page as your partner. When it comes to discipline, otherwise you end up disciplining each other instead of the kid. And the kid gets nothing. And so that's been the main thing. But, you know, the idea that you wanted to make sure at every level that your kid is being the kid who will turn into the adults that you want them to be, right? I mean, that's the idea. You want to watch for behaviors that aren't going to serve them well. And then, you know, in a, in as careful and productive way as you can, you discipline, whether that's just taking them aside and talking to them or.

Yeah, discipline doesn't mean punishment. Yeah, it just means, it means when I pay attention and, it means paying attention. And, you know, well, it basically means paying attention and then acting on it. So that's what we try to do.

And, you know, he's one and a half. So he listens perfectly. Yeah. Yeah, he's doing all right. Yeah. He's doing all right. Yeah, he's doing all right. All right. Well, cheers guys. That was fun.

Cheers. You bet. And here's to finally having this conversation. Yeah, I'm being able to have it. Yeah. Thank God. Thank God. you