The Psychology of Financial Decision-Making in Today's Economy
In this mind-expanding episode of The Higher Standard, Chris and Saied take a detour from their usual financial deep dives to expose the sinister underbelly of human decision-making. Turns out, the economy isn’t broken—our brains are. From Robert Shiller’s Narrative Economics to Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, the duo unpacks how financial markets, political ideologies, and your everyday spending habits are more influenced by viral stories and social media hysteria than by any rational thought process. Long story, short: You’re probably not making financial decisions—you’re reacting to the subconscious cues planted in your head by algorithms, dopamine hits, and good old-fashioned tribalism.
➡️ And just when you thought you were in control, they hit you with The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher, a book that details how social media isn’t just ruining dinner-table conversations—it’s actively rewiring your brain for extremism and anxiety. From doomscrolling mortgage rate headlines to being emotionally blackmailed into buying gold, Chris and Saied reveal that the only way to escape the manipulation matrix is to step back, slow down, and—dare we say—think. But hey, no pressure! If you’d rather stay plugged into the fear factory, there’s always another viral headline waiting to tell you the economy is collapsing.
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🔗 Resources:
The Mortgage Rate Reality Sets In (Yahoo! Finance via Instagram)
Bank of England Cuts Interest Rates Amid Economic Slowdown (The Guardian)
US Imposes New Tariffs, Prompting Global Trade Tensions (CNN Politics)
US Job Growth Slows in January (Associated Press )
⚠️ Disclaimer: Please note that the content shared on this show is solely for entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal or investment advice or attributed to any company. The views and opinions expressed are personal and not reflective of any entity. We do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, and listeners are urged to seek professional advice before making any legal or financial decisions. By listening to The Higher Standard podcast you agree to these terms, and the show, its hosts and employees are not liable for any consequences arising from your use of the content.
Transcript
And we're back, baby.
Speaker B:Another magical episode of the Higher Standard.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the number one financial literacy podcast in the world.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's us.
Speaker A:That's us.
Speaker A:Sitting next to me on my left, my partner in crime, Kristen Heavy.
Speaker B:And sitting next to me on my right, my one and only, my partner in time, the legend that is said Omar.
Speaker A:Oh, thank you.
Speaker B:The modern day Bagger Vance.
Speaker A:The modern day what?
Speaker B:Bagger Vance.
Speaker B:The legend of Bagger Vance.
Speaker A:Oh, it's the legend of Bagger Vance.
Speaker B:Stop it.
Speaker B:Don't.
Speaker B:Don't make another top of the show.
Speaker B:Don't know.
Speaker A:Top of the show.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Come on, man.
Speaker A:What is it?
Speaker A:What are we talking about?
Speaker B:It's a golf based movie.
Speaker A:Is it really Will Smith?
Speaker A:I don't know this Will Smith.
Speaker B:It's new.
Speaker B:Come on, man.
Speaker A:It's old.
Speaker A:Oh, geez.
Speaker A:Here we go.
Speaker B:All right, well, rather than get into, say, it's chronic lack of film taste and viewing, we're gonna go into a show which is packed, jam packed full of how would you put aside the.
Speaker A:Moist goody good stuff?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's all there.
Speaker A:It's all there.
Speaker A:But before we get into that, we need everyone.
Speaker A:We're checking the analytics, we're seeing all the numbers.
Speaker A:We're seeing a good portion of the people that are watching aren't subscribing.
Speaker A:So please make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel.
Speaker A:Hit that like button.
Speaker A:Ring that notification bell, Leave us an honest five star review.
Speaker A:If that's on Apple or Spotify, we actually have one that we should read right now.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, we got a review.
Speaker A: Yeah, this from Esther: Speaker B:I mean, we do try to be sometimes informational.
Speaker A:I mean, we do provide.
Speaker A:We do provide information.
Speaker A:And I mean, you are pretty funny.
Speaker B:You're not.
Speaker A:No, you're supposed to say it back to me.
Speaker B:Oh, you're pretty funny too.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I didn't think that talking about finance and wealth building could be so light hearted.
Speaker A:Thank you for making this show fun, yet easy for the audience to understand.
Speaker A:I appreciate how you are all very honest about the positive and challenging elements of your careers that you've lived, man.
Speaker B:And they've been challenging, let me tell you.
Speaker A:Yeah, we've had definitely peaks and valleys.
Speaker A:Thank you for making a show that doesn't just show one way to financial literacy, but gives the tools for every human to find the right path for them.
Speaker B:Well, Esther, there is no one way.
Speaker B:That's the easy answer there.
Speaker B:So no need to worry about that.
Speaker A:But no two people have the same starting point.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's very subjective.
Speaker B:Which is also why we kind of have a particular disdain towards core sellers.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Because they're selling a one size fits all plan to build wealth, which frankly, I've never seen two people do it the exact same way.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And look, we've been on the record and saying we don't believe in core selling because we think that we provide a lot of information out to the peeps.
Speaker A:But I'm not going to rule it out for some time in the future.
Speaker A:I was going to say at a very, very, very, like nominal price.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I was thinking like $5 for a first time home buyer course.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like 10 bucks or something like that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Or we give something away for free.
Speaker B:Just a multifamily investment course.
Speaker A:Just something to show a little consideration.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Just hey, guys, we like you.
Speaker B:Here's about what I would pay for dinner on a tip.
Speaker A:Love that.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:You're getting the tip.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:Right, exactly.
Speaker B:So we want your tip, everybody.
Speaker A:Yeah, we want your tip.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:So I have an interesting structure to start the show, but really the back end of this show is going to be super, super critical.
Speaker B:And if we walk away from this episode changing one person's perspective on financial information and the economy and the narrative around it and the intersection of those two, then I would say we've accomplished something.
Speaker B:We're successful.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:Because we're really going to challenge the way you think about economics, the way you think about data, and the way you think about the narratives that you see in front of you every single day.
Speaker B:But we would be remiss if we started the show without talking about some of the things that give you kind of a current state of affairs in the last week.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:So right off the top mortgage rates, the reality is sinking in.
Speaker B:Okay, this from Yahoo.
Speaker B:Finance.
Speaker B:Today's higher mortgage rate reality is finally sinking in with potential home buyers and sellers.
Speaker B:As the average 30 year mortgage rates have stayed stuck around about 7%.
Speaker B:The net share of consumers who believe they'll fall in the next 12 months declined sharply.
Speaker B:In Fannie Mae's latest survey on housing market attitudes.
Speaker B:Just 35% of respondents polled by the mortgage giant in January now expect rates to drop down from 42% in December and a survey high of 45% in November.
Speaker B:The share of consumers who think that rates will rise jumped from 32% to only down.
Speaker B:I'm sorry, jumped to 32% from 25%.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I still can't read for those of you who don't know, housing market economists have warned that mortgage rates might not fall much this year after the Fed lowered its expectation for rate cutting.
Speaker B:And uncertainties linger over how President Donald Trump's economic agenda could impact inflation and economic growth.
Speaker B:And look, I think this is actually a good thing.
Speaker B:It sounds like both, both people who were, hey, rates are going to go up or hey, rates are going to go down.
Speaker B:They're all getting to the same place, they're all uncertain.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So you know, over the course of the last two years or so, what the Fed is going to do with the fed funds rate has been, you know, primarily what people are talking about.
Speaker A:So naturally, the way everyone always thought of it was if the Fed cuts rates, then that should mean naturally interest rates for homes should go down.
Speaker A:But we found out that that's not quite how it works.
Speaker A:On the last cut that we did, the ten year actually rose.
Speaker A:And we know mortgage rates are influenced by the ten year Treasury.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:So it sounds like people are starting to understand that.
Speaker A:Well, we can't just go off what the Fed says.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it.
Speaker B:I think they've been so over stigmatized for a long time with some of these headlines.
Speaker B:I mean, look at the headline in this article.
Speaker B:The Mortgage Rate reality sinks in.
Speaker B:This constant need to emotionally charge people to get them to read your content or view your content is going to be a big part of what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker B:The next article is another great example of this.
Speaker B:This is a headline from again this week.
Speaker B:Bank of England cuts interest rates amid economic slowdown People.
Speaker B:Oh my God.
Speaker B:Economic slowdown.
Speaker B:Oh my God.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I need to know about this.
Speaker B:It's an economic slowdown.
Speaker B:You know, it sounds, you know, oh.
Speaker A:That'S kind of what the Fed is leaning on right now.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And we're going to get into the jobs numbers here in a bit.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But if, if all the data points for all, you know, for what's going on in the economy, what's going on with gdp, what's going on with jobs, what's going on with inflation too.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If everything is positive, then there's really no reason for the Fed to cut rates.
