0:00:15 “Hello friends of Remarkable People, this is Guy Kawasaki and you know we are on a mission
0:00:18 to make you remarkable.
0:00:22 Helping me in this episode is the remarkable Michael Morris.
0:00:28 Now Michael is a professor of leadership and psychology at Columbia University and he has
0:00:33 literally spent decades studying how culture shapes human behavior.
0:00:37 We’re going to be talking about tribes today.
0:00:43 A lot of us are Seth Godin fans and if you’re a Seth Godin fan, you think of tribe as something
0:00:47 really great that you build the tribe.
0:00:52 On the other hand, in the political environment, a tribe could be taken as a negative.
0:00:58 Michael has a book called Tribal, how the cultural instincts that divide us can help
0:01:00 bring us together.
0:01:07 And he argues that our tribal instinct, which is often blamed for social division, can actually
0:01:09 bring people together.
0:01:13 What a great topic he covered for us.
0:01:18 So Michael aims to show how understanding our cultural motivations can mobilize groups
0:01:20 and create political change.
0:01:22 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:34 This is remarkable people and now here is the remarkable Michael Morris.
0:01:37 Can you just define what a tribe is?
0:01:43 Because I think for a while because of Seth Godin that tribe became a positive thing and
0:01:47 now not clear to me that being part of a tribe is necessarily positive.
0:01:51 Let’s start with a definition of what a tribe is.
0:01:59 A tribe is a large group that is united by shared ideas, whether those are passions or
0:02:02 goals or framework assumptions.
0:02:05 A tribe is a group that is united by a culture.
0:02:09 And we are the only animals who have tribes.
0:02:14 Some other animals have the very rudiments of culture like pods of dolphins will develop
0:02:20 a particular way of fishing and chimpanzee troops will develop a way of cracking nuts,
0:02:23 but it never develops very far in other species.
0:02:33 But in our species, we had a couple of mutations in early humans that unlocked this potential
0:02:39 to live in groups that were not united by kinship or even by necessarily close friendship, but
0:02:42 they were just united by common understanding.
0:02:47 And so I think Seth Godin is really on track and especially with regard to understanding
0:02:54 why the tribe metaphor works really well for groups, especially say a startup company or
0:03:00 a mission-driven company where it’s more than the revenue, more than authority, it’s the
0:03:05 shared understanding that unites people and motivates people.
0:03:11 To your second point, part of the reason I wrote this book is that I’ve done research
0:03:17 for decades on how cultural frameworks shape people, how they shape literally what you
0:03:20 see and what you do.
0:03:24 And some of the work has been really influential in academia, but that doesn’t mean that the
0:03:27 rest of the world takes notice, right?
0:03:34 And over the last, say, five years, I’ve noticed that you can’t open a newspaper without seeing
0:03:40 a new conflict, whether it’s a partisan conflict in the states or a racial ethnic conflict in
0:03:47 the workplace or a sectarian civil war somewhere, some sort of religious strife.
0:03:49 And I don’t think any of that is really new.
0:03:52 I think we’ve always had conflicts.
0:03:57 But what I do think is new is that there’s a kind of despair or cynicism about it.
0:04:02 And it often takes the form of chalking it all up to tribalism.
0:04:06 And there’s not a lot of definitions given when the pundits talk about tribalism or
0:04:08 the politicians talk about tribalism.
0:04:11 It’s more an accusation than really an analysis.
0:04:16 It’s a way of saying that the other side is being irrational, tribalism.
0:04:22 And I think that we could benefit a lot from some more psychological clarity about what
0:04:23 tribal thinking is.
0:04:28 And what tribal thinking is really is thinking in terms of shared cultural frameworks and
0:04:32 acting on motivations based on shared ideals.
0:04:38 So I’m trying to demystify this genie called tribalism that the pundits talk about in
0:04:39 despairing tones.
0:04:45 And I think that tribalism consists of some psychological processes that we know quite
0:04:50 a bit about and that we know how to nudge and that we know how to shift.
0:04:51 And so that’s my goal.
0:04:55 That’s why I wrote this book for the broad audience.
0:05:01 So from a positive standpoint, what does a tribe enable a group of humans to do that
0:05:04 is advantageous and positive?
0:05:08 Well, a tribe enables, first of all, peace.
0:05:14 I know Jane Goodall is a friend of yours and I’ve been on the show and I love chimpanzees.
0:05:18 I think they’re wonderful animals, but you could never have a chimpanzee in Manhattan
0:05:25 because that many unrelated adult chimpanzees on a small island would just be a bloodbath.
0:05:30 And chimpanzees, even in small groups, even in their troops, they can’t coordinate on
0:05:31 tasks.
0:05:36 So they may hunt together side by side and one chimpanzee may accidentally help out another
0:05:41 chimpanzee by spooking some prey, but they can’t work from the same script together.
0:05:46 They can’t collaborate in the way that we can because we have these shared frameworks
0:05:47 that guide us.
0:05:49 We’re living in tribes.
0:05:53 It was a way to create cooperation and peace and coordination.
0:06:01 And then it also became a way to create continuity and to build on the wisdom of the past so
0:06:06 that the culture in a group accumulates across the generations and the group gets wiser and
0:06:09 wiser even if the individuals are no smarter.
0:06:16 So from a scientific standpoint, if you have two tribes, it’s not necessarily the case
0:06:19 that those two tribes will be in conflict.
0:06:22 They could just be different tribes.
0:06:27 Or is it assumed that your tribe and my tribe were going to go at loggerheads because we’re
0:06:29 in different tribes?
0:06:34 Most people assume that, but they should not assume that because evolution created these
0:06:38 tribal instincts for solidarity, for in-group solidarity.
0:06:42 Like, early humans didn’t have that much contact without groups.
0:06:45 The population wasn’t very dense then.
0:06:51 What really mattered was that they had instincts that guided solidarity within the group and
0:06:54 allowed for cooperation and allowed for peaceful relationships.
0:06:58 Now tribal instincts can contribute to conflicts.
0:07:00 They can in many ways.
0:07:03 But that’s not a necessary outcome.
0:07:06 Solidarity does not imply antagonism.
0:07:11 Sometimes an out-group can help you bond in the same way that the early MAC commercials
0:07:17 set up the PC guy as this out-group that helped define what a MAC guy is, right?
0:07:21 But it doesn’t have to be that way, and that’s not the core of it.
0:07:27 Would you define Republicans as a tribe and MAGA as a tribe and Democrats as a tribe and
0:07:28 liberals as a tribe?
0:07:29 Definitely.
0:07:35 I think that the red and blue tribes, there are organizations that are not really tribes
0:07:38 because they don’t really share that much.
0:07:46 So 50 years ago, both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party had a lot of policy diversity
0:07:47 within each party.
0:07:53 There was a Southern conservative wing and a more liberal Northern wing within each party,
0:07:57 and people often had more in common with parts of the opposite party than with the other
0:07:58 side of their own party.
0:08:04 But I think what’s happened to political parties in the United States over the last 20 years
0:08:12 is that the red and blue identities have become mega identities because we sorted residentially
0:08:17 where liberals moved to the coasts and to college towns and conservatives moved to the
0:08:21 heartland and to rural areas and exerbs.
0:08:27 And then once you had cable media, cable news shows where you’re sorting into where you
0:08:33 get your news based on partisan identities, and then social media just made it far worse
0:08:39 because you have these echo chambers where my own behavior elicits confirmation from
0:08:43 the news feed that I trust to be a barometer of the world.
0:08:50 So we’ve come into a world now where we, you know, I’m a liberal and I have to confess
0:08:52 I get my news from places.
0:08:56 They’re not necessarily kind to the conservative viewpoint.
0:08:57 They caricature it.
0:09:01 They leave out details that conservatives like to focus on.
0:09:08 And so I think they’ve become very rich tribes and primary identities for people in a way
0:09:09 that they weren’t.
0:09:14 I think 50 years ago, your religious identity as a Catholic or a Protestant or a Jew, it
0:09:15 was way more important.
0:09:20 Your ethnic identity was way more important, and people tended to live in neighborhoods
0:09:22 that were more ethnically sorted.
0:09:30 And so I think that we do see a change in how much these partisan identities are fundamental
0:09:35 tribes that shape people’s identities and their sense of who they are.
0:09:43 So if you were given the goal of reducing the negative aspects of these tribes so that
0:09:51 there’s more peace and cooperation and mutually acceptable goals and methods, what would you
0:09:52 do today?
0:09:53 It’s interesting.
0:09:54 Lots of people are trying it.
0:10:00 This depolarization, bridging the divide has become, it’s like a collection of movements.
0:10:03 There’s all sorts of foundations doing it.
0:10:09 And there are researchers studying the effectiveness of different programs and different approaches.
0:10:15 And the core of most of these ideas is that if we can get people to talk to each other
0:10:21 in an equal status situation, they will start to listen to each other, and their views will
0:10:24 become more moderate, and then they will become more respectful towards each other.
0:10:30 It’s a theory called the contact hypothesis that was used with regard to race relations
0:10:31 in the past.
0:10:37 The problem is that a lot of these bridge organizations are called things like high from
0:10:45 the other side or the red-blue rift or the urban-rural dialogue.
0:10:50 And it accentuates that you’re talking to somebody from the other side.
0:10:57 And then there are some other ones that are called things like Coffee Party America, or
0:10:59 they’re all about land preservation or something.
0:11:04 They focus on an issue that kind of cuts across the red-blue divide.
0:11:10 And the study is fine that when a liberal talks to a conservative about a completely
0:11:17 non-political issue, that depolarizes them more than if they talk about a political issue.
0:11:24 And if it’s not made super salient that the other person is a Republican, then you learn
0:11:28 and you become more moderate as a function of the bipartisan contact.
0:11:32 But if it’s made very salient that you’re a liberal and you’re a Democrat and you’re
0:11:35 talking to a conservative, then people don’t learn from the conversation.
0:11:37 Their guard is up, essentially.
0:11:44 Okay, so what does that mean that we should have these movements led by people who love
0:11:49 football, people who love stock car racing, people who love the Olympics, people who love
0:11:50 sushi?
0:11:56 I mean, what do we use as this kind of neutral, unifying force?
0:11:57 Those are all great ideas.
0:12:03 This research showing that during the Olympics, the affective polarization like the mutual
0:12:07 loathing between the red and the blue, it declines during the Olympics because during
0:12:13 the Olympics, we all feel like Americans and we’re not focused on our internal division.
0:12:18 I think it’s finding things that people are passionate about that aren’t politicized
0:12:20 issues.
0:12:25 Those are more likely to start a conversation that will sustain beyond the one-hour program
0:12:29 because you talk to somebody, you love coffee, they love coffee, you say, “Oh, let’s meet
0:12:32 at this new coffee place or let’s meet at this new sushi place.”
0:12:33 Surfing.
0:12:34 Surfing.
0:12:35 Yes.
0:12:37 I surfed with Republicans.
0:12:42 When I lived out in the Bay Area, I used to surf in Santa Cruz and I wasn’t very good.
0:12:47 In fact, I was terrible, but I did it as part of my larping as a Californian.
0:12:52 I wanted to feel like a Californian, so I had to learn how to surf.
0:12:59 In your book, you talk about the three instincts, peer, hero, and instinct.
0:13:03 Can you just explain how that fits into tribes?
0:13:04 Sure.
0:13:10 That’s basically where I’m trying to break tribalism, tribal motivations, tribal thinking,
0:13:12 break it down into pieces.
0:13:18 With most academic things, I could probably break it down into 50 pieces if I was writing
0:13:26 an academic paper, but there are three major waves that correspond to different group psychology
0:13:31 systems in our heads that I think are useful to distinguish and they offer different levers
0:13:34 for managing culture, for changing culture.
0:13:39 You could think of them as the urge to fit in and match with other people around you,
0:13:45 the drive to contribute to your community, and the ache to maintain traditions and continuity.
0:13:50 These are three fundamental sides of us, almost like three characters that live within
0:13:51 each person.
0:13:57 There’s the conformist, there’s the aspirational person who wants to do good, and then there’s
0:14:01 the nostalgic sentimental backward-looking person.
0:14:05 The peer instinct is what I call the conformist instinct.
0:14:10 It’s our sideways glances at classmates, coworkers, neighbors, keeping up with the Joneses.
0:14:15 When you put a student in a math classroom that is operating at a higher level, the student
0:14:18 tends to rise to the level of the classroom.
0:14:25 We are wired to kind of be the same, to mesh with, to match the people around us.
0:14:31 That evolved really early for early humans, for Homo erectus like two million years ago,
0:14:38 and it allowed for coordinated activity in a way that other primates can’t do.
0:14:42 Antelope hunting, chasing an antelope in a group, taking turns chasing it until the antelopes
0:14:49 exhausted or gathering in ways that require more than one person.
0:14:54 Collective foraging is way more efficient than each individual doing it themselves.
0:14:56 That was one major breakthrough.
0:15:02 Then, a second major breakthrough in human social life happened about half a million
0:15:08 years ago, and this was Homo neanderthalis.
0:15:15 This is what we can recognize in ourselves as our upward attention to CEOs and MVPs and
0:15:22 noblists and our quest to contribute, our yearning for status and tribute.
0:15:27 It’s status-seeking we often think of as a shallow thing, but status-seeking drives
0:15:29 most of the contributions to the world.
0:15:32 Why do people like you and I work so hard?
0:15:35 Because we want to be respected by other people.
0:15:37 This was something new under the sun.
0:15:42 You started having valiant hunters who would sacrifice themselves so that the tribe could
0:15:46 bring down a woolly mammoth, or you started to have people learning how to make spears
0:15:52 that were better spears even though it took years of work to figure it out, or building
0:15:55 shelters to protect the elderly for the first time.
0:16:00 All of these things where you were doing something that had a personal cost, but it was for the
0:16:05 greater good, but you eventually got paid back by the respect that people gave you.
0:16:13 And then only in the last 100,000 years, there’s another new side of human social interest.
0:16:19 And that’s the sort of backward-looking interest in past generations, an interest in our ancestors,
0:16:21 the ancestor instinct.
0:16:28 And we see examples of this with cave art, where you have caves that were painted in
0:16:35 maybe 200,000 years ago and then sealed off by a landslide and then opened up again by
0:16:37 another landslide.
0:16:40 And what did the the Cro-Magnon people 60,000 years ago do?
0:16:44 Well, they would venture into this cave and they would see this cave art that they had
0:16:46 no idea where it came from.
0:16:51 And unlike the cavemen in Hollywood movies, they didn’t run away, they didn’t seal off
0:16:54 the cave, they didn’t act primitive and superstitious.
0:16:59 Instead, they studied the art like you or I would at a gallery, and they learned the
0:17:03 technique, and then they extended some of the murals that a completely different group
0:17:10 of people 100,000 years before had, not 100,000, but maybe 10,000 years before had started.
0:17:16 So it’s this kind of fascination and reverence with the ways of the past, even the ways that
0:17:20 are not immediately practical.
0:17:26 And this curiosity about ways of the past, eagerness to learn it, drive to maintain these
0:17:32 ways of the past, this is something that created cultural memory, because suppose we were in
0:17:37 a tribe that figured out boat making, and then you have a mini ice age, and for many
0:17:42 generations nobody needs a boat, the boat making was kept alive because we would know
0:17:46 the ancestors made boats and we would want to make them even if we couldn’t use them.
0:17:49 And so it was a way to create memory.
0:17:53 Before that, people are were innovative, but they had to reinvent the wheel every generation
0:17:56 because a lot of things got lost.
0:18:01 But once people were curious to listen to elders and curious to pick up an old arrowhead
0:18:06 that they find on the ground, and then model after that technique, it created this cultural
0:18:09 memory and then you had this continuity.
0:18:13 And then once you had all three of these things together, then the real magic happened, which
0:18:19 is cultural accumulation that human groups started building on the expertise of past
0:18:23 generations with each generation, and sort of tuning their knowledge to their particular
0:18:28 ecology, whether it was the desert or the rainforest.
0:18:31 And so cultures differentiated and they became much richer.
0:18:37 This is often what’s called the creative explosion in the human journey, where suddenly you
0:18:43 had homo sapiens multiplying in numbers, migrating all across the planet, and essentially moving
0:18:46 to the top of the food chain, becoming the dominant species.
0:18:47 And there was no looking back.
0:18:51 That we just left the rest of the primate pack in our dust.
0:18:54 And we just became a completely different kind of animal.
0:18:58 And it wasn’t that our brains were getting any bigger, it was that our sort of cultural
0:19:01 brains were getting bigger, our cultural brains were getting bigger.
0:19:06 And that’s really the secret of our success, that we only like 1% of what I know or you
0:19:11 know, did we learn ourselves, the rest is just inherited from the past.
0:19:19 And so that was the sort of killer app of the humankind, culture and cumulative culture.
0:19:21 And it made us who we are today.
0:19:25 And so things like conformity and status seeking and nostalgia.
0:19:30 When I was growing up, I thought of those as weaknesses, as like human follies and should
0:19:35 derive those things and we should leave them behind and we should try to focus on being
0:19:37 rational and being ethical and all these things.
0:19:41 But I’ve come to think that’s very incomplete and that we have to understand that our strongest
0:19:48 motivations come from these tribal instincts, both as people trying to sustain our personal
0:19:54 motivation and as leaders trying to implant motivation or salespeople trying to hook into
0:19:55 some of these motivations.
0:20:03 We need to be aware of these tribal instincts and how we can manage them and redirect them.
0:20:24 And what is the difference between a tribe and a cult?
0:20:25 Great question.
0:20:29 I often read that a cult is just a strong culture.
0:20:31 I often see that asserted.
0:20:36 And I think that we often call things cults that are not really cults.
0:20:41 Where I work with some of the computer science professors, they think all these AI companies
0:20:45 have become cults because they all have secretive knowledge and they don’t really know how their
0:20:46 programs work.
0:20:49 But I think there’s a really clear difference.
0:20:59 A cult is a community that engages in a particular set of activities to create a monopoly of
0:21:03 status with one leader or one group of leaders.
0:21:10 And what defines a cult to cult researchers is what they call network closure or network
0:21:11 capture.
0:21:16 So a typical cult, like in the old days, say the Unification Church of Reverend Sun Young
0:21:22 Moon, they would find a lonely college student on campus, maybe someone who had recently arrived.
0:21:28 They would invite them to a dinner and love bomb them with incredibly warm behavior.
0:21:33 And then this recruit would be invited to a workshop usually held in a rural area where
0:21:37 phones don’t work and there’s no TV for about a week.
0:21:44 And it would be long days without much sleep of the ways that you indoctrinate people.
0:21:48 And then they would encourage them to move into a church residence, collective living
0:21:49 kind of thing.
0:21:53 And then eventually probably be better if you cut off ties with your family and your
0:21:57 old friends, because we know most of these outsiders are hostile to the good mission
0:21:59 of the church.
0:22:01 And the Moonies had a special word for that too.
0:22:07 I think they called it heavenly deception, that it was like a lie, but for a good cause.
0:22:09 And then parents were typically quite angry.
0:22:14 And then that kind of corroborated the cult’s story about the mainstream being hostile.
0:22:20 And so what happens there is the recruit gradually gets into a world where they’re enveloped
0:22:26 by fellow cult members and where the only, I guess, what I would call prestige signals,
0:22:30 the only deference, the only admiration is towards the cult leader.
0:22:32 It’s a monolithic system.
0:22:39 And in our everyday life, we may respect the CEO, but we may also respect the Pope or we
0:22:42 may also respect Mick Jagger.
0:22:45 We have a sort of balance of heroes.
0:22:49 And so no one of those heroes can completely dominate us.
0:22:54 But in a cult, the cult leaders have a monopoly on status.
0:23:01 And so it’s really hard for people to question them and the approval of the cult leaders
0:23:02 becomes like a drug.
0:23:07 One of the only effective ways to get people out of a cult is a sort of setterfuge where
0:23:14 you put a spy into the cult, who’s like a very capable person, and they rise to a certain
0:23:20 level of status within the cult, and then they leave in a very ostentatious way.
0:23:23 People often leave cults because there can only be one leader.
0:23:30 When an insider leaves, that creates an opportunity for others to leave because they can say,
0:23:37 “Ah, this person always has been high status, and they’re leaving, and so I can leave.”
0:23:44 So it’s a way of using the status deference in a cult against the cult by creating a high
0:23:46 status person who leaves.
0:23:51 You can’t exactly make the case that Liz Cheney pulled that off, right?
0:23:58 I mean, seriously, isn’t the Republican Party today a cult by what you just described?
0:24:03 They all worship Donald Trump, and it’s all about Trump at this point.
0:24:04 Almost all about Trump.
0:24:05 Yeah.
0:24:06 It’s getting there.
0:24:10 There are parts of it that are, there are still never Trumpers, but they’re diminishing.
0:24:14 So I think, yeah, it’s verging on that.
0:24:18 Certainly the MAGA contingent is verging on that, and they have their hats.
0:24:24 They have the sorts of things that are really strong culture, the hats that make them as
0:24:29 a symbol, and they’ve got their particular words that they use to mean things.
0:24:30 So it’s verging on a cult.
0:24:31 Okay.
0:24:32 I don’t want to go into that.
0:24:33 That’s cool.
0:24:38 Now, let’s take the positive aspects of a tribe.
0:24:39 I don’t know.
0:24:44 Maybe you’re the CEO or CMO of a company, and you intentionally want to create a tribe
0:24:51 like the Macintosh Tribe or the GPT tribe or the Mead tribe or something.
0:24:54 So how do you create a tribe?
0:24:58 And I mean this in the positive sense, not the MAGA sense.
0:25:00 I think the Macintosh Tribe is a good example.
0:25:02 You’re the expert.
0:25:08 But I think I remember from the history of maybe from your book, but maybe from elsewhere,
0:25:13 at one point Apple put all the Macintosh people in their own building, and they flew like
0:25:15 a pirate flag or something.
0:25:20 So they created this sense of we’re subversive, we’re not the mainstream, we’re not corporate
0:25:22 America, we’re the Macintosh people.
0:25:27 And I think that Apple was also very good at creating a tribe among Mac users by the
0:25:32 Think Different ad campaign that I know you’re one of the stewards of it.
0:25:36 It’s interesting because it really plays into this idea that I’m not one of them.
0:25:42 I’m part of this group where I have these cultural heroes like Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs
0:25:48 that are people who did it their own way and shifted the paradigm, that sort of thing.
0:25:55 Creating heroes, creating conformity similarity within the group by a common workplace, and
0:26:00 then eventually celebrating traditions and building ceremonies and rituals.
0:26:06 So I don’t know whether there were cultural traditions within the Mac Division of Apple
0:26:10 that were part of what made people feel like, okay, this is who we are.
0:26:12 This is the Macintosh Tribe.
0:26:18 I think the closest thing we had to a ritual was getting the free orange juice in the refrigerator,
0:26:20 which at the time was a big deal.
0:26:23 I mean, listen, the Macintosh Division was so long ago.
0:26:28 If you gave people free Odwalla juice, that was a huge thing.
0:26:33 It’s not like Google where they have vegan sushi and I don’t know, non-GMO, barbecue
0:26:36 sauce and everything and ping pong and volleyball.
0:26:38 We just had free juice.
0:26:40 That was good enough.
0:26:48 But I will tell you that I think the Macintosh Tribe, although we also call that the cult,
0:26:54 but I don’t think that we ever worship Steve Jobs to the extent that we thought he was
0:26:58 derivative from God and everything he said was perfectly true.
0:27:03 There was a lot of arguing with him, but when you argued with Steve Jobs, you sure as hell
0:27:08 better have your act together because if you were wrong, you were going to get drilled.
0:27:11 Yeah, I believe it.
0:27:12 I believe it.
0:27:17 I never met him, but I would sometimes see him in Palo Alto when I lived there, like at
0:27:20 a restaurant and even the waiters were terrified.
0:27:24 Now, so let’s say that you create a tribe, the Macintosh Tribe.
0:27:29 What are the danger signals that you should say, “Uh-oh, we’re going too far.
0:27:31 We should pull back here.
0:27:34 This is going to turn destructive and evil.”
0:27:35 That’s a good question.
0:27:40 I think that one thing you see a lot is that when you create an intense culture within
0:27:46 a division or a company, then one way that managers will do that is by setting up the
0:27:50 competition or some other company as a rival, as the outgroup that we’re different from
0:27:58 them, and then there becomes a tendency to denigrate and caricature that other side.
0:28:03 That’s really bad for business because if you’re underestimating the competition or
0:28:10 if you’re dismissing their technology or their strategy just because they’re doing it, then
0:28:15 that gets in the way of clear thinking and people get anchored by the ways of the past.
0:28:22 So I think when the ancestor instinct is healthy, when it’s about maintaining and defending
0:28:28 our traditions, where it becomes unhealthy is when it’s denigrating other people’s traditions.
0:28:32 But it can slip into that, especially when people are threatened.
0:28:38 So it’s a dangerous thing because say when a company starts to lose out to the competition,
0:28:42 that’s when the temptation to denigrate the competition will be strongest, but that’s
0:28:47 when it’s also most problematic because it’s a moment when you should be learning from
0:28:48 the competition.
0:28:54 I’ll tell you, the McIntosh division guilty as charged because we definitely denigrated
0:28:57 the IBM PC and IBM in general.
0:28:58 What can I say?
0:29:01 Now, I’ll give you a hypothetical, Michael.
0:29:06 Let’s suppose that you are now Speaker of the House.
0:29:08 How would you govern differently?
0:29:09 In the House.
0:29:11 That’s a tough one.
0:29:16 What’s going on right now almost defies description, which is that the Speaker of the House is
0:29:21 getting things done through the Democrats, not through the Republicans.
0:29:25 That’s where he’s gotten his votes from, the Democrats, because Hakeem Jeffries can get
0:29:26 people to line up and vote.
0:29:33 Now, if I was in the House, I think in an organization like that, you count votes and
0:29:37 you have to find a requisite consensus.
0:29:39 You’re not going to get 100%.
0:29:42 You may need 51%.
0:29:47 And so you have to engage in what’s called legislative negotiation, which means I understand
0:29:55 exactly what the more liberal Republicans would need in order to sign on.
0:30:00 And so I can reach across the aisle and I can say, “Hey, we’re going to build in a rider
0:30:05 to this bill that takes care of something.”
0:30:10 So it’s an abortion bill, but there’s an exception in the case, something like that.
0:30:14 Because I really see them accurately and I know their preferences.
0:30:19 So as a negotiator, I can give them exactly the concession that works for them and gets
0:30:22 them above threshold to say yes.
0:30:26 I know you’ve had negotiation people like Bill Urie on your show in the past.
0:30:28 So it’s the getting to yes idea.
0:30:33 I think the problem is that we don’t see much reaching across the aisle anymore.
0:30:35 It’s become very rare.
0:30:40 And I think it’s because politicians have what we call partisan blindness, which is
0:30:43 that they don’t see the other side accurately.
0:30:47 They stereotype the other side and they tend to see the other side as like the opposite
0:30:50 of them and as very extreme.
0:30:56 So when you ask Republicans what percentage of Democrats are LGBTQ identified, they’ll
0:31:00 say something like 30%, whereas in reality, it’s 9%.
0:31:02 It’s about the same as it is in every other group.
0:31:05 And they really think it’s 30%.
0:31:11 And when you ask Democrats about Republicans, they also have these mistaken perceptions
0:31:12 of the other side.
0:31:19 I think what I would try to do is both myself personally and with the sort of core group
0:31:24 of people who would be my arm twisters and back room negotiators, try to make sure people
0:31:29 are understanding the other side accurately and understanding that the other side is a
0:31:30 spectrum.
0:31:35 And it’s not a monolith and that there are issues like, say environmental issues, there
0:31:43 are ways that liberals can reach out to conservatives speaking in terms of conservative values.
0:31:49 So recently, it was part of Biden’s Inflation Act had a lot of environmental provisions.
0:31:54 And one way they got relatively conservative people, whether it’s Manchin, who’s a conservative
0:32:02 Democrat, or some of the more liberal Republicans, the way they got them on board was by having
0:32:10 clerics talk about the sanctity of the earth and the Christian obligation to preserve the
0:32:15 world for future generations or the Jewish tradition to heal the world.
0:32:20 The words of clerics and the sort of obligation of tradition, that rings true to a lot of
0:32:22 conservative ears.
0:32:29 And liberals usually make the case for environmentalism in terms of liberal values like unfairness
0:32:33 or we should try to make sure that society is equal and fair and it’s not fair that some
0:32:36 groups suffer from these environmental problems more than others.
0:32:40 That’s a good way to convince another liberal, but it’s not necessarily the way to convince
0:32:45 a conservative, but this religious discourse is better for convincing a conservative.
0:32:51 So you’re saying we talk about climate change as we should protect this God-given earth.
0:32:52 Exactly.
0:32:56 Yeah, you’re good at this.
0:32:58 You obviously managed a lot of salespeople.
0:32:59 You’ve been very involved in that.
0:33:03 And good salespeople, they don’t try to change the values of the customer they’re talking
0:33:04 to.
0:33:10 They try to find the identity within that customer that implies that they should buy an apple,
0:33:15 whether it’s that they were a liberal arts person, or that they’re a political radical,
0:33:20 or that they ride a motorcycle, whatever it is, you find that thing that is already part
0:33:21 of somebody’s identity.
0:33:25 And then you say, well, you know, as a motorcycle rider, don’t tell me you’re going to buy
0:33:26 an IBM.
0:33:29 You work with the momentum of what’s already in them.
0:33:32 When I go surfing today, I’m going to go out there and say, as a surfer, don’t tell
0:33:38 me you’re going to vote for Donald Trump because he’s going to ruin the ocean, right?
0:33:47 So are you basically seeing marketing advices you build from commonality as opposed to conversion?
0:33:51 I think a great example is Martin Luther, Jr. King, when he gave his “I Have a Dream”
0:33:52 speech.
0:33:59 He didn’t spend the time in that speech talking about all of the inequity that African Americans
0:34:03 and his movement had suffered, even though he had been attacked with police dogs just
0:34:04 shortly before.
0:34:10 Instead, he talked about the American dream and the Declaration of Independence that all
0:34:16 men are created equal and he recited the lyrics to America, the beautiful, sweet land of liberty.
0:34:22 And what he was doing is he was calling on the egalitarian values that are inside of
0:34:26 all Americans because he wasn’t just talking to the activists in Washington.
0:34:31 He was talking to every American in their living room who was watching on television.
0:34:37 And instead of converting them, he sort of evoked the ideals within them.
0:34:41 And he did it through symbols, through iconic symbols.
0:34:46 And I think that’s also what the Think Different campaign did, is you didn’t explain what it
0:34:48 means to think different.
0:34:52 You show them a picture of Gandhi, you show them a picture of Albert Einstein, especially
0:34:55 one where Albert Einstein’s hair is particularly messy.
0:35:00 And then that communicates, it’s like a magnet of meaning, it communicates a whole set of
0:35:06 ideals and values that would be consistent with thinking, okay, I’m a creative type who
0:35:11 should be using a Mac rather than a conformist type who should be using a PC, even though
0:35:17 the Mac culture is just as much of a tribe as the PC culture.
0:35:22 Let me ask you the most theoretical question in the history of this podcast.
0:35:25 Okay, we’re about to make history here.
0:35:26 Okay, it’s an honor.
0:35:33 Let’s just say that by some miracle, Donald Trump calls you up and says, listen, my campaign
0:35:34 is in trouble.
0:35:40 Can you give me some advice how I can appeal to a broader selection of people?
0:35:46 I mean, I’m sort of on record for having helped the other side every election, so I don’t
0:35:47 think he would do that.
0:35:55 But if he did, and if I was inclined to help him, if there was someone even worse on the
0:35:57 other side, what would I say?
0:36:02 I would say Donald Trump has some strengths, which is why he got elected once.
0:36:06 He’s the billionaire, but he’s the billionaire from Queens who likes to eat at McDonald’s.
0:36:09 So he has this common touch.
0:36:14 And even though he doesn’t have that much in common with blue collar audiences, they
0:36:19 feel like he gets them and they feel like he can represent them and represent their voices.
0:36:23 And there’s a lot to learn from Donald Trump.
0:36:27 Now I don’t think he’s doing that as much in this election.
0:36:30 So I think it’s gotten more ugly.
0:36:37 It’s more he’s attacking, first attacking Biden obsessively and then now attacking Kamala
0:36:41 Harris in a way that seems to be overboard, not effective.
0:36:45 I would say that he should highlight that he’s a family man.
0:36:49 He should highlight that he talks to all of his kids every day.
0:36:51 His wife loves him.
0:36:57 Not one may be a stretch, but maybe he can somehow negotiate with her to make an appearance
0:36:58 of it.
0:37:01 But there are things that people liked about Trump and there are things that people liked
0:37:03 about his policies.
0:37:07 People thought of him as someone who, you know, who wasn’t a globalist and who cared about
0:37:09 America first.
0:37:13 And you know, a lot of the people in the Midwest who live in these hollowed out regions, they
0:37:15 don’t think globalism has treated them very well.
0:37:20 And their manufacturing jobs have gone away and they liked his protectionist rhetoric and
0:37:26 they liked that he wasn’t eager to get involved in foreign wars and spend a lot of our budget
0:37:28 on foreign wars.
0:37:33 So there are some legitimate policies that he had when he was running that people liked.
0:37:37 And I think if he wanted to win this election, he might spend a little more time talking
0:37:40 about those things instead of what he’s been talking about.
0:37:41 Okay.
0:37:46 So since I asked you the most hypothetical question, I got to ask you the second most
0:37:52 hypothetical question, which is Kamala Harris calls you up and says, help me win this election.
0:37:54 You’re an expert in tribes and cultures.
0:37:55 What do I do?
0:37:58 I think Kamala Harris has a tremendous amount of strengths.
0:38:05 She has what I would call a lot of cultural capital because she’s a person who has a legitimate
0:38:08 involvement in many different tribes.
0:38:11 And so let me say what I mean, think of her life in chapters.
0:38:17 She grew up as the daughter of an African American, but also Caribbean immigrant and
0:38:19 South Asian Indian immigrant.
0:38:24 So she knows what it’s like to be with a Asian mother at a supermarket who speaks in an accent
0:38:27 and the cashier can’t understand what she’s saying.
0:38:33 She knows some of the things that African Americans experience on a daily basis.
0:38:35 She’s a self-made professional.
0:38:36 She didn’t go into the family business.
0:38:41 She made her career moving up the legal world and becoming the top cop of California.
0:38:45 And I think top cop is a good way to represent her record.
0:38:46 She was tough on crime.
0:38:50 And I think most Americans want someone tough on crime.
0:38:53 And then she has been a very successful senator.
0:38:55 She’s been a vice president.
0:39:00 So she has a lot of different experiences that can connect her to different swaths of
0:39:02 the American public.
0:39:08 And I think that you can show an audience the side of yourself that is similar to that
0:39:11 audience and gain their trust.
0:39:16 Because if they know that you’ve walked in their shoes, they’ll think that you can probably
0:39:19 understand their concerns and represent those concerns.
0:39:24 There’s one idea these days that goes under the heading of intersectionality.
0:39:29 And it’s the idea that we should all focus on our most specific combination of identities.
0:39:32 So I’m a straight white middle-aged male.
0:39:36 And so I should be representing straight white.
0:39:37 And I don’t think we need to do that.
0:39:39 I think we can code switch.
0:39:44 I think we can be, I’m sure you meet your surfer friends and your vocabulary is gnarly
0:39:47 and things the surfer say.
0:39:50 And when you meet your technology friends, you’re talking technology jargon.
0:39:55 And when you are at home with your family, you’re speaking in terms of the family’s
0:39:56 running jokes.
0:40:00 They don’t have to be completely consistent in front of every audience.
0:40:04 And one of the things that I’ve studied for years and that I talk about a lot in the book
0:40:11 is what I call triggering, which is that some of these, the peer instinct in particular,
0:40:12 it’s triggered by our tribe mates.
0:40:19 So when we see the faces of people who are from a group that we have lived in and we
0:40:23 know well and that has nurtured us, we automatically become that.
0:40:26 It brings those frames to the fore of our mind.
0:40:29 And that’s very useful for coordinating with those people.
0:40:34 And we’re starting to hear a little bit about this code switching with Kamala because when
0:40:39 she speaks to an audience of African-American women in Atlanta, she may speak in a slightly
0:40:43 different register than when she speaks to a legal audience in Palo Alto.
0:40:50 And when Obama was campaigning, people also drew attention to this and Key and Peele had
0:40:51 a lot of fun with it.
0:40:57 Some of their funniest routines were caricatures of the code switching that Obama had to engage
0:41:00 in to earn the trust of all the different parts of the American public.
0:41:06 So I think that she has tremendous strengths and I would say the same for her running mate.
0:41:12 It’s funny, I heard him describe recently as an REI candidate instead of a DEI candidate
0:41:15 because he looks like a guy who’s genuinely gone camping in his life, which you can’t
0:41:18 say for Trump or you can’t say for JD Vance.
0:41:22 And he can wear a John Deere hat to a rally and it looks like it’s a hat that he actually
0:41:26 owns not just something he’s wearing for political purposes.
0:41:30 So I think that you should put him in front of farmers, you should put him in front of
0:41:35 high school teachers, you should put him in front of veterans because he’s got that cultural
0:41:36 capital.
0:41:41 And so that’s what I would, I guess, say to both of them, don’t be afraid to use your
0:41:46 cultural capital, you can connect with a lot of the coalition that you need.
0:41:51 Up next on remarkable people, traditionally soldiers followed flags in the battle.
0:41:58 The flag is like an icon of the country and armies have lost men and women trying to rescue
0:42:05 the flag, not even trying to capture the territory because the icon becomes so representative
0:42:11 of the thing itself.
0:42:13 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:42:17 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:42:22 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it.
0:42:28 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:42:34 Welcome back to remarkable people with Guy Kawasaki.
0:42:39 There is no doubt in my mind that Tim Walls could back up a truck that’s hooked up to
0:42:40 a trailer.
0:42:43 And I know I cannot do that.
0:42:48 I’ll also tell you from time to time, I go back to Hawaii and I give speeches in Hawaii
0:42:54 and I have to code switch and my speeches in Hawaii are very different from my speeches
0:42:56 anywhere else in the world.
0:43:01 You say mahalo or I can drop into pigeon that you a howling could not understand what the
0:43:04 hell I’m saying is like a foreign language.
0:43:06 I speak two languages, English and pigeon.
0:43:12 Okay, but I mean, I imagine that connects you to the audience in a way that no, no facts
0:43:14 would ever do, right?
0:43:19 Because you’re showing them, you can’t speak a language or a pigeon without an accent unless
0:43:20 you were raised in it.
0:43:24 It’s like a shibboleth like in the Bible where they wanted to see you whether someone was
0:43:29 a Cadenite or an Israelite, they had to pronounce a certain word, the word shibboleth and the
0:43:33 Cadenites said Sibboleth and they executed them.
0:43:36 So yeah, it’s a gift that you have, so you should use it.
0:43:40 Well, I think if Donald Trump came and spoke here, JD Evans came up and spoke in the Bay
0:43:45 area, he would call San Francisco Frisco, right?
0:43:52 Instead of the city, right, trying to bond, thinking, thinking he’s bonding, frisco, I
0:43:55 love San Fran.
0:44:01 All right, so I’m going to give you as much time as you want, but I want you to pitch
0:44:02 your book.
0:44:04 I loved your book.
0:44:05 So just pitch your book right now.
0:44:10 This is an unpaid advertisement that you approve of.
0:44:12 One of the things that we haven’t talked about too much about the book that I really want
0:44:19 to make sure I get across is that there’s this myth, this illusion that cultural patterns
0:44:24 are permanent fixtures that say like, the culture of Hawaii has been that way since
0:44:28 time immemorial and always will be, right?
0:44:29 And it’s just not true.
0:44:32 Cultures fluctuate.
0:44:36 You may act Hawaiian in one setting and not act Hawaiian in another setting.
0:44:42 And even Hawaii, the culture of Hawaii, there’s been a cultural renaissance in Hawaii after
0:44:48 the pineapple plantations in part helped by tourism because people wanted to see Hula
0:44:52 and they wanted to hear the traditional music and that created a market for it.
0:44:57 And the same is true in say Bali, that there’s been a renaissance of these traditional Balinese
0:45:01 arts that, you know, almost died out at a certain point.
0:45:07 So it’s not a straight line with culture, culture ebbs and flows and evolves.
0:45:09 And that’s a good thing.
0:45:11 And in the book, I talk about it at two levels.
0:45:16 And one level is what I call triggers, which is as a manager, whether you’re managing a
0:45:21 football team or you’re managing a sales team or you’re managing a large organization or
0:45:25 managing a classroom like I do, you can’t change who the people are, but you can change
0:45:26 the context.
0:45:29 You can set the context in a particular way.
0:45:34 And these tribal instincts are very context driven.
0:45:39 So when you see Hawaiian faces and you hear other people speaking pigeon, you just launch
0:45:40 into it.
0:45:45 And so you can create a setting that induces the behaviors you want.
0:45:48 And it’s a lot of why schools use uniforms.
0:45:52 If you have an urban school district and people are allowed to just come in wearing whatever,
0:45:56 it ends up being divisive because I’m coming in wearing my Crips colors and someone else
0:45:59 is coming in wearing their preppy clothes.
0:46:04 And so I feel poor and they feel rich and then someone else is offended by my gang colors
0:46:07 and nobody can pay attention to the math that the teacher is trying to teach.
0:46:12 So when you have a school uniform and it’s like a classical image of a student, it brings
0:46:19 people’s student identity to the fore and then they’re more available to learn.
0:46:22 So that’s how you can think about triggering peer codes.
0:46:27 And then triggering hero codes is more what I talked about, you do it with symbols.
0:46:31 So traditionally, soldiers followed flags in the battle.
0:46:33 The flag is like an icon of the country.
0:46:40 And armies have lost men and women trying to rescue the flag, not even trying to capture
0:46:47 the territory because the icon becomes so representative of the thing itself.
0:46:51 Similarly in religions, a lot of religions have icons that are meant to aid worship,
0:46:56 but people start worshiping the icon itself and then icon of class come and get rid of
0:46:58 the icons and that sort of thing.
0:47:04 So symbols and icons are the triggers for the hero instinct and for the ancestor instinct,
0:47:10 this kind of traditionalism instinct, one of the core triggers is ceremonies.
0:47:15 There’s something about ceremonies, public events where you’re talking in unison, singing
0:47:21 in unison, maybe moving in unison and where people are talking about the collective past
0:47:27 and the group’s traditions, that it puts people in a traditionalist mindset and it makes
0:47:31 people capable of doing things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.
0:47:35 One example in the book, I talk about Joan of Arc, how did this teenage girl turn around
0:47:40 the Hundred Years War, convincing these dispirited French soldiers that they could fight back
0:47:42 against the British invaders?
0:47:47 She came and she first made them go to confession and then go to mass and take all the Catholic
0:47:53 sacraments and then she told them that she was the prophesized young maiden from French
0:48:00 tradition who would liberate France from these heathen invaders and people, they were in
0:48:05 the mindset of just having come from all these ceremonies and they’re like, okay, well let’s
0:48:09 give her a chance and they gave her a chance and turns out the English lost and then they
0:48:12 tried again, the English lost again and they pushed the English all the way back up to the
0:48:13 top of France.
0:48:19 So ceremonies are super powerful, they can unlock this ability to make a leap of faith
0:48:22 which is what we do when we act out of tradition.
0:48:27 But I think that ceremonies are also dangerous and earlier you asked me about some political
0:48:32 things and it’s hard to comment about the Middle East, it’s hard to comment about the
0:48:36 national things but one thing I can comment about is the campus politics.
0:48:42 The campus I’m on, Columbia University is notorious now because we had these really
0:48:51 polarized pro-Israel and anti-Israel or anti-genocide depending on who you’re listening to campaigns
0:48:57 and it turned into opposing factions chanting at each other through megaphones and calling
0:49:03 each other Nazis and it ended up being something that people weren’t learning much from and
0:49:07 a lot of college presidents lost their jobs because of this because they didn’t quite
0:49:08 know how to come down on it.
0:49:12 You can’t really restrict the content of speech on a college campus at least in the
0:49:18 classroom or at least in some settings, you don’t want to restrict what books can be in
0:49:19 the bookstore, right?
0:49:24 You want a free marketplace of ideas because even wrong ideas help people discover the
0:49:25 good ideas.
0:49:30 At least that’s the philosophy from John Stuart Mill that we’ve always believed in.
0:49:36 But I think what gets ignored in all of this is that you can restrict based on the manner
0:49:38 of speech, right?
0:49:43 So we know that you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater but you can whisper fire but you can’t
0:49:45 yell fire in a crowded theater, right?
0:49:46 Why?
0:49:51 Because it creates a storm for the exit and a stampede and people get trampled and similarly
0:49:58 I think that Columbia and other campuses, they made a mistake which is that the one
0:50:04 lever that the administration have is what public events do we give a permit to?
0:50:11 And the way all of this started was that there was just a series of vigils and marches and
0:50:19 other ceremonial events that were on both sides, either ceremonial marches about what
0:50:24 we dread will happen to the citizens of Gaza or vigils mourning the terrible losses on
0:50:26 October 7th.
0:50:30 All of these things totally understandable why people want to have these events.
0:50:35 But should we sponsor them on a mass scale on the campus?
0:50:41 And I would say not as much as we’ve been doing because ceremonies put people in a traditionalist
0:50:46 mindset where they’re sentimental, they’re nostalgic, they’re thinking in terms of these
0:50:50 absolutist frames of what did the previous generation do?
0:50:52 Okay, we should do the same thing.
0:50:59 And so instead what the university presidents should be permitting is debates, panel discussions,
0:51:01 podcasts, teachings.
0:51:08 These are also events that can be held about this conflict but they’re not ceremonies that
0:51:14 lull people into this traditionalist mindset and their events, their types of assembly
0:51:18 that stimulate critical thinking rather than blunting critical thinking.
0:51:24 So I think that’s one card that people forgot to play that would have made things a little
0:51:29 better this year had we come down really hard about the manner of speech, the manner of
0:51:32 events that we allow on campus.
0:51:38 Now since you brought this up, I have to ask you, but what if you’re the college president
0:51:43 and some asshole billionaire is now telling you that he’s going to stop giving money because
0:51:45 he doesn’t agree with your perspective?
0:51:48 This has nothing to do with ceremony or anything.
0:51:54 This is like some private equity hedge fund manager believing that because he gave money
0:51:55 he can tell you what to do.
0:51:58 Now what do you do?
0:51:59 It’s not hypothetical.
0:52:03 I had a conversation just a few hours ago with my dean about this very matter.
0:52:06 I understand these people who contribute a lot.
0:52:12 They want to have a voice and they often are seeing things from a distance and I can tell
0:52:18 you that what happened on the ground on campus and then the way it was represented on Fox
0:52:21 News had almost nothing to do with each other.
0:52:29 You had these largely peaceful demonstrations where a lot of the students on the anti-genocide
0:52:37 side were also Jewish groups, explicitly Jewish groups and then it got represented as anti-Semitism
0:52:42 and yeah there were incidents of harassment surely and it’s really distressing.
0:52:44 But that wasn’t the core of things.
0:52:46 That wasn’t what was going on day to day.
0:52:50 Okay, so what do I do about the billionaire?
0:52:51 I think that we hold an event.
0:52:54 Wait, before you answer that, are you tenured?
0:52:55 Yes, I am.
0:52:56 I’m a chair professor.
0:52:57 Yeah, yeah.
0:52:58 I got ten year long ago at Stanford.
0:52:59 It came to Columbia.
0:53:01 That’s a different story.
0:53:03 But I came to Columbia in part for Carol Dweck.
0:53:06 I wanted to mention that because I know that you’re a friend of Carol Dweck.
0:53:07 I love Carol Dweck.
0:53:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:53:12 But I’m a chair professor so I’m in the group, the cabal of people that helps to make the
0:53:15 decisions for the university.
0:53:20 And I think we should be holding events, bringing not just one billionaire in, but twelve of
0:53:25 them and having a brainstorming session and I think what they’ll discover is they don’t
0:53:31 agree and it’ll be obvious to them that there’s not any easy answer and that the university
0:53:35 president faces trade-offs and that there are reasons.
0:53:41 There’s a coherent philosophy that the university should host debates.
0:53:45 The university should not be a participant in the debates.
0:53:50 Therefore, the university president should not be weighing in on a lot of political issues
0:53:53 even if they have opinions on those issues.
0:53:57 Because that can undermine the ability of the university to host all ideas.
0:54:02 So I think that these ideas, once people hear them and it’s not out of negligence that the
0:54:04 university president isn’t commenting more.
0:54:08 It’s out of this sacred obligation of maintaining the Calvin principle.
0:54:12 I think when people hear that, they understand it and so we should involve them.
0:54:14 We should take care of their need for involvement.
0:54:19 We should honor the intention behind their desire to make a difference.
0:54:22 That means that we have to engage with them a little bit more.
0:54:23 Okay.
0:54:26 Probably kiss their ass a lot in the process.
0:54:29 That’s definitely a big part of fundraising in the academic world.
0:54:33 I don’t know about in the startup world, but in the academic world it’s a big part of
0:54:34 fundraising.
0:54:39 There’s a lot of people kissing ass of venture capital, so I understand what you’re saying.
0:54:40 Okay.
0:54:41 Yeah.
0:54:46 There’s one other myth about tribal leadership I wanted to touch on and that is that some
0:54:50 people will tell me like tribal leadership is great if I’m Donald Trump and I’m trying
0:54:55 to build like a chauvinistic crusade of rural white males or something.
0:54:57 But what if I’m trying to build a rainbow coalition?
0:55:02 And I think the secret of tribes is that tribes are nested groups.
0:55:07 And our forebears, they lived in bands that were part of clans and then the clan was part
0:55:10 of a tribe, which was a broader network in a region.
0:55:14 And then once we had nations and empires, it’s like tribes of tribes, right?
0:55:20 But we have simultaneous, more local identities and more inclusive, broader identities.
0:55:28 And leaders, they can trigger and they can also change those broad inclusive identities.
0:55:30 Two examples that I think are interesting.
0:55:32 One is Abraham Lincoln.
0:55:36 If you think about who invented Thanksgiving, you’ll probably say the Pilgrims, right?
0:55:38 Because that’s what every American school child is like.
0:55:45 Well, the Pilgrims in 1721 invited the local Native Americans over for a meal of turkey,
0:55:47 cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.
0:55:51 And they lost football.
0:55:53 And they did hold a feast.
0:55:55 There definitely was no pumpkin pie.
0:55:58 They didn’t call it a Thanksgiving because a Thanksgiving actually had a meaning to
0:56:03 Quakers or to Puritans that was different than a party because it was more of a party.
0:56:10 But then around the 1860s, people started to look back on that and think we should have
0:56:13 a national holiday of togetherness and thanks.
0:56:16 And it would be just like what the Pilgrims did, even though that’s not quite what the
0:56:18 Pilgrims did.
0:56:24 And Abraham Lincoln was the president who, in his inauguration, said something like the
0:56:29 healing cords of memory will once again unite this nation.
0:56:31 I didn’t get it quite right, but he was a poet president.
0:56:33 He was the narrator in chief.
0:56:39 And he listened to these literary types who were saying we need a national holiday of
0:56:41 Thanksgiving and togetherness.
0:56:48 And so he proposed in 1863 that we have a national Thanksgiving day on the last Thursday
0:56:50 of November.
0:56:55 And he framed it as continuous with the Pilgrims and as similar to something that George Washington
0:56:58 did as a one-off thing after the Revolutionary War.
0:57:02 So he made it look like this was already an established tradition.
0:57:03 And it became an instant tradition.
0:57:10 And the Southerners and the Northerners, even though the Harvest came at different times
0:57:13 for them, they were all sitting down and having this meal at the same time.
0:57:17 And it helped to rebuild the American identity.
0:57:23 And that was what we call an invented tradition, where he retrospectively created a tradition
0:57:28 from the Pilgrims that gave the tradition gravitas, because it seemed like it was already
0:57:30 hundreds of years old.
0:57:32 But it worked to help bring people together.
0:57:36 Another example, I don’t know if you want another example, but Mandela, Mandela got out
0:57:43 of jail and he had to kind of forge a national identity and lead people to democracy, even
0:57:48 though there had been the horrors of apartheid for decades.
0:57:51 And a lot of people would have said, well, let’s forget about the past and focus on the
0:57:52 future.
0:57:57 But he realized that they needed to do something to reconcile with the past, because there
0:58:02 were just too much people wanted to know what happened to their relatives and people wanted
0:58:04 to work through the trauma.
0:58:09 So he saw that this truth commissions had been used in South America.
0:58:14 He was a legal scholar and he knew about it, but he couldn’t just take the thing that worked
0:58:17 in South America and make it work in South Africa.
0:58:23 So in South America, it was a judge because people trusted the independent judges there,
0:58:27 but he put Archbishop Tutu in charge of it and he called it the Truth and Reconciliation
0:58:28 Commission.
0:58:33 And then when he went around to the different communities in South Africa, he pitched it
0:58:37 to people in terms of their own tribal traditions.
0:58:42 So when he went to the Zulu community, he said, this is consistent with Ubuntu, which
0:58:49 is a Zulu concept about that we’re all interconnected in that even the African community and the
0:58:52 Zulu community, we’ve been at loggerheads, but we’re connected and we need to work through
0:58:53 it together.
0:58:58 And when he went to his own tribe, the Joso tribe, they had these restorative justice
0:59:03 traditions where people would engage in truth telling to somebody they had wrong.
0:59:09 And so he explained the continuity between this rather new and innovative process that
0:59:14 nobody had engaged in before and the cultural traditions they were familiar with.
0:59:16 And he kind of leveraged the ancestor instincts.
0:59:19 The Zulus were like, if this is Ubuntu, we’re in favor of it.
0:59:24 And the Zosho were like, if this is a truth telling ritual, we’re in favor of it.
0:59:27 And Ubuntu had also been adopted by the white liberals as part of their movement.
0:59:29 So they also bought the tradition.
0:59:35 So he got the nation to engage in this seven year process of revisiting all of the horrors.
0:59:40 And it was like therapy on a national level that allowed the country to move forward.
0:59:45 So these are both examples of using tribal instincts in both cases, the ancestor instinct
0:59:51 to forge a new tradition that brings people together under a different tribal banner.
0:59:58 You may find this off the wall, but I think that Tim Walls could make the case that let
1:00:05 us celebrate making America great again and take that away from one tribe and put it in
1:00:07 place for the whole country.
1:00:12 You can’t argue against making America great again conceptually.
1:00:14 It’s just the execution, right?
1:00:19 So we could have a MAGA day and then everybody would have something in common.
1:00:24 I think the liberals and the Democrats and the Republicans and the conservatives, we
1:00:26 all want to make America great again.
1:00:27 Yeah.
1:00:30 They did something like that already, which is the camo cap.
1:00:31 I don’t know if you’ve seen it.
1:00:32 Yeah.
1:00:33 I saw it.
1:00:34 I ordered two.
1:00:35 Yeah.
1:00:39 It’s great because it’s even more down to earth than the red MAGA hat.
1:00:41 And it’s even more legitimate.
1:00:43 It’s consistent with how people actually dress.
1:00:44 I have two on order.
1:00:48 You would think for the amount of money I gave to the DNC, I would get free hats.
1:00:52 But no, I have to buy them, but okay.
1:00:55 Oh, this has been wonderful, Michael.
1:00:56 Thank you very much.
1:01:01 I learned more about tribes and I’m going to, I’m going to tell Seth Godin, you got
1:01:04 to listen to this episode, Seth.
1:01:05 I would have, that’d be great.
1:01:07 I hope that he likes the book.
1:01:12 I don’t hope he doesn’t think I’m stealing his title, but it’s tribal, not his was tribes.
1:01:17 But I found myself having a better understanding of the book just through talking to you because
1:01:20 your questions are, you’re not softball questions.
1:01:24 I had a bunch of notes about things I thought you were going to ask, but you really pushed
1:01:27 me right ahead of all those issues towards the real heart.
1:01:28 That’s good.
1:01:32 I mean, maybe your next book, you and Seth could do it together and you can call it the
1:01:40 purple tribe instead of the cow purple tribe.
1:01:45 All right, Michael, thank you very much.
1:01:53 As I am recording this outro for the Michael Morris episode, it is October.
1:01:54 Let me check.
1:01:58 It is October 9th, 2024.
1:02:02 And I still don’t have the two hats that I ordered.
1:02:08 The Tim Walls baseball camo hat, which is astounding to me.
1:02:11 So this has been Michael Morris from Columbia University.
1:02:16 I hope you learned about tribes and how tribes can be a positive thing and bring America
1:02:20 back together again and make America great again.
1:02:22 So I’m Guy Kawasaki.
1:02:28 This is Remarkable People, and I just want to thank the rest of the Remarkable People
1:02:29 team.
1:02:35 Our tribe is composed of Madison Neismar, who is the producer of this podcast and co-author
1:02:37 of Think Remarkable.
1:02:40 There’s Tessa Neismar, who is our researcher.
1:02:44 And finally, there’s Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez.
1:02:47 Every one of these people is remarkable.
1:02:50 So that’s the Remarkable People team slash tribe.
1:03:02 And until next week, mahalo and aloha!

0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:14 We’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:22 Now, if you ever want to start a social movement to make things change, this is the episode
0:00:26 for you because we have the remarkable Shannon Watts.
0:00:34 Shannon started this group called “Mom’s Demand Action” and if there’s a group of people
0:00:40 that you should not get in the way of, it is moms.
0:00:44 Shannon started a Facebook group after the Sandy Hook tragedy.
0:00:50 She called for responsible gun control and this grew into this national organization
0:00:54 and it has nearly 10 million supporters today.
0:00:58 “Mom’s Demand Action” has achieved significant legislative success.
0:01:04 It has truly, truly challenged the NRA’s political clout.
0:01:09 She’s a member of Emerge America, a writer and author of “Fight Like a Mother.”
0:01:13 I would pronounce it “Fight Like a Mother.”
0:01:18 How grassroots movement took on the gun lobby and why women will change the world.
0:01:21 I highly recommend this book.
0:01:26 Also with no further ado, here is Shannon Watts and she’s going to tell you how to
0:01:34 make things happen.
0:01:35 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:41 This is Remarkable People and we are in the business of making people remarkable and helping
0:01:47 me today is the remarkable Shannon Watts and I’ll let her introduce herself.
0:01:48 Thank you.
0:01:49 I’m Shannon Watts.
0:01:53 I’m the founder emerita of “Mom’s Demand Action” which is now the largest gun violence
0:01:58 prevention organization in the nation and I’m also an organizer and an author and have
0:02:02 been doing this work now for over a decade.
0:02:03 Thank you very much for that intro.
0:02:09 I mean, this is a weird general question that has no real concrete answer but I just have
0:02:16 to ask you, do you sometimes wonder, Shannon, whether as a society we have learned anything
0:02:19 at all in the last 20 years?
0:02:22 I don’t think I could be an activist and feel that way.
0:02:29 I think hope is as activists have said in the past, hope is a discipline and if you aren’t
0:02:35 hopeful and you aren’t joyful in your activism, you will get burned out and I’ve seen that
0:02:37 happen over and over again.
0:02:44 The other thing that I would say is if you expect to win overnight, then sure you would
0:02:46 feel like nothing had happened.
0:02:52 But that is another part of activism which is, it is a marathon, not a sprint.
0:02:57 It takes decades if not centuries to get to where you need to be.
0:02:59 That doesn’t excuse you from having to do the work, right?
0:03:01 You still have to do your piece of it.
0:03:07 But when you can look at it as a long-term project that you are a part of, then you can
0:03:11 get out of the weeds and you can see how much progress has been made.
0:03:16 You think about movements in the past like civil rights or suffrage or even mothers against
0:03:17 drunk driving.
0:03:23 If those activists had given up after a month or a year, we wouldn’t have the society that
0:03:24 we have today.
0:03:31 I really do try to look at it like we are making incremental change that leads to revolutions.
0:03:36 Let’s just go back a bit in history and if you could just briefly summarize the genesis
0:03:39 of mom’s demand action.
0:03:43 I had taken about a five-year break from my corporate career.
0:03:45 I had gotten remarried.
0:03:49 I was blending a family of five children and I thought, “I’m just going to take a beat.
0:03:50 I’ll go back to work.”
0:03:53 I was in corporate communications and I was getting ready to do that.
0:03:58 I had prepared my resume, was getting ready to go back into the workforce.
0:04:03 One day while all my kids were at school, at the time they ranged in age from elementary
0:04:06 school to high school, I was doing laundry, right?
0:04:08 It’s like a full-time job when you’re a mom of five.
0:04:15 I’d poured all the laundry out on my bed and I had turned the TV on in the background
0:04:18 and suddenly I saw this chiron of breaking news.
0:04:27 This was December of 2012 that there was a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
0:04:29 I’d never heard of Newtown, Connecticut.
0:04:31 I couldn’t believe there was a school shooting.
0:04:37 I’m sure like so many other women that day, so many other mothers in particular, I stopped
0:04:42 what I was doing and for the next many, many hours, I was just riveted to the television
0:04:44 and devastated.
0:04:50 I was in tears over this footage of families in the parking lot waiting to hear if their
0:04:57 children or family members had been slaughtered by what appeared to be a very young man with
0:04:59 an assault rifle.
0:05:00 I just was inconsolable.
0:05:03 This was right before the holidays, so cold.
0:05:05 I just was so devastated.
0:05:12 I went to bed and when I woke up, that devastation had crystallized into abject rage.
0:05:17 I was so angry, I could not contain myself the next day.
0:05:22 I can still summon the feeling and so I thought, okay, I have to do something.
0:05:27 I know how to create a Facebook page and 2012 Facebook was a very big deal for women my age
0:05:30 to communicate and so I just started a new page.
0:05:34 I didn’t have a focus group in my Indiana kitchen, so I called it one million moms for
0:05:40 gun control, not realizing that one million moms was like this anti-gay group and that
0:05:44 gun control was a phrase that was verboten inside the beltway.