Speaker B:And more importantly, there's no reason for you to read about people talking about the Fed cutting rates.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:It's a parasitic cycle.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Sounds like someone's trying to control the narrative.
Speaker B:Someone is trying to control the narrative and the question is, is are you actively being engaged or are you Subconsciously being engaged.
Speaker B:That's a little foreshadowing the business.
Speaker B:K.
Speaker B:There you go.
Speaker B:We're going to tell you which one it is and why.
Speaker B:So, and if you like books, this episode is going to have five really solid recommendations for you.
Speaker A:We get that.
Speaker A:We get those recommendations or requests a lot.
Speaker A:What do you guys recommend us read?
Speaker B:I'm delivering today, baby.
Speaker B:Yeah, coming in hot.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean you could always read the transcript of the show, people.
Speaker B:Yeah, I feel like, you know, you could sometimes, sometimes putting it in your ear holes isn't enough.
Speaker B:Yes, you put in your eye sockets too.
Speaker B:Put it in your eye sockets, you know.
Speaker B:On February 6th, the bank of England reduced its base interest rate from 4.75% down to 4.5%, aiming to stimulate the UK's slowing economy.
Speaker B: st rate cut since November of: Speaker B: central bank also halved its: Speaker B:Following the announcement, the FTSE 100 index, which is in London, reached a record high, closing at 8,727.28 points, a 1.1% increase.
Speaker B:So a really sensational title for something that was kind of like me, you know?
Speaker A:Right, exactly.
Speaker B:Amid economic slowdown.
Speaker B:But you also had your index, the FTSE close at an all time high.
Speaker A:I mean it's also true.
Speaker A:But we know that some of the data points that came out this week, expectations for a rate cut at the next Fed meeting, which I believe is March 19, I think so they're going to stay put and not cut rates again.
Speaker A:It's a 95 chance.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I don't think you see a rate cut then.
Speaker A:Yeah, Pretty confident they're signal they've been signaling higher for longer.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean I, I will probably live the rest of my life.
Speaker B:Anytime someone says higher for longer, I'm going to think Fed scenarios.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's no longer.
Speaker B:That's the only thing I'm going to equate that phrase to now.
Speaker B:Right, right.
Speaker B:Sad but true that in inflation there is transitory.
Speaker A:Transitory, yeah, Anything that's transitory.
Speaker A:Oh, like inflation.
Speaker B:Like inflation, yeah.
Speaker A: Kind of back in: Speaker B:Doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.
Speaker B:I feel like it propped up a tent and it's just going to camp out here for a while.
Speaker A:Even though the numbers have been coming down, just the fact that I feel like this is the longest stretch in my adult lifetime that I'VE been talking about inflation.
Speaker B:Yeah, it probably is.
Speaker B:Yeah, probably is.
Speaker A:I mean, not just because of the show, but in general.
Speaker B:I mean, the show does help.
Speaker A:It's on the, it's on every headline.
Speaker B:I mean, we do sit down and talk literally for hours about once a week about inflation.
Speaker B:About inflation, yeah.
Speaker B:Another sexy headline.
Speaker B:US imposes new tariffs, prompting global trade tensions.
Speaker B:And everybody and their mother on social media was lighting up talking about this this week.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:In a positive way or negative way?
Speaker B:Well, both.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Some people are big advocates, some people are, are not so big a fan.
Speaker B:And some people are saying, well, the American population doesn't understand tariffs.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And to paraphrase the reality here, before I get in the article's content, we pay the tariffs.
Speaker A:No, no different than when we, we talk about inflation numbers every month.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:We talk about cpi, pce.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Those are the ones that Fed base it off of.
Speaker A:Another metric or data point that we talk about all the time is ppi, the producer price index.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:No different than that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If it costs more for wholesalers or people to, to create it and make it and sell it off, then what do you think that costs?
Speaker A:Who did that cost get passed down to?
Speaker A:Ultimately gets passed down to the consumer.
Speaker A:They're not going to have their profits go down.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So if country like China or Mexico or Canada, there's tariffs that get put in place.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:In theory, you think they'll, oh, all kinds of extra tax revenue.
Speaker A:No, no, no.
Speaker A:But who's gonna have to front that bill?
Speaker B:We are the American population.
Speaker A:That's us.
Speaker B:You, me, your parents, my friends, everybody around you, they're going to pay those tariffs.
Speaker B:And the sick part is when the tariffs go away, they're not gonna go, you know what?
Speaker B:Let's drop our prices.
Speaker A:Just like when your Netflix subscription goes up again recently.
Speaker A:Again.
Speaker B:My guy, enough.
Speaker B:Like, stop.
Speaker B:Like, okay, look, Netflix, I get it.
Speaker B:I'm addicted to your shows.
Speaker B:I will admit that.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:I know I have a problem and you are my problem.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And you keep raising the price on me.
Speaker B:That's not cool.
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker B:Can I get a grandfather price in?
Speaker B:Like, I'll be The guy at 24 Hour Fitness who had that 899amonth, you know, and everybody else paying 50amonth.
Speaker B:But I was grandfathered in.
Speaker B:Remember those days?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:Glorious days.
Speaker A:I had this discussion with an NBA fan and also listens to the show the other day and how like cable numbers are down for the NBA.
Speaker A:I'm like, half the problem is they make it so hard to watch the game, you gotta have this subscription.
Speaker A:You need to have this cable service.
Speaker A:Oh.
Speaker A:You need to also have this league pad to watch this game.
Speaker A:Like back in the day, you had tv, you had cable, you got to see the game.
Speaker A:That was.
Speaker A:That was it.
Speaker A:And then on top of that, too, it's like the cable ratings and the viewership, they're only tracking cable.
Speaker A:They're not, they're not tracking streaming numbers.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:But here's a problem, though.
Speaker B:In all God's honest truth, the problem with sporting events, and I know it's going to rub some people the wrong way, you probably one of them.
Speaker A:Be careful, bro.
Speaker B:I don't mean to rub you anyway.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I just want to give you the God.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:We have moved to a population that doesn't want to have to be in front of their TV at a certain time.
Speaker A:I agree.
Speaker B:They want to watch on demand content in the outside of sports, outside of maybe some rare events.
Speaker B:Everything you watch is when you want, at your own convenience.
Speaker A:Even the shows that try, even the shows that try to release an episode on a specific day.
Speaker A:I think of like the show that my family and I that we watch right now with the kids, the Beast games.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:It drops every Thursday, but they drop it like in the morning.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you can watch it at any point in the day that you want.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:And that's a lot of shows like on Apple TV will say they come out every Friday, but they really come out Thursday night.
Speaker B:And they know.
Speaker B:So you can watch it at any point in time on Friday.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And I may have watched it last night, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker B:Doesn't matter.
Speaker B:I watched it when it came out.
Speaker A:And I appreciate it more.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So let's get back to the CNN article because I think a lot of the psychology we're talking about here is going to be really, really fascinating for most listeners.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:On February 1st, President Donald Trump announced new tariffs.
Speaker B:25% on imports from Mexico and Canada, 10% for energy products, and 10% on Chinese imports.
Speaker B:These measures aim to address trade imbalances and national security concerns.
Speaker B:In response, Canada and Mexico planned retaliatory tariffs, but negotiated a one month delay after discussions with the U.S.
Speaker B:china retaliated with increasing tariffs on U.S.
Speaker B:goods and initiated an antitrust investigation into Google because that seems fair.
Speaker B:These actions have heightened global trade tensions and raise concerns about potential economic slowdowns.
Speaker B:Again, a lot of talk about a lot of things that have not happened yet.
Speaker B:And on social media, it is all sorts of a Debate right now.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:All over the place.
Speaker B:And I'm.
Speaker B:I'm at this point in my life where I read these things, but I'm also very, very hesitant to believe them because I know from doing the show with you for so long, so much of what we look for on social media is based on confirmation bias of how you feel.
Speaker B:Feel.
Speaker A:100 and so much of what tries to get past the tactic that is used is fear.
Speaker B:Yeah, Right.
Speaker B:Fear is a fear.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And sensationalism are probably the two.
Speaker B:To offend somebody with sensationalism.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:To create fear in somebody with sensationalism.
Speaker B:Those are the two best ways to get people to go viral.
Speaker A:100 exactly.
Speaker A:And with.
Speaker A:With tariffs, the number one, the things that they're going to the talking points.
Speaker A:And this, this is where you're, you know, the alarms just start to go off for you anytime you start to hear some of these things.
Speaker A:It protects jobs.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:Oh, that's.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I want my job protected.
Speaker A:You want your job protected?
Speaker B:You know, it does sound like a nice thing.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:You know what else it does?
Speaker A:It boosts the economy.
Speaker B:Oh, we all want that.