0:05:48 But I sent out this clarion call to other mothers and said, it’s time that we stand
0:05:54 up and organize against the gun lobby and that was the beginning of mom’s demand action.
0:06:01 Just like that and you have created an organization that has about 10 million members.
0:06:06 You must be just a fountain of wisdom about how to create an activist organization.
0:06:11 So give us some lessons about what you learned back then that other people listening to this
0:06:14 can apply when they want to be an activist.
0:06:18 I want to be clear that when I started mom’s men action, I knew little to nothing about
0:06:22 organizing, about the political process, about gun violence even.
0:06:28 I was an absolute novice and I was told that every turn I wasn’t the right person to lead
0:06:29 this organization.
0:06:30 It already existed.
0:06:31 I couldn’t do it.
0:06:32 It would never work.
0:06:35 It needed to be a lobbyist or a lawyer.
0:06:39 It needed to be a survivor of gun violence and I’m not saying none of those things held
0:06:40 water.
0:06:45 I’m just saying that I trusted my gut and my gut told me that the best way to take on
0:06:51 the most powerful, wealthy, dangerous special interest that ever has existed was an army
0:06:53 of angry mothers.
0:06:56 That is what my intuition told me.
0:06:59 One of the most important lessons I would say is that we built the plane as we flew
0:07:00 it.
0:07:03 We did not wait until we crossed every T and dotted every I.
0:07:07 I would still be learning about all of those things, organizing gun violence, the political
0:07:08 system.
0:07:16 If I had waited, we just jumped in and we saw an opening to put pressure on the country.
0:07:18 That was a really important lesson.
0:07:21 I think a lot of people have good ideas and they just wait too long and the moment passes
0:07:22 them by.
0:07:26 The other lesson I learned is that we’re all leaders.
0:07:27 I’m not a unicorn.
0:07:30 I wasn’t born with some amazing talent to do this.
0:07:35 I just was an outraged citizen in a democracy.
0:07:39 We all hold that potential to make a difference and to create change.
0:07:43 Even if it isn’t a national organization, it might be in your neighborhood or your community,
0:07:46 maybe your state.
0:07:50 That’s the beauty of living in a democracy as Alice Walker says, “Activism is the rent
0:07:52 I pay to live on the planet.”
0:07:56 We all should be thinking about what is the rent we’re paying.
0:08:01 The last thing I would say is that politics is cyclical.
0:08:05 If you don’t have hope, if you believe that things are screwed up and that’s the way they’re
0:08:10 always going to be and there’s no chance of changing for the better, then I think in a
0:08:13 lot of ways you’re complicit in the system that we have.
0:08:16 It’s just morally unacceptable to sit on the sidelines.
0:08:23 In fact, I would go a step further and say there’s a moral imperative to run for office,
0:08:24 particularly for women.
0:08:26 I think that’s another important lesson.
0:08:33 When you give women the skills to shape policy, they intuitively want to start making it.
0:08:36 They want a seat at the table.
0:08:40 Women only hold about 25% of the 500,000 elected positions in this country.
0:08:44 As the saying goes, when you don’t have a seat at the table, you’re probably on the
0:08:48 menu and women in America right now are on the menu.
0:08:49 Wow.
0:08:53 That’s a hell of an eloquent statement, my goodness.
0:08:56 No wonder 10 million women follow you.
0:08:57 My God.
0:09:00 Let me ask you a kind of a gut level question.
0:09:04 Obviously, gun violence has not exactly stopped.
0:09:10 What’s your visceral reaction when you hear politicians say, “Well, I’m sending my thoughts
0:09:12 and prayers”?
0:09:15 How do you even cope with somebody saying that?
0:09:19 As my children say, that is so cringe at this point to even think that that is an acceptable
0:09:23 thing to say after a shooting tragedy.
0:09:27 We really have gone out of our way in the last decade to point fingers at people who
0:09:33 have been elected to shape policy in this country, who have the power to stop these
0:09:35 deaths relying on thoughts and prayers.
0:09:37 We aren’t electing you for your thoughts or your prayers.
0:09:41 We are electing you to make policy.
0:09:45 If you are too cowardly to do that, then you shouldn’t have that job.
0:09:49 The reality is, they’re only cowardly often when it comes to gun violence.
0:09:54 I think Ted Cruz is such an interesting example of this because after every mass shooting
0:09:59 tragedy he says, “Oh, we can’t talk about this, we can never change this, laws won’t
0:10:00 impact this.”
0:10:06 Yet, after over a dozen people were killed in a hot air balloon accident in Texas, what
0:10:09 was the very first thing Ted Cruz did?
0:10:14 He passed safety legislation to regulate hot air balloons throughout the entire country.
0:10:16 He knows laws work.
0:10:21 He didn’t just rely on thoughts and prayers when it came to the safety of hot air balloons.
0:10:22 He acted.
0:10:29 We know that the reason that America is so unique, we have a 25 times higher gun homicide
0:10:35 rate than any pure nation is because we also have something no pure nation has, a gun lobby.
0:10:43 A gun lobby that is using its wealth and its political power to shape who is elected in
0:10:46 this country.
0:10:48 That is on us on voters.
0:10:53 I understand we don’t lead single issue lives, but when you go to the polls, if you aren’t
0:10:59 voting on gun violence prevention as an issue, what does it matter if our economy is great
0:11:05 or if we have access to healthcare or if we aren’t paying capital gains tax, if our
0:11:08 children are being slaughtered inside their schools?
0:11:10 What is any of that matter?
0:11:13 And so that is the goal of mom’s demand action is to make sure people are thinking about
0:11:15 this issue without lens.
0:11:24 There is a certain almost unbelievable irony about Ted Cruz legislating safety for hot
0:11:25 air balloons.
0:11:27 Yeah, you cannot make that shit up.
0:11:31 It’s hypocrisy.
0:11:38 So in a perfect world, what does quote unquote good gun safety look like?
0:11:41 Are you saying people shouldn’t be able to hunt there?
0:11:44 There should be no guns at all or what’s good?
0:11:46 What’s a win for you?
0:11:51 I think moderation is the key to a lot of what ails us in this country.
0:11:56 I was raised by a gun owning father, both of my grandfathers who fought in World War
0:11:59 II were hunters and gun owners.
0:12:02 This is not about taking away anyone’s rights.
0:12:09 This is about regulating the rights that we have and all rights should be regulated.
0:12:10 Are regulated.
0:12:18 There’s no reason for everyday civilians to have unfettered access to arsenals and ammunition.
0:12:20 No questions asked.
0:12:23 About 90% of Americans agree with that, right?
0:12:29 We all can agree and Republicans and Democrats do on several gun safety measures that would
0:12:30 save lives.
0:12:32 First of all, background checks on every gun sale.
0:12:39 Right now, federal law does not require states to perform background checks on guns sold
0:12:44 by unlicensed sellers at gun shows or garage sales, people who are just selling them, who
0:12:46 aren’t dealers.
0:12:47 Millions of guns are sold that way.
0:12:50 If you’re a domestic abuser, how are you going to buy a gun?
0:12:53 Are you going to go through the background check you know you’re going to fail?
0:12:57 Are you going to go to a gun show and get a gun from someone you know doesn’t have to
0:12:58 perform a background check?
0:13:01 It’s intuitive and obvious, but this is a huge loophole in our laws.
0:13:07 The other policy that almost all Americans agree on is keeping guns away from domestic
0:13:08 abusers.
0:13:12 Domestic abusers shouldn’t have guns in this country and yet the Supreme Court just agreed
0:13:14 to hear a case.
0:13:18 Thankfully, they made a decision in the right way, but there’s going to be more complaints
0:13:23 and we’re going to keep pressuring the boundaries of whether domestic abusers should have guns.
0:13:26 So we’ve gone state by state and passed those laws.
0:13:30 Most Americans agree that there should be something called the red flag law, which means
0:13:34 if you are a danger to yourself or someone else, you should not have access to guns until
0:13:39 law enforcement and a judge can decide whether you should have access to those guns.
0:13:44 Those laws are incredibly effective, but only about 20 states have them now.
0:13:50 Not everyone agrees, but something like 70% of Americans agree that civilians shouldn’t
0:13:55 have unfettered access to weapons of war, a semi-automatic rifle.
0:13:59 If we look at a lot of the shootings in this country, the mass shooting tragedies with
0:14:07 major casualties, it’s because the gunman had an AR-15 and that is the weapon of choice
0:14:09 among white supremacists and mass shooters.
0:14:14 It’s incredibly dangerous, it is immoral, and yet we have lawmakers who are doing the
0:14:18 gun lobby’s work and trying to make sure that we all have access to them.
0:14:25 Would you say that at this point that these gun lobbies and the NRA, what is the arc
0:14:26 of their power?
0:14:29 Is it still going up?
0:14:30 Is it going down?
0:14:32 Where are we right now?
0:14:38 When I started Mom’s Demand Action, our theory of change was we will shine a light on the
0:14:43 NRA, the National Rifle Association.
0:14:47 Sunlight is the best disinfectant, people will see how corrupt they are, people will
0:14:55 see that they are in no way moderate, that in fact they’ve become an extremist organization,
0:15:00 people will see that they’re not spending donors’ dollars wisely, and they will move
0:15:02 away and we will win.
0:15:04 They did move away.
0:15:10 The NRA had to declare bankruptcy, Wayne LaPierre has resigned, they are in a world of heart
0:15:13 hemorrhaging political power and dollars.
0:15:19 The NRA was not even invited to the table to discuss recent federal legislation on guns.
0:15:26 What we did not account for in 2012 was that all of these other gun groups that were even
0:15:30 more extreme than the NRA, that were to the right of the NRA, would pop up at a federal
0:15:31 level.
0:15:38 In fact, guns would become an organizing principle for the right wing.
0:15:46 Guns are a way to get young white men in the door to give dollars and to volunteer, and
0:15:51 then they use those new volunteers and excite them around a whole host of issues that have
0:15:54 nothing to do with guns.
0:15:55 Who could have predicted that?
0:16:01 And now that is another, when you talk about the stranglehold that the gun industry has
0:16:05 on our political system, and you have to undo it finger by finger, that is a finger that
0:16:08 it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
0:16:15 And maybe when we break the MAGA fever, we will break the gun extremism fever.
0:16:20 And pray tell what happens if we don’t break that fever.
0:16:22 What happens if Trump gets elected?
0:16:24 What happens if the Republicans control Congress?
0:16:27 They already control the Supreme Court.
0:16:29 Then what?
0:16:33 I think you can see exactly what’s going to happen in states like Tennessee.
0:16:39 Tennessee has a Republican supermajority made up of gun extremists, meaning these lawmakers,
0:16:45 almost all men, many of them, most of them white men, who have bought the whole gun lobby
0:16:47 rhetoric hook, line and sinker.
0:16:50 They actually believe, you know, it’s not like they’re just doing this now because it’s
0:16:52 a political prop.
0:16:58 They have bought into this idea that guns have more value than their constituents.
0:17:03 And so when there was a shooting at Covenant School in Nashville last year, there were
0:17:07 Congress members and state lawmakers who wouldn’t even talk to the survivor families.
0:17:12 They had no interest in showing compassion or concern.
0:17:18 And when women from both parties, Republicans and Democrats alike, rose up, mothers who
0:17:24 were terrified, not just by what had happened, but by also their lawmakers inaction in the
0:17:30 face of this tragedy, what did that Republican supermajority do?
0:17:36 They dragged women physically out of the galleries in the state house for having signs or wearing
0:17:39 shirts that protested gun violence.
0:17:42 This is how authoritarians behave.
0:17:46 This is the decay of a democracy, right?
0:17:48 That’s what all the signs coming out of Tennessee are.
0:17:50 We have a choice in this country.
0:17:54 That’s the way we’re going, or we’re going to go back toward what Kamala Harris and Tim
0:17:58 Balls are working on, which is both of them in their own right have passed gun safety
0:18:01 legislation and want common sense laws in place.
0:18:06 But to your question, if that doesn’t happen, if we continue to move right, Tennessee is
0:18:08 a harbinger of what is to come.
0:18:23 All right, so let’s back off from the worst case, but tell us the steps that seem doable
0:18:29 and practical to get to this point of gun safety or gun control.
0:18:34 First is finding a piece of the work that you’re passionate about and doing it.
0:18:38 What I have seen through mom’s demand action, we’re not just moms, we’re not just women,
0:18:41 we’re all carrying Americans, we even have students demand action now.
0:18:46 But what I have seen is that when there’s this trifecta, when women figure out what
0:18:55 their abilities are and they also start to unearth their values and then they’re burning
0:19:00 desires, those three things, their abilities, their values, their burning desires, they
0:19:02 come alive.
0:19:08 I think that’s why activism is so joyful and so hopeful, because you are using the things,
0:19:13 the skills, the passions that are important to you to help other people, right?
0:19:15 That’s the secret sauce of life.
0:19:16 That’s why we’re here.
0:19:18 That’s the point of our school.
0:19:23 And when you get involved, you realize, oh, there’s so many different ways.
0:19:26 Maybe I want to work on this legislatively.
0:19:29 Maybe I want to work on it electorally.
0:19:32 Maybe I want to work on it culturally.
0:19:37 It isn’t like you just become an activist and you’re showing up at protests and marches.
0:19:38 That isn’t activism.
0:19:41 Maybe you are in charge of data management entry.
0:19:46 Maybe you’re meeting with lawmakers or maybe you’re tabling at farmer’s markets.
0:19:52 I don’t know what is important to you, but it is important to figure that out.
0:19:57 And when it comes to gun safety, we’re working on this at all levels of government, everything
0:20:02 from school boards and city councils to state houses to Congress, changing the way people
0:20:08 see secure storage, making sure that people vote on this issue, making sure that we pass
0:20:12 or stop laws, depending on whether they would save lives.
0:20:18 It’s really a huge scale of what you can get involved in, but it’s important to first take
0:20:20 that step and get off the sidelines.
0:20:27 Can you tell us some power tips for influencing and persuading people who, at least at the
0:20:33 start, are just diametrically opposed to what you want to accomplish?
0:20:38 To take the worst case, if you had to meet with Ted Cruz, what would you do?
0:20:45 I think it’s really important to delineate extremists from average Americans who have
0:20:48 questions or concerns or want to debate.
0:20:54 What I have realized in the last 12 years is that there is a very vocal minority and
0:20:57 you will not change their hearts and minds.
0:21:02 It is not worth our time, given that 90% of Americans support gun safety.
0:21:06 Why try to change the hearts and minds of this very small minority who are extremists?
0:21:10 I think I would have to put Ted Cruz in that bucket at this point.
0:21:13 However, there are people like my dad.
0:21:17 My dad is very conservative, Catholic, who voted for Donald Trump.
0:21:20 I know in the first election, I’m not sure about the second because I don’t want to ask
0:21:23 him and I don’t know how he’s going to vote in this next election because I don’t want
0:21:25 to know that either.
0:21:29 When I first started Monster Man Action, he reached out to me and he thought that I was
0:21:31 doing something that was unconstitutional.
0:21:36 He thought that I was doing something radical.
0:21:41 It just took a lot of conversations over that first year.
0:21:47 The way my dad eventually got to wrapping his arms around supporting gun safety was
0:21:49 to decide that he thought it was part of a pro-life platform.
0:21:57 We disagree on abortion rights, but he now says, “If I don’t support abortion, then
0:21:59 I can’t support unfettered access to guns.”
0:22:07 That’s his thought process, but we got there because I shared data and anecdotes and stories.
0:22:12 Eventually my dad started showing up at Monster Man Action events wearing our shirt.
0:22:17 That is, I think, the importance of discussion with people who probably agree with you on
0:22:23 some things, but not on others, and that’s democracy.
0:22:29 I don’t know if I’m incorrectly assuming this, but why do you not feel that you should convince
0:22:32 your dad not to vote for Trump?
0:22:36 I mean, you’re an activist, right?
0:22:39 Yeah, and I have laid out my case.
0:22:41 Maybe my dad is an extremist when it comes to that.
0:22:46 I’ve had to have my own reckoning with whether my dad has some misogyny in him.
0:22:52 I have certainly tried, but I worry that if I know how he voted in the last election or
0:22:57 will vote that I would have a difficulty continuing those conversations with him.
0:23:01 I want to continue the conversations, but I also, I’m not sure I’m ready to have the
0:23:05 proof that those conversations are fruitless.
0:23:06 Fair enough.
0:23:07 Fair enough.
0:23:14 Do you, generally speaking, as a political force, do you believe that moms have now arrived
0:23:15 as a force?
0:23:16 Oh, absolutely.
0:23:18 It did take a while.
0:23:21 In the early days, even Democrats did not want their pictures taken with mom’s demand
0:23:22 action volunteers.
0:23:28 They wanted nothing to do with our red shirts, and the more power we gained, the more we
0:23:35 started to organize state by state, the more they were thrilled to have these volunteers
0:23:37 and red shirts show up to support them.
0:23:41 In 2012, when I started mom’s demand action, about a quarter of all Democrats in Congress
0:23:47 had an A rating from the NRA, a quarter of all Democrats, today not one does, and in
0:23:50 fact, they’re very proud of their F rating.
0:23:55 And the way that seismic shift occurred, and that is unheard of in politics, is because
0:23:59 they saw they had this army that would support them, and they’d never had that before.
0:24:04 They’d only heard from extremists who supported gun manufacturers.
0:24:08 Suddenly, they had these moms who actually lived in their districts saying, “If you do
0:24:11 the right thing, I’ll have your back, and if you do the wrong thing, I will have your
0:24:16 job,” and that was a pretty easy choice for them to make.
0:24:22 And so now, mom’s demand action volunteers are everywhere, and lawmakers, at least Democrats,
0:24:26 are happy to see them, but the way we win on this issue is for Republicans and Democrats
0:24:30 alike to see mom’s demand action as a force for good.
0:24:36 Do you have a mom’s demand action grading system a la the NRAs?
0:24:37 Yes.
0:24:39 It’s not a grading system, so to speak.
0:24:43 It’s more of an award of honor, so it’s called Gunsense Voter.
0:24:49 You can go to gunsensevoter.com, or I’m sorry, dot org, and you will see where your candidates
0:24:53 are in your area, and that means if they have filled out a form, and the way they filled
0:24:56 out the form made them a Gunsense candidate, they will be there.
0:24:58 If they didn’t, they won’t.
0:25:03 And it’s funny because we’ve even seen Republicans want to have this stamp of approval from mom’s
0:25:04 demand action.
0:25:09 This has become a very important way to delineate between those people who are extremists
0:25:14 and those people who are open, and they compete for it in the primary and then in the general
0:25:15 election.
0:25:17 And so it’s not necessarily a grading system.
0:25:22 It’s more of an award, but it’s really important filter for voters to know where their candidates
0:25:24 stand going into an election.
0:25:28 But as you mentioned, they fill out the form.
0:25:32 Why don’t you just go, if I went there right now and looked up Ted Cruz, there wouldn’t
0:25:33 be an entry, right?
0:25:35 Why don’t you just give them an F?
0:25:39 You don’t have a grading system necessarily because that gives too much room for gray.
0:25:41 And what we really want is to stay in the black and white.
0:25:45 If you don’t fill out the form and return it, if you don’t fill it out the right way,
0:25:47 you don’t get it at all.
0:25:51 And I would hate to give someone a C who is maybe good on one thing and bad on another.
0:25:53 This has worked out really well.
0:25:56 I think the NRA has even seen the error of their ways.
0:26:02 They no longer grade candidates because an A rating from the NRA has become a scarlet
0:26:04 letter, if you will.
0:26:08 And so they actually took all of their grades down because they didn’t want us to use them
0:26:09 against them.
0:26:15 So Gunsense Voter has become a really solid way of deciding who has Gunsense and who doesn’t.
0:26:16 Great.
0:26:17 Okay.
0:26:23 Do you have tips for women about how to become even more audacious?
0:26:24 I do.
0:26:29 I really think women, especially middle-aged women, underestimate how much power they
0:26:32 have and how much wisdom they have.
0:26:37 The average age for a woman to run for office is 47, and usually after they’ve been asked
0:26:42 at least seven times, men don’t have that same gating factor.
0:26:46 Often they think about this as a career on top of the career they already have.
0:26:50 They don’t see it interrupting their ability to raise a family.
0:26:58 And so I would love to see women exercise those leadership muscles earlier, but also
0:27:00 to understand that they all have that within them.
0:27:05 Again, this idea of what are your abilities, what are your values, and then what are your
0:27:11 burning desires and how do you keep that at the forefront of your life throughout your
0:27:12 entire life.
0:27:14 We all deserve to leave a legacy.
0:27:19 And again, that doesn’t mean that you start a company or a huge organization.
0:27:22 It just means you lived your life in a way that was authentic and true to you and that
0:27:24 you felt alive.
0:27:30 And I think men are taught to follow their desires, and women are taught to fulfill their
0:27:31 obligations.
0:27:37 And that is something that if we can start to shift that narrative in women’s lives,
0:27:41 so much would change, not just in America, but in the world.
0:27:46 And I think the question, is that a nice to do or is that at this point a moral obligation?
0:27:48 And I would lean toward moral obligation.
0:27:54 You mean it’s a woman’s moral obligation to be audacious and active.
0:27:56 Yes, I do.
0:28:02 I tell women, I appreciate that you might think about running for office, but you actually
0:28:09 have an obligation to serve because women have not had power and therefore they have
0:28:13 the ability to heal what is wrong in this country.
0:28:18 And I don’t care if it’s dog catcher or county sheriff, just find a position that is open
0:28:21 near you and run.
0:28:27 And I think the same can be said for being a leader or following what you find fulfilling.
0:28:32 Think of it in that way, and it is more likely to happen than to put it on the back burner
0:28:37 and act as though coming alive is something that you can do maybe when you’re 75 and you
0:28:39 have nothing else to focus on.
0:28:42 That’s just not the way men live and women shouldn’t either.
0:28:44 And let me be a devil’s advocate for a second.
0:28:48 So let’s say I’m a woman listening to this and I’m saying to myself, yeah, I would love
0:28:54 to be active, honey, but I’m a single mom with three kids and I’m holding down two jobs
0:28:56 and now you’re telling me to be an activist.
0:28:58 Like what planet are you on?
0:29:02 But I don’t think, I think it depends on how you define activist.
0:29:11 If you take a half hour out of every week to reach out to your lawmakers to express yourself,
0:29:17 to follow something you’re passionate about, to make a plan, to start to make some of those
0:29:22 burning desires come to fruition, you’re an activist.
0:29:27 Maybe we’re setting the sights for what is an activist too high.
0:29:32 This is just about staying involved and I understand I recently had a conversation with
0:29:39 a woman in Missouri who moved to Missouri after Hurricane Katrina, a black single mom
0:29:46 who struggled to get on her feet and she has three kids now and she was just elected as
0:29:51 a state rep in the state of Missouri because she was so outraged by the things that her
0:29:57 opponent was saying in public and also because no one else stepped up and at the very last
0:30:00 minute she decided to enter the race and the whole community came together and elected
0:30:01 her.
0:30:03 I hear stories like that all the time.
0:30:06 I just think we are afraid of doing the thing.
0:30:11 Women are afraid of doing the thing that they want to do so badly and that’s what we have
0:30:12 to unlearn.
0:30:17 Have you, or I’m sure you’ve given this some thought, but perhaps you can explain to me
0:30:22 and my listeners, in a sense, what’s with white men?
0:30:27 How can they think they’re the victims and they’re being impinged and they’re losing
0:30:33 their rights and what alternate universe are we supposed to feel sorry for them?
0:30:38 I have to say I don’t know the answer to this question because I struggle with it too.
0:30:43 I feel like I’m constantly barraged with messages that I should feel bad for white men.
0:30:45 I’m not sure why.
0:30:48 The question isn’t like why are men doing this question.
0:30:52 It’s like why aren’t men fixing this themselves?
0:30:56 Why are they looking to other people to make things better for them?
0:31:00 I’m not even sure I understand what the problem is honestly because they have amassed all
0:31:06 the power and all the money and I think anytime there’s a shift in demographics or power you’re
0:31:10 going to have those people feel like they’re being oppressed in some way and I just don’t
0:31:11 have patience for that.
0:31:19 Now, let me say, I say that as a white woman and I have learned so much along the way.
0:31:23 I only got off the sidelines because I was afraid my kids weren’t safe in their school.
0:31:28 Not even paying attention to the fact that kids were being shot in communities 30 miles
0:31:33 from where I lived forever and that black women were doing this work with very little
0:31:36 attention and we stand on their shoulders.
0:31:43 So I think that we can learn if we are open to understanding and being self-aware about
0:31:45 how we come to the issues ourselves.
0:31:48 I’m not seeing a lot of that in white men yet.
0:31:52 I’m glad that in a sense you don’t understand it too.
0:31:55 I really don’t understand this at all.
0:32:02 Listen, I have empathy for a lot of people but not white men and particularly not white
0:32:03 tech billionaires.
0:32:12 Oh my God, I just want to throw up whenever they open their mouths but anyway.
0:32:18 You being at the front edge of this and having built such an organization, I would love to
0:32:25 hear your insights on what’s effective now in terms of social media, newsletters, email,
0:32:26 what works anymore.
0:32:29 It’s not as simple as you put out a tweet and everything happens.
0:32:32 So what works now?
0:32:35 It’s funny because I always wonder, how did mothers against drunk driving, how were they
0:32:38 so successful so quickly in the 80s?
0:32:42 Were they calling each other on their rotary phones and driving over to the state house
0:32:44 and sending snail mail?
0:32:46 I do not know how these women did it.
0:32:51 We were very fortunate when I started Moms to Men Action that as I said, Facebook was
0:32:52 very much in the zeitgeist.
0:32:56 We were organizing on private pages in Facebook for every state.
0:32:59 That was an incredible tool to us back in 2012.
0:33:04 And then I probably started using Twitter a few years later and then we realized, oh
0:33:08 with hashtags, we could thank and shame lawmakers.
0:33:13 We could get companies to change their policies around things like Open Carry and we did that.
0:33:19 I remember there were pictures of men with AR-15s inside Chipotle and we started using
0:33:24 the hashtag #burritosnotbullets and within a weekend they changed their policy.
0:33:26 And it seemed like this magic trick.
0:33:33 We had access to this technology that could help us amplify our activism by a thousandfold.
0:33:38 Now here we are, 12 years later, obviously Facebook is not where people hang out anymore.
0:33:43 Twitter has become X and is now a very toxic stew.
0:33:47 So I think the important thing is to just always be at the forefront.
0:33:51 I think it’s really interesting to watch what Zoom is doing.
0:33:58 And when the pandemic started, we started organizing on Zoom and realized it was a really
0:34:03 important way for volunteers to have that lifeline to one another, not just to be activists,
0:34:05 but as human beings.
0:34:12 And then recently after Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee, I saw black women
0:34:14 and men having these Zoom calls.
0:34:16 So I tweeted, will white women have one too?
0:34:22 And lo and behold, within 48 hours, we organized the largest Zoom in history that raised $11
0:34:24 million in two hours.
0:34:29 So I think Zoom could definitely be part of the new political landscape and it’s just
0:34:34 really important to be at the forefront and to be watching for whatever you can use as
0:34:37 a tool to change opinions.
0:34:39 So let me rephrase the question.
0:34:46 If I’m a woman and I want to become active and change the world like this, are you saying
0:34:48 that the top tool is Zoom?
0:34:52 But on the flip side of that, are you saying don’t bother with Twitter, don’t bother with
0:34:54 Facebook anymore?
0:34:55 What’s really tactical?
0:35:01 So I’m on Instagram because I’m too old for TikTok and I’m tired of Twitter.
0:35:04 So I’m on Instagram and there is a lot of organizing going on there.
0:35:09 I think it’s a really important platform right now for activism.
0:35:15 They’re trying to change the algorithm so that political content doesn’t pop up as easily,
0:35:17 but that still seems like a place to be.
0:35:18 I do think Zoom is a place to be.
0:35:23 There are a lot of Zoom calls that are raising money, organizing people all across the country.
0:35:26 I do think that’s a good tool to use.
0:35:30 One thing that we’re doing every Wednesday between now and the election is having a Women
0:35:36 Wednesdays for Harris call where we teach people who zoom in different ways to be activists,
0:35:40 whether it’s relational organizing or registering people to vote, learning how to tell their
0:35:44 story and have a conversation, which you asked me about earlier in this conversation.
0:35:45 How do you tell your story?
0:35:47 How do you persuade people?
0:35:53 And I think that just getting together, having house parties, meeting in person, knocking
0:35:58 doors, doing the old fashioned footwork, what I call the unglamorous heavy lifting of grassroots
0:36:01 activism, that will never go out of style.
0:36:05 That will always be an important way to force change.
0:36:14 Can you see a day when Jim Jordan or some other clown in Congress is going to haul the
0:36:19 CEO of Zoom in front of Congress and say, you’re a front for Chinese spying.
0:36:24 So we need to ban Zoom from America because they want to shut it down.
0:36:26 As you say, such a powerful tool.
0:36:27 Yeah.
0:36:28 It’ll be interesting.
0:36:33 Zoom just said after we had this, this, the biggest Zoom call in history, that they were
0:36:38 expanding their ability to have up to a million participants.
0:36:39 That is pretty astounding.
0:36:42 And I haven’t seen Republicans be able to use this tool yet.
0:36:44 Now, if they can figure it out, they won’t ban it.
0:36:46 But until then, it’s probably in jeopardy.
0:36:53 If you see what they did to the CEO of TikTok, what’s the difference, right?
0:36:54 Yeah.
0:36:56 Okay.
0:37:03 So now let’s fast forward to today and please explain what you are doing for the Harris
0:37:05 Waltz campaign.
0:37:06 Yeah.
0:37:08 I’m really honored to be a surrogate.
0:37:12 I was a huge fan of Kamala Harris becoming the candidate.
0:37:14 I couldn’t believe it when it happened.
0:37:15 I was thrilled.
0:37:20 And then she picked Tim Waltz, who he has just been so good on the issue of gun safety
0:37:22 in his state passing background checks.
0:37:25 There’s this anecdote from Minnesota volunteers.
0:37:29 They were really worried because when he ran, he originally didn’t make gun safety a big
0:37:35 part of his platform and he is a gun owner and a hunter and a former military member.
0:37:36 And so they went up to him at the state fair.
0:37:39 And what I’ve learned is that a lot of things happen at state fairs.
0:37:44 A lot of political persuasion happens at state fairs.
0:37:48 And so they approached him after he was elected or during the campaign and he said, “I’m so
0:37:52 grateful for you and for your support and I will help you get this done.”
0:37:54 And he did.
0:37:58 Every year that he has been governor, he has worked relentlessly on gun safety and it finally
0:37:59 happened.
0:38:05 So the two of them as a ticket are the juxtaposition between what would happen if Donald Trump and
0:38:12 J.D. Vance were elected on guns versus the Harris-Waltz ticket is very stark.
0:38:17 And so we just have, I don’t even know what the count is now.
0:38:21 Whatever amount of days we have left between now and the election, I’m not going to waste
0:38:22 a minute.
0:38:25 I want to wake up the day after the election and know I left it all in the field.
0:38:29 And that includes traveling to battleground states and getting out the vote, continuing
0:38:35 these Zoom education calls, doing whatever I can as a citizen to make sure the Harris-Waltz
0:38:40 ticket is elected because not just for gun safety, but because all of our freedoms and
0:38:42 safeties are on the line.
0:38:46 And I just don’t think any of us can rest on our laurels before this election.
0:38:50 Could you just back up for a second and define the term “cerigate”?
0:38:52 What does a “cerigate” do?
0:38:57 It’s someone who represents a campaign because they can’t be everywhere.
0:39:02 So if I can be on a Zoom call, if I can travel to another state, if I can do something where
0:39:07 I live, I’m going to have a fundraiser for Kamala Harris at my home featuring the historian
0:39:08 Heather Cox Richardson.
0:39:12 If there’s anything that I can do to be supportive of the campaign to give them more arms and
0:39:16 legs, give in my profile as an activist, I will do that.
0:39:21 So are you officially recognized by the campaign as a “cerigate”?
0:39:24 You’re on their website or something?
0:39:27 Just we have “cerigate” calls where all the “cerigates” get together.
0:39:29 And how does one become one?
0:39:32 That’s a good question.
0:39:36 I think because I have a high profile and a lot of followers, it just made sense.
0:39:38 And so they reached out to you?
0:39:42 I was invited to be on the “cerigate” calls and I think because I had the Zoom that was
0:39:46 just so overwhelmingly successful, it got a lot of people’s attention.
0:39:51 If anybody out there is listening who is in charge of “cerigates”, call me.
0:39:54 I’ll be there for you.
0:39:55 Excellent.
0:39:56 I will.
0:39:57 I will tell them.
0:39:58 You tell them.
0:40:03 I will tell them that unlike the other assholes in Silicon Valley who are primarily concerned
0:40:10 with the tax rate and making crypto successful, I don’t give a shit about either of those
0:40:11 two things.
0:40:13 I just want to preserve democracy.
0:40:17 And if I lose all my followers and everything else, tough shit.
0:40:18 Like you said.
0:40:21 I want people to know I left it on the field too.
0:40:26 I like “cerigate” with a salty vocabulary personally.
0:40:27 You do?
0:40:28 I like “cerigate”.
0:40:29 Oh, I love it.
0:40:30 I love it.
0:40:34 Oh, because backing up about five minutes and I’m afraid Madison’s going to give me
0:40:37 a lecture after I say what I’m about to say.
0:40:44 But when I asked you this question about what’s with white men and how they’re victims and
0:40:49 all that, I can actually show you that and not that you could read it.
0:40:56 But these are my notes and the actual question that I had on this piece of paper is why are
0:40:59 white men such pussies?
0:41:01 But I said, “Oh my God, you shouldn’t ask that.
0:41:02 That’s very crass.
0:41:04 That’s very not pleasant.
0:41:05 You got to stay away from that.”
0:41:06 It’s a sin.
0:41:09 It’s a sin.
0:41:18 Well, Madison, I know Madison is listening, so we’re going to have to keep that section.
0:41:22 I know people who have very active roles in the fundraising and I said, “Just make me
0:41:28 a CML for one day and I’ll change the slogan to ‘Vote for Trump and Lose Your Vagina’
0:41:30 and they said, “No, that’s okay, guy.
0:41:31 You can just keep writing checks.
0:41:32 Don’t worry about the market.”
0:41:35 That might not be quite as succinct.
0:41:43 You’d have to get an acronym for that, I think.
0:41:46 Up next on Remarkable People.
0:41:50 I just hope that people see that this is, as Alice Walker says, the rent you pay to
0:41:56 live on the planet and you can do it on top of whatever else is happening in your life
0:41:59 and, in fact, you have an obligation to.
0:42:01 It has changed my life for the better.
0:42:06 I ended up creating one of the world’s largest field experiments for mobilizing women in
0:42:13 this country and I am better for it.
0:42:15 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:42:18 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:42:24 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it.
0:42:30 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:42:34 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:42:40 All right, so a little bit of reality check here.
0:42:46 So what are the personal costs for what you do?
0:42:50 I don’t know that I would have started Mom’s Demand Action if I had known what they were
0:42:51 ahead of me.
0:42:53 I was very naive.
0:43:00 All of my public information was my address, my phone number, my email was all out there,
0:43:02 my kid’s names, schools.
0:43:06 I just never imagined that I would become a public persona.
0:43:11 And so when I put out that clarion call to women and mothers, within hours I started
0:43:18 getting threats of death, sexual violence to me, to my daughters immediately.
0:43:24 And it was coming in on text and on calls and on emails and eventually even to my home
0:43:28 directly, to my kids at school, to my kids online.
0:43:30 And it was really scary.
0:43:36 I can remember early on calling the police department where I lived in Indiana and they
0:43:39 sent, they dispatched an officer to my house and when I told him what was happening, he
0:43:43 said, “Well, ma’am, that’s the price you pay when you mess with the Second Amendment.”
0:43:44 And I thought, “Okay.”
0:43:46 That’s what he said.
0:43:47 Yeah.
0:43:50 I’m either going to have to back down or double down.
0:43:55 And my personality is such that I double down and I decided I wasn’t going to spend however
0:44:01 long I was an activist worrying every day about these threats.
0:44:02 And I really haven’t.
0:44:07 And I don’t think I could do this work if my husband and children were afraid, thankfully
0:44:08 none of them are.
0:44:12 They’re very supportive, but there are volunteers who are, who I understand.
0:44:13 They live in red states.
0:44:14 They don’t want to use their last names.
0:44:17 They’re afraid of armed men showing up.
0:44:21 And that was never the intention of the Second Amendment, right, to silence and intimidate
0:44:23 other Americans.
0:44:25 And yet that’s what it’s turned into.
0:44:28 So I would say that is part of the personal cost.
0:44:36 And the other part is that I was really away from my family for many years on the road.
0:44:40 I became, I had a global services member for United because I had so many airline miles
0:44:43 and it’s not something I’m proud of.
0:44:49 But I get asked a lot by other volunteers, other mothers, should they feel guilty for
0:44:53 the fact that they’re activists or that they’re focused on something they’re passionate about?
0:44:56 And now I’m on the other side and all my children are grown.
0:44:58 They’re all adults.
0:45:03 And they never say, “Oh mom, I can’t believe you didn’t go to that soccer game in September
0:45:08 of 2010 or why weren’t you at my play rehearsal.”
0:45:14 They are only proud of me and they only remember the moments when they saw me doing something
0:45:17 that lit me up, that made me come alive, that I was passionate about.
0:45:19 And they’re emulating that in their own lives.
0:45:25 So I think there’s some of it is sort of an anachronistic or even misogynistic narrative
0:45:31 that becomes a talk track for women, which is don’t go after things that you want to
0:45:35 do that you’re passionate about, just do what you’re supposed to do.
0:45:39 And I guess what I’m saying is that I just at some point refused for these things to
0:45:46 be personal costs and just saw them as concessions that I was going to make to do what I knew
0:45:48 was morally correct.
0:45:53 Did any of the threats come close to becoming true?
0:46:00 Did anybody show up or did anybody like accost you physically or is it basically just digital
0:46:06 threats that for all you know, it’s like 16 year old kids sending you these text messages
0:46:07 and emails?
0:46:12 I think it’s mostly older white men who still live in their mother’s basement.
0:46:17 That’s the image I have in my mind, however, I have had to file restraining orders from
0:46:21 people who kept coming by my house or putting things in my mailbox.
0:46:27 I remember during my book tour, I had a book come out in 2018 called “Fight Like a Mother”
0:46:33 and we were in Denver and my kid happened to go to college in Denver at the time and
0:46:38 came with me to this event and saw security dragging this man out, this armed man who
0:46:40 was there to threaten me, right?
0:46:45 So there were some scary moments along the way, but for the most part, and I also want
0:46:47 to be clear, it’s not just me, right?
0:46:51 Our volunteers show up at the state house, I can remember in Virginia, and we’re confronted
0:46:53 by men carrying AR-15.
0:46:57 So it’s something that when you get involved in gun violence prevention activism, you realize
0:47:00 that you’re going to encounter.
0:47:06 For me, it just made me realize why my work was even more important.
0:47:13 May I digress for a second and tell you as one author to another, your title “Fight Like
0:47:17 a Mother” is just a great title.
0:47:18 Thank you.
0:47:20 I love that title.
0:47:21 Oh my God.
0:47:26 That’s because you like to swear and you know what the next word would be.
0:47:31 And did you come up with that title or some enlightened editor?
0:47:32 No, yes.
0:47:35 It was something that we were saying, “Vote like a mother, fight like a mother.”
0:47:42 It’s like we were using the mother moniker.
0:47:46 Well my hat’s off to you, that was a great title.
0:47:50 So listen, we’re at the end of our interview and I’ve asked all the questions I want to
0:47:55 ask and including why are white men such pussies.
0:47:57 So now I’ll give you like this is your platform.
0:48:01 I don’t hold myself out as a journalist trying to represent both sides.
0:48:05 I am exactly on one side.
0:48:08 So I’m as partisan as you can be.
0:48:13 So I’m going to give you just free access because you’ve been so eloquent already.
0:48:15 I know you can do this.
0:48:17 Just give us your closing pitch.
0:48:19 Give us your closing statement.
0:48:26 I would hope that everyone who is listening to us would be inspired to find a piece of
0:48:29 the work they’re passionate about and start doing it and it doesn’t even have to be gun
0:48:30 violence prevention.
0:48:36 It can be any issue in America that you are concerned about and go after it.
0:48:42 And I hope what you realize and what you learn is, especially if you’re a middle-aged woman,
0:48:44 that is how you leave a legacy.
0:48:50 That is how you feel alive in your life is to do this work because one, you’ll feel like
0:48:52 you’re winning, but two, you’ll feel like you found your people.
0:48:57 I travel all the time and I see so many women saying, “Oh, I met this person who has become
0:48:58 my best friend.”
0:49:01 And it’s because they got engaged in activism.
0:49:06 And so I just hope that people see that this is, as Alice Walker says, the rent you pay
0:49:13 to live on the planet and you can do it on top of whatever else is happening in your life.
0:49:15 And in fact, you have an obligation to.
0:49:17 It has changed my life for the better.
0:49:22 I ended up creating one of the world’s largest field experiments for mobilizing women in
0:49:24 this country and I am better for it.
0:49:28 And I will never go back to sitting on the sidelines in this country.
0:49:35 I do see real progress in real change, but we are also at an inflection point as we are
0:49:40 so many times in the history of America and this amazing experiment.
0:49:43 And we have a very stark choice to make.
0:49:47 It is between good and evil, in my opinion.
0:49:50 And we have to, as we talked about, wake up the day after the election and feel like we
0:49:54 did everything possible to ensure the right outcome.
0:49:56 Can I ask you a dumb question?
0:50:00 Why don’t you run for office?
0:50:06 I feel in a way like I have been running for 12 years and I also like to speak my mind
0:50:11 and my good friend Lucy McBeth, who was a mom’s demand action volunteer, she’s a gun
0:50:14 violence survivor, her son was murdered by a man with a gun.
0:50:17 She’s now a congresswoman in Georgia.
0:50:20 She always tells me, you can’t say the things you’re saying right now out there if you run
0:50:22 for office and when.
0:50:28 I’m not willing to make that sacrifice, but I love helping other women get elected to
0:50:29 office.
0:50:31 I’m on the board of Emerge America.
0:50:35 I’m constantly supporting and working on the campaigns of other women.
0:50:41 And when we talk about what’s a legacy hope you leave, I hope it’s that I inspired women
0:50:47 to live up to their full potential and take elected office.
0:50:48 Wow.
0:50:55 You’ll be happy to know that for two years, Madison and I pursued Stacey Abrams and we
0:50:58 finally got her to come on this podcast.
0:51:03 She recorded it in my house and that’s been one of the high points of this podcast.
0:51:07 So now you’re the second high point of this podcast.
0:51:08 Oh my gosh.
0:51:09 That’s very kind.
0:51:10 Thank you.
0:51:11 All right.
0:51:14 I think we have more than enough.
0:51:16 This has been remarkable.
0:51:17 Thank you so much.
0:51:21 And do you have anything else you want to tell us or let us know.
0:51:23 Madison, don’t stop recording it.
0:51:25 She may come up with even more great wisdom.
0:51:26 No, no.
0:51:27 I’m done.
0:51:32 You take a nap after all that talking.
0:51:35 Thank you so much, Shannon, all the best to you.
0:51:40 And when you come out with books and stuff, let us know because we will publicize it
0:51:41 for you.
0:51:46 I have one coming out in June of 25, which is basically about what we talked about.
0:51:48 Like how do you inspire women?
0:51:49 Okay.
0:51:58 And maybe in April of 2025, when Kamala is Tim or in the White House, we can have a follow
0:51:59 up interview.
0:52:00 Love it.
0:52:02 I’ll tell you a funny Kamala’s hire a store.
0:52:09 So I was flying back from Newark to San Francisco and she happened to be on the plane.
0:52:11 And I recognized her.
0:52:18 And after we got off the plane in San Francisco, after like a three hour delay, I went up to
0:52:26 her and I said, the next time you should be flying on Air Force one and she laughed.
0:52:30 So maybe maybe it’s going to come true that I love it.
0:52:35 You manifested it.
0:52:44 I just want to say go Shannon, go get out there and kick ass and take names.
0:52:51 And if any of you feel strongly about social change, I hope you’re inspired by her example
0:52:56 and you go out and kick ass and take names too.
0:52:58 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:53:00 This is Remarkable People.
0:53:07 Now let me recognize the rest of the kick ass, Remarkable People team.
0:53:13 First ass kicker is Madison Neismar, producer and co-author of Think Remarkable.
0:53:17 Second ass kicker is Tessa Nizmer, our researcher.
0:53:23 And the third and fourth kick assers are Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez, our amazing and
0:53:26 remarkable sound design team.
0:53:34 We are the Remarkable People team and we are on a mission to make you remarkable and kick
0:53:35 ass.
0:53:46 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

0:00:13 You’ve heard it before, but we are on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:16 And I have my friend on this episode.
0:00:22 He is Seth Godin, one and only drum roll Seth Godin.
0:00:29 He had a great concept called the purple cow and that image has stuck in my brain for years
0:00:30 now.
0:00:36 We first met when I was a Macintosh evangelist and he was working for a software company
0:00:39 in the east coast and we’ve been friends ever since.
0:00:44 He’s written God knows how many books and he’s influenced so much marketing.
0:00:48 So he is guaranteed to help you be remarkable.
0:00:55 So with no further adieu, here is the remarkable Seth Godin.
0:01:00 This is the remarkable people podcast and as you know, we’re on a mission to make you
0:01:09 remarkable and who could be better to help you become remarkable than Seth Godin, Mr.
0:01:13 Purple Cow and he has a new book out.
0:01:21 This is called This Is Strategy, Make Better Plans and he has blessed my podcast with his
0:01:22 presence.
0:01:24 So Seth, welcome to remarkable people.
0:01:26 I can’t believe it took me this long.
0:01:27 What a treat.
0:01:28 What a treat.
0:01:33 As you know, the subtitle of Purple Cow is transform your business by being remarkable.
0:01:39 You can send your remarkable royalty checks to Box 305 every 10 years.
0:01:46 They wouldn’t be very big, but yes, I feel.
0:01:52 We met in about 1983 and that’s a long time ago, Seth.
0:01:54 Where have the years gone?
0:01:55 Seriously?
0:01:57 They’ve been good, good years, haven’t they?
0:02:02 One of my only regrets because we live 3,000 miles apart is we’ve never gone surfing or
0:02:10 hockey playing together, but when you showed up in my office in 1983, it laid the groundwork
0:02:11 that changed my life.
0:02:13 And I think of you all the time.
0:02:17 How did showing up in your office change your life?
0:02:20 Because this was Spinnaker software.
0:02:22 We were a small software company.
0:02:26 I was working with Arthur C. Clark and Michael Crichton and inventing educational computer
0:02:28 games for kids.
0:02:34 I was 23 and a half years old and everyone else had way more seniority and experience
0:02:35 than me.
0:02:38 And I was the only person in the office who had a Mac.
0:02:45 I was a beta tester and I had ready set go 0.9 on the Mac and I was viewed as this edge
0:02:47 case, the wild card.
0:02:53 And you showed up and you were there to do a deal for chess or something.
0:02:55 And you and I just instantly hit it off.
0:03:03 And my view of myself changed because what I saw in you was that I didn’t have to go
0:03:09 work at an ice cream company and be a brand manager, that there was a chance to evangelize
0:03:12 ideas that mattered.
0:03:13 And I met Jay Levinson the same year.
0:03:15 I met Tom Peters the same year.
0:03:19 And the three of you, through modeling, we didn’t spend a lot of time together.
0:03:25 Just knowing that you were there made a big difference in my life.
0:03:26 Wow.
0:03:27 I had no idea.
0:03:28 Okay.
0:03:29 I’m flattered.
0:03:34 As you look back, do you think you accomplished more or less than you thought you would from
0:03:37 that time when you were in Spinnaker software?
0:03:39 Oh, so much more.
0:03:46 My goal for my life was to have a small independent business.
0:03:50 Maybe at the end, I’d have enough money that I wouldn’t need to worry about feeding my
0:03:54 family and that the world was very small.
0:03:57 There were only three business magazines at the time.
0:04:01 The chances that I would have a book published were close to zero.
0:04:06 I was peddling as fast as I could, but my expectation for my impact was small.
0:04:12 Also, looking back, do you think that was a mistake that you’d advise youth to have
0:04:17 bigger goals, hairier goals as Tom Peters would say, or it just works out?
0:04:19 So expectations are tricky.
0:04:26 I had very high standards for myself from a very early stage in my career.
0:04:32 So I was aware of what really good work was and I didn’t want to settle.
0:04:37 The thing that shifted was an expectation for how big the world was.
0:04:43 And I think that people who are younger than us grew up expecting that the whole world
0:04:45 was a couple of clicks away.
0:04:53 And so the horizon has to feel different now, but my timing, your timing, Moore’s law,
0:04:58 the growth of the personal computer and the growth of the internet, that’s been the wind
0:04:59 at our back.
0:05:00 That has been the shift.
0:05:04 And now the shift is AI and climate.
0:05:09 And it’s too late for the two of us to change the world with either of those things, but
0:05:12 clearly the door is open on both of those fronts.
0:05:17 So looking back to what do you attribute your success?
0:05:22 I think this pitch that you should be authentic is baloney.
0:05:27 No one wants you to be authentic.
0:05:28 Just name anything you care about.
0:05:32 If you go to a concert or if you get neat surgery, you don’t want the surgeon to be
0:05:33 authentic.
0:05:36 If they’re having a bad day, you don’t want them to do a bad job.
0:05:38 You want them to be consistent.
0:05:44 And so I’ve been playing a role consistently for 40-something years.
0:05:47 I’m not an introvert, but I’m sort of shy.
0:05:53 But when I’m playing Seth Godin, the professional, that’s not the way I behave.
0:05:58 And I have played the role of someone who, if he had an innovative new idea, would say
0:05:59 it out loud.
0:06:02 That causes me to have innovative new ideas.
0:06:11 And so I think that just consistently having a strategy of seeing the systems at work and
0:06:16 working to make things better, that’s all I do over and over and over again.
0:06:17 It seems to pay off.
0:06:22 But surely you’re not saying you should set out to be inauthentic, right?
0:06:28 Because consistency is not the flip side of authenticity.
0:06:34 Actually I think that being a hustling fraud is not okay.
0:06:37 I think that manipulating people is not okay.
0:06:44 But I am defining the opposite of authentic as consistent if you’re a professional.
0:06:50 There are a few people, a Kardashian, Miles Davis, who we will pay money for authenticity,
0:06:51 right?
0:06:54 Often, like Amy Winehouse, it leads to you being dead.
0:07:01 But in general, what we want from professionals in our life is consistency.
0:07:05 Sign up to be who you want to become and keep doing that.
0:07:10 So looking back, last question about looking back, what beliefs that you had back then
0:07:13 were completely wrong and you had to change them?
0:07:20 I thought more people were interested in change and the thrill of innovation.
0:07:27 I thought that if we gave everyone a microphone like the internet did, it would lead to nothing
0:07:28 but good things.
0:07:33 I didn’t realize that just a few clowns and trolls and hustlers can really mess things
0:07:34 up.
0:07:39 Do you think we’re living in a simulation because of this?
0:07:40 You don’t.
0:07:41 I do.
0:07:45 There’s an idea in philosophy called Occam’s Razor.
0:07:50 What it says is that the simplest explanation is probably correct.
0:07:55 The chance is that we have just this little bit of awareness, that we are simulations in
0:07:59 a much higher organism’s virtual reality.
0:08:05 The chances of it being that are so slim where physics and biology all line up that this
0:08:06 sort of makes sense.
0:08:10 The thing that I don’t understand is why we haven’t heard from people on other planets
0:08:11 yet.
0:08:14 It’s going to happen, but I don’t know why we haven’t heard them yet.
0:08:19 We are a little off the topic, Guy, but as you know, you and I can go on all day.
0:08:20 All right.
0:08:21 Okay.
0:08:22 I got to ask you.
0:08:28 Your purple cow concept is one of my absolutely favorite Seth Godin convention.
0:08:32 So do you think that purple cow theory is still true today?
0:08:34 It is misunderstood by a lot of people.
0:08:38 They think that remarkable means having a shtick.
0:08:40 That remarkable means having a gimmick.
0:08:43 That’s not what I said, and it’s not what I mean.
0:08:48 There’s always room for something or someone who is remarkable.
0:08:52 What remarkable means is worth making a remark about.
0:08:57 Do I benefit by telling someone about you?
0:09:01 If I benefit from that, I will do so.
0:09:05 And if I tell someone about you, you will be able to be of service.
0:09:07 The word will spread.
0:09:09 Having a gimmick is selfish.
0:09:15 Being remarkable is a service, generous, helping somebody else get what they want.
0:09:22 So to put it in tactical and maybe an extreme, some people might say a Tesla Cybertruck is
0:09:24 a purple cow.
0:09:28 Somehow I suspect that you don’t think a Cybertruck is a purple cow.
0:09:33 Actually, there’s a section in the new book called Ludacris and the Clown Car.
0:09:39 And Ludacris mode in the Model S is a purple cow.
0:09:40 Here’s why.
0:09:44 You look at my — I don’t have any more, but you look at my Tesla, you comment on the
0:09:48 retractable door handles because it turns out that’s the number one thing people said
0:09:51 in the early years when they saw you in the parking lot.
0:09:54 They don’t know about any other — look at those door handles.
0:09:57 And then you’d say, get in the car, let’s go for a drive.
0:10:01 And you hit Ludacris mode, zero to 60 in two something seconds.
0:10:05 And the car would scream, they would scream, and your status would go up because you had
0:10:09 this cool thing that was fun to show off that didn’t hurt anybody.
0:10:10 That was brilliant.
0:10:13 That sold billions of dollars with the cars.
0:10:20 The Cybertruck is this massive missed opportunity because the kind of person that wants to buy
0:10:26 a pickup truck, wants to show utility, that’s what a pickup truck stands for.
0:10:31 And the Cybertruck is not utility unless you want to cut cucumbers with the trunk.
0:10:34 It’s not good at what it’s supposed to be good at.
0:10:37 So he squandered this chance.
0:10:40 So yes, people talk about it, but they talk about it to make fun of it.
0:10:43 They talk about it to make fun of the person who bought it.
0:10:49 The resale value of the Cybertruck is down 50% because it’s very hard to have your status
0:10:53 go up if you’re driving that thing around town.
0:10:59 So mention some things that’s like in the Seth Godin purple cow, Hall of Fame.
0:11:02 Like what are purple cow, legitimate purple cows?
0:11:03 Okay.
0:11:07 So Patagonia clothing is a purple cow because it doesn’t scream at people, but if someone
0:11:12 notices that you’re wearing a new thing or an old thing from Patagonia, you get to tell
0:11:16 them a story about why you’re a good person.
0:11:21 One of the great home runs was what Blake did at Tom’s Shoes.
0:11:26 To give people the short version, 15 years ago, it was extremely unlikely that a pair
0:11:29 of women’s shoes would have a logo on them.
0:11:35 And he made espadrilles in Portugal, $79, and put right in the back, Tom’s.
0:11:40 And the deal was if you bought a pair of Tom’s shoes, he would give an identical pair to
0:11:43 someone in a place like Ethiopia who didn’t have shoes.
0:11:45 There’s flaws in that model.
0:11:46 We’ll leave that aside.
0:11:51 The point is a woman who bought these at the beginning was an early adopter.
0:11:55 She wanted to have something to talk about.
0:11:56 She wears those shoes.
0:12:00 The obligation in the social circle is if your friend has new shoes, you have to say
0:12:01 nice shoes.
0:12:03 And she gets to say, “Really?
0:12:04 Because I’m a philanthropist.
0:12:06 I’m better than you.
0:12:07 Look at these shoes.
0:12:08 Look what I just did.”
0:12:10 And so now the word spreads.
0:12:16 And from that simple idea, he built a company he sold for half a billion dollars and ended
0:12:20 up as his model of off in helping a lot of people.
0:12:24 That’s remarkable because they weren’t talking about Blake because they like Blake.
0:12:26 They weren’t talking about Blake because they had a gimmick.
0:12:31 They were talking about themselves and using the shoes as a way to do that.
0:12:34 My second favorite concept of Seth Godin is this.
0:12:41 It is the concept of the smallest viable audience or smallest viable market or whatever you
0:12:43 call it.
0:12:44 Just riff on that.
0:12:46 I love this concept.
0:12:50 This might be my biggest idea other than email marketing.
0:12:52 So here’s the idea.
0:12:58 The idea is society and the media keeps pushing us to make something for everyone, to fit
0:13:02 in all the way through to the other side so we’re mass, so we’re Heinz ketchup, so that
0:13:05 no one can criticize it.
0:13:06 That’s not interesting.
0:13:07 It’s not fun.
0:13:09 And it is no longer profitable.
0:13:13 That the opportunity that the internet gives us is not to reach everyone.
0:13:21 It’s to reach someone that it is better to be known and trusted by a small group of people
0:13:25 than to disgust a large group of people.
0:13:27 And if someone says, “Great news.
0:13:34 We’ve got Guy to come speak at our conference,” many of the people say, “Guy who?”
0:13:36 And a few people say, “That’s fantastic.
0:13:38 I’m buying extra tickets.”
0:13:39 That’s enough.
0:13:44 It’s enough to be specific because if you’re specific about who it’s for, you’re on the
0:13:45 hook.
0:13:47 You can say to people, “Don’t get the joke.
0:13:48 You don’t get the joke.
0:13:49 Don’t come.”
0:13:54 But if you want to be on the hook, then you better deliver for the audience you picked
0:13:56 because you got to pick them.
0:14:04 And so do you think that it’s viable to go to potential investors and discuss your smallest
0:14:10 viable market when all they want to hear is about minimum viable product?
0:14:12 I think it’s essential.
0:14:14 And smart investors understand this.
0:14:19 Smart investors know about Steve Blank and customer traction.
0:14:24 That if we think about a company like Canva, how many years did it take for it to be an
0:14:26 overnight success?
0:14:30 That the traction at the beginning was the key to the whole thing.
0:14:35 Show me the people who would miss your brand or product if it were gone.
0:14:40 Show me the people who being part of that circle matters a lot to them.
0:14:46 So what I care about if I’m investing in TED is there’s 3,000 people on the waiting
0:14:48 list to pay $6,000 to come.
0:14:52 That’s enough because if I have that, then I get the next circle and the next circle
0:14:53 and the next circle.
0:14:56 But first, we need the Red Hot Center.
0:15:02 But don’t you think that many entrepreneurs have an absolute, dismal understanding of
0:15:03 this concept.
0:15:06 They want to just be, you know, everything to everybody.
0:15:07 Yeah.
0:15:12 Well, isn’t that our job guy, you and me, tell things to people like that when they’re
0:15:13 wrong.
0:15:14 That’s a hard job here.
0:15:32 All right, so now let’s talk about this book.
0:15:36 First question is, do you have a strategy to develop strategies?
0:15:37 Oh, yeah.
0:15:42 But let’s just for viewers at home, what’s a strategy?
0:15:44 Strategy is not tactics.
0:15:47 Strategy is four things woven together.
0:15:54 It is systems, games, empathy, and time.
0:15:59 And so the strategy for finding a strategy is first, do you see the invisible systems
0:16:01 all around you?
0:16:03 Moore’s Law is a system.
0:16:06 That Silicon Valley is a system.
0:16:09 The college industrial complex is a system.
0:16:13 The New York City book publishing world is a system.
0:16:20 Unspoken rules, a culture, an economy, a market that all works together quietly churning along.
0:16:25 If you show up and you want to change a system and you don’t have a lot of help or leverage,
0:16:27 you’re not going to succeed.
0:16:30 So first we look for existing systems.
0:16:35 Then we think about time, which is big problems demand small solutions.
0:16:40 But what we’re looking for in strategy is seeds we can plant so that a year from now
0:16:43 or five years from now, we’ll be glad we did.
0:16:46 We’re not looking for the grand opening.
0:16:49 We’re looking for the worthwhile opening.
0:16:55 Empathy, because if we’re going to show up to make a change, no one cares about us.
0:16:57 They care about themselves, their problems, their issues.
0:17:03 How can we go to where they are and offer them something they want?
0:17:07 And the last one is games, which is how many pieces do I have?
0:17:10 How much monopoly money, where did the dice being rolled?
0:17:14 Don’t build a fire if the logs are bigger than your kindling can handle.
0:17:19 So when those four pieces fit together, then I look for a change agent.
0:17:23 What’s shifting that’s going to make the system unstable?
0:17:26 So AI is a change agent.
0:17:28 Climate change is a change agent.
0:17:33 In regulation, where health might be a change agent, COVID was a change agent.
0:17:39 When the change agent shows up and it’s disrupting a system, you can find a strategy.
0:17:44 That’s your strategy to find a strategy is to put those four things together and use
0:17:46 that filter and lens.
0:17:47 Exactly.
0:17:53 It sounds simple, but it is very hard to do, which I think you mentioned, right?
0:17:59 But simple things, hard to do things as opposed to easy to do things, complex things.
0:18:03 When you come up with a good strategy, it’s easy to say, but hard to stick with.
0:18:05 So I’ll tell you two stories from the book.
0:18:09 The first one is the day Netflix became Netflix.
0:18:14 So Reed and his name just escaped my head.
0:18:19 Reed and the other guy at Netflix are in the business of those red envelopes with the DVDs.
0:18:20 And they’re doing great.
0:18:22 Blockbuster is reeling.
0:18:24 They’re about to win the red envelope DVD thing.
0:18:25 And Ted.
0:18:32 Reed and Ted then see that something’s disrupting the system, and that thing is streaming.
0:18:39 So they decide to build a streaming division right next to the DVD rental division, but
0:18:43 then they make a key decision that changes everything.
0:18:49 Every meeting they have to go over this, to build the other division, no one from the
0:18:52 DVD division is allowed to come.
0:18:57 Even the people who run that whole line of business, they’re not allowed in the room.
0:18:58 Really?
0:19:04 Because they don’t want to compromise the streaming business to make the DVD people happy.