Speaker A:I want a stronger economy.
Speaker A:Would you want a stronger economy?
Speaker B:I mean, like the Inflation Reduction Act.
Speaker B:I want to reduce inflation.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:That sounds amazing, right?
Speaker B:Amazing.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And you know what encourages Chris?
Speaker A:It encourages fair trade.
Speaker A:Things need to be fair.
Speaker B:Are we using first names now?
Speaker A:Saeed.
Speaker A:Christopher.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, site of her.
Speaker B:Listen.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:U.S.
Speaker B:job growth in January slowed and everyone's going, oh, my God, that title doesn't need to be sexy or sensational because everybody's interested in job growth slowing.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So they sell you there.
Speaker B:But the.
Speaker B:The topic, the actual headline, by the way.
Speaker B:US employers added 143,000 jobs in solid but unspectacular January hiring.
Speaker B:Jobless rate fell to 4%.
Speaker B:Big bold letters.
Speaker B:Here it is in the Associated Press.
Speaker B:I mean, it looks like, oh, my God, I should be.
Speaker B:I should be.
Speaker B:I should know this.
Speaker B:Like, everybody's gonna be talking about this.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And then you read the article.
Speaker B:US labor market added 143,000 jobs in January, a decrease from previous months, while the unemployment rate fell to 4.0%.
Speaker B:Wage growth was modest at 0.5% from December, with inflationary pressures partially offset by productivity gains.
Speaker B:Key sectors contributing to job gains include health care, retail, and government, while mining experienced job losses.
Speaker B:Mining, really?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:These developments occurred amid economic uncertainties linked to trade policies and potential impacts on inflation and job creation.
Speaker B:Nothing in there was sensational.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:That headline said a lot of scary stuff.
Speaker B:And then you get to that and you're like, me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So the expectations for the jobs number were that we were going to add 170,000 jobs.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:It came in at 143,000.
Speaker B:So you're talking nationwide, man.
Speaker A:Yeah, nationwide, exactly.
Speaker A:And then I believe there was a revision to December, November, where they, they increased it 100,000.
Speaker A:But we've, we've had this discussion on and on and on where these.
Speaker A:I don't know whether you can trust these numbers, because a year from now, they could revise it back down 800,000 jobs.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So it's like, how much can you really rely on these figures?
Speaker A:You know, in the report, it also said wage growth was up 4.1%.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So there's technically saying, you know, people are getting paid more.
Speaker A:And you're, you're like.
Speaker A:I mean, that is a cause for potentially more inflation down the road.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So 100%.
Speaker B:You'll find that there's a correlation.
Speaker B:I don't go on this path too hard, but Trump's been very critical of the Fed.
Speaker B:If anything, he should be sending Jerome Powell gift baskets and candy, saying, thank you for getting me elected.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, all he, he did all the things.
Speaker A:Little muffins.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:That man got you elected, brother.
Speaker A:He did, yeah.
Speaker A:So I'm just saying a big role.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I want to, I want to pivot here to a moment that I don't really talk about what I do for a living very frequently in the show, and I'm not going to really do that.
Speaker B:But what I will say is I did go to a Raymond James conference.
Speaker A:And what is Raymond.
Speaker B:Raymond James is they have investment bank.
Speaker B:They do a number of different things.
Speaker B:They're, they're pretty, pretty significant player in the powerhouse on Wall Street.
Speaker A:On Wall Street.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:They provide economic data, they help with financial solutions, they do investment banking.
Speaker B:They, they do everything.
Speaker A:They give you insight into, you know, companies and, you know, where they, where they believe things are going and so on and so forth.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I have a tremendous respect for them, their team.
Speaker B:I've worked alongside them for, you know, decades, even before my current career.
Speaker B:And I very rarely have attended event where an economist spoke.
Speaker B:And I was like, damn, I like this guy.
Speaker A:But this guy, like, damn, I like this guy.
Speaker A:He should be my co host or.
Speaker B:Well, he did take a couple of aggressive shots across the bow at Mark Zandy, our boy.
Speaker B:Shout out to you, Zandy.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because Zandy had called for real estate values to go Down.
Speaker B:So of course I'm dipping my head into my, you know, into my side of my shirt going like, hey, look at me.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know.
Speaker B:You don't listen to podcasts, do you, Mr.
Speaker B:Thornberry?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Dr.
Speaker B:Thornberg.
Speaker A:Dr.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So he gave a presentation that I thought was so powerful that I'm going to give you some of the psychologically interesting tidbits from what he presented.
Speaker B:His presentation was far better than I could ever articulate.
Speaker B:So I'm not even attempting to do that here today.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:But Dr.
Speaker B:Christopher Thornburg, Ph.D.
Speaker B:covered a presentation called the Economic Outlook of the U.S.
Speaker B:and California Narratives versus Reality.
Speaker B:But what is really fascinating was he laid out the psychology behind people's reactions.
Speaker B:And I'm going to skip over what he got into from an economics perspective because you've heard us talk about all these things on the show for a number of years now.
Speaker B:You know that there is an overvaluation bubble somewhere in this economy.
Speaker B:Whether that's homes, whether it's the stock market, that's just, that's just a certainty, right?
Speaker A:100%.
Speaker A:And especially in the stock market, the tech heavy stock market.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:When we look no further than Deep Seek comes out, next thing you know, look at that, the market cap adjustment to Nvidia.
Speaker A:Right away you're like, wait a minute, are we in a bubble?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I avoided the entire Deep Seek thing.
Speaker B:I spent no time reading about Deep Seek that entire week just because I didn't want to do it.
Speaker A:If anything, I thought it taught a valuable lesson, though, that, you know, you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket in something like technology.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:At least that's my mindset.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Because you never know what could happen overnight.
Speaker A:Something could pop up and the whole game changes.
Speaker B:Yeah, true.
Speaker B:Well, so I'm going to read to you a little bit of an introduction, which we typically don't do from a red structured format.
Speaker B:But I think for this particular episode, the sometimes you got to rely on these authors that are going to articulate it better than us.
Speaker B:So in today's world, money moves faster than ever and so does information.
Speaker B:You've got peer to peer sharing, you've got all these things.
Speaker B:Oh, by the way, you would love Mr.
Speaker B:Thornberg because he hates cryptocurrency, thinks it's all about narrative and completely a fallacy.
Speaker A:So you're like, same Z's.
Speaker B:He, he was, he referred to crypto, cryptocurrency as a Ponzi scheme on a number of occasions.
Speaker A:So yeah, he's friends with our boy Warren.
Speaker B:Yeah, he.
Speaker B:He is friends with your boy Warren, and he did cite Warren Buffett and his.
Speaker A:Yeah, I'm sure he did.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, he did.
Speaker B:So in today's world, money moves faster than ever and so does information.
Speaker B:But are we really making better decisions?
Speaker B:Markets swing wildly, political divisions deepen, and economic uncertainty keeps growing.
Speaker B:What if the problem isn't just inflation or interest rates, but how we as a society think?
Speaker B:And more importantly, how we've changed how we think.
Speaker B:Not intentionally, not by design, not because humans are becoming different, but because the technology around us is gamifying information around us.
Speaker B:Okay, so in this episode, we're going to dive into five of the most important books that reveal why our economy, our minds, and our society feel increasingly chaotic.
Speaker B:If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the amount of information on the show, just from a finance perspective, this is going to help you understand why.
Speaker B:Do you ever talk to your friends or get in a group and you feel like people are searching for confirmation bias or they have so many people that agree with them?
Speaker B:We're going to explain why and more importantly, we're going to help you start to decipher, not only from a financial perspective, but from just looking at social media perspective, how you can alleviate some of the psychological pitfalls that some people fall into, which make a lot of kids depressed these days.
Speaker B:Okay, so each one of these books tells a different part of the story, so you need to look at them all in aggregate.
Speaker B:The first book we're going to look at is a book by Robert Schiller.
Speaker B:There's going to be a lot of Nobel laureates here, so I need you to refrain from being upset.
Speaker A:Robert Schiller from the Case Shiller Index.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:Your boy Robert Schiller wrote a book called Narrative Economics.
Speaker B:How the Stories We Believe Shape the Economy is the kind of summary of that.
Speaker B:So we're going to start there talking about the stories that we believe and how that changes what actually happens from a financial perspective.
Speaker A:And this doesn't just apply to the economy.
Speaker B:No.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:This is, this is like the age old story.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:This is the way people process information is almost.
Speaker A:They.
Speaker A:You have generally, I think, two kinds of people.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And some of this can be a blend as well.
Speaker A:There's rational thinking that's more logical and then there's people that try to understand situations through stories.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Well, the, the juxtaposition of these books gets to the point where they basically said that we all try to understand our lives through stories.