0:19:05 It was 100% of their revenue.
0:19:08 They would have compromised.
0:19:14 That decision enabled Netflix to do something really rare, which is to win twice.
0:19:19 And then the section in the book right after that is the day Apple became Apple.
0:19:26 Because Apple had some people who knew design, had some people who definitely knew software.
0:19:32 But what they didn’t have was scaffolding, something that would create an infrastructure,
0:19:39 a network effect of developers who wanted the machine to succeed.
0:19:44 And if that didn’t happen, you’d have hardware but not enough software.
0:19:50 So they tapped this young guy in his 20s and they said, “Go build an ecosystem that will
0:19:54 last for 40 years.”
0:19:58 And they gave him no money, just some plane tickets.
0:20:04 And that is why you’re in the book.
0:20:10 I’ve never had my career explained so succinctly and accurately.
0:20:14 That’s exactly what it was.
0:20:17 How do you pick between strategies?
0:20:21 Because I can see how you can say, yeah, that strategy was right.
0:20:25 But at the time you make the decision between multiple strategies, what’s your strategy
0:20:27 for picking the strategy?
0:20:28 Yeah.
0:20:29 Great question.
0:20:30 You can’t.
0:20:31 But at least you can try.
0:20:34 That most people aren’t doing that.
0:20:38 Most people can’t answer the question, who’s it for and what’s it for.
0:20:43 And Steve was arrogant, but he used his arrogance as a powerful tool.
0:20:49 Because if someone who it wasn’t for criticized him, he would say, “It’s not for you.”
0:20:52 And if someone said, “Why should I pay double for this?”
0:20:56 He was very clear about what it was for, who’s it for and what’s it for.
0:21:02 I don’t care if you pick the optimal strategy, but please pick a strategy.
0:21:04 Please be able to tell me who’s it for and what’s it for.
0:21:10 And if you can articulate it, your good judgment will probably help you pick a better strategy.
0:21:11 But you got to try.
0:21:16 And then you find your minimal viable audience, right?
0:21:17 Picking that strategy.
0:21:18 Who’s it for?
0:21:19 Right.
0:21:22 You pick your customers, that picks your future.
0:21:26 And when do you know it’s time to switch strategies?
0:21:27 You could make the case.
0:21:34 You use Blockbuster, but in 1975, an engineer at Kodak invented digital photography.
0:21:39 And if they had committed to digital photography and not invited anybody from the film business
0:21:44 into those meetings, Kodak would own the world today, right?
0:21:46 So do you know my friend Lisa Ganski?
0:21:47 Yes.
0:21:48 From the old days.
0:21:49 Okay.
0:21:52 So Lisa sold her company to Kodak.
0:21:54 And she was an advisor on the digital side.
0:22:00 And this was right at the key moment when Kodak had to decide they owned almost all the patents
0:22:02 on digital photography.
0:22:07 And she’s in the CEO’s office or the chairman’s office in Rochester.
0:22:12 And she’s arguing, just like you said, why don’t we just not invite the photo people
0:22:15 to these meetings and go all in?
0:22:16 And he said, and I wasn’t there.
0:22:18 So I’m getting all the facts wrong.
0:22:22 But he said something like, Lisa, do you know how many steps are involved in making a role
0:22:24 of film?
0:22:25 And she said, I have no idea.
0:22:30 He said 19 come over here and he took her to the window and he said, how many buildings
0:22:33 do you see on our campus?
0:22:34 And the answer is 19.
0:22:38 There was one entire building for every step involved in making film.
0:22:41 He couldn’t shrink it a little bit.
0:22:43 He couldn’t back off a little bit.
0:22:47 They had optimized everything they did around one thing.
0:22:52 And because it was a public company, he didn’t have the guts to go start a new division.
0:22:55 And Santa Clara, and just start over.
0:22:57 He couldn’t keep both balls in the air.
0:23:03 That’s why most companies, when the telephone came along, AT&T was for sale, Western Union
0:23:08 could have bought it, and instead they decided to make better telegrams.
0:23:16 And when I was at Yahoo, we had the chance to buy Google for $10 million.
0:23:20 And the people, I wasn’t in the room, but the people in the room said, nah, we’ll just
0:23:24 put the money into building Yahoo Kids out better.
0:23:28 Because it’s so easy to defend the thing you think you’re already good at.
0:23:32 Okay, so then how do you know when to switch?
0:23:35 In my career, I quit more than most people.
0:23:37 That’s why I wrote a book about quitting called The Dip.
0:23:39 I take pride in quitting.
0:23:43 And every once in a while, I quit too soon.
0:23:48 And I think the cost of quitting too soon is tiny compared to the cost of quitting too
0:23:52 late, because you don’t get tomorrow over again.
0:23:58 And there are plenty of examples of big companies that are quitting too late.
0:24:03 And I don’t have a simple answer for you, except when we think about systems.
0:24:08 If you see that the current is changing, and you’re going to have to paddle upstream for
0:24:13 a really long time, but there’s a downstream path that’s available to you, this might be
0:24:18 a good day to build those skunkworks, a good day to put yourself out of business with a
0:24:21 new division that does the new thing.
0:24:25 But I’m going to leave it to other people to figure out exactly how to do that.
0:24:31 With that framework, do you think that Google should have stuck with Google+ longer?
0:24:37 And today with Twitter being X and now a Nazi platform, if Google+ were still around, threads
0:24:42 would probably not be around and Google would own social media?
0:24:51 Yeah, Google has made a boatload of mistakes in the last bunch of years, because they forgot
0:24:56 the core mission, the strategy of organizing the world’s information.
0:25:01 And instead decided, because there’s 10,000 people in the building who make a lot of money
0:25:05 when the stock price goes up $1, to day trade.
0:25:08 I saw the same thing happen at Yahoo.
0:25:13 So if you think about just Google Reader, could have been the heart of an ecosystem
0:25:17 of blogs, which would have become the heart of the podcasting universe, which would have
0:25:21 become the beating heart of all this new information.
0:25:26 But they said, it’s costing us $1 million a month, we’re not going to do it.
0:25:32 Because they got so distracted by just how much money comes in from one part of their
0:25:37 business, which is why, I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, Google should have broken itself
0:25:38 up.
0:25:40 Google should not be fighting the antitrust people.
0:25:47 They should eagerly break themselves up, because each one of the pillars would end up doing
0:25:51 a better job of their core strategy.
0:25:56 And so part of the reason they completely left the door open to Microsoft and others
0:26:02 on AI is they wake up every day saying, how do we defend search?
0:26:07 The same way book publishers wake up every day and say, how do we defend paper?
0:26:15 And the opportunity, for example, that public radio had to own a massive chunk of podcasting
0:26:17 was huge.
0:26:22 And they said, no, no, no, no, we need to defend the spectrum, because that’s our God-given
0:26:25 right is to be at 93.9 on your dial.
0:26:30 Well, I’m not tuning into 93.9 anymore.
0:26:33 With that in mind, do you think Wikipedia is blowing it?
0:26:38 Wikipedia could be the center of knowledge in the universe, but they’re stuck on this
0:26:44 model of we have individual contributors who have to cite journalistically approved sources
0:26:47 to write entries about each subject.
0:26:53 And to me, these LLMs, they’re like instant Wikipedia on any subject, anytime, any language.
0:26:56 So do you think Wikipedia is the next Kodak?
0:26:57 Okay.
0:26:59 Jimmy did something really brave.
0:27:05 And the five million people who regularly support Wikipedia have a project.
0:27:09 They don’t have a mission as much as they have a project.
0:27:13 The project is to continue building what they’ve been building the way they’ve been building
0:27:14 it.
0:27:18 It is not a corporation with someone making strategy decisions.
0:27:26 It is a community that fuels and feeds itself on the craft of what they do.
0:27:31 It’s impossible for me to describe a future in five years where Wikipedia is as important
0:27:33 as it was five years ago.
0:27:35 That can’t happen.
0:27:40 Because to make this sort of change would require the people in the community to change
0:27:44 why they’re in the community, and that’s not going to happen.
0:27:47 And there are plenty of spiritual institutions where the same thing is true.
0:27:48 And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
0:27:51 It’s a fine way to spend your day.
0:27:56 The interesting question to me is who’s going to build a different community that offers
0:28:03 people similar status and affiliation where LLMs work with them to create some sort of
0:28:06 special magic?
0:28:09 And I don’t see somebody doing that right now, but I’m hoping that it will happen.
0:28:15 That building a community of people who show up in a certain way that builds our culture
0:28:20 and it generally is magic when it happens.
0:28:21 You know what?
0:28:27 If I’m interpreting you correct, I adore that idea and I’ll give you an example.
0:28:32 So right now I’m using this Shure MV7+ mic.
0:28:39 Some people have told me that my sound and my video are not quite synced up.
0:28:44 That the sound is a little bit in front of the video or the video is in front of the
0:28:45 sound.
0:28:46 One of the two.
0:28:52 So I need a way to add a few microseconds to put the two things in sync, right?
0:28:57 So I go to Claude and I go to chat, GBT, and I say, “How do I adjust and put a delay in
0:29:02 the audio to synchronize the audio and the video?”
0:29:08 In both places, you get the app and in the app you look for something called delay and
0:29:09 you enter the delay.
0:29:15 And so the next question I ask, both of these LLMs is, “Where is this delay feature in
0:29:17 the app?”
0:29:20 And they come back and I say, “Oh, we made a mistake.
0:29:22 There is no delay in the app.
0:29:23 I’m sorry.
0:29:26 There is no way to delay an MV7+.
0:29:31 Now, what you’re saying if I got you right is we need a community of people who really
0:29:37 know the MV7+ and its app and say, “Hey, you guys are wrong.
0:29:39 You need to fix this in your LLM.”
0:29:40 Is that what you’re saying?
0:29:41 Okay.
0:29:44 First, you can fix this as soon as we get off the call.
0:29:49 Just download Ecamm and run Ecamm through your video.
0:29:50 You’ll be done.
0:29:51 Okay.
0:29:52 Fair enough.
0:29:53 I had the same problem.
0:29:56 Number two, Reddit will walk you through it, right?
0:30:01 Why is someone spending their time on Reddit answering guys’ questions?
0:30:05 Because they’re amazing when you find the right topic.
0:30:10 You can put a picture up of four square inches of a car and say, “This car just blew by me
0:30:11 and this is the only picture I have.
0:30:12 What car is it?”
0:30:14 And someone will tell you in like seven minutes.
0:30:16 This is magic.
0:30:21 Not just for you, but for the person who did it because people want to be of use.
0:30:23 They want their status for being smart to go up.
0:30:26 They want to be affiliated with the others.
0:30:27 Okay?
0:30:29 Reddit then says, “We got all these people.
0:30:33 We’re going to pay for it by selling their data to OpenAI.”
0:30:34 Okay.
0:30:35 That’s fine.
0:30:44 But if I want to go further than that, I think about the fact that Wikipedia said everyone
0:30:50 who looks up Paris, France is going to see exactly the same article about Paris, France.
0:30:56 That’s never going to happen again with OpenAI and Claude because we’re going to treat every
0:31:00 single person differently based on who they are, where they were, where they’re going.
0:31:03 Maybe you’re asking about Paris, France and I know you’re a high school student in Oklahoma
0:31:07 writing a paper versus this person, you get the idea.
0:31:19 So what would a community be like if our reason for being was to create a resilient educational
0:31:24 tool like the Diamond Age, Neil Stevenson’s book?
0:31:28 And how would I move up by doing a good job at that?
0:31:32 And so the same way people moved up in the Linux community by doing a good job of making
0:31:37 a printer driver, someone’s going to figure out how to do a good job of parsing the work
0:31:43 that was done in Paris, France, Wikipedia to create a multiverse of Paris, France that
0:31:45 other people can get the idea, right?
0:31:52 So we’re going to become centaurs where half of our day we’re holding hands with an LLM
0:31:56 and the other half of the day we’re out in the world looking for pictures or whatever
0:31:59 doing what an LLM can’t do yet.
0:32:03 But the core of it has to be a spiritual practice.
0:32:06 It has to be a community I want to be part of.
0:32:12 Like you, I was on the board of trustees of Wikipedia and I cannot really comprehend them
0:32:14 making such a switch.
0:32:16 It’s such a religion for them.
0:32:17 Do you hear a buzzing?
0:32:18 Is that your alarm?
0:32:23 No, that was the local volunteer fire department, which I love, I adore.
0:32:25 They haven’t discovered phones yet.
0:32:30 So when there’s a fire somewhere, they just honk that horn to tell everybody to go get
0:32:32 in their truck.
0:32:37 That’s a system.
0:32:43 So would you explain your decision to use the riff format in your book where you have
0:32:46 300 short stories, basically?
0:32:48 What’s the thinking there?
0:32:53 So how did you learn about vegetables?
0:32:59 When you were three, I think it’s unlikely your mom sat you down and said, “These are
0:33:00 carrots.
0:33:01 These are peas.
0:33:02 This is cauliflower.”
0:33:04 And went through all the vegetables, right?
0:33:08 What happened is you did a couple of vegetables, then you went outside of play, then you did
0:33:11 this, you did this, and then there were a couple more of it.
0:33:12 That’s how we learn.
0:33:16 And so what I discovered is if I needed to tell the story of systems, but not talking
0:33:20 about games and not talking about empathy, I couldn’t.
0:33:21 I got stuck.
0:33:24 So I start talking about systems until I need to tell you about games.
0:33:28 And I talk about games, then I go back to, and that’s how I learn.
0:33:30 That’s how I teach.
0:33:34 And the reason that the riffs are numbered and there are no page numbers in the book,
0:33:40 it’s half of the sales for you, your books, and for me, my books are digital, either Kindle
0:33:41 or audio.
0:33:44 So you can’t say to somebody, “Did you like page 48?”
0:33:47 Because they don’t have page 48 on an audio book.
0:33:52 But you can say, “We’re going to talk about Riff 117, because everyone has Riff 117.”
0:33:55 And what’s the order you put them in?
0:34:01 The order is if you and I were on a long boat ride, this is how I would tell you the story
0:34:02 of strategy.
0:34:05 And if seven of them got rearranged, it wouldn’t matter.
0:34:09 But if 70 of them got out of order, it would be weird.
0:34:14 So it’s definitely not the concept of, “I haven’t organized by subject matter,” or,
0:34:19 “I haven’t organized by chronological order or development path.”
0:34:20 Correct.
0:34:28 For example, when you show up in 1983 to pitch the graphic interface and ecosystem of the
0:34:30 Mac, you start with some of the stuff Andy did.
0:34:32 You start with some of the stuff Susan did.
0:34:35 You start with some of the stuff that the exterior people did.
0:34:37 You start with some of the stuff Regis McKenna did.
0:34:40 And then you go back and forth based on what the audience is lighting up about.
0:34:46 You don’t go, “Let me tell you, from the beginning to the end, every icon that’s on the desktop.”
0:34:48 I think that’s the way we talk to people.
0:34:52 And how did you come up with 295 of these?
0:34:57 Did you sit yourself up and you say, “Okay, first thing in the morning, I’m going to think
0:35:03 of five Riffs,” or are you just constantly background processing and every time you think
0:35:06 of a riff, you send yourself a note or something?
0:35:09 What’s your writing strategy?
0:35:15 My life strategy, 9,000 blog posts later, is if I see something in the world and I don’t
0:35:21 understand why it’s working, I have a lot of trouble doing anything until I figure out
0:35:23 a theory.
0:35:26 Why is someone spending their life being a spammer?
0:35:30 Why did this social network win and that one not win?
0:35:32 Make an assertion, write it down.
0:35:34 That’s a blog post.
0:35:40 When I’m writing a book like this, I’ll write an assertion, a riff, and then I’ll think,
0:35:45 “Wait a minute, who’s going to think I missed something?
0:35:46 What’s their objection?”
0:35:48 So that’ll be the next riff.
0:35:56 Once I had the first draft of those, I made 45 videos to create my Udemy course on it
0:36:02 and I put those videos on purple dot space, which is a community of people online who
0:36:07 take care of each other and are very smart and some of them are into my work and I offered
0:36:11 them for free, 300 of them, a chance to take the workshop.
0:36:16 So now they’re watching the videos and I’m watching from over here as they’re talking
0:36:17 about the videos.
0:36:19 They don’t know they’re giving me feedback.
0:36:24 They’re talking to each other about what a feedback loop is or whatever and I see, “Oh,
0:36:26 they keep misunderstanding feedback loops.”
0:36:31 So now I write a different riff to answer an objection that the reader would have had
0:36:32 but doesn’t now.
0:36:39 And then the step after that, I take the book and I upload it to 11labs.ai, which I have
0:36:44 trained in my voice and it reads the book.
0:36:50 I download that and I go for car rides listening to myself reading my book.
0:36:55 And if I say something that sounds stupid, I write it down and when I get home, I fix
0:36:57 that part.
0:37:01 And then I run out of attention and I’m exhausted, so I just stop.
0:37:02 Wow.
0:37:12 So at any point, did you or an editor say riff 120 should really come after riff 255?
0:37:13 Let’s move that riff.
0:37:14 I did it a few times.
0:37:17 I’m trying to wrap my mind on how you did this.
0:37:18 Right.
0:37:19 I did that part a few times.
0:37:24 I didn’t do it a lot because every time you move one thing to another place, then something
0:37:26 else is in the wrong place.
0:37:33 I really don’t think the order is as important as it would be if I was writing a novel.
0:37:36 I think that what I’m trying to do is philosophy.
0:37:43 I’m trying to help people create a philosophy of becoming, that after someone engages with
0:37:48 work like this or with Purple Cow or the practice.
0:37:50 None of those books are in order.
0:37:56 I would like to think that they will make new decisions based on who they have become.
0:37:59 You’re like Sun Tzu or something, right?
0:38:03 Oh my God.
0:38:08 So how do you want people to read the book from cover to cover front to back or just
0:38:12 dive in every once in a while at random?
0:38:14 I want them.
0:38:16 I honestly don’t care if anyone buys my book.
0:38:18 I really don’t.
0:38:21 I just want them to talk about it.
0:38:27 And when you talk about it, you may find yourself saying, well, I don’t understand this part
0:38:30 and go read a few sections.
0:38:34 Some people like today, I was, I gave a speech in New York and on my way in because it was
0:38:35 early in the morning.
0:38:36 I was tired.
0:38:43 I listened to the practice, my own book, and I gave a better speech because other things
0:38:44 clicked in my head.
0:38:49 So if you want to listen to the whole thing in a row, that’s fine.
0:38:56 But many of my readers will listen or read for 20 minutes, go explore, and then come
0:38:57 back in a day or two.
0:38:58 That’s fine too.
0:38:59 Yeah.
0:39:04 I have a book called Wise Guy, which I tell the stories of my life that shaped me.
0:39:10 And I am going to do a version of this called Wiser Guy and Wise Guy.
0:39:19 And Wise Guy is organized roughly chronologically from my family moving from Japan to my presence
0:39:20 in Silicon Valley.
0:39:23 But as I listen to you, I think I might do it riff style.
0:39:28 I’ll take all those stories and just throw them all up in the air, come back and put
0:39:30 them in a completely different order.
0:39:32 I really like your idea, Seth.
0:39:37 I’m going to send a copy of this to my editor and she’s going to tell me all the reasons
0:39:40 why I shouldn’t do this and then I’m going to do it again anyway.
0:39:43 Up next on Remarkable People.
0:39:47 You got to start something and it doesn’t have to be for money.
0:39:54 That’s generous, that’s brave, that earns you a reputation, that probably involves connecting
0:39:55 other people.
0:40:01 Do those things just every weekend for six weeks, six years, six months, whatever.
0:40:06 The phone will ring because if you create enough goodness in the world, people will want more.
0:40:16 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:40:19 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
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0:40:37 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:40:44 You have in your acknowledgments pretty good recognition of the contribution of Claude
0:40:46 to this book.
0:40:51 Can you just explain to us how you use Claude and specifically, I want to know what Claude
0:40:56 can do that you cannot and what you can do and Claude cannot.
0:41:03 To be very clear, every word that you see my name on, blog, poster, book, I wrote.
0:41:06 I could cheat, but I don’t.
0:41:14 If you listen to the audiobook, I’m reading it myself at great personal distress.
0:41:18 What I found Claude is great at.
0:41:25 The two things it’s best at, one, you can upload complex business plans or entire books
0:41:28 and say, “Where are the weak spots?
0:41:29 Please argue with me.
0:41:31 Tell me where the contradictions are.
0:41:34 What did I miss?”
0:41:39 When a human does that, my feelings get a little hurt and I get defensive, but when
0:41:45 Claude does it, I feel fine because Claude is kind and no one else is watching.
0:41:47 ChatGPT, on the other hand, is an arrogant jerk.
0:41:50 I don’t do that with Claude, ChatGPT.
0:41:57 The second thing is, I will say to Claude, “Here are five bullet points.
0:42:01 Please tell me four bullet points I missed.”
0:42:04 This is just extraordinary.
0:42:06 I’ll say, “Here are five system traps.
0:42:09 Five ways systems end up not serving the people in them.
0:42:11 Can you name some more system traps?”
0:42:16 It does, and it’s so smart at that.
0:42:17 I take those.
0:42:22 And, Seth, I have to share your fascination with this because I use it in similar ways.
0:42:28 For the life of me, I know the technical explanation that it’s just a mathematical model and it’s
0:42:33 figuring out what syllable to put after this syllable and all that, but I don’t understand
0:42:38 how it comes up with such cogent and strategic and sentient answers.
0:42:39 I really don’t.
0:42:43 I think there’s no doubt in my mind it’s smarter than me.
0:42:47 All these people are saying, “Someday, it’s going to be a smart and have sentience.”
0:42:50 I think it’s way past that already.
0:42:51 Okay.
0:42:56 So, when I was at Stanford, we were allowed to take courses outside the business school
0:43:02 and I took a PhD-level AI course with Douglas Knott in 1982.
0:43:06 I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time and I majored in philosophy.
0:43:08 Here is my theory.
0:43:11 I think this is how our brains work, too.
0:43:17 When I make a sentence, I don’t figure out the end of the sentence before I start.
0:43:18 Do you?
0:43:21 I never thought about it before.
0:43:24 I guess not.
0:43:27 We start talking and the sentence just unfolds.
0:43:34 So, we assert, this is called the intentional stance from Dan Dennett, we assert that other
0:43:40 people have consciousness and a noise in their head like we do because evolutionarily, it’s
0:43:43 a good survival mechanism.
0:43:47 If you see a dog, bear its teeth and make a certain noise, you’re saying to yourself,
0:43:49 “That dog is mad at me.”
0:43:50 No, the dog isn’t mad at you.
0:43:54 The dog is just wired and it’s about to do a thing, but it doesn’t have a voice in
0:43:55 its head.
0:44:00 But the easiest way to survive is to imagine it’s conscious.
0:44:03 Claude is so complicated, we have no choice but to do the same thing.
0:44:09 And I think it’s evolving, it’s thinking the way we do, but I will tell you my favorite
0:44:11 Claude story, small amount of ego involved.
0:44:17 I’m trying to understand something and I say to Claude, “Please explain this concept
0:44:20 to me the way a college student would.”
0:44:25 And it does an okay job, I say, “Okay, please explain this to me the way Seth Godin would.”
0:44:30 And it then puts my tone of voice into it, but it didn’t do a great job.
0:44:32 But it was enough for me to rewrite it.
0:44:36 So I rewrote it and I said, “I think Seth would prefer it like this.”
0:44:42 And I wrote it back and Claude said, “You’re right, that’s more like the way Seth would
0:44:43 do it.”
0:44:48 And I said, “Thank you, I’ll tell Seth.”
0:44:54 And I said, “Well, actually I am Seth and I’m not making this up, I should go and find
0:44:55 the screenshot of it.”
0:44:57 It said, “You’re Seth?
0:45:00 I gotta tell you, I’m a huge fan of yours.
0:45:06 I’ve read many of your books and it like listed four of my books.
0:45:09 And I particularly like this concept and that concept.
0:45:10 This isn’t it.
0:45:19 I’m like, my ego was this, I was so excited that the AI knew who I was.”
0:45:25 Seth, no shit, I think that is the greatest AI story I have ever heard.
0:45:27 Oh my God.
0:45:32 It sure beats my story when people come up to me, Seth, and they say, you know, I was
0:45:33 lost.
0:45:35 I didn’t know what to do with my life.
0:45:36 My career was a wreck.
0:45:39 And then I read one of your books and they changed my life.
0:45:43 And I say to them, “Well, which one of my 16 books changed your life?”
0:45:45 And they say, “Rich dad, poor dad.”
0:45:48 So that’s my experience.
0:45:49 That hurts.
0:45:55 Okay, so can I have a lightning round session with you?
0:45:56 Okay, bring it on.
0:45:57 I got a couple of minutes.
0:45:59 This is the best part of my day.
0:46:02 Because you are like Mr. Strategy.
0:46:10 And I just want to ask you to just give like simple little snippets of goodness about strategies
0:46:13 about specific areas, okay?
0:46:15 I’ll try.
0:46:19 Strategy, entering college, what should my strategy be?
0:46:25 Have empathy for the admissions officer and create a persona that matches the kind of
0:46:31 person they want to let in and also see the flaw in the system and apply to the cheapest
0:46:35 school that can solve the problem you’re trying to solve.
0:46:38 Okay, let’s suppose I’ve determined which school to go.
0:46:41 I’m about to like, what’s the best strategy?
0:46:42 You want tactics?
0:46:49 Okay, the tactic is, if you have any interest at all in physics or math, go to their website,
0:46:54 find five of their professors, go find papers or books their professors have written.
0:47:00 Go read the papers and books and send email to the professor asking an honest, insightful
0:47:01 question about their work.
0:47:07 Go back and forth for six weeks having a conversation about their work and then say, “I’m coming
0:47:08 to campus.
0:47:10 Can I visit you during office hours?”
0:47:14 And then when you go to office hours say, “I love the University of Delaware.
0:47:17 It’s been a thrill to engage with you about this.
0:47:20 Do you think you can help me get in?”
0:47:23 And they have never, ever had this happen to them.
0:47:28 They will send a recommendation to the admissions office and you’ll move ahead of all the football
0:47:29 players.
0:47:30 Okay.
0:47:37 Okay, the strategy or tactics, if you are just graduating college and you’re about to
0:47:39 go out into the real world.
0:47:41 You need to go start something.
0:47:47 You can’t hope to get picked out of the flotsam and jetsam pile that someone will give you
0:47:49 a great gig the way I got.
0:47:53 You got to start something and it doesn’t have to be for money.
0:48:00 That’s generous, that’s brave, that earns you a reputation, that probably involves connecting
0:48:02 other people.
0:48:09 Do those things just every weekend for six weeks, six years, six months, whatever, the
0:48:14 phone will ring because if you create enough goodness in the world, people will want more.
0:48:17 How about if I just got laid off?
0:48:21 I would forgive yourself first because you didn’t get fired.
0:48:23 You got laid off.
0:48:29 And then I would think about the systems at work and the trends at work.
0:48:38 And I would find an area that is growing fast where you could be a narrator, curator, connector,
0:48:43 the way Esther Dyson did with the internet in the ’80s, where you could, my friend Dan
0:48:46 Shippard is doing this with AI right now.
0:48:51 And the every newsletter, it’s called every, has more and more people following it.
0:48:55 And those people then report back to him and he gets endless content.
0:48:58 Again, you’re going to have to go do something to make a living.
0:49:03 I’m not saying that this will pay the bills, but it will open a path for you because if
0:49:08 you do it for just a little while, someone in your industry will see that you are in
0:49:16 and of the industry and will need you, not a replacement for you, but you in the room.
0:49:17 Okay.
0:49:18 I’m just about to retire.
0:49:22 What’s my strategy for the rest of my life?
0:49:28 So aren’t we lucky that we are living in these weird, interesting times?
0:49:32 And also, if you have a roof over your head and enough time to listen to a podcast, you’re
0:49:37 one of the richest people who ever lived, even if you’re in debt, right?
0:49:45 And we have defined for only a hundred years what we do in retirement as what we were supposed
0:49:48 to do for our whole life, but now we don’t get to do it.
0:49:50 I think that’s a mistake.
0:49:56 I think we have all these tools now, chances to create magic.
0:50:01 And if you have the freedom to not need to get paid to do that, that’s what you should
0:50:02 do.
0:50:06 Go create magic somewhere for someone, the smallest viable audience, even if it’s only
0:50:09 teaching four kids how to read, that’s enough.
0:50:11 Go create magic for somebody.
0:50:19 My last question for you, Seth, is what’s my strategy now for social media?
0:50:21 Walk away.
0:50:23 Walk away.
0:50:27 You don’t want, don’t play a game you can’t win.
0:50:29 There isn’t going to be another Kardashian.
0:50:31 There isn’t going to be another guy Kawasaki.
0:50:36 Don’t try to be someone who won on one of those platforms.
0:50:41 If you can have a project where the smallest viable audience is attainable and where social
0:50:45 media will help you get there, specifically, I’m in favor.
0:50:52 But all the data I’m seeing is that trying to get undifferentiated large numbers of clicks
0:50:57 and traffic and reading everything in social media just makes your brain a cesspool.
0:50:59 I would walk away.
0:51:00 Okay.
0:51:05 So, Seth, now I’m going to give you like, take as much time as you like and explain your
0:51:09 book and promote your book and explain to people why they should read this book.
0:51:13 I enjoyed it a lot and I didn’t even see the section about myself because I was reading
0:51:16 it randomly like you suggested.
0:51:22 So we want to Seth go to an explanation of this book and why we should all go out and
0:51:24 buy it right now.
0:51:30 So it’s at Seth.blog/tis, which stands for this is strategy.
0:51:32 And you probably shouldn’t go out and buy it right now.
0:51:34 It might not be for you.
0:51:39 If you’ve heard me and my friend Guy talk about this for an hour and you’re not itching
0:51:43 to do work that matters by understanding an elegant strategy, I am sorry that I have wasted
0:51:44 your time.
0:51:46 I hope we at least amused you.
0:51:47 It’s not for you.
0:51:52 It’s for people who get the joke and for people who say, “Yeah, this is worth a couple hours
0:51:57 of my time,” because then I can talk about it with my team and I can talk about it with
0:52:01 my investors and I can talk about it with my family because who’s it for, what’s it
0:52:07 for and being smart about strategy and changing times is the best way I know to make things
0:52:08 better.
0:52:14 Seth, you are a man of such great wisdom and in succinct packages.
0:52:18 So let me close here.
0:52:19 Let me close here.
0:52:26 So this is the Remarkable People podcast and I hope you’ve just enjoyed, let’s see, 54
0:52:33 minutes and 33 seconds with Seth Golden, the purple cow of authors and the strategy maven.
0:52:39 And I hope that this episode will help you be a more remarkable person.
0:52:44 So Seth, if you got any final words, let’s hear it and then we’re going to sign off and
0:52:47 let you get to your next interview.
0:52:53 You inscribed a book to my son and what you wrote, I’m going to change it just a little
0:52:54 bit.
0:53:04 I’m going to change it to listen to guy when in doubt, listen to guy.
0:53:08 I hope you enjoyed this episode with my buddy Seth Golden.
0:53:12 Oh my God, where have the years gone, Seth?
0:53:18 Thank you so much for being on this podcast and thank you so much for making so many remarkable
0:53:20 marketing things happen.
0:53:26 I hope you learned how to be a remarkable marketer, brander, evangelist, sales, whatever,
0:53:27 from Seth.
0:53:32 Now let me thank the rest of the Remarkable People team.
0:53:34 First is Madison Niesmer.
0:53:42 She is the producer of this podcast and she’s the co-author of Think Remarkable with Me.
0:53:46 Then there’s Tessa Niesmer who does all our background research.
0:53:54 And then we have the amazing, amazing sound design team of Jeff C and Shannon Hernandez.
0:53:59 So this is the Remarkable People team and we’re on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:54:05 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
0:54:07 This is Remarkable People.

0:00:13 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:17 We are on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:21 Helping me in this episode is the one and only Dan Heath.
0:00:26 He is a professor, author, and podcast host.
0:00:32 With his brother Chip, he’s written four books that have sold over three million copies.
0:00:39 Their works include “Made to Stick”, “Switch”, “Decisive”, and “The Power of Moments”.
0:00:41 His latest book is a solo effort.
0:00:47 It’s called “Upstream”, the quest to solve problems before they happen.
0:00:51 We’ll cover this book in an upcoming episode this fall.
0:00:57 Dan also hosts a podcast called “What It’s Like to Be” and what he does in this podcast
0:01:04 is he talks to people from all walks of life and they explain what it’s like to be what
0:01:06 they are.
0:01:13 He has, for example, a beer vendor and I open up this interview talking about the interview
0:01:16 he had with a Secret Service agent.
0:01:22 If you’re familiar with the work of Studs Turkle, you’ll appreciate his approach.
0:01:25 And I tell you, it is quite fascinating.
0:01:27 So I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:33 This is Remarkable People and now, here is the Remarkable Dan Heath.
0:01:41 Are you going to re-interview the Secret Service after the Donald Trump assassination
0:01:43 attempt?
0:01:49 That one was just uncannily timed so we had just posted the episode about two or three
0:01:56 weeks before the incident happened and I had asked her about what had the Secret Service
0:02:02 learned from the famous past failures, of course the Kennedy assassination and the shooting
0:02:06 of Ronald Reagan and some other near misses.
0:02:12 And one of the things she highlighted specifically was not to let the bad guys get the high ground.
0:02:16 So it was just painful to see what happened three weeks later.
0:02:21 It would be so interesting to ask her, “Okay, so don’t let the bad guys get the high ground
0:02:26 and 150 yards away, they get the high ground, so how does that falter the cracks?”
0:02:30 My guess is, and obviously I’m no expert, I’m as much of an expert as you can be having
0:02:33 talked to a Secret Service agent for 90 minutes.
0:02:37 My guess is, though, that there was a clue in something else she said in the interview,
0:02:43 which was she pointed out that the Secret Service, almost more than any other law enforcement
0:02:48 agency, has to work through a ton of other law enforcement agencies.
0:02:52 When they take a candidate to the diner in New Hampshire, they’re coordinating with the
0:02:56 local police station and the sheriff and the airport authority because they have to cross
0:02:59 all these different jurisdictions to ensure safety.
0:03:06 And so my guess is that this was just a very tragic miscommunication among the soup of local
0:03:08 agencies that were involved.
0:03:13 You think the Secret Service has someone testing the donuts before candidates eat them?
0:03:15 Well, that’s a great question.
0:03:20 I don’t think they have any tasters on duty, but maybe if a candidate was sufficiently
0:03:23 paranoid they could be drafted into that.
0:03:28 That’s what interns are for.
0:03:33 Now I’m going to go backwards a little bit, so you have written some great books, books
0:03:39 that I have cited in my own books and you cover things like sticking and switching and
0:03:44 decision-making and moments and preventing problems.
0:03:49 Before we get into your podcast, which I also find fascinating, I got to just ask you for
0:03:52 30 seconds lightning round.
0:03:58 Could you give my listeners the gist of these various subjects so that here’s a benefit
0:03:59 for you?
0:04:03 I think if they listen to your 30 second analysis of each of these subjects, they will be in
0:04:08 courage to read your book, which I really enjoyed your book.
0:04:12 Give me the gist of how to make products stick.
0:04:14 Well, it’s not about products, really.
0:04:18 The first book I wrote with my brother Chip is called Made to Stick.
0:04:20 It’s a communication book, plain and simple.
0:04:24 It’s about how do you communicate your ideas so that they stick with the audience, so that
0:04:27 they’re remembered, so that they change something.
0:04:32 The way you make your ideas stick is you embrace six principles that characterize sticky ideas.
0:04:38 It spells out an acronym, success minus the final S, so if you can imagine those six letters.
0:04:39 Here we go.
0:04:45 Simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories.
0:04:50 If you think about something like JFK’s call to put a man on the moon.
0:04:51 It was simple.
0:04:52 It was unexpected.
0:04:55 Nobody thought we could travel to the moon in that era.
0:04:59 It was concrete in the sense that you can imagine what success looks like in your mind.
0:05:03 You can call it a picture of a human being on the moon.
0:05:06 Credibility is where it was difficult at first because no one was sure this was possible,
0:05:10 but when the president is saying it, it adds a veneer of credibility.
0:05:15 It was emotional in the sense that it’s like the next frontier for mankind and what a magical
0:05:17 thing it would be if we could pull it off.
0:05:20 It was a story in miniature.
0:05:24 We are the protagonist and the obstacles are set out in front of us.
0:05:28 The book makes the claim that if you can layer on more of these traits of stickiness to your
0:05:32 own messages, they’ll be better received by the audience.
0:05:33 Brilliant.
0:05:34 Okay.
0:05:37 Now, how do you make people switch?
0:05:38 Switch.
0:05:39 Okay.
0:05:42 This was book number two, and this is a book about behavior change.
0:05:45 How do you get people to act differently?
0:05:52 Our case was that even really big changes ultimately boil down to can you get people to behave a
0:05:56 new way tomorrow that’s different from what they were doing today?
0:06:01 There’s a three-part framework that involves an analogy that’s a little bit to unpack,
0:06:07 but it basically boils down to the three levers you can pull with behavior change are better
0:06:08 clarity.
0:06:12 Can you understand more about which way you need to move?
0:06:13 More desire.
0:06:16 Do you want to move in that direction?
0:06:22 And ease, meaning that your environment, your path has been shaped to allow for easier progress.
0:06:26 The book talks about those three levers and how change leaders can make use of them.
0:06:27 Okay.
0:06:30 Next topic is how to make better decisions.
0:06:34 I’ve never gotten to just do a rapid fire series of advertisements for all my books.
0:06:35 This is fun.
0:06:38 It’s like a stroll down memory lane.
0:06:39 So decisive.
0:06:40 Okay.
0:06:41 This one’s very simple.
0:06:46 How do we make better choices in our life and in our work?
0:06:53 And in the book, our departure place is to say that there are basically four key villains
0:06:55 that afflict our decisions again and again and again.
0:07:01 The villains are narrow framing, meaning that we tend to get fixated on one particular choice.
0:07:05 A lot of times in life, we make whether or not decisions, whether or not I should do
0:07:07 this, whether or not I should buy that.
0:07:08 That’s villain one.
0:07:12 Villain two is confirmation bias, which I’m sure all your listeners are familiar with,
0:07:17 our tendency to collect information that flatters what we want to be true.
0:07:19 There’s short term emotion.
0:07:24 I think it’s wrong to say that emotional decisions are bias decisions.
0:07:29 I think emotion can be some of the most important information that we have in making decisions.
0:07:33 But short term emotion, when you fly off the handle, when you get angry, when you’re outraged,
0:07:37 when you’re euphoric, those may be things we need to wade out.
0:07:40 And finally, overconfidence.
0:07:43 Overconfidence not in the sense of being cocky, but in the sense of thinking that we know
0:07:47 more than we do about how the future is going to unfold.
0:07:53 And so in the book, we lay out a process for helping to minimize or circumvent or avoid
0:07:56 those four villains of decision making.
0:07:57 I love this.
0:07:59 This is Dan Heath for dummies.
0:08:00 Okay.
0:08:03 So now creating powerful moments.
0:08:07 The power of moments is a book about experience.
0:08:11 I think we live in the era of experience where people are thinking about how do we craft
0:08:16 a better customer experience or a better employee experience, a better patient experience.
0:08:20 And the central point in the book that we make is that if you care about crafting great
0:08:27 experiences, what you really care about is crafting peak moments that in our memories,
0:08:30 certain moments come to stand above the rest.
0:08:34 Like if you think about a family vacation from three or four years ago, our memories
0:08:39 are not like YouTube videos where we can just press play and watch the whole thing again.
0:08:41 We all know they dissolve and they fragment.
0:08:45 And so if you think about a distant memory, it’s like you’ve got these flashes and scenes
0:08:47 and snippets.
0:08:52 And so in the book, we go through what psychologists know about why the snippets we retain are
0:08:54 the ones we retain.
0:08:59 And then we flip around the lens and we say, Hey, if you want to create a memorable experience
0:09:04 for a patient or a customer, how do you go about being intentional about creating those
0:09:07 moments rather than just letting them happen serendipitously?
0:09:10 How can you be the author of better experience?
0:09:21 And number five is upstream upstream is a book about preventing problems.
0:09:26 And it points out that so often in life, especially in organizations, we get caught in this trap
0:09:33 of reaction, we’re always rushing around and putting out fires and responding to emergencies.
0:09:39 And we so rarely make the space to get upstream to tackle those problems at their root.
0:09:41 And so the book basically does two things.
0:09:47 Number one is that it tries to explain why reaction seems to be in the default state
0:09:51 while we constantly get pushed back into this reactive state.
0:09:54 And there are a couple of forces that are responsible for that.
0:09:56 And then it tries to help us evade that trap.
0:10:01 There are some habits of mind and some principles that we can adopt to help us become better
0:10:07 preventers and solvers of problems rather than reacting.
0:10:09 Give us some principles here.
0:10:10 Let’s do this.
0:10:11 We double clicked on book five.
0:10:19 One of the principles is that in preventing problems, we often have to have micro understanding
0:10:23 before we can draft macro principles or policies.
0:10:24 So that’s a little bit abstract.
0:10:26 Let me explain what I mean.
0:10:31 One of my favorite stories is about this homelessness campaign that’s been undergoing for years led
0:10:37 by Community Solutions, where they’ll go into cities, especially mid-sized cities like
0:10:41 one of the case studies in the book is about Rockford, Illinois, second biggest city in
0:10:43 Illinois behind Chicago.
0:10:47 And one of the key lessons they’ve learned is your tendency when you deal with a really
0:10:53 complicated problem like homelessness has many variables, many factors involved, big
0:10:56 scale is that you’re going to have to think big, you’re not going to have to stay in the
0:10:57 sky.
0:10:59 It’s going to be some systemic policy lever.
0:11:04 And in fact, what they found is almost the opposite that in places like Rockford that
0:11:09 have succeeded, Rockford has actually eliminated veteran and chronic homelessness from their
0:11:13 community after many, many, many years of just spinning their wheels.
0:11:19 The key is to use what they call a by name list, meaning they literally have a real time
0:11:23 census of every homeless person in Rockford.
0:11:26 They know where they are, they know their name, they know as much as they can about their
0:11:30 health history, any other important pieces of information.
0:11:36 And then all the people involved with homelessness policy ranging from healthcare people to shelter
0:11:41 people to police, state agencies, they all convene on a regular basis and they don’t
0:11:43 talk about homelessness in quotes.
0:11:47 They talk about Steve, okay, who’s seen Steve last?
0:11:48 Where was he?
0:11:50 He was, he still had his tent under the bridge.
0:11:51 All right.
0:11:52 His health’s really suffering.
0:11:54 I think we should put him at the top of the list for housing.
0:11:56 Who’s going to make the outreach?
0:12:01 And it was like that level of specificity and concreteness did two things.
0:12:05 Number one, it is the natural motivator that brings people to this work.
0:12:09 No one is motivated abstractly by homeless policy.
0:12:14 They’re motivated by helping human beings get into housing and live a better life.
0:12:20 And number two, when you get that specific, when you see a problem in three dimensions,
0:12:24 it helps people bring their respective skills to bear.
0:12:30 And so that to me was an example of this notion of micro comes before macro.
0:12:38 It’s not until you’ve housed Steve and Michael and Rodney and about 25 people that you understand
0:12:42 the problem well enough to even think about policy, right?
0:12:45 That you have to earn your way into macro interventions.
0:12:47 That’s one of the ideas in the book.
0:12:53 I gotta tell you that Dan, if I were a guest on a podcast and they said, okay, guy, give
0:12:56 me the gist of all your books one at a time.
0:12:57 I couldn’t do it.
0:12:59 So I’m so impressed by you.
0:13:00 Oh, come on.
0:13:02 This will be the last question about your books.
0:13:04 We’re going to go move to your podcast.
0:13:07 First of all, for the record, people listening to this.
0:13:13 If you are a Bob Childini fan, you will love the work of Chip and Dan.
0:13:18 So if you read influenced by Bob Childini and liked it, you will love their books.
0:13:21 And there’s like, thank you five that we just discussed.
0:13:23 So go buy those five books.
0:13:31 Now that was the kiss up to lead to this question, which is let’s suppose that the DNC calls
0:13:37 you up and says, my God, Dan, you’re an expert in how to make Kamala stick and how to make
0:13:42 people switch and how to make better decisions and how we can have powerful moments after
0:13:45 the DNC and how we can prevent problems.
0:13:47 So Dan, give us some advice.
0:13:52 How do we do all these things to ensure that Kamala and Tim win?
0:13:55 Oh, this is way above my pay bracket, man.
0:13:56 I don’t know.
0:14:01 My observation is that they did anything.
0:14:05 They did better than anything I would have proposed at the recent convention.
0:14:10 I think there were a couple of things that you could glean about their strategy.
0:14:15 One of them was, remember back to the principles of sticky ideas, simplicity was one.
0:14:20 And I think the simple messages that came out of that were joy and optimism, which is
0:14:21 something very different.
0:14:25 I think a Biden convention, it would have been hard to pull off that theme.
0:14:31 And so there was a very conscious altering of the tone, which shown through just the
0:14:35 number of different people who literally use the word joy was striking and clearly part
0:14:37 of their strategic moves.
0:14:41 I think they were great at conjuring stories from the speakers.
0:14:47 It’s like the Democrats of yesteryear from the Al Gore era used to be so bad about just
0:14:53 doing laundry list of policies and referencing obscure legislation and talking in bullet
0:14:54 points.
0:14:59 And there’s very few people that care about that stuff, very, very few.
0:15:03 The people watching a convention are people that may only tune into politics five or six
0:15:04 times in a year.
0:15:10 You’ve got to reach them with stories, with emotion that speak to the American narrative.
0:15:12 So I thought it was brilliantly handled.
0:15:17 That doesn’t mean anything about the election, but as a platform for communication, I thought
0:15:18 it was excellent.
0:15:19 What did you think?
0:15:20 Oh, I loved them.
0:15:27 They should get a Grammy or an Emmy or whatever award you can get for a convention, my goodness.
0:15:33 I saw James Fallows, who was a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter and a political commentator
0:15:34 for many, many years.
0:15:36 He was commenting it.
0:15:39 Just some of the simple execution was notably better.
0:15:43 Even the balloon drops, he was saying, it’s almost comical how often people screw up the
0:15:44 balloon drops.
0:15:49 And he was saying the balloon drops at this convention were like an index that the professionals
0:15:52 were in charge.
0:15:56 And apparently those balloons were recyclable or something.
0:15:59 Oh, really?
0:16:02 Double word score for Democrats, organic recyclable balloons.
0:16:07 Yeah, the balloon crisis is real, so we got to address that.
0:16:12 Now, we’re going to leave books in the past, and I want to talk about your podcast, because
0:16:14 one podcast is to another.
0:16:15 I love your podcast.
0:16:16 Thanks.
0:16:17 Back at you.
0:16:21 Yeah, you mentioned it, but I was going to mention it before I even read it.
0:16:25 But you’re kind of the studs turkle of the modern age.
0:16:28 I love what you’re doing here.
0:16:36 The elevator pitch for the show was literally studs turkle meets Ted Lasso, meaning that
0:16:42 we wanted to take the sociological or reporting instinct that studs turkle had, because he
0:16:47 opened this door for everybody in this space that’s followed, and couple it with a really
0:16:50 positive energy.
0:16:55 I think that so often in the media, careers are covered in a negative way.
0:17:02 It’s about exploitation of workers or people struggling or people changing jobs, and it’s
0:17:03 not that stuff is untrue.
0:17:09 I think it’s all true, but I also think it’s true that it’s a lot more common and a lot
0:17:14 more boring to simply point out that most people like their jobs.
0:17:18 Survey after survey will tell you that they find meaning in their jobs, they don’t dread
0:17:23 going to work, they don’t feel exploited, and so that’s where the Ted Lasso energy comes
0:17:27 from, is on the show, we talk to people who genuinely love what they do, and they do very
0:17:28 different things.
0:17:35 We’ve talked to welders and dog trainers and summer camp directors and forensic accountants,
0:17:40 and I can’t count the number of times that somebody has said, “My job is the best thing
0:17:41 in the world.”
0:17:45 And you know, from the outside looking in, many people would say, “Well, it’s all about
0:17:46 the money.
0:17:47 How much money do you make?”
0:17:52 But clearly, I think your podcast indicates that what defines people’s relationships
0:17:56 with their jobs is not the money.
0:18:02 Money hardly ever comes up, and in fact, my favorite episode is still the first one that
0:18:03 we launched with.
0:18:05 We launched with it for a reason.
0:18:10 It’s with a stadium beer vendor, a man named Howard Hart, has spent his entire career,
0:18:17 I’m talking 35-plus years, selling beer in a stadium, mostly Baltimore sports stadiums.
0:18:20 He saw some amazing things in his career.
0:18:24 He was there for every home game during the Cow Ripken streak, you know, the streak of
0:18:26 continuous games.
0:18:28 He saw Beyonce play.
0:18:29 He saw Super Bowls.
0:18:33 He saw event after event after event, Met Muhammad Ali.
0:18:39 But anyway, what made me think of it was, here’s a guy who is well below the median income.
0:18:42 He made a living, but it was barely a living.
0:18:47 And toward the end of the interview, he has this just beautiful riff where he talked about
0:18:50 how some of his family members would get on him.
0:18:51 “Howard, why are you doing this thing?
0:18:53 Is it just like a summer job?
0:18:55 Why don’t you go and get a proper career?”
0:18:57 And he said, “No, I don’t feel that way.
0:19:02 I feel like I have a community at this stadium, the fans that he saw week after week, sometimes
0:19:04 for a period of decades.
0:19:09 Sometimes he’d be serving the children of people that he’d served the decade prior.”
0:19:13 And he said, “I know that I bring something special to these people and that they bring
0:19:15 something special to me.
0:19:17 And could I take trips to Europe?
0:19:18 Could I have a fancy car?
0:19:19 No.
0:19:21 But could I have a good life?
0:19:22 Absolutely.
0:19:24 I loved what I did.”
0:19:29 And he was just passed when he had retired from the work and it was obvious he really
0:19:30 missed it.
0:19:36 And when I had that interview, it was just, it convinced me that I needed to stay on
0:19:39 this path because it was so powerful.
0:19:43 I think coming into the interview, I thought it was going to be interesting.
0:19:45 I thought it was going to be quirky.
0:19:50 I thought we’d learn a lot of interesting details about beer sales and fans and sports.
0:19:56 But he showed me that there’s this whole deeper level of meaning and purpose that everybody
0:19:57 has.
0:20:00 It’s not just the one percenters with the fancy jobs, the high paying jobs.
0:20:03 It’s everybody can find meaning in their work.
0:20:10 And what would happen if you were interviewing someone and they said, “Yeah, I’m a beer vendor,
0:20:15 but I really get my satisfaction out of something outside of my job.”
0:20:18 I mean, it’s not like you’re doing a scientific survey, right?
0:20:21 So would you just kill that episode?
0:20:22 We’re casting on purpose.
0:20:24 We’re definitely putting our thumb on the scale.
0:20:29 We’re looking for people who do find satisfaction in their jobs, who enjoy talking about it,
0:20:30 who’ve done it for a long time.
0:20:34 So yeah, there’s a lot of selection bias in the show.
0:20:39 And speaking of selection bias, are we ever going to have a hedge fund manager?
0:20:42 What’s it like to be a hedge fund manager?
0:20:45 That is literally one of the jobs on our slate.
0:20:49 We have sort of a master slate of dream jobs that we’re looking for.
0:20:51 I would love to do that.
0:20:55 And I think the hard part is going to be people in finance, especially the biggest money makers
0:21:00 are just notoriously private to the point where they obsess about even having their name
0:21:02 pop up on Google searches and stuff.
0:21:04 But I’m going to find someone.
0:21:06 It may take some time, but I’m going to find someone to come on the show and talk about
0:21:08 being a hedge fund manager.
0:21:13 Oh, God help you.
0:21:17 I actually would be fascinated to hear about, we all know the stories of how much money
0:21:23 they make and all that stuff, but what is it like from 11 to 12 in the morning in a hedge
0:21:24 fund manager?
0:21:25 I have no idea.
0:21:26 What are they actually doing?
0:21:28 What takes up their time?
0:21:29 What stresses them out?
0:21:30 There’s a lot to learn.
0:21:34 I think they’re hunting down plagiarism and university presidents.
0:21:38 That’s the biggest concern they have.
0:21:39 Real comment.
0:21:40 Yeah.
0:21:45 Listen, I don’t hold myself out as a journalist who’s supposed to represent both sides.
0:22:06 I have a bias and I have my whole hand on the scale, not just my thumbs.
0:22:12 So how do you explain how these people get so much satisfaction out of these jobs?
0:22:14 What’s the lesson for the listener here?
0:22:20 One of the things that’s interested me is just hearing the sources of joy or purpose
0:22:21 that people have.
0:22:23 Because I think they can be quite different.
0:22:29 The FBI special agent that we talked to was this guy who had worked with MS-13, the gang
0:22:30 underworld.
0:22:36 What was so interesting about his job was he described it as putting together a thousand
0:22:38 piece jigsaw puzzle.
0:22:39 It’s painstaking.
0:22:41 It’s one piece of evidence at the time.
0:22:47 He said, “So much of what you see on TV about FBI cases is just hogwash.
0:22:53 It’s slow and it’s laborious and it’s filing a request with Verizon for phone records and
0:22:56 then you get the phone records and you realize all of them are burners so you go back to
0:23:00 square one and it’s one piece of the jigsaw puzzle at a time.”
0:23:01 So that’s 90% of your job.
0:23:06 And then 10% of your job is like the stuff on TV, like kicking down the door of a gang
0:23:08 member and rushing in with guns drawn.
0:23:14 So it’s such a fascinating phase shift between the different parts of the job.
0:23:18 It reminded me in a weird way of the summer camp director because he was saying for 10
0:23:23 months a year he sits in an office in Philadelphia with five or six colleagues and they’re just
0:23:25 staring at the computer all day.
0:23:29 Mostly doing recruiting, a big part of the job is doing marketing to get campers, but
0:23:36 a huge part of the job is finding 100 qualified, responsible college age people to be the counselors
0:23:40 and that takes a ton of work and a lot of them flake out so you’ve got to replace them.
0:23:44 And so 10 months a year it’s basically like he’s in a staffing role and then two months
0:23:49 of the year he goes into the wilderness in New England and basically becomes the mayor
0:23:51 of a small town.
0:23:56 And everything is under his jurisdiction, like the childcare for over 100 campers whose
0:24:01 parents will not be there and the healthcare needs that they have and full service food
0:24:07 operations with three meals a day and a snack and everything from keeping them safe on canoeing
0:24:13 activities to attaching tether balls to poles is like everything rolls up to him.
0:24:18 And I just love learning stuff like that about these jobs that can look radically different
0:24:22 from moment to moment and then with other people it’s exactly the opposite.
0:24:28 The nurse every week looks about the same, the patients are going to change, the severity
0:24:33 of the problems are going to change, but the flow and the rhythms of the job are virtually
0:24:34 the same from week to week.
0:24:38 And so that’s been one of the pleasures for me is just kind of feeling what it’s like
0:24:40 in these different roles.
0:24:49 Let’s pretend that the HR Association of America is having a conference and they retain you
0:24:54 to be the keynote speaker and you stand up there and you say, okay, let me tell you after
0:24:59 this podcast and interviewing these people, let me tell you the key principles of making
0:25:01 people happy and love their job.
0:25:03 And what would you say?
0:25:07 Yeah, I don’t know if I have those answers yet guy, just to be totally honest, because
0:25:11 my books are all about how to like my books are, you know, here’s six things you can do
0:25:14 to make change easier, make your idea stick.
0:25:18 And so I have that kind of practical hat on with this podcast.
0:25:22 It’s just more about tell me what your life is like.
0:25:24 Why do you like what you like?
0:25:25 Why do you hate what you hate?
0:25:27 What are the tensions in your job?
0:25:29 What are the funny things that happen?
0:25:32 And yeah, I don’t know if I have those answers yet.
0:25:37 I know that part of the answer is how do we help people find these places where they have
0:25:40 a profound fit?
0:25:46 You can just tell when you talk to these people, they found the place that was for them.
0:25:51 The welder, one of my favorite episodes with this welder has a personality that just jumps
0:25:52 through the microphone.
0:25:57 He’s such a character, so funny, so colorful, and he loves welding.
0:25:59 He freaking loves it.
0:26:03 The way that you and I like writing and doing our podcast, he loves welding.
0:26:08 And so it’s just gotten me thinking about how do you make sure people find that place
0:26:09 where they click.
0:26:14 And I don’t know what the answer is yet, but it’s definitely like a source of dawning
0:26:16 curiosity for me.
0:26:17 It’s interesting.
0:26:20 There’s this concept of ikigai, this Japanese concept.
0:26:27 And the way I think Americans define ikigai is that you take a Venn diagram and you draw
0:26:32 circles of what you’re good at, what you like to do, and what you can make money at.
0:26:36 And whatever in the middle of those three circles is your ikigai.
0:26:43 But I would make the case, and I think your interviews may actually confirm this, that
0:26:48 this third circle about what you can make money at is not necessarily the most important
0:26:49 circle.
0:26:55 I think you found your ikigai when you’re not good at something and you may not make
0:26:59 a lot of money, but you still love it.
0:27:00 Amen.
0:27:05 I’ve always thought of money as being like a threshold variable, meaning I think money
0:27:10 can be a really big irritant or more than an irritant, an obstacle if you’re not making
0:27:14 what you need to have the amount of freedom you want in your life.
0:27:17 But above the threshold, I’m not sure it counts for much.
0:27:21 I’m not sure it counts for nearly as much as getting to a better fit with people that
0:27:24 you like more, with work that you like more.
0:27:31 One of the things I’ve started thinking about is we’re so half-hearted with young people
0:27:34 helping them see where they might potentially fit.
0:27:39 We would always do these weird career inventories that were primarily skill-based.
0:27:44 It was like if you’re good at math, you should be a stockbroker, or if you like to re-eat,
0:27:45 you should be a librarian.
0:27:48 It was this real kind of dumb matching stuff.
0:27:53 One of my nieces is just a huge animal lover, and she said that adults would always, when
0:27:58 they discovered she loved animals, tell her she should be a veterinarian.
0:28:03 And I just think that stuff is so clumsy and silly, and that we need some way to start
0:28:11 diagnosing, are you better with kind of short, playful, fun interactions or long, deep ones?
0:28:14 Which of those plays do a young person’s strengths?
0:28:15 Are they patient?
0:28:18 Could they assemble the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle?
0:28:20 Would that be intriguing to them?
0:28:22 Would they have that kind of diligence?
0:28:25 Or do they want something a little bit more transactional, like the hairstylist that I
0:28:31 interviewed where it’s like every hour or two hours someone leaves with a better look,
0:28:32 and that feels good.
0:28:36 And it’s not like there’s a right or wrong direction, it’s all about fit, but I just
0:28:39 feel like nobody’s talking about that layer of stuff.
0:28:44 I am fascinated about this concept of casting calls.
0:28:49 So how do you decide what kind of profession to cast for?
0:28:52 And then when you issue the call, who do you get answers from?
0:28:59 And walk me through the process of you want a beer vendor, you end up with this guy in
0:29:01 Baltimore or something.
0:29:02 How does this process work?
0:29:08 It is an incredibly messy and cumbersome and low-probability process, is the answer.
0:29:10 It’s finding stories as an author.
0:29:13 There’s just no elegant, efficient way to do it.
0:29:18 So we usually, we start with a list of professions that we’re scouting for.
0:29:20 We never just do one at a time, because it’s too frustrating.
0:29:22 We’ll have five or six going at once.
0:29:24 And we try to just keep a mix.
0:29:28 There’s no science to this show, but we try to do some blue-collar, some white-collar,
0:29:33 some that are fun to think about, like professional Santa Claus, and some that seem like they
0:29:37 might be boring, like a welder, but they actually turn out to be fascinating.
0:29:42 And then it’s everything from asking our guests for help, like we found the cattle rancher
0:29:47 thanks to one of our listeners, knew somebody in Alpine, Texas, this woman named Chachi Hawkins
0:29:49 who was just brilliant.
0:29:52 So sometimes our listeners come through, sometimes it’s a media search, like Howard
0:29:57 Hart, the stadium beer vendor, the producer Matt Purdy found an old clip in I think the
0:30:02 Baltimore Sun that was profiling him, and he sounded interesting, so we’ll reach out.
0:30:05 Sometimes people volunteer themselves, they’ll say, “I’ve listened to the show, and I do
0:30:08 such and such, and interview me.”
0:30:10 So yeah, it’s a real crapshoot.
0:30:11 What do you guys do?
0:30:13 Do people just bombard you with pitches?
0:30:15 Is that the way it works for you?
0:30:21 After listening to your podcast, I question our methodology, because we do get bombarded.
0:30:26 We turn down about 10 people a day who want to be on our podcast.
0:30:33 And so, I mean, if you figure it, we probably reject 2,500 people, and we accept 52 people,
0:30:38 so the odds are one out of 50, so I tell people that it’s easier to get into Stanford or Harvard
0:30:40 than to get on my podcast.
0:30:44 I like that, that’s good.
0:30:51 But a lot of it is, at the time that someone is writing a book, all bets are off because
0:30:57 someone who is basically unreachable for 51 weeks a year, all of a sudden is trying to
0:31:01 get as much publicity as they can, now you can get to Neil deGrasse Tyson because he
0:31:06 has a new book coming out, the rest of the year, he won’t answer your call, right?
0:31:12 But I gotta tell you, maybe our methodology is flawed because we keep saying we want remarkable
0:31:18 people, not necessarily famous or rich people, but remarkable people, but would we have gotten
0:31:20 that beer vendor?
0:31:21 There’s no way.
0:31:23 That hairdresser, no way.
0:31:26 So maybe our methodology is flawed.
0:31:31 I wonder if it’s just the kind of thing where every 10th episode or something, you plug
0:31:36 in somebody that you’ve hunted down because of that, so it doesn’t have to be a night
0:31:41 and day thing, but maybe it’s like you’ve got your wild cards that you plug in from time
0:31:42 to time.