Speaker B:It's Just how do you seek those stories out and how are they presented to you?
Speaker B:And you can imagine if you throw in an algorithm in there, those can be weaponized against you, no matter which personality type you have.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And they often are.
Speaker B:And we're going to get into that.
Speaker B:The second book, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Speaker B:Why we're so prone to making bad financial and political decisions.
Speaker B:So again, we're talking about how these narratives change the story, the economy.
Speaker B:Then we're going to talk about why we're so prone to making bad decisions, both financially and politically.
Speaker B:Then the next book we're going to talk about is the Righteous Mind by John Haidt, spelled H I, H A I D, T.
Speaker B:Just.
Speaker B:Just not haters.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Why we fight over economic and political policies instead of finding solutions.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:The fourth book is going to be the Chaos Machine by Max Fisher.
Speaker B:You want to stay to the end on this one?
Speaker B:This one is a very powerful, powerful book.
Speaker B:It talks about how social media is breaking our ability to think clearly and rationally intentionally.
Speaker B:They are doing this to get us to be more ingratiated in their ecosystem.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:Knowing the psychological impacts to us as people, it's no different than fast food companies making those french fries hyper, addictive and also incredibly fattening.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:It's about their profits, not about your health.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:And lastly, we're going to end with a book called the Anxious Generation Again by John Haight.
Speaker B:How a generation raised on smartphones is struggling with anxiety and economic insecurities.
Speaker B:And I think that was a really interesting way to end the show because we're going to talk about these things to a lot of people who are listening to the show.
Speaker B:Our main demographic is probably in around the age of 18 to 44, but I would say anybody who's below the age of, call it 25 has grown up with nothing but this in their life their entire time.
Speaker B:So it is having a pronounced impact on the mental well being of our kids.
Speaker B:And we're going to talk about it.
Speaker B:And you'd be surprised how many people listen to this show from an economics perspective are going to go, oh my God, that's me.
Speaker A:I remember back in the day when we used to go to the gym and be at the gym for like six hours, Right.
Speaker A:Playing ball, lifting, and then you're just hanging out there after and then you would just throw your phone in your bag and you come to it at the end of the day.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:There was no media on it.
Speaker A:There was always a competition before we Check out how many texts you think you got.
Speaker A:How many texts do you think I got?
Speaker A:And I'd go and it'd be like one or two texts all the time.
Speaker B:That used to be a lot back in the day.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:One person messaged me.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:But now I can't imagine, like if you didn't get those Instagram notifications, you didn't get the likes on that post you made.
Speaker A:It's a real problem for these kids.
Speaker B:It's a real problem.
Speaker B:So let's start off by.
Speaker B:With narrative economics from Robert Schiller, how stories go viral and drive major economic events.
Speaker B:Never did I think I'd see a Nobel Laureate talking about stories going viral causing financial events.
Speaker B:I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker A:But we saw it not too long ago with the contagion period.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, and he cites that particularly.
Speaker B:Well, the contagion period was this knee jerk psychological response where we, we wound up having like a, I want to call it just over a trillion dollar impact to the economy.
Speaker B:But we added like 5 trillion of stimulus into it or something.
Speaker B:Or maybe it's billions, but whatever into it we five times added what the economy ultimately lost.
Speaker B:So of course people were flush with cash.
Speaker B:And when people flush with cash, do they buy stuff?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:What happens?
Speaker B:A lot of people buy stuff.
Speaker B:Inflation.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's not rocket science exactly, but we did these things because we were so afraid.
Speaker B:Fear.
Speaker A:Yep.
Speaker B:Fear drives decisions.
Speaker B:So the key themes and insights from this book.
Speaker B:The power of economic narratives.
Speaker B:Economic events like recessions, booms and financial crises are shaped by stories that go viral.
Speaker B:The second somebody of high profile status says we are in a recession, and that's picked up and it goes viral, the American population will believe we are in recession whether we are actually in one or not.
Speaker A:Honestly, this happens, I think on every scale.
Speaker A:So, like, given what we do in our show.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:I'm plugged into a lot of the other financial literacy shows and I.
Speaker A:And I'm.
Speaker A:It's on, it's on my feed, right.
Speaker A:To see what everyone's talking about.
Speaker A:And sure enough, when I see one person start talking about how to buy a home.
Speaker A:Very basic piece of content.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Next thing you know, all the other channels are putting up videos.
Speaker A:How to buy a home.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:It's like they all have them on standby, waiting.
Speaker A:So like you said, if one notable person comes out and says we're in a recession, game over.
Speaker B:For the record, I apparently am notable enough.
Speaker B:Food for thought.
Speaker A:Not yet.
Speaker B:Not yet.
Speaker B:These narratives influence consumer behavior, investor sentiment, and policy decisions.
Speaker B:A great example.
Speaker B:Again, going back to the recession scenario.
Speaker B:If somebody you believe and trust as we're in a recession and you adamantly believe that, what are you going to do?
Speaker B:You're not going to spend as much, you're going to be more thoughtful about your money, you're going to be more concerned, you're going to have all this extra anxiety because this person that you believe and respect and trust has told you that we are entering a financially bad time.
Speaker B:Compounding this, further, viral narratives in history have been very pronounced.
Speaker B:Shiller analyzes major financial events through the lens of popular narratives such as the Great Depression and the belief in excess of speculation.
Speaker B:The bitcoin boom driven by a distrust of central banks and inflation fears shaping public expectations and policy, the last of which we're clearly living through right now.
Speaker B:He also goes into memes and contagion.
Speaker B:In economics, economic ideas spread like viruses, some catching on and some shaping behavior while others fade away.
Speaker B:But social media and mass communication accelerate the spread of these financial narratives by using things like memes, which are supposed to be jokes or funny.
Speaker B:But that split snapshot with no information, no context, can be overwhelmingly powerful, even though they might seem silly at face value.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And you gotta, you gotta ask yourself, there's so much money right behind some of these, you know, big media, right, that who would it benefit if they actually had a program and they came out and said, you know, I think that we're actually in a recession right now, and that just hasn't been declared yet, so you should all stop spending your money.
Speaker A:It would not help anybody.
Speaker A:That helps them pay for ads on the show.
Speaker A:I can't.
Speaker A:I can't see a world where that would ever exist.
Speaker B:100%.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And then you look at the data and you say, is it that bad?
Speaker B:I mean, if you look at the data, not really.
Speaker B:Does it look like there's an asset bubble?
Speaker B:Yeah, there does.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:But it's to.
Speaker A:To Schiller's point, to your point, right.
Speaker A:These stories that shape our values and our belief systems.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I think I saw, I saw a meme the other day, right, about this.
Speaker A:It said, I think it would only take one generation where if we were required to send our kids to school, okay.
Speaker A:At an early age, let's call it six months.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And there was a program that taught kids at school how to walk, right.
Speaker A:And one generation later, I bet you a majority of people would think, in order for my kid to walk, I have to send them to school.
Speaker A:It would just take One.
Speaker A:It would just take one generation, right?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because you would hear a story from the people that are older above, you know, older than you tell you.
Speaker A:Oh, this is how I taught my kids to walk.
Speaker A:I sent them to school, and that's how they learned.
Speaker B:This is also why whenever I read stories about religion and I listen to them, I take them at a much deeper value than most people do.
Speaker B:Like, I try to find the commonalities.
Speaker B:In other words, those of you who don't know what I do in my spare time, which is I have very little of these days, is I tend to read a lot and watch a lot about archeology and history.
Speaker B:It's kind of.
Speaker B:Kind of nerd out on it.
Speaker A:That's your thing.
Speaker B:And one of the things that I've grown really, really interested in in my 40s was how there's a lot of symmetry in religions across the world at different places at different times.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, how does a religion for the Incan and Mayans, if you will, seem very similar to some of the religious and visual indications of religion in Europe, Turkey, for example.
Speaker B:There's a lot of things around the world that there was no way to communicate.
Speaker B:There was no phone system.
Speaker B:People had to sail across the oceans in order to spread this stuff.
Speaker B:But yet the stories are very similar.
Speaker B:It's kind of hard to deny that there's something there.
Speaker B:Right, but that's the way you taught the next generation is with stories.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So economists tend to ignore these kind of narratives.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:But there's compelling reasons why they shouldn't.
Speaker B:Chiller goes on to say that traditional economic models assume rational behavior and overlook the power of storytelling.
Speaker B:If your model is based on humans acting rationally, then your model is probably wrong.
Speaker A:It's 100%.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, I think most humans tend to act when it's too late.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:When it's already gone past that point.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Shiller tends to argue throughout this book that economists should incorporate narrative analysis to better predict market trends.
Speaker B:Say, hey, this is what the rational person would do, but this is also the sentiment around it.
Speaker B:So, for example, we use Bitcoin because I know how much you love it.
Speaker B:If the narrative is that this is a way hedge against inflation.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Or there's a deep distrust for the US Government and that this is going to to be your secure way around it.
Speaker B:And that's the narrative.
Speaker B:And it's believed and bought so much that Bitcoin's over 100,000.
Speaker B:You need to at least incorporate that narrative and that deep distrust into Whatever.
Speaker B:Your underlying disbelief is that crypto is good.
Speaker B:Another great one.
Speaker B:Gold is a hedge against inflation.
Speaker B:How?
Speaker B:This is a very logical concept.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:People always say, chris, what's the best hedge against inflation?
Speaker B:And I always say, keep investing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:What's the thought process behind gold?
Speaker B:Because they think that people are.
Speaker B:Oh, currency is going to be devalued because everything's going to cost so much.
Speaker B:Well, guess what?
Speaker B:What do you buy gold with?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Currency.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:I mean, back.
Speaker A:Back.
Speaker A:Back at it during a time when every dollar was backed by a piece of gold or silver.
Speaker A:Different.
Speaker A:Completely different.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Carried a different weight back then.
Speaker A:But now, not.
Speaker A:Not so much.
Speaker B:But people don't use their logical brain.
Speaker B:They buy the narrative.
Speaker B:Oh, my God, that guy's got a lot of gold.
Speaker B:He must be rich.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Not true at all.
Speaker B:But yet that's where we wind up.
Speaker A:Is that why Mr.
Speaker A:T wore all the.
Speaker B:What you're talking about, Willis?
Speaker B:No, fool.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:Well.
Speaker A:No, you're thinking about.
Speaker A:God, it's gonna hurt.
Speaker A:Bother me.
Speaker B:Kids of the 80s.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:I gotta get this.
Speaker A:Go ahead.
Speaker B:It wasn't the Cosby show, was it?
Speaker B:No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker B:It was all the Family.
Speaker A:Different strokes.
Speaker B:Different strokes.
Speaker A:Yeah, different.
Speaker B:Damn it.
Speaker B:All right, well, examples of economic narratives.
Speaker B:Luddite fears about automation and job loss.
Speaker B:Everybody's afraid of.
Speaker B:Of losing their job to automation.
Speaker B:It's a narrative.
Speaker B:AI is going to take my job or it won't.
Speaker A:Or, you know, I mean, you got to think, right.
Speaker A:Certain industries are so old that they're not just going to allow AI to come in and disrupt everything.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Attorneys, they have so many trade associations in the way.
Speaker A:Banking.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's gonna help a lot of things.
Speaker A:It definitely can help a lot of things.
Speaker B:Are jobs gonna change?
Speaker B:Yeah, but jobs change all the time anyway, you know, over the course of 20 years.
Speaker B:The job you do today is not what it was 20 years ago.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Another example, housing market bubbles and the belief that real estate prices always go up.
Speaker B:That's the narrative.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:How many Realtors do you see on social media saying, you know what?
Speaker B:Home values always go up.
Speaker B:They go up every single year, year after, they always go up.
Speaker B:And you know what?
Speaker B:Statistically speaking, you're more right than wrong.
Speaker B:But that's also an economic narrative that if you're an economist and you're predicting behaviors, you've got to kind of think about.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:You have to.
Speaker B:So stock market optimism and pessimism cycles and their role in financial crises.
Speaker B:It takes one talking head on CNBC to Spread the narrative that we were in a bull market or a bear market, and then it becomes fodder for public commentary and conversation, and everyone picks a side.
Speaker B:Okay, so now we've established that economic narratives are important.
Speaker B:We recognize that the study of economic narratives can help policymakers, investors, and business leaders anticipate market shifts.
Speaker B:So there's a reason that you need to be more thoughtful about what's a narrative and is it real or not?
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Shiller argues in his book that stories, not just numbers, drive the economy.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So bear with me.
Speaker B:I'm going in a specific order here, because all of this will build on the concept that came before it.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:All right, so now we're going to talk about Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:This book is really fascinating because it describes the two systems we, as humans use to think.
Speaker B:And narratives play a big role in how those systems are accessed.
Speaker B: n Thinking Fast and slow from: Speaker B:Ooh, sorry, Saeed.
Speaker B:Sensitive topic.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker A:Still.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker A:Still no green jacket.
Speaker B:Just put out a book and you.
Speaker A:Too can get the Nobel Laureate.
Speaker B:You gotta.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:It's a book thing.
Speaker B:So Nobel Laureate Daniel Kinneman explains how humans think and make decisions.
Speaker B:He introduces two models of thinking.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:System one, fast, intuitive, emotional.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Move on it quickly.
Speaker B:I'm doing this.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:System two, slow, deliberate, logical.
Speaker B:And explains how cognitive bias shapes our judgment and decision making.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So let's get into some of the themes and insights in this book, because I think they're gonna be really fascinating as we go on.
Speaker B:So the two systems of thinking, the system one, the fast thinking, it's intuitive, emotional, automatic.
Speaker B:You react quickly based on patterns and past experiences.
Speaker B:A great example of this is you instantly recognize a friend's face in a crowd.
Speaker B:You've seen that face, you know that person, you react.
Speaker B:That site.
Speaker B:Right, Right.
Speaker B:But we also do this with all sorts of things in our lives, and we don't realize it because we seek out confirmation bias.
Speaker B:And when we seek out confirmation bias, we're not doing it with our logical, slow, thought process brain most of the time.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:We're doing it with our.
Speaker B:I know that.
Speaker B:That statement.
Speaker B:I feel like that statement.
Speaker B:That's the statement that.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker B:I agree with it.
Speaker A:Yeah, there you go.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Or you see some.
Speaker A:You see something from the outside looking in immediately, as a human, you try to understand it.
Speaker A:And how do you understand it?
Speaker A:Based on, you know, past experiences or things that other stories that have been told to you.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's A compelling thing.
Speaker B:We don't think about these things that we do every single day, but we're doing this in every single moment of every single day, and we don't realize it.
Speaker B:And the algorithms on social media are weaponizing this thought process against us.
Speaker B:They don't want you to go to System two.
Speaker B:System two is slower thinking, logical, analytical and effortful.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So you're gonna.
Speaker B:It requires this concentration and reasoning, and we, as humans, we're getting more and more distracted.
Speaker B:So concentration is not a status that we're constantly in.
Speaker B:At least not without the help of medication, apparently, for some people.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So an example is solving a complex math problem.
Speaker B:How often do we.
Speaker B:Outside of the work capacity where, you know, we're supposed to be doing work, do we sit down and voluntarily engage System 2 to learn and concentrate on something?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Rarely, as an adult.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Cognitive biases in heuristhetics.
Speaker B:Heuristics.
Speaker B:Heuristics.
Speaker B:I can't say the word.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's very complex SAT vocabulary that one of your laureate people would say humans are not fully rational decision makers.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:Stop it.
Speaker B:That is not true.
Speaker A:Come on.
Speaker A:I am.
Speaker B:I feel like you're not.
Speaker B:I'm not no rational person without that much arm hair, buddy.
Speaker B:So we rely on shortcuts.
Speaker B:Heuristics.
Speaker B:Heuristics, yeah.
Speaker B:That can lead to errors.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So if we as humans like to take shortcuts whenever we think about things logically and it leads to errors, you would think we'd slow down.
Speaker A:I guess people want to work smarter, not harder.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Apparently not the case.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Well, there's a couple different biases that we need to be aware of, because these will impact economic decisions and, frankly, how we interact with things like social media.
Speaker B:Anchoring bias.
Speaker B:We rely too heavily on the first piece of information we receive.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You get a piece of information, says we're in recession, you now believe we're in a recession.
Speaker B:No one's going to convince you.
Speaker B:You anchored your bias to that article.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:How many people know that?
Speaker A:One person that, like, when they get a piece of information, they just run with it versus hearing both sides of the story.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:All the time.
Speaker A:Anchor by personal life, business, you name it.
Speaker A:It's everywhere.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's a problem.
Speaker B:And certain people will literally fall in love and romanticize the idea that they're on the cutting edge of knowing something and that they're right.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And you're wrong.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And then obviously shaping.
Speaker A:I mean, look, it's.
Speaker A:There's that there's that famous saying, right.
Speaker A:Perception becomes reality.
Speaker A:So as long as they can make them believe and control that narrative and paint it out for them, that's what they're going to run with.
Speaker A:It makes sense to them.
Speaker B:Availability heuristic.
Speaker B:We judge the likelihood of events based on how easily we recall examples.
Speaker B:It has to be likely because I've got a thousand and one examples or.
Speaker A:But some.
Speaker A:But we've.