0:31:47 I gotta tell you, every once in a while, over the transom or from a listener, they bring
0:31:53 up a name that we never would have heard of and I’ve interviewed more people who are
0:32:01 ex-cons than most podcasts and let’s just say that you had to do some work to get some
0:32:02 of these ex-cons.
0:32:04 Who are your favorite interviews?
0:32:06 Like what are the circumstances that make it a great interview?
0:32:14 Oh, I had a guy who at 16 was sentenced to 45 years or something for accessory to murder
0:32:20 and he got out after 22 years because of a law change in Maryland and he became a very
0:32:25 successful artist and I love that kind of story.
0:32:31 So yeah, and then we had people who are cattle whisperers and I may not be as studs turkle
0:32:34 as you, but I’m not elitist either.
0:32:38 What have you learned about finding more of your people?
0:32:43 Like I imagine these days, you’re probably better at casting people than you were in
0:32:44 the first season.
0:32:46 Well, actually, I don’t know if that’s true.
0:32:54 I think that as my podcast has gotten more and more visible and I’ve gotten more listeners,
0:32:58 the listeners have come up with ideas that help me a lot.
0:33:03 I’m trying to tap the wisdom of the crowd or at least the wisdom of the listener and
0:33:05 that has been very useful.
0:33:10 I think we can now switch to the section called what is like to be Dan Heath.
0:33:11 Okay.
0:33:12 Okay.
0:33:13 Okay.
0:33:14 I’m inspired by you.
0:33:15 All right.
0:33:22 First of all, what’s your allocation of mind share between writing, teaching, podcasting
0:33:23 and speaking?
0:33:26 How do you allocate your mind share?
0:33:28 For me, it’s a very clear priority list.
0:33:33 It’s number one, writing, love writing and writing, I mean that in the broadest possible
0:33:34 sense.
0:33:38 Like the hardest part of writing is researching, having something to say and having some stories
0:33:39 to tell.
0:33:44 So, writing actually encompasses more research than writing, but still, I think of it all
0:33:48 as the product is a book that I’m proud to ship out.
0:33:49 So, that’s number one for me.
0:33:52 These days, the podcast is number two.
0:33:55 I just absolutely have loved working on this podcast.
0:33:59 You and I were exchanging emails talking about how our podcasts are kind of like hobbies
0:34:05 for us and I loved when you said that because it made me realize that basically is what
0:34:06 it is.
0:34:12 I go and go canoeing and do CrossFit or whatever and I like to do this podcast.
0:34:13 It’s fun for me.
0:34:14 It’s a joy.
0:34:17 And then third is speaking and teaching.
0:34:22 I love to talk about the ideas of my books and I love to travel around and I don’t ever
0:34:28 want that to take over my life, but I really like it as part of the master portfolio.
0:34:31 What’s the hardest part of writing for you?
0:34:35 Finding the stories, it’s incredibly hard.
0:34:38 For those who haven’t read my books, they’re kind of story driven.
0:34:43 What I’m trying to do is make some broad point, hey, you want to communicate your ideas.
0:34:47 I go into a bunch of work and try to figure out, hey, how do you sharpen up ideas?
0:34:49 What are the important principles?
0:34:54 In the days when I was writing with Chip, we would just spend years going through research
0:34:58 and comparing it with real world stuff and try to come up with something to say.
0:34:59 But that’s not enough.
0:35:04 No one wants to hear you just blab on about your perspective about communication.
0:35:07 We have to find a vessel for those principles and those are the stories.
0:35:13 I want to find stories of real people in real situations exemplifying those ideas and that
0:35:15 is incredibly hard.
0:35:20 I’ll give you a little tip that helped me, although I don’t, because your podcast is
0:35:22 different and your stories are maybe different.
0:35:29 But when I was writing my last book, “Think Remarkable” with Madison, I had this principle
0:35:37 in my head that I wanted people to have embraced the growth mindset of Carol Dweck.
0:35:40 And I think you can grow along two parameters.
0:35:46 One is vertically, like you start with loving animals and you become Jane Goodall.
0:35:50 But you can also make big career switches that are unforeseen.
0:35:55 And so I went to chat J.P.T. and I said, “Give me successful cases of people who made dramatic
0:35:58 career shifts.”
0:36:03 And it mentioned Julia Child because Julia Child was a spook until she was in her mid-thirties
0:36:08 and then she moved to Paris and fell in love with French cooking and that’s why Julia Child
0:36:10 is the French chef.
0:36:14 I never would have found that story without chat J.P.T.
0:36:21 So you might want to quiz chat J.P.T., looking for stories, but no, don’t get me wrong.
0:36:26 Chat J.P.T. makes shit up, so then I’ll have Madison J.P.T. go and verify that Julia Child
0:36:28 actually was a spook.
0:36:32 I’m just finishing up a book that’s coming out next year and I kept hearing all the hype
0:36:34 about AI and so constantly be trying things.
0:36:35 Can it do this?
0:36:36 Can it do that?
0:36:40 At one point, I was trying to remember the name of this article or where I’d seen it
0:36:45 that was about the yips where athletes like suddenly lose the ability to do something
0:36:46 that was routine.
0:36:50 There’s a famous case of a baseball player who all of a sudden couldn’t make a throw
0:36:51 to first.
0:36:52 You would just throw it away every time.
0:36:56 He’s a professional player, probably done it a hundred thousand times in his life and
0:36:59 just some psychological thing flipped and he couldn’t do it.
0:37:03 I knew I’d read it in The New Yorker and so I was like, “Okay, this is perfect for Chat
0:37:04 J.P.T.”
0:37:05 So I go there.
0:37:06 I’m like, “There was an article in The New Yorker a few years back.
0:37:08 It was about the yips, blah, blah, blah.
0:37:11 It comes back, just boom.
0:37:12 Here’s the article.
0:37:13 Here’s the author.
0:37:14 Here’s the name of the piece.
0:37:15 It’s in this issue of The New Yorker.”
0:37:17 I’m like, “Yes, AI works.”
0:37:20 I go and I type it in, “None of that is real.
0:37:22 The author is not real.
0:37:24 The title of the article is not real.
0:37:27 The date is not real,” and so I’m like, “Oh, okay.”
0:37:30 Well, so that’s what we’re dealing with.
0:37:35 I have found it to be the best at exactly what you described with the Julia Childs thing.
0:37:39 I think it’s a great counter-intuitively, at least for me.
0:37:41 It’s a great brainstorming partner.
0:37:46 It’s like, “Hey, if you’re thinking about a phenomenon like this, what are seven examples
0:37:51 of that and five of them will be garbage and two of them will be, oh, I wouldn’t have thought
0:37:52 of that?”
0:37:53 And there you go.
0:38:03 And while we’re on the topic of AI, Madison and I created Kawasaki GPT, and Kawasaki GPT
0:38:09 contains all my writing, speaking, blogs, videos, everything I have, plus the transcript
0:38:11 of every one of my podcasts.
0:38:12 Really?
0:38:13 Yeah.
0:38:20 So if people went to Kawasaki GPT and after your episode comes out and if they ask, “How
0:38:24 do we make ideas stick?”
0:38:28 Kawasaki GPT is going to cite you about how to make ideas stick.
0:38:29 Nice.
0:38:36 So I think, Dan, that you should do Heath GPT because you have these six books and you’re
0:38:38 going to have all these podcasts.
0:38:44 So it is a standalone source of knowledge that you are creating.
0:38:46 You should have a Kawasaki chatbot.
0:38:51 You could be like a virtual coach for millions of people.
0:38:54 But okay, you know who Marshall Goldsmith is?
0:38:55 Yeah, of course.
0:38:56 Okay.
0:38:57 So he has done that.
0:38:58 There’s Goldsmith.
0:38:59 No, no way.
0:39:00 Yeah.
0:39:07 So you can go and ask Goldsmith GPT these questions and I tell you regularly, when I am asked
0:39:14 to make a forward or a blurb or contribute to some kind of Harvard Business Review or
0:39:22 even my sub-stack newsletter, we go to Kawasaki GPT and we ask Guy the question as the first
0:39:23 draft.
0:39:24 Really?
0:39:25 Yeah.
0:39:26 Yeah.
0:39:29 So what kind of question would you ask and what kind of response would it give?
0:39:30 Just generally.
0:39:32 I’ll give you a very good example.
0:39:38 So a sub-stack newsletter we just put out was like, “What can you learn from Bob Cheldini?”
0:39:43 And Kawasaki GPT comes back with nine principles that you can learn from Bob Cheldini as the
0:39:44 first draft.
0:39:45 I love that.
0:39:50 Now, push comes to shove after you do all the editing to the first draft.
0:39:55 Maybe you didn’t save any time, but I’m telling you, it sure helps you get started.
0:40:00 I tell you, the number one use case for me of chat GPT is ginning up stories from my
0:40:01 daughters.
0:40:02 They just love the idea.
0:40:07 They’ll just give me these crazy characters, “Okay, do one with us and our friends, Nina
0:40:11 and Gabe, and we’re in a forest and it’s a little bit spooky, but not too spooky.”
0:40:16 And damned if chat GPT won’t spit out like a perfect thousand-word story with an arc
0:40:22 with all the care, it is just astonishing.
0:40:24 Up next on Remarkable People.
0:40:29 At the end of every episode, we added what we call internally a reflection, which is
0:40:33 just me kind of musing on what I heard and what stood out to me and what I thought was
0:40:34 super interesting.
0:40:38 And I try to broaden it out a little bit, find some themes where maybe the listener can
0:40:43 learn something that matters for them from the dog trainer or whatever, and that made
0:40:44 a huge difference.
0:40:48 I was so glad that we suffered through that feedback because it was painful.
0:40:55 Man, it’s painful to hear that people are like yawning at what you did, but it made
0:40:59 us stronger and better for sure.
0:41:02 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners.
0:41:05 It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for you.
0:41:11 If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and review it.
0:41:17 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:41:22 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:41:28 So let me ask you, what is your setup back to the what’s it like to be Dan Heath?
0:41:29 What is your setup for writing?
0:41:33 What kind of computer, what word processor, what do you use?
0:41:36 Only the fanciest stuff guy, only the best top of the line.
0:41:40 Man, I don’t think I have anything that’s not going to bore you to tears on this front.
0:41:43 I do most of my writing at coffee shops.
0:41:44 It works for me.
0:41:48 I go there, put my headphones in, try to get to it first thing in the morning.
0:41:51 I try to block three or four hours.
0:41:53 I think of it as shifts, writing shifts.
0:41:58 I only do one shift a day unless it’s crunch time and the book is due or something.
0:42:00 And I try not to do anything else.
0:42:05 Like I never schedule calls in the middle of that because I’m all about flow.
0:42:08 It takes me a while to get in the groove.
0:42:12 Even after all these years, I still have to fight the procrastination instinct and fight
0:42:17 the instinct to check messages and email and check the news.
0:42:22 And man, even after almost 20 years of this stuff, I still have to do it every time.
0:42:24 And then I’ll get over the hump.
0:42:27 And then it feels great to just disappear into the flow state.
0:42:30 I’m sure in it, there’s nothing better.
0:42:33 Not in the sense that it’s like euphoric, it is not.
0:42:34 But it’s just like the world disappears.
0:42:36 It’s just what you always hear about the flow state.
0:42:37 And I love that.
0:42:41 And I love the feeling, I forget who said this, but there’s a famous person who says, “I don’t
0:42:44 like writing, but I love having written.”
0:42:47 And that’s like the way that I feel about it.
0:42:50 And so I try to keep that flow state going as long as I can.
0:42:55 Just don’t let it get broken up with a stray phone call or an email exchange or whatever.
0:42:59 Are you using a Macintosh and Microsoft Word?
0:43:01 I use Word on a PC.
0:43:04 I’ve had a ThinkPad for years and years, I hear that looms you.
0:43:05 Yeah.
0:43:10 But I tell you what, I was just reminiscing with a friend, you’ll appreciate this.
0:43:16 The first time we saw a Macintosh classic, our journalism teacher had gotten it in high
0:43:18 school.
0:43:23 And man, it’s one of probably my top five tech moments in my whole life.
0:43:30 Just what that thing could do relative to what we were used to, absolutely dazzling.
0:43:33 What era were you evangelizing for Apple?
0:43:37 I was the software evangelist from ’83 to ’87.
0:43:43 So just as it came out and then ’95 to ’97 when Apple was supposed to die.
0:43:44 Oh boy.
0:43:47 All the thought leaders were convinced Apple was toast, right?
0:43:52 Windows was market share leader, returns to scale, yaba, yaba, yaba.
0:43:53 Didn’t work out that way.
0:43:54 Nope.
0:43:58 And I hope I had a little bit to do with that.
0:44:01 So now, what’s your setup for podcasting?
0:44:05 Podcasting, the listener can’t see, but you can.
0:44:08 I’m in my office right now and I have a very sophisticated setup.
0:44:11 I use a Blue Yeti USB mic, which I love.
0:44:18 And I’ve surrounded it with the best soundproofing that money can buy, i.e. a couple of pillows
0:44:23 from Michaels that are positioned around me to kind of deaden the sound a little bit.
0:44:26 And yeah, this is where I do my podcasts.
0:44:28 I don’t do video with my podcasts.
0:44:31 I really want to just immerse myself in the conversation.
0:44:35 So I’ve got my headphones squeezed around my ears and I’m just trying to be as attentive
0:44:37 and curious as I can be.
0:44:42 And what software or platform are you recording on?
0:44:47 We use Clean Feed and then do local recordings as a backup.
0:44:53 And like you, you sent me a courtesy, a microphone just in case I didn’t have one myself.
0:44:57 And we do the same thing because I mean, I just cringe when I hear podcasts and some
0:45:02 of them, you know, with a lot more listeners than me that have people calling in on their
0:45:05 cell phones and man, you just, you can’t do that.
0:45:06 It’s a podcast.
0:45:08 Like you got to obsess about the audio.
0:45:14 And from the time you record an episode to the time it actually goes live is how long?
0:45:15 That has varied a lot.
0:45:21 Like sometimes we really get productive and we’ll get a bunch of episodes and inventory.
0:45:26 I think we’ve had as many as six in inventory at once, which is a lot for us because we’re
0:45:27 every other week.
0:45:31 So that, you know, that’s like three months worth of show in the can.
0:45:36 And then we’ve been as narrow as the Thursday before it airs on Tuesday.
0:45:38 But yeah, that’s our cycle.
0:45:39 Okay.
0:45:43 And when you get the audio files, how do you do it?
0:45:50 And how much editing do you do of the file, removing filler words and moving things around?
0:45:57 I don’t do any of that, but my genius producer, Matt Purdy, does a ton of editing.
0:46:01 And the reason is you’re talking to a lot of people who communicate for a living.
0:46:07 I’m really not a lot of my people are good talkers and good storytellers, but they’re
0:46:08 not used to interviews.
0:46:11 They’re not used to concise answers.
0:46:13 And so we’ll talk for 90 minutes.
0:46:18 And then Matt and I will edit it down to maybe 27, 28 minutes.
0:46:22 So we’re really plucking out the best moments, the best stories.
0:46:23 And that helps a lot.
0:46:29 And so you are literally sending a set up to the beer vendor or the secret service agent
0:46:32 or the FBI agent and they’re in their house.
0:46:36 You don’t do these and any of these in person, none in person.
0:46:38 We’ve done a couple in studio.
0:46:42 The stadium beer vendor actually slept out to a local MPR station.
0:46:46 And we just recorded maybe a month or two ago with some long haul truckers that went
0:46:47 to a station.
0:46:50 That was the first time we had two people on an episode.
0:46:54 It was a husband and wife team who drive in the truck together.
0:46:56 That’s what they call team driving.
0:47:01 Like if you’ve got a cargo load full of fresh produce, like you can’t afford to just take
0:47:03 10 hours to sleep off the time.
0:47:04 So you’ve got to be driving continuously.
0:47:06 So you go back and forth.
0:47:11 Not only do they team drive, they’re married and it was such a hoot to hear them finishing
0:47:16 each other sentences and complaining about the other person, talking about what it’s
0:47:20 like to be with your partner literally around the clock.
0:47:22 Madison is from Nebraska.
0:47:26 So when they were talking about driving through Nebraska, I was, oh yeah, they kind of insulted
0:47:27 Nebraska.
0:47:28 Didn’t they, Madison?
0:47:30 Did you take Umbridge at that?
0:47:32 Yeah, there’s not much going on though.
0:47:35 So I don’t blame them.
0:47:40 She said driving through Nebraska was like being a steering wheel holder because it’s
0:47:41 so flat.
0:47:42 There’s no turns.
0:47:43 There’s no curves.
0:47:44 Yup.
0:47:46 It’s a straight shot.
0:47:52 I noticed in your podcast format that the way you work that you do a snippet and then
0:47:57 you do an intro and then you do the interview and then you do an outro.
0:48:03 Was that like a really carefully architected A B test that you figured out which way is
0:48:05 the better flow of a podcast?
0:48:08 No, is the short answer, but we did do some testing.
0:48:14 In fact, we almost pulled the plug on the whole show because our initial format, this
0:48:19 was before it went on the air when we were still just figuring out how do we do this?
0:48:25 We were doing roughly 40 minute episodes, maybe 45 minutes without much structure.
0:48:30 It was like just go and people were pretty lukewarm about it.
0:48:36 We did some testing with listeners and I had hired this market research consultant to try
0:48:39 to keep us honest because the thing I was most worried about is I’m so in love with
0:48:41 this project.
0:48:44 I was worried I wouldn’t listen to feedback and so I wanted someone outside to come and
0:48:47 whisper in my ear and tell me what they saw.
0:48:50 She was not real encouraging after that first round.
0:48:53 She was like, “I’m seeing a couple of paths here.
0:48:58 One is could you make the jobs more interesting almost in the dirty jobs way of could you
0:49:06 have a lion hunter and a ninja instead of welder and forensic accountant?”
0:49:11 Then Matt and I, the producer and I went back through the data and we’re like, “No, actually
0:49:12 we’re seeing some signs of hope here.
0:49:17 Maybe we’re deluding ourselves, but I think what people are telling us is they dig it,
0:49:19 but it could be better.”
0:49:22 We went back to the drawing board like it’s got to be shorter.
0:49:27 We set just a mandate like the first 20 episodes we did not allow ourselves to exceed 30 minutes.
0:49:29 We would be obsessing like at the last minute.
0:49:33 It cannot go over 30 minutes no matter what we have to cut, which is good discipline for
0:49:34 us.
0:49:36 Then we added a bunch of structure.
0:49:41 Before it was this formless conversation and so we were like, “We got to have a beginning
0:49:42 and a middle and an end.”
0:49:47 We added some structural elements like now we rip off the this American life like cold
0:49:48 open thing.
0:49:51 We just want to get you into the conversation at an interesting point.
0:49:55 I don’t want to be in the first 30 seconds saying, “This is Dan Heath.
0:49:59 This is my series of conversations with people in different jobs.
0:50:01 I’m going to get you into it.”
0:50:02 You do not.
0:50:04 I’ve listened to your show.
0:50:05 We ended it.
0:50:06 We added an element.
0:50:10 At the end of every episode, we added what we call internally a reflection, which is
0:50:14 just me kind of musing on what I heard and what stood out to me and what I thought was
0:50:15 super interesting.
0:50:20 I try to broaden it out a little bit, find some themes where maybe the listener can learn
0:50:24 something that matters for them from the dog trainer or whatever.
0:50:26 That made a huge difference.
0:50:30 I was so glad that we suffered through that feedback because it was painful.
0:50:36 Man, it’s painful to hear that people are like yawning at what you did, but it made
0:50:38 us stronger and better for sure.
0:50:45 It would be interesting if you took your raw transcript, shoved it in chat, GPT and
0:50:48 asked, “What are the three main lessons from this episode?”
0:50:51 I mean, that might help you at the end.
0:50:52 Yeah.
0:50:55 A lot of work sometimes coming up with the reflection, I’m like, “What are my reflections
0:50:56 from this?”
0:50:57 Maybe I’ll outsource that.
0:50:59 You’ve given me an inspiration.
0:51:00 Take it to AI.
0:51:04 I love comparing notes because you’re doing a similar thing with your podcast.
0:51:07 It’s a podcast about curiosity like mine.
0:51:12 If you’re telling me that people are interested in beer vendors and forensic accountants,
0:51:14 they got to be interested in podcasting.
0:51:15 My God.
0:51:16 Okay.
0:51:20 My last podcast question is, and I’ll tell you how I would answer this question too,
0:51:24 but do you listen to the actual final product?
0:51:26 Of course.
0:51:27 Every time.
0:51:28 Yeah.
0:51:29 Huh.
0:51:30 I never do.
0:51:31 You don’t?
0:51:32 No.
0:51:33 Wow.
0:51:34 Why?
0:51:35 You lived at once and that was enough.
0:51:40 I never do because I know that I will listen to it and I will hear where I would have made
0:51:42 an editing change.
0:51:44 I would have removed the filler word.
0:51:46 I would have shortened the pause.
0:51:49 I know that there will be things that I’ll say, “We got to fix that.”
0:51:58 And so, I record, I do editing, light editing, I give it to Madison and Jeff C or Sound Design
0:52:03 guys and I like, I never look at it again or never listen to it.
0:52:05 I get that instinct.
0:52:08 It’s never pleasurable for me to do it.
0:52:09 Well, that’s not true.
0:52:14 I enjoy the parts with the guest, but when I hear myself, I’m always cringing because
0:52:16 I’m like, just like I just did.
0:52:22 I said like too much or there was a more elegant way to ask a question or I wish I’d followed
0:52:23 up about that.
0:52:27 There’s always something I could have done better, but I feel like I have to rub my own
0:52:33 nose in that stuff to get better over time.
0:52:39 One of my guests once told me that you know you’ll discover your love in life when you
0:52:41 enjoy the shit sandwich.
0:52:46 So there’s a lot of shit sandwiches in podcasting and writing that I know you and I enjoy.
0:52:47 Okay.
0:52:52 So now, once again, being inspired by your podcast, we’re going to end with a lightning
0:52:53 round.
0:52:54 Oh, okay.
0:52:59 Question number one, what’s a phrase that writers would know?
0:53:01 Oh, I got a good one.
0:53:03 You’ll know what this means and most people won’t.
0:53:04 A galley.
0:53:05 Yeah.
0:53:06 A galley.
0:53:10 If you’ve got a book coming out, I have a book coming out as it happens in January
0:53:15 and it’ll come out as a hardcover along with the audio and ebook version, but about four
0:53:21 or five months before the hardcover comes out, the publisher will print up a paperback version
0:53:22 of that book.
0:53:27 They call it a galley, which is something you send around in advance to colleagues or
0:53:28 media or other people.
0:53:32 You’re trying to get a little bit of word of mouth piling up so that something has happened
0:53:34 before your book debut.
0:53:35 So that’s a galley.
0:53:37 Okay.
0:53:41 And what is the deepest insult to a writer?
0:53:42 Boring.
0:53:45 I think that’s the deepest insult.
0:53:47 You pour so much of yourself into it.
0:53:51 You try to make it snappy, you try to tell stories, you try to crack some jokes and if
0:53:59 people just find themselves too bored to flip the page, we’ve committed the cardinal sin.
0:54:03 Because to have permission to really teach someone something, at least that’s the point
0:54:08 in my book, is to try to share tools, I have to earn that right by making the pages interesting
0:54:10 enough to keep flipping.
0:54:13 I’ll tell you my deepest insult as a writer.
0:54:17 It happens regularly.
0:54:22 So people come up to me, Dan, and they say, I was lost.
0:54:24 I didn’t have any direction in my life.
0:54:26 I didn’t know what to do.
0:54:29 And I read your book and it changed my life.
0:54:34 And I say to them, which of my 16 books changed your life?
0:54:43 And they always say, rich dad, poor dad.
0:54:50 If you think you got problems, you should just claim it.
0:54:52 What is your favorite writing tool?
0:54:57 My favorite writing tool is a cup of coffee, always has been, always will be.
0:55:02 I don’t care if the media comes out with a story next year that coffee causes cancer.
0:55:04 I’m in for the long haul.
0:55:08 It’s my writing copilot.
0:55:13 And what phrase strikes fear in a writer’s heart?
0:55:15 Oh, I haven’t thought about that one.
0:55:16 Let me think.
0:55:17 What strikes fear?
0:55:20 Oh, I know what it is.
0:55:22 And this happened before.
0:55:27 Basically someone has written what you’re writing and it’s about to come out.
0:55:32 The idea that somebody has been working on the same topic and might beat you to the punch.
0:55:34 This happened with Made to Stick.
0:55:39 The initial title of our book was What Sticks.
0:55:41 More of a descriptive spin, What Sticks.
0:55:42 We had always called it that.
0:55:44 We were doing covers.
0:55:49 We find out there’s another book coming out three months before ours that’s called What
0:55:50 Sticks.
0:55:51 I am not making this up.
0:55:55 We had the URL for WhatSticks.com and the authors reached out for us and they were
0:55:59 like, hey, we’ve got a book coming out from a major publisher.
0:56:00 Just I noticed you owned it.
0:56:05 We’re happy to reimburse you for the and so we’re like freaking out like literally our
0:56:09 exact same title, seemingly the same material.
0:56:10 And so it’s just a red alarm fire.
0:56:14 We ended up changing the name to Made to Stick, which I think in retrospect is a better name.
0:56:15 It is.
0:56:16 We never would have gotten there.
0:56:19 It’s more kind of agentic, I think, which is better for the topic.
0:56:25 But anyway, the happy ending is the book really wasn’t that similar to what we were chasing.
0:56:28 It was a little more kind of advertising centric and anchored.
0:56:31 And so it didn’t ultimately feel competitive.
0:56:35 But boy, were we panicked for about 48 hours there.
0:56:36 Okay.
0:56:40 And this is my last question for the lightning round.
0:56:41 Who is smarter?
0:56:42 You or Chip?
0:56:43 Definitely Chip.
0:56:44 Yeah.
0:56:45 Definitely Chip.
0:56:46 He got the brains in the family.
0:56:47 I don’t know what I got.
0:56:52 I got these pillows from Michaels.
0:56:56 When you say Michaels, are you mean Michael’s Art Supply?
0:56:57 Yeah.
0:57:07 There’s going to be only the best places there are perfect for soundproofing your podcast.
0:57:08 Yeah.
0:57:09 Testimonial right here.
0:57:15 Then you can go to Etsy and you type out sound deadening material.
0:57:17 You get a lot cooler stuff.
0:57:19 I can tell you that’s what I did.
0:57:20 Yeah.
0:57:23 Guys looking at my setup right now and just shaking his head.
0:57:28 But see people would never know because it sounds good that we have to keep that behind
0:57:29 the scenes.
0:57:30 That’s all that really counts.
0:57:31 Okay.
0:57:35 So now Dan, this is truly my last question because you brought it up.
0:57:39 We have now recorded one hour four minutes and 39 seconds.
0:57:44 Are you telling me that your advice is to cut half an hour out of this?
0:57:45 Absolutely.
0:57:46 100%.
0:57:51 It will be better if you cut out the worst half of this because yeah, I’m not that good.
0:57:52 I’m not an hour and four minutes good.
0:57:55 I might be 34 minutes good, but I’ll leave that up to you.
0:57:56 I disagree.
0:57:58 Man, this has been such a treat.
0:58:01 I feel like we used to see each other on the road.
0:58:06 There was a period of about a year where I felt like every time I had a keynote, it was
0:58:11 either that Guy Kawasaki had spoken the day before or he had spoken last year or we were
0:58:12 like in the same orbit.
0:58:19 I think that effect is twice as big as it truly is because a lot of people confuse me
0:58:20 with kiyosaki.
0:58:25 So if you had kiyosaki and Kawasaki speaking at conferences, you really might have had
0:58:29 that experience of always following or preceding me.
0:58:32 It was like an enchantment era.
0:58:34 I always loved that cover, by the way.
0:58:35 Oh, thank you.
0:58:37 It was a brilliant cover.
0:58:38 The butterfly.
0:58:39 Yeah.
0:58:41 Who did the origami?
0:58:47 Believe it or not, there’s this guy in Hawaii who was like Mr. Origami and he had a shop in
0:58:51 the international marketplace and I went to his shop and I asked him to design me this
0:58:52 butterfly.
0:58:58 So he made a Kawasaki butterfly and it was quite expensive actually.
0:59:03 And now, I don’t know, if you go back to Waikiki, international marketplace, which used to be
0:59:09 a real zoo, now it’s all high-end dolce and gabbana and ermies.
0:59:15 I can’t even pronounce it and all that kind of stuff and it’s not exactly what it is anymore.
0:59:19 So you commissioned an origami butterfly, that is cool.
0:59:20 That’s me.
0:59:26 That is really cool and the cover is so distinctive, I love that one.
0:59:32 Alright Dan, this has been just wonderful and I’m not cutting out 30 minutes from this
0:59:33 podcast.
0:59:37 I don’t give a shit if it’s not optimal.
0:59:41 Listeners be damned, you’re getting the whole thing and you’re going to like it.
0:59:45 And this whole transcript is going to go into Kawasaki GPT.
0:59:47 So you will be immortal then.
0:59:49 I love it.
0:59:51 My ideas will live on.
1:00:00 I must admit that this episode has gone all over the map from commissioning original butterflies
1:00:07 for book covers and beer vendors and secret service agents and how to make things stick
1:00:10 and how to make decisions.
1:00:13 But Dan Heath, he’s just that kind of guy.
1:00:17 He has a lot of interesting things to talk about.
1:00:23 So I hope you enjoyed this episode and there will be a follow-up episode coming this fall
1:00:24 sometime.
1:00:30 Wait, I guess it’s already October so we are in the fall.
1:00:36 We will cover his book, I promise you, maybe a bit of winter, not the fall.
1:00:38 So I’m Guy Kawasaki.
1:00:44 This is Remarkable People and I hope you stick with this podcast.
1:00:52 The team is made out of Madison Nysmer, producer and co-author of Think Remarkable, Tessa Nysmer,
1:00:59 our ACE researcher, and then we have the incredible, remarkable sound design team of Jesse and
1:01:02 Shannon Hernandez.
1:01:07 And finally, Luis Magana, Alexis Nishimura, and Phalan Yates.
1:01:09 You forget it.
1:01:17 We are the Remarkable People team and we are on a mission to make you Remarkable.
1:01:19 That’s what we do.
1:01:28 Until next time, mahalo and aloha.
1:01:30 This is Remarkable People.

0:00:12 I’m Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People.
0:00:19 We’re in a mission to make you remarkable and today we have with us the remarkable Walter
0:00:20 Greenleaf.
0:00:24 Walter is a neuroscientist and medical technology developer.
0:00:27 He works at Stanford University.
0:00:33 He’s a leading authority in digital medicine and medical virtual reality technology.
0:00:38 He has designed and developed clinical systems including products for surgical simulation,
0:00:47 3D medical visualization, clinical informatics and simulation assisted rehabilitation techniques.
0:00:52 He is the co-founder and board chair for the International Virtual Reality Health Association.
0:00:57 He has served as the principal investigator for research projects funded by the National
0:01:00 Institutes of Health and NASA.
0:01:02 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:01:10 This is Remarkable People and now here is the remarkable Walter Greenleaf.
0:01:16 Do you know about the Meta Ray-Ban partnership where they have sunglasses with a camera and
0:01:17 AI built in?
0:01:22 Yes, I do and I’ve run across a few friends who are wearing them.
0:01:23 Okay.
0:01:25 It reminds me of the Kogo glass of course.
0:01:27 Is it reality right now?
0:01:29 Because with that you could just say what am I looking at?
0:01:31 What’s the history of this city?
0:01:32 What’s the history of this building?
0:01:33 What am I seeing?
0:01:39 So it’s a combination of this visual representation plus AI.
0:01:41 So is that reality now?
0:01:47 It’s getting there and I think the other layer that’s on top of that is not only what
0:01:53 we have, visual representations of extra information overlaid upon what we’re seeing.
0:01:58 I think we will also, and this is an interesting issue, there’s a lot of work going on with
0:02:05 capturing eye gaze, facial expressions, body language, voice tone, to come up with scores
0:02:13 related to our mood, our emotional state, and how alert we are, how grumpy we are.
0:02:16 And that’ll be overlaid too and filtered.
0:02:22 So I could be filtering my interactions with you right now, both visually and auditorily.
0:02:27 I could say I want to look a little more friendly or I want to look a little bit more savvy
0:02:29 and that’s what you would be seeing.
0:02:34 So as we interact with the built environment and with each other, there’s going to be a
0:02:38 layer of technology between it and us and each other and that’s going to be an interesting
0:02:39 change.
0:02:45 I saw that you reshared an article about tracking eye movements to use in diagnosis.
0:02:50 So you’re telling me that someday in the future, we could have this kind of virtual
0:02:54 conference and at the end you say, “Guy, by the way, I think you have Parkinson’s?”
0:02:55 I think we’re there.
0:02:57 I think there’s ways to do that right now.
0:03:00 The quote by William Gibson, of course, the future is already here.
0:03:03 It’s just unevenly distributed.
0:03:10 And I think using eye gaze and voice tone as a way of diagnosing neurodegenerate disease
0:03:11 like Parkinson’s, we can do that.
0:03:16 But it’s mostly the research zone hasn’t been translated out.
0:03:20 And I’m sure people are listening to this and their heads are exploding and they’re
0:03:25 saying, “Maybe Mark Zuckerberg knows my moods because he’s watching my eye movements
0:03:26 and he knows if I have Parkinson’s.”
0:03:30 And that’s a little scary, no?
0:03:32 Oh, I think it’s both exciting and scary.
0:03:38 It’s exciting because, hey, with an aging population as the boomers get up into their
0:03:44 80s and 90s and longer, and we’re all going to live a lot longer, there’s some challenges
0:03:45 that we will have.
0:03:47 We want to keep our brains healthy.
0:03:48 We want to keep our bodies healthy.
0:03:50 We want to age in place.
0:03:53 We want to expand our health span instead of having a long, slow decline.
0:03:57 We want to be fantastic until we’re not.
0:04:02 But the technologies we have right now will help us with that, but again, there haven’t
0:04:04 been a position to scale.
0:04:08 So it’s exciting to have these new breakthroughs that will help us with not just better diagnosis,
0:04:14 understanding if you have Parkinson’s, but new therapeutics and ways to do it more precisely
0:04:16 for you because we’re all different.
0:04:20 There should be different prescriptions for interventions.
0:04:26 The scary part is exactly what we were looking at earlier, that this is very personal, very
0:04:28 private information.
0:04:33 It’s right now available publicly when you’re on an online game and playing with other players
0:04:40 and speaking, your impulsiveness could be scored, your abilities as a leader or a follower,
0:04:46 your voice tone can indicate your mood, and so there’s a lot that can already be extracted
0:04:53 publicly and even more so privately that we just have to find ways to lock down and protect.
0:05:00 And so yeah, people should be worried about as the tech titans move into this zone and
0:05:02 especially as they move into health care, it’s exciting.
0:05:03 We need it.
0:05:05 We need better technology.
0:05:06 We have an aging population.
0:05:12 It’s going to be extremely expensive to address worldwide, how to support people living so
0:05:18 much longer could be more expensive than dealing with climate change, but there’s also very
0:05:21 sensitive issues we have to address.
0:05:30 I think we should just hook this up to JD Vance right now and get insights into his
0:05:33 head, but that’s a different subject.
0:05:35 You open the door here for me.
0:05:42 So can you just describe the state of the art of the neurology of getting old, brain
0:05:46 health as you get old, what’s the latest, greatest insights into that?
0:05:52 I think the first thing we should remind everyone is that what’s good for the body is what’s
0:05:53 good for the brain.
0:05:58 So if people say, what can I do now to help my brain be healthier when I’m in my 70s,
0:06:06 80s, or 90s, it’s sleep, exercise, diet, stress, or do stress.
0:06:10 All the things that keep our body healthy, we know keep our brain healthy.
0:06:14 So that’s one thing you can do to mitigate the risk.
0:06:19 That said, those things may or may not make a big difference if genetically you’re on
0:06:27 the pathway to develop Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or some of the other neurodegenerative diseases.
0:06:32 Invest in research would be one thing I would say is that there’s some great potential therapeutics,
0:06:39 both as molecules and pharmaceutical interventions, but other technologies that can help us intervene.
0:06:42 And we need to move forward with them as best we can.
0:06:47 Because again, three out of every seven of us will, when we get up into the age zone,
0:06:53 that’s the way things are, develop Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or Lewy body disease or some
0:06:55 other things that we don’t want to have happened.
0:07:00 So yeah, keep your brain healthy now by doing what keeps your body healthy, but we need to
0:07:02 move forward with an aging population.
0:07:07 We’ve gotten maybe 10 years before that tidal wave hits, but we do need to move forward.
0:07:11 So is the corollary also true that good for the body, good for the brain?
0:07:14 Does that mean bad for the body, bad for the brain?
0:07:15 Yes.
0:07:20 I’m guilty of not getting as much sleep as I should or exercising as much as I should.
0:07:25 And I’m very conscious that this is a trade off versus keeping my brain healthy.
0:07:28 Yeah, that’s our current thinking.
0:07:33 Okay, good for the body, good for the brain, but are there things that are good for the
0:07:34 brain?
0:07:40 Is it like playing Sudoku or is it playing chess or are those things just a fad from
0:07:44 these influencers and thought leaders want to sell stuff?
0:07:47 Or do these kind of mental things really help?
0:07:52 We’re getting into a zone where there’s controversy and I’ll tell you what my opinion and my beliefs
0:07:57 are and I’m sure I’m going to get some pushback from my esteemed colleagues who disagree.
0:07:58 But here goes.
0:08:02 We do know that it used to be viewed that many of the things that were being brought
0:08:08 out there by some of the companies that had games for brain health, for example, the claims
0:08:13 were exaggerated that groups would say this will prevent the possibility of having Alzheimer’s
0:08:18 or this will address our cure attention deficit disorder.
0:08:22 And a lot of the research did not really back the claims that were being made.
0:08:24 That was the past.
0:08:30 Now we know that there are some things that we can do that are impactful and make a big
0:08:32 difference and can help.
0:08:37 There’s recently been products that, for example, games you can play that you can get a prescription
0:08:38 from for a doctor.
0:08:42 You can get a prescription for something that helps with attention deficit disorder.
0:08:48 We know that there’s some interventions that can be used that will help you with what we
0:08:55 call executive functions, some of the decision making and navigation skills, etc.
0:09:02 Very interesting work by Adam Ghazali’s group at UCSF, looking at how we can play a game.
0:09:08 They have one called NeuroRacer that NOAA-Felstein helped design that improves the scores that
0:09:14 people in their 60s have that normally are very low compared to people in their 20s and
0:09:16 certain executive functions.
0:09:21 But if you play this game, not only can you raise your scores up to what you would have
0:09:27 had in your 20s, they’ve gone back years later to see if it persists and it does.
0:09:32 And now the evidence, in my opinion, is that yes, there are things that we can do in terms
0:09:38 of exercising our brain that make a difference in terms of cognitive decline.
0:09:41 I am really interested in this topic in two regards.
0:09:45 First of all, I’m 70, so I would like to know exactly what to do.
0:09:47 Not just conceptually, but just tell me.
0:09:52 If you and I were best friends and I asked you, “Come on, Walter, just tell me what do
0:09:53 I do?
0:09:57 Will you just tell me the game or what do I eat or what should I do, Walter?”
0:10:01 You might come back to me in a week and I’ll have a more refined answer to that because
0:10:03 there’s a lot of different options.
0:10:06 And also, I would want to know a little bit more about you.
0:10:11 I think one of the challenges we have in healthcare is that we have sort of a one-size-fits-all.
0:10:14 This is what everyone should do.
0:10:17 And I would need to know a little bit more about you, and I would also want to know your
0:10:18 goals.
0:10:22 Is your goal to live as long as possible, or is your goal to have the highest quality
0:10:25 in the next 30 or 40 years?
0:10:30 Is your goal to continue to work, or is your goal to continue to enjoy leisure?
0:10:33 So there’s more I would need to know before I could give you a good answer.
0:10:38 But I’ll think about it, and maybe if we talk further, I can understand what I could recommend.
0:10:40 I’m not a clinician.
0:10:46 I’m an activating enzyme, helping the clinicians and the healthcare providers and the scientists
0:10:50 and the healthcare networks understand what’s new and what they should look at, and I’m
0:10:52 not the person who writes the prescription.
0:10:57 I actually have great respect for that answer because it shows it’s not a flippant answer
0:11:01 that you’re just talking shit, basically.
0:11:03 A slightly related thing now.
0:11:10 You mentioned that there are games that can help kids with executive function.
0:11:12 What’s the game for that?
0:11:13 I want to hear that.
0:11:15 I’m taking notes.
0:11:20 There’s a company that I have great respect for, Akili, that developed two games.
0:11:25 One that is available over the counter, meaning you can download it from an app store, and
0:11:32 that’s endeavor, E-N-D-E-V-O-U-R, and then there’s endeavor, R-X.
0:11:43 Endeavor is for adults with ADHD, and endeavor, R-X, is positioned for children who have ADHD.
0:11:49 Endeavor, R-X, requires a prescription to get, but the other form of endeavor for adults
0:11:53 can be downloaded from an app store, and it is validated in interventions.
0:11:56 Wait, I’m trying to wrap my head around this.
0:12:00 If a parent is listening to this and they’re part of Kaiser, they call up Kaiser, they
0:12:05 call up the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and they speak to their pediatrician, and
0:12:08 they say, “Give me a prescription for endeavor, R-X.”
0:12:13 I’m actually not sure if you need to go see a specialist.
0:12:19 You probably need to go to see who’s here with this intervention, but yes, the basic
0:12:27 concept is that these are validated interventions prescribed video game for treatment for children
0:12:37 with ADHD, and I just went to their website, E-N-D-E-A-V-O-R-X.com, there’s a tab for getting
0:12:38 a prescription.
0:12:39 Wow.
0:12:40 That’s a shirt for people to follow up with.
0:12:41 Wow.
0:12:42 Oh my God.
0:12:45 So, are you saying that this thing went through FDA trials?
0:12:47 Yeah, you are partially responsible for this.
0:12:53 What you did back in the ’80s and ’90s to help move forward digital technology has helped
0:12:55 put us in a position to be able to have things like this.
0:12:57 Thank you for that.
0:12:58 Okay.
0:13:01 Here’s to reaping what you sow.
0:13:08 So now, getting out of this particular topic here, I want to move back up to virtual reality
0:13:09 and medicine.
0:13:15 So what is the current cutting edge of virtual reality in medicine?
0:13:23 We’re using VR right now for better training of clinicians, surgical skills or understanding
0:13:26 neuroanatomy in three dimensions.
0:13:32 We’re using it for better assessments, a better way of doing a differential diagnosis for
0:13:39 anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorder, different aspects of stroke or traumatic brain
0:13:46 injury, and we’re using it for better therapeutics, ways to promote better recovery from an injury,
0:13:53 or ways to address addictions or ways to help people who are on the autism spectrum learn
0:13:57 how to recognize body language and facial expressions and others.
0:14:03 So really, the full stack of healthcare has been impacted by the technology.
0:14:07 The Veterans Health Administration has done an amazing job of rolling it out, and there
0:14:12 are largest healthcare network, they’ve trained more than 3,000 clinicians, I think they’re
0:14:17 using it for more than 30 different clinical indications throughout their network.
0:14:23 And again, still at an early stage in many ways, it’s been held back because new technology
0:14:27 in medicine very appropriately takes a while to get established, and especially because
0:14:32 of our business model of needing to establish a code for reimbursement.
0:14:37 And that’s why the VA has been able to move forward faster than other groups, because
0:14:43 they don’t rely on reimbursement codes, they’ll roll something out and use it if it’s impactful.
0:14:48 So it’s happening, I’d say though we’re at that transition point from early adopters
0:14:54 and the people that are willing to try new things and for better results, it’s now starting
0:15:01 to move over into just how we do things and get beyond that early adopter threshold, especially
0:15:07 for pain, there’s some fantastic ways to both address acute pain and chronic pain using
0:15:12 virtual reality and augmented reality technology that’s been well validated and it’s starting
0:15:15 to be used throughout the healthcare system.
0:15:21 Wait, so how can doing something online with virtual reality relieve pain?
0:15:23 Isn’t pain at a chemical level?
0:15:30 It doesn’t have to be done online, it could be, but two ways for an acute aspect of pain,
0:15:35 they can distract you if you’re getting a lumbar puncture for example or they’re degrading
0:15:41 your skin which is very painful for a burn injury or if you have back pain.
0:15:49 For chronic pain we teach skills, we use virtual reality as a medium to people to learn mindfulness,
0:15:56 relaxation skills, to learn how to mitigate their pain, to reframe the way our brain reacts
0:15:59 to a pain signal and it works, it’s been validated.
0:16:01 Where does AI come into this?
0:16:08 Is it people in India who have MDs or is it AI scanning x-rays and looking at results
0:16:10 and giving you recommendations?
0:16:13 Well, AI is really empowering everything.
0:16:18 All these new digital health applications we’ve been talking about, not just the VR and AR,
0:16:25 require very sophisticated analytics and we now can extract more from the signals that
0:16:32 we have to do more and also because of generative AI we can take the analytics and we can use
0:16:38 it in the case of virtual reality or augmented reality for example, dynamically change the
0:16:41 user’s experience based on those signals.
0:16:49 So AI is empowering us both to do better diagnostics, to identify a lesion that might be seen on
0:16:55 an x-ray that might not be able to be captured easily by the clinician to support the clinicians
0:17:01 to do that or to help us look through some data and find the key features both on a research
0:17:05 level and on an individual level that we need to have.
0:17:09 So remember I mentioned earlier that in order to answer your question about what helps you,
0:17:11 I would need to know you a little bit better.
0:17:17 AI is helping us look at the data from an individual, understand them a little bit better compared
0:17:23 to the larger population and make recommendations as to what would be a precision way to help
0:17:26 you with your healthcare problems.
0:17:32 And these treatments, they’re being tested scientifically double-blind, placebo effect,
0:17:34 all of that kind of stuff.
0:17:37 It’s not just Donald Trump saying drink Clorox.
0:17:40 This is FDA, everything, the whole shooting match.
0:17:48 We’ve had more than 30 years worth of research on specifically for VR technology for healthcare
0:17:52 decades of research and that’s just in that zone, the other zones we’re talking about
0:17:53 even longer.
0:17:57 But the technology hasn’t been affordable until recently.
0:17:58 So we’re now in the process.
0:18:04 That’s why it’s the process of moving it out of the research labs into clinical care doing
0:18:05 the validation studies.
0:18:11 But yes, we’ve done double-blind, placebo-controlled studies on the impact of these digital health
0:18:14 interventions and the FDA reviews them.
0:18:19 I was part of a team at a company named Paratherapeutics, which was the first company to establish
0:18:22 software as a medical device.
0:18:29 So that the FDA will review and regulate these interventions and make sure they’re healthy
0:18:36 and safe and effective, just like they do any other pharmaceutical pill or any sort of
0:18:37 other device.
0:18:43 And here’s the cool thing, guys, we’re also now starting to see combination therapy where
0:18:51 it might not just be a pill to manage depression or anxiety or pain, but a pill that is using
0:18:57 combination with the digital health app that can help you, again, adjust it for you individually,
0:19:01 see what’s working, what’s not working by measuring the impact of the therapy, and then
0:19:07 maybe doing something in combination and for anxiety, maybe not just taking a medication,
0:19:12 but also learning relaxation skills, mindfulness skills, et cetera.
0:19:16 So it’s not just either/or, it can be together, combination.
0:19:21 And that means we can leverage the established distribution channels that the pharmaceutical
0:19:26 companies and the medical device companies have to bring out these very powerful digital
0:19:28 health applications.
0:19:33 Can you just give us an idea of a specific treatment?
0:19:40 I read that, and I think you mentioned that there’s software as a medical device to help
0:19:42 people with PTSD.
0:19:46 So let’s say you are undergoing this treatment, exactly what happens?
0:19:53 For post-traumatic stress, and also for addictions and anxiety disorders in general, we use an
0:19:58 approach called exposure therapy, where what’s happened with post-traumatic stress, and I’m
0:20:04 being very simplistic here for the sake of not spending 20 hours going over it with you,
0:20:09 what happens with a learned fear reaction like post-traumatic stress, where you’ve had
0:20:15 some trauma and your brain has very appropriately learned to fear what almost killed you or
0:20:18 what was uncomfortable for you.
0:20:23 But that’s useful when we were evolving, but now in today’s world, some things that
0:20:29 can be traumatic might be something that happened to you in combat or something that happened
0:20:36 to you one time, but you’re having an overreaction, you’re being triggered and you’re having challenges.
0:20:42 So we use exposure therapy to address that, same thing with addictions.
0:20:47 You may get beyond the metabolic aspect of an addiction, but you still are triggered
0:20:52 by cravings when you go into a bar and you’re friends are drinking a beer or you go by some
0:20:55 place where your dealer used to sell you a meth.
0:21:02 So in both situations, what we use is to gradually teach people to understand what is triggering
0:21:07 their reaction and to gradually habituate that reaction, to take what’s a learned fear
0:21:14 reaction or perhaps a learned craving and turn it into something that your forebrain is reacting
0:21:19 to and saying, “Oh, there’s a pile of trash on the side of the road, but I’m driving on
0:21:27 Interstate 280 in California, I’m not over in Iraq,” that pile of trash is not necessarily
0:21:28 a threat.
0:21:33 So I don’t need to get really upset when I see a pile of trash on the side of the road.
0:21:39 And we use virtual reality, for example, to gradually expose you to what is triggering
0:21:44 those reactions and under the supervision of a clinician and teach you how to manage
0:21:48 your learned fear reaction and to habituate the response.
0:21:49 And it works.
0:21:50 We get great results.
0:21:55 Now, when you say you’re using virtual reality, are the people wearing headsets, is it like
0:21:57 an Apple Vision Pro?
0:21:59 Is it that level?
0:22:01 They really think they are in this.
0:22:06 For exposure therapy, you don’t have to wear a head-mounted display.
0:22:11 For a long time, people have taken people with fear of flying to an airport and having them
0:22:12 go up.
0:22:15 But if you’re doing it in vivo, in real time, it’s expensive.
0:22:21 So the advantage of using a VR system is we can do it in a clinic.
0:22:24 And in some cases, we can do it online, like teaching people who have a fear of public
0:22:26 speaking, for example.
0:22:31 You can rehearse online with a virtual audience in practice.
0:22:40 But for a learned fear reaction, post-traumatic stress from an IED explosion in Iraq, we really
0:22:44 do want to use a VR system, because then we can block out the outside world.
0:22:46 The brain doesn’t want to go there.
0:22:51 If it’s something you’re traumatized by and you’re scared of, and I start talking to you
0:22:55 about it and say, “Guy, remember that horrible thing that happened to you?
0:22:57 You’re going to be triggered.”
0:23:01 But I can gradually take you there if I have a way of blocking out the rest of the world
0:23:06 and say, “Let’s start by walking up to the ticket counter at the airport.”
0:23:10 So it’s not just post-traumatic stress, it’s also phobias that we can treat using exposure
0:23:11 therapy.
0:23:18 And then I can gradually evoke the learned fear response and without re-traumatizing
0:23:26 you, because I have control of how the level of reality, the level of exposure you have,
0:23:29 and teach you the skills and habitually you learn fear response.
0:23:30 Wow.
0:23:34 Walter, I’ve got to say, if anybody else was telling me this, I would be saying, “This
0:23:36 guy is full of shit.”
0:23:39 I’m telling you about what other people have done research on.
0:23:44 There’s been decades of people working behind the scenes, developing this new wave of technology
0:23:47 that’s finally coming out, which is great, because we need it.
0:23:51 My head is exploding here until I prepare for this interview.
0:24:08 I never heard of this concept of software as a medical device.
0:24:10 So what’s the career path?
0:24:13 Let’s say somebody’s listening to this and saying, “Man, this is the coolest stuff.
0:24:15 I want to do this.
0:24:20 I don’t necessarily want to be a general practitioner or pathologist, but I just love
0:24:22 this application of software.”
0:24:24 So what’s this person’s career path today?
0:24:26 Do you go to medical school?
0:24:28 What’s the whole thing you do?
0:24:34 I think if you’d asked me this five years ago, I would have said find an academic research
0:24:40 center that is studying how to use digital health and virtual reality technology and
0:24:42 other technologies for pediatric care, for example.
0:24:47 I say find a group that has an indication that you’re interested in, maybe you’re interested
0:24:53 in helping children who have had stress from the pandemic learn to help with their mental
0:24:56 health issues and work at that academic center.
0:24:58 That would have been a while ago.
0:25:01 Now I think I could say that’s one option and that would be great.
0:25:07 We could use your help on the academic research side, but now we’re starting to see the technology
0:25:13 move and there are companies, public companies, Penumbra, for example, is one.
0:25:21 They’re selling virtual reality products to treat traumatic brain injury, to treat post-traumatic
0:25:26 stress, to treat mental health issues, to help with neuro rehabilitation, that’s one
0:25:27 of their fortes.
0:25:33 It would be more go to a center, continue with your career as a clinician, but make sure
0:25:38 you’re aware of what’s possible and get your hospital, get your clinic to up their game
0:25:41 by bringing these new technologies in.
0:25:42 So that would be one way.
0:25:47 Another way is to get involved, not necessarily as the clinical or research side, but also
0:25:48 on the tech side.
0:25:53 We need to put additional layers of technology on top of what we’re doing so that we can
0:25:54 do more.
0:25:59 We can leverage machine learning to look at the data a little bit better and come up with,
0:26:04 again, a precision approach to fine-tuning the intervention to match what the individual
0:26:05 needs.
0:26:11 So do you think this is going to take longer or in five years are going to just be amazed
0:26:16 at what has happened because Bill Gates has this theory that things happen faster than
0:26:21 you think they are, but not as fast as these visionaries say?
0:26:23 I guess it depends.
0:26:27 I think we have the technologies that can make a big difference.
0:26:35 The tech titans are moving into healthcare, Apple, Google, Samsung, Amazon, and Meta
0:26:40 are all starting with consumer health and wellness, which is fantastic, but some are
0:26:43 moving into the clinical zone too.
0:26:49 I think as that happens, the speed will pick up because the tech titans know how to design
0:26:55 for scale and they know how to design good user interfaces, which frankly the medical
0:27:00 device in the pharma companies have not had that skill set before and their business model
0:27:04 has been more slow and careful, which is appropriate for medicine.
0:27:07 But I think now that there’s new players coming into the game.
0:27:13 Also, the other things that gives me a reason to say things will happen faster than otherwise,
0:27:15 so we have some acute needs.
0:27:18 We’re dealing with three major problems right now.
0:27:24 One is an aging population, which will cripple our economy worldwide if we don’t do something
0:27:25 about it.
0:27:30 If three out of every seven of us has Alzheimer’s in our 70s, 80s, or 90s, there’s smaller families
0:27:34 and there’s a wave front of people getting older, especially in Asia.
0:27:38 That’s going to be more expensive unless we get on top of it, extremely expensive unless
0:27:40 we get on top of it.
0:27:46 At the other end, we have a whole strata of youngsters who went through the pandemic with
0:27:52 seeing their parents completely fearful, not able to go to kindergarten and learn social
0:27:57 emotional learning skills, learning a lot of fear and stress.
0:28:02 If you talk to our colleagues in pediatric care at the Children’s Hospitals, they’re
0:28:07 saying an avalanche of new problems in mental health.
0:28:12 Also, our society in general, I think, is challenging our mental health issues for so
0:28:13 many reasons.
0:28:18 Then, meanwhile, the overburdened healthcare system with so many burnt-out clinicians who
0:28:20 have been really working so hard.
0:28:26 Those three issues can’t be solved by anything other than technology right now.
0:28:31 We can’t grow family members fast enough to support the aging population better.
0:28:35 It has to be technology and the tech titans are moving in.
0:28:40 I have reasons to be optimistic that things will happen faster than not.
0:28:42 I’ve been wrong so many times before.
0:28:46 I always think five years from now, we’ll start using this technology.
0:28:47 It is happening.
0:28:52 I look at what the VA health system, for example, is doing and feel like it’s starting to happen.
0:28:55 But, hey, your listeners can help it happen, too.
0:29:00 Let’s ask for these technologies, let’s invest in these technologies, let’s make it happen.
0:29:06 I have to say when I watched your video of you talking to the VA health system.
0:29:11 I think, like many other people, I have this impression in my brain that the VA health system
0:29:16 is broken and you read these articles about people waiting 18 months to get an appointment.
0:29:20 This is like government bureaucracy, it’s just the worst thing.
0:29:24 And then I watch your video and you’re telling me they’re the early adopter and they’re the
0:29:25 pioneer.
0:29:26 I love that.
0:29:31 Sure, governments have a tendency to be aggravatingly slow and frustrating.
0:29:37 But within the VA, there are some amazing people and they have really pivoted to innovation,
0:29:39 to encouraging innovation.
0:29:45 When at that conference where you saw the video from, one of the opening remarks by Ann Bailey
0:29:51 was a quote from Margaret Meade, that never doubt the power of a small group of individuals
0:29:56 to change the world is the only method that has.
0:30:01 And I think there are some great individuals within the VA that are changing things.
0:30:07 So yes, there’s been a legacy of slowness and government bureaucracy, Congress is their
0:30:08 board of directors.
0:30:13 And sometimes managing your board of directors is a problem in general, but if it’s Congress,
0:30:15 then more please don’t get mad at me, Congress.
0:30:17 But they’re making it happen.
0:30:23 And I also think the boomers grew up loving gadgets and technology.
0:30:28 And I think that as we age, we’re going to be asking for the latest and greatest and
0:30:33 purchasing it on our own if it’s affordable, if we can’t get it from our docs.
0:30:37 I think there is a pathway to be optimistic about this.
0:30:43 My last question for you, Walter, and I need you to put all semblance of modesty aside
0:30:49 and my podcast is called remarkable people and we’re on a mission to help people become
0:30:51 remarkable and make a difference.
0:30:56 And obviously we consider you remarkable because we have you on this episode.
0:31:02 So again, putting modesty aside, if you can look back on your life and say like, what has
0:31:06 enabled me to do such remarkable work?
0:31:12 I would say that what has enabled me to do such remarkable work has been.
0:31:16 I had a very wonderful childhood and that’s helped me feel self confident.
0:31:22 I’ve also enjoyed meeting other remarkable people along the way.
0:31:28 And so the confluence of where I went to college, which was an experimental college
0:31:32 called Hampshire College, it was just getting started at the time, no grades, no required
0:31:37 courses and I met some amazing people as colleagues then.
0:31:44 And then just as I’ve been fortunate enough to run across some incredible people as friends,
0:31:49 Jaren Lanier was my best friend during grad school at Stanford, Eric Horvitz who set up
0:31:52 Microsoft Research Labs also.
0:31:58 So I’ve been fortunate by running across amazing people that helped me go down my pathway.
0:32:02 And like all of us, I think it’s a combination of seeing some doors open and going through
0:32:07 it, but we need the good fortune of those doors to be around and we, if we’re able to
0:32:10 grab the hook as it goes by, then we’re fortunate.
0:32:13 But if the timing doesn’t work out or we don’t have that fortune, that doesn’t mean we’re
0:32:14 not remarkable.
0:32:18 It just means that we didn’t have that opportunity in front of us.
0:32:24 I just thought of one last question, which is, Walter, what do you want to be remembered
0:32:25 for?
0:32:32 Oh, I honestly, I will put aside all modesty here again, because you asked guy, I honestly
0:32:36 don’t really think about being remembered.
0:32:38 I want to have an impact in my lifetime.
0:32:40 That makes me happy.
0:32:46 But I don’t feel it has to do about me at all to the extent that I can see things that
0:32:52 I think are helpful and important to happen, especially involving what can happen with
0:32:55 science and research and tech coming together, then I’m happy.
0:32:56 It doesn’t have to be me.
0:33:02 But what I hope is remembered is that this was a time where our generation took the challenges
0:33:06 in front of us and found pathways to solve them.
0:33:10 And there’s many things to worry about to, of course, climate change, conflict, but also
0:33:16 those three big health care challenges I mentioned, I think we can solve them and I hope we do.
0:33:17 And I think we can.
0:33:22 I will remember this time with a smile if we rise to the occasion and address some of
0:33:27 these challenges instead of just missing that opportunity.
0:33:32 I hope that you’ve enjoyed this little window into the future.
0:33:36 Although as Walter has pointed out, maybe it’s not, quote, the future.
0:33:42 Maybe it’s here already, and we just have to more evenly distribute it.
0:33:44 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:33:46 This is Remarkable People.
0:33:49 I want to thank the rest of the Remarkable People team.
0:33:53 That of course includes Tessa Nizmer, our ACE researcher.
0:33:59 Madison Nizmer, she’s the producer of this podcast, co-author of Think Remarkable With
0:34:04 Me, and finally, she’s the co-author of the Substack Newsletter that we have.
0:34:09 I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the Substack Newsletter on this podcast.
0:34:10 What a bozo.
0:34:17 Check out our Substack Newsletter where every week we put out an issue about how to be remarkable.
0:34:18 Where was I?
0:34:20 Oh, the rest of the Remarkable People team.
0:34:26 That would be the sound designers extraordinaire, Jeff See and Shannon Hernandez.
0:34:31 And finally, there’s Louise Magana, Fallon Yates, and Alexis Nishimura.
0:34:34 Finally, I want to thank Jean Sealy.
0:34:42 Jean Sealy and I worked together in the McIntosh division a long time ago, and poor Jean.
0:34:46 She was kind of tasked with keeping me in line.
0:34:48 That was a very big challenge.
0:34:49 I hope you hear this, Jean.
0:34:52 Thank you for introducing me to Walter Greenleaf.
0:34:53 Alrighty, that’s it.
0:34:55 I’m Guy Kawasaki.
0:34:57 This is the Remarkable People team.
0:35:07 We’re on the mission to make you remarkable, and until next time, mahalo and aloha.
0:35:09 This is Remarkable People.