Speaker A:We have noted on this show that 10 out of the last 10 times when this data point has been this way, it's caused a recession.
Speaker B:That's probability, though.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:There's a difference there.
Speaker A:Difference in probability.
Speaker A:That's reasoning.
Speaker A:That's logical.
Speaker B:Yeah, it is though, because I'm doing it as long as obviously, clearly.
Speaker A:So we're doing.
Speaker B:I think when you have an undeniable correlation to probability, that that that's not quite the same.
Speaker B:I think what they're trying to say is if you know someone, and I'll use an extreme example, who is a politician pushing a bill that you think is inflammatory, but you can come up with countless examples where other similarly situated politicians on the same side of the aisle also want to do it.
Speaker B:Well, you have an availability bias.
Speaker A:I see.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:There's other examples of other people pushing it.
Speaker B:That doesn't necessarily make it more true.
Speaker B:It just means there's other examples of people pushing it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Another one.
Speaker B:Loss aversion.
Speaker B:Losses feel twice as painful as equivalent gains feel pleasurable.
Speaker B:And I can tell you, as a guy who's taking a lot of Ls in my life, I will sit there and dwell on the L.
Speaker B:What's the L?
Speaker A:What's the L?
Speaker A:That still stings to this day.
Speaker A:Come on.
Speaker B:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:That's a great question site.
Speaker A:They can taken quite a few hours, man.
Speaker B:Yeah, I've taken a lot.
Speaker B:The first house I sold because I thought that you're supposed to sell a house and move on to a bigger property I sold way too soon is worth a whole hell of a lot of money later on.
Speaker B:The house I sold last year to pay for some of the taxes that I had.
Speaker B:My tax bill, that one's done.
Speaker B:That's part of the reason why I bought this office.
Speaker A:It's still kind of fresh that we're.
Speaker B:Going into the podcast because in my mind I'm like, I need to replace that property.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And I don't even.
Speaker B:I don't even feel like the W I got in the office.
Speaker B:I feel the L on the house that I.
Speaker B:That I took oh, right.
Speaker B:Like I just.
Speaker A:Yeah, stick.
Speaker A:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:Well, technically speaking, losses feel twice as painful as equivalent gains feel pleasurable.
Speaker A:100%.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So that.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker B:That's just.
Speaker A:I mean, that's when naturally, you know, human behavior, psychologically anyways.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Like, people can recall all the bad stuff that happened to them, but can quickly forget all the things that they should feel blessed for.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:That's just human nature.
Speaker B:And it's part of how we access these cognitive biases and how we access one or two types of thought process.
Speaker A:Is that why you think a lot of people believe in gratitude journals?
Speaker B:I think it's part of the element of why they work is so that you can remove a little bit of the fast thinking, intuitive, emotional, automatic response and move it into what I would call the slower thinking, logical, analytical process.
Speaker B:So you're not knee jerk reacting to emotion.
Speaker B:You're writing down your gratitude.
Speaker B:So you're thinking about it and you're spending the time to concentrate on it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You're engaging that mental.
Speaker B:Mental channel, if you will.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker B:I think there's some value to it.
Speaker B:I'm not a big fan of that.
Speaker B:My wife has recently gotten really into gratitude journaling.
Speaker A:I can right now, as we're talking through this.
Speaker A:Me, I as well, have never practiced, you know, the art of a gratitude journal.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:But I can now talking through this, I can see.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:There's probably some good benefit there.
Speaker A:What I do like to do, though, is, like every birthday, let's just sit back and reflect.
Speaker B:See, I don't like to do anything fun for my birthday.
Speaker B:Like, you know, go out.
Speaker B:I don't have, like, yo, it's my birthday week.
Speaker B:We going out.
Speaker B:Like, I don't know that guy.
Speaker A:Come on.
Speaker B:I don't even want to have a party.
Speaker B:Like, here's what I want.
Speaker A:What's wrong with you?
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker A:I want to celebrate you.
Speaker B:I know.
Speaker B:Here's what I want.
Speaker B:You want to celebrate me?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Have a good day.
Speaker A:Me.
Speaker A:Have a good day.
Speaker B:Have a good day.
Speaker B:Have a.
Speaker B:Do something good.
Speaker A:That you.
Speaker B:You at home, you're like, you know, I had a good day today because that's how you celebrate me.
Speaker B:Oh, my birthday is for everybody.
Speaker B:National holiday.
Speaker B:Have a good day day, you know.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:The role of prospect theory.
Speaker B:Traditional economic theory assumes people act rationally.
Speaker B:That is the Shiller book, narrative economics.
Speaker B:But Kahneman's research shows that fear loses more.
Speaker B:More than we seek gains.
Speaker B:We.
Speaker B:I'm sorry.
Speaker B:Research shows we fear losses more than we seek gains.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:How many people are complacent?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But if we know that people fear losses more than they seek gains, then we know the best way to tap into that emotional response is to visually, audibly threaten them with potential losses to get things to go viral, because it's much, much more going to register of people.
Speaker A:I see what you're saying.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So understanding that human psychology means that things are going to be typically framed to you, the viewer, the listener, the audience, as potential losses, not as potential gains.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:This is why everything's so stigmatized on social media.
Speaker B:You need to have fear engaged to have you send and spread and buy into your.
Speaker B:Your.
Speaker B:Your kind of underlying aversions, if you will.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So an example.
Speaker B:People would rather avoid losing $100 than take an equal risk bet to win 150.
Speaker B:You know, you don't say the L.
Speaker B:L's hurt.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So I gotta bring this up now because you brought this up.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:This.
Speaker A:This last episode of the Beast Games, they narrowed it down from a thousand contestants, right down to six.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:They're the final six.
Speaker B:Damn, that's a big.
Speaker B:That's a big herd.
Speaker A:It's big.
Speaker A:I don't want to get into all the details on how they eliminate some of the people.
Speaker A:Let's just say Your boy Jimmy, Mr.
Speaker A:Beast, is the savage.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:The way he pins these people against each other.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:People are turning left and right.
Speaker A:Anyways, they're down to the final six.
Speaker A:Biggest award in history.
Speaker A:He's offering $5 million to the winner.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:They get down to the final six, he rolls out another 5 million.
Speaker A:So he's got two stacks.
Speaker A:He's got a 5 million here and 5 million here.
Speaker A:And then what he does, he comes out and he rolls out a coin and he says, any one of you right now can select to pick up the coin and flip it heads or tails.
Speaker A:And if you guess correct, I'll include the additional 5 million.
Speaker A:So now the winner will get 10 million.
Speaker A:But if you guess wrong, you're out.
Speaker B:I do it.
Speaker A:You would do it.
Speaker A:So I had this conversation with my wife.
Speaker A:I said, absolutely not.
Speaker A:There's 5 million, bro.
Speaker A:This isn't like 100,000.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:I'll find a way to make it on.
Speaker A:On an investment.
Speaker B:I get it.
Speaker B:But here's what I look at, okay?
Speaker B:I got a one in six chance of being out anyway.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:I understand, but you don't.
Speaker A:You get no favors on if you guessed right.
Speaker A:You just.
Speaker A:Now, you and everybody else have a shot at 10 million as opposed to 5.
Speaker B:What were the statistical odds of you making it down to six?
Speaker A:Yeah, but.
Speaker A:Okay, but now you can't do that, though.
Speaker A:You're playing a very risky game that.
Speaker B:The whole point of the game is risky.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So the way I look at it is, is if I can get everybody else to flip as well, then I'm gonna eliminate more competition.
Speaker A:No, but everyone else is saying, I don't feel it.
Speaker A:I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker B:No one else gonna do it.
Speaker A:No one else did it.
Speaker A:But guess what?
Speaker A:One person stepped up and he ended it and he flipped it, and then they cut it.
Speaker B:So you have to wait.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I guess we'll have to revisit that.
Speaker A:In a little bit.
Speaker B:All right, I'm gonna run through the rest of this book because there's three more I want to get to, and they're all very valuable, particularly the last two, so.
Speaker B:And yes, I am making you wait to the absolute end of the show to.
Speaker B:To really feel like you got what you wanted out of this.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Because we are masters of media.
Speaker A:Yeah, we.
Speaker A:We are.
Speaker B:You should be afraid.
Speaker B:Triggering that fear response that you're not going to hear the end.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The mere fact that we are.
Speaker A:This is now like we.
Speaker A:Two shows in a row.
Speaker A:Perfectly clean.
Speaker B:Perfectly clean.
Speaker A:Well, the last one was minus the buffs.
Speaker B:Yeah, there was some blips, and I didn't bleep them out because I was like, you know what?
Speaker B:Our audience can register the fact that we're trying to learn.
Speaker A:We're trying.
Speaker A:And honestly, like I said, It's PG13.
Speaker B:From the 90s, so no one's ever said this.
Speaker B:This next one to me.
Speaker B:Overconfidence and the illusion of understanding.
Speaker B:No one's ever called me overconfident or providing the illusion of understanding.
Speaker B:People often believe they understand why things happen, even when the outcomes are due to randomness.
Speaker B:Oh, I knew it was gonna happen.
Speaker B:Did you?
Speaker A:Huh?
Speaker B:Right, Bob?
Speaker B:Did you really know that?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Bobby, Come on, Bobby.
Speaker B:Yeah, I knew.
Speaker B:I was 100%.
Speaker B:I knew.
Speaker B:I knew it was going up this way.
Speaker B:Yeah, you did, did you?
Speaker B:Did you bet.
Speaker B:No, but I knew.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Did you?
Speaker A:My favorite thing I always tell my wife at home, too, something comes across the ticker.
Speaker A:I was like, I told you that was going to happen.
Speaker A:Yeah, I never.
Speaker A:We never talked about it one time.
Speaker B:Yeah, Another type of bias.
Speaker B:You ready for it?
Speaker B:Hindsight bias.
Speaker B:Makes us believe past events were predictable.
Speaker B:You should have known that was going to happen.
Speaker B:Yeah, I saw where the bear Stearns was trading.
Speaker A:How do you not know?
Speaker A:I mean, by the time this show airs, we'll know who the super bowl champions are.
Speaker A:How'd you not know the Chiefs were going to win?
Speaker B:I didn't know the Chiefs were in it.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, you had to.
Speaker A:Taylor, bro.
Speaker A:Taylor's too big to not know.
Speaker B:I didn't.
Speaker B:I didn't know.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I had the whole.
Speaker A:There's a whole theory on if they win, he's going to propose right after the game.
Speaker B:I don't care.
Speaker A:Neither do I.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't.
Speaker B:I do not care.
Speaker A:I actually, I think that I won't even be tuning in.
Speaker B:I'm not going to watch super bowl this year.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:My wife and I have decided.
Speaker B:Me.
Speaker B:Decided we're not going to watch it this year.
Speaker A:You're boycotting Kendrick.
Speaker A:That's what you're doing.
Speaker B:Oh, that's right.
Speaker B:So I heard a theory that the reason why Drake sued Kendrick was so he could not play not like us at the Super Bowl.
Speaker A:I mean, I think there's way more than that, but that's got to be more.
Speaker A:I mean, there's real money at play here.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, I.
Speaker A:If he knows.
Speaker A:If he knows what?
Speaker A:Universal.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Universal Music Group.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:If.
Speaker A:If he knows the practices that they run because it's.
Speaker A:It's helped benefit him, then I mean, we're talking about.
Speaker A:It's got to be like 500 million, right?
Speaker B:I don't even want to go there.
Speaker B:The planning fallacy and decision making errors.
Speaker B:We underestimate time costs and risks involved in projects.
Speaker B:Example, construction projects almost always take longer and cost more than plan.
Speaker B:And the guy who's building out a studio.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Always a lot longer and a lot more expensive.
Speaker B:Stupid.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:Why did you let me do that?
Speaker A:Unless.
Speaker A:Unless you got them under contract for a certain.
Speaker A:They offered a certain bid.
Speaker A:You can hold them to that bid.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You've done it before.
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker B:Hold on?
Speaker A:That's the bid, bro.
Speaker A:I would have never done it.
Speaker A:I would have never done it if it was more than that bid.
Speaker B:You don't need to convince me with your hindsight bias.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, I understand.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I shouldn't have to take.
Speaker A:Take a hit because you didn't bid out the project correctly.
Speaker B:Guy lost his job because of you.
Speaker A:No, he didn't know.
Speaker A:I found out he's still employed.
Speaker A:Okay, now I did find out.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:I recently found that out too.
Speaker B:It seems very convenient for the narrative.
Speaker A:That we're talking about spinning that narrative Boy.
Speaker B:So why all this matters?
Speaker B:Understanding bias helps us make better financial, business and personal decisions.
Speaker B:Recognizing the flows in intuition can help us rely on system two, thinking when needed.
Speaker B:Hey, am I reacting emotionally here?
Speaker B:Should I not be reacting emotionally?
Speaker B:Should I be thinking about this critically and slowing down?
Speaker A:I know you have a really good practice when it comes to this.
Speaker B:I do.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I feel like it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:You tend to let it settle in before reacting emotionally.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I'm a.
Speaker B:I'm a cancer.
Speaker B:I don't buy any of this nonsense, but if you go by the astrological signs.
Speaker B:Supposed to be caring and emotional, and my wife very much believes in it.
Speaker A:Case study for why this doesn't exist.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's caring and emotional.
Speaker B:Stop it.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker B:Look, I still am a very emotional person.
Speaker B:Like, I.
Speaker B:I have the desire to want to cry in moments.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker A:It's true.
Speaker A:I have the want and desire.
Speaker A:I just don't.
Speaker B:I know that in certain moments I should be crying, but I can.
Speaker B:I can turn it off.
Speaker A:No, this is.
Speaker A:This is what you do.
Speaker A:This.
Speaker A:Oh, man.
Speaker B:What's wrong with that?
Speaker A:This is bad.
Speaker A:I know that I should be calling and checking on my friend right now, but 100% agree.
Speaker A:Honestly, I'm just not gonna do it.
Speaker B:I'm not that guy.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Like, I understand what a normal person in my situation would do.
Speaker B:My brother's not talking to me right now in large part because I'm not that guy.
Speaker A:And you know.
Speaker A:Oh, God.
Speaker A:Yeah, but you don't real.
Speaker A:But you know.
Speaker A:But you also know, like, let me just fix the situation.
Speaker B:But fixing the situation is me changing who I am to.
Speaker B:I don't make you for the greater good.
Speaker A:No, you're greater good for you two to come back together, bro.
Speaker A:God forbid, if something were to happen.
Speaker B:Let me ask you a question.
Speaker B:When people tell you who they are, why do other people not want to believe them?
Speaker A:What do you mean?
Speaker B:When someone tells you who they are with actions and behavior, believe them.
Speaker B:Stop making excuses for people.
Speaker B:Trigger that type 2 brain that's going to be cognitive and logical.
Speaker B:If someone does not understand your perspective.
Speaker A:I think that there are some people out there that are worth, I guess, explaining yourself to and trying to reach a different level of understanding.
Speaker B:If they don't want to know that nothing you explain to them is going to change anything.
Speaker B:A lot of humans just want what they want from you.
Speaker A:Or they're very stubborn.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Myself included.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Right now.
Speaker B:Nah, this is nothing.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:The righteous mind.
Speaker B:Why good people are divided by politics.
Speaker B:And Religion by Jonathan Haidt.
Speaker B:Great name for it.
Speaker A:Solid name.
Speaker B: The Righteous mind came out: Speaker B:Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores why people have deeply held moral beliefs that often clash, particularly in politics and, and in religion.
Speaker B:And if you've heard us say in the show, there's two more that we think are really, really important.
Speaker B:Money and fitness.
Speaker B:All the same concept here.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So economics we talk about a lot in the show.
Speaker B:People are very polarized and divided by it.
Speaker B:This gets into a little of that.
Speaker B:He argues that morality is not just about the reason, but also shaped by intuition and social influences.
Speaker B:Using insights from psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience, Haidt explains how moral psychology drives ideological divisions.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:We all develop this morality, whether that's religion driven or socially driven, and then we use that to divide ourselves from one another.
Speaker B:I'm not like said because my morals would never allow for this.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You see, I mean, you see it.
Speaker A:Parents do it all the time.
Speaker A:They want their kids to be friends with these kids because maybe the parent, they feel as though the morals of those parents align with theirs.
Speaker B:So springboarding.
Speaker B:True.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:And springboarding off.
Speaker B:Of the type 1 and type 2 thought processes we talked about earlier, there are two systems of moral judgment equally as separated.
Speaker B:Like Kahneman's thinking in Fast and Slow Hate describes two modes of moral reasoning.
Speaker B:Intuition, fast thinking, gut feelings drive moral beliefs.
Speaker B:But that type 2 slower thought process, we justify our beliefs after the fact.
Speaker A:So here's a question for you.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker A:I mean, obviously there's no one way that's the right way, but if you were to have a preference, what do you think?
Speaker B:About what?
Speaker A:Which one is better?
Speaker B:Well, the book, if you were to read the book, basically says that people feel first and then rationalize their beliefs later on.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:You have a knee jerk emotional reaction to something and then you, then you rationalize it later on.
Speaker B:I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker B:I think we as humans, some people, have great intuition.
Speaker B:Well, intuition feelings are a tool for us to use.
Speaker B:If you feel a certain type of way in a moment, it is for a reason.
Speaker B:But if you react in that moment based purely on those feelings, you're probably wrong.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You're dancing with the devil.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Or.
Speaker B:Or you might not be wrong in how you're responding, but what you're doing is, is you're strategically at a disadvantage because you've revealed your emotional hand.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:So what I find myself doing is, is I have.
Speaker B:My knee jerk reaction is often an expedite filled rage.
Speaker A:Mm.
Speaker B:But my rational brain will Usually stop, think, wait, and then I will be strategic later on, over the course of days.
Speaker B:I used to hate unresolved conflict.
Speaker B:And my emotions would drive me.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker B:And I think that's part of that's just growing up.
Speaker B:And part of that's just the, the industry that I'm in and the business that I'm in where it's really at the top, it's very political.
Speaker B:But in my older age, it's.
Speaker B:My emotions will drive a response initially and then I'll get over it and then I'm going to be strategic as hell about how I change, or pivot for that matter.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So the moral foundations theory.
Speaker B:Hate Identifies six moral foundations that shape different ideological worldviews.
Speaker B:Care and harm.
Speaker B:Protecting the vulnerable.
Speaker B:Fairness and cheating.
Speaker B:Justice and reciprocity.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Loyal and betrayal.
Speaker B:Group solidarity.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You're loyal, you're not.
Speaker B:Authority and subservience or subversion, I should say.
Speaker B:Respect for hierarchy.
Speaker B:President said this had to be true.
Speaker B:Sanctity and degradation.
Speaker B:Reverence for purity and tradition.
Speaker B:Oh, that's so immoral and impure.
Speaker B:Liberty and oppression.
Speaker B:Resistance to tyranny.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Oh, that guy's a dictator.
Speaker B:I don't like him.
Speaker A:There you go.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Why liberals and conservatives think differently.
Speaker B:Liberals emphasize care, fairness and liberty.
Speaker B:Well, conservatives value all six foundations, but emphasize loyalty, authority and sanctity more than liberals do.
Speaker B:This explains why political debates often feel like different moral languages clashing.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's true.
Speaker B:They're using different parts of their brains to fight over the same concept.
Speaker B:And you're never going to get that quick emotional response to jive with that cognitive response that somebody else has taken an approach with.
Speaker A:And if there's ever.
Speaker A:Usually what I've noticed, you know, especially in my adulthood.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Is and if there's ever a change in power.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:There's almost as if there's an over correction the other way.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And the pendulum swings so far this way and then it's got to come back this way and now it's got to swing back all the way the other way.
Speaker A:And it's just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker A:This is feel.
Speaker A:It's starting to feel like it's too much.
Speaker B:Well, and certainly the next part of the book I think is really important to me.
Speaker B:I mean, don't get me wrong, I like the politics and stuff, but I'm not huge into them.
Speaker B:I just try to understand the human behavior behind it.
Speaker B:The hive switch in groupishness.
Speaker B:Humans evolve not just as individuals, but also as tribal group oriented creatures.
Speaker B:People from moral tribes they form moral tribes and feel a deep sense of belonging when fighting for a cause.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:You see this a lot on social media.
Speaker B:People will virtue signal and they will pander.
Speaker B:Yeah, they will pander their beliefs, and other people will seek out and recognize and applaud their beliefs and then do the same thing that they did and virtue signal their own beliefs.
Speaker B:And now it's this pattern in practice.
Speaker B:If you believe in what we believe in, you're going to virtue signal those beliefs, too, and you're going to be proud of your beliefs.
Speaker B:And it's this weird kind of cyclical pattern that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker A:It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker A:Sense.
Speaker A:And honestly, to some degree, some of it is really disgusting.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:Because it's literally, they're using it to weaponize against you, to change, you know, the.
Speaker A:The fabric of.
Speaker A:Of.
Speaker A:Of what you believe in.
Speaker A:Because now this person that you care about or is an influencer or someone that you, you think is notable is now, you know, saying the things you want to say, and they're literally using it to weaponize against you.
Speaker B:You'll see this a lot on social media with people who are in group out group, you know, if you're.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's one of the first things they try to teach you in those classes, right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So people on social media will say, okay, either you're part of the hive group mentality that we have here, or you're just not going to make it.
Speaker B:You're not going to be successful.
Speaker B:You're not like us.
Speaker B:We're the rich.
Speaker B:You're a brokey.
Speaker A:You're a brokey.
Speaker B:If you, if you, if you acted and sounded like me, you'd be rich, too.
Speaker A:You wouldn't have paper hands, bro.
Speaker B:You're out.
Speaker B:You're out the group, bro.
Speaker B:You're a brokey over there.
Speaker B:I don't want to talk to you people.
Speaker A:I was entertaining myself literally last night watching one of these.
Speaker A:One of these guys that were selling a course.
Speaker A:He had posted, like, the first lesson online.
Speaker A:I was like, oh, I got to see this.
Speaker A:And he had a room full of people that was at a hotel, and he brought up somebody on stage.
Speaker A:And this was literally all he was teaching them.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:This was, this was probably.
Speaker A:This went on for like 15 minutes.
Speaker A:Two people standing on stage.
Speaker A:And which one of us has power of the room right now?
Speaker A:Like, wait, what is he.
Speaker A:What are we doing right now?
Speaker A:What is he?
Speaker A:And both.
Speaker B:There's his seminar.
Speaker A:Huh?
Speaker B:It was his seminar.
Speaker A:No, no.
Speaker A:You know, no, but his hands were down and the person next to his hands were down.
Speaker A:And then all he did was like, now look, if I stand here and I.
Speaker A:And I put my hands up like this, now who has power of the room?
Speaker B:That is the dumbest thing.
Speaker A:And then literally you just see people in the crowd go, oh, yeah, he does look like, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, you're right.
Speaker B:Confirmation bias.
Speaker A:Look at that.
Speaker B:Look around.
Speaker B:They're all nodding their heads.
Speaker B:So you nod your head.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Okay, so I just gotta put my hands up.
Speaker B:Yeah, terrible.
Speaker A:What the.
Speaker A:You paid for this.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Moral psychology, religion and politics.
Speaker A:I didn't cuss, I didn't.
Speaker B:I said, what the I know you custom earlier.
Speaker B:I didn't call you.
Speaker A:No, I didn't.
Speaker B:Did you did.
Speaker A:Yeah, I did.
Speaker B:I'm, I'm, I'm.
Speaker B:I'm more respectful than you today.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I'm respecting the audience.
Speaker A:Apologize.
Speaker B:Religion, despite its flaws, binds people together through shared moral systems.
Speaker B:Political movements function in a similar way, activating group loyal and moral emotions.
Speaker B:Why all of this matters.
Speaker B:Understanding moral psychology can reduce political polarization by helping people see that the moral logic behind opposing views is just a different way of thinking.
Speaker B:Recognizing the tribal nature of morality helps foster better discussions across ideological divides.
Speaker B:The Righteous Mind argues in the book that morality is shaped more by intuition than reason.
Speaker B:More of that first.
Speaker B:That type one quick thinking human emotional response is what drives morality.
Speaker B:Okay, Reason later on will reinforce it, but it's almost always driven by that quick knee jerk response.
Speaker B:And that political divisions arise because people prioritize different moral foundations.
Speaker B:Hate's insights can help us bridge ideological gaps by understanding rather than demonizing our opponents.
Speaker B:So he's trying to say, look, let's all understand where we're coming from emotionally.
Speaker B:But then the next book comes along.
Speaker B:It takes all of these concepts and wraps it up in a really scary title.
Speaker B:One that I rarely would say this is deserved.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:The Chaos Machine.
Speaker B:The Inside story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher.
Speaker B:And I gotta tell you, it's a fantastic book.
Speaker B: ng time ago, I think probably: Speaker B:The Chaos Machine journalist Max Fisher investigates how social media platforms have reshaped human behavior, politics and society, often for the worse.
Speaker B:He argues that tech Companies, especially Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, prioritize engagement over ethics, leading to the spread of misinformation, polarization and radicalization through in deep research and insider in depth research and insider accounts.
Speaker B:Fisher explores and exposes hidden Algorithms driving online extremism and their real world consequences.
Speaker B:So what social media has done is it finds the dopamine.
Speaker B:So platforms exploit dopamine driven feedback loops, likes, shares, comments to keep users engaged.
Speaker B:That's why those are there.
Speaker A:Mm.
Speaker B:They're all trying to trigger dopamine.
Speaker B:You.
Speaker B:Don't you think you really need to be in the app to upload your video when you upload it and keep it open?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:That's just a way of keeping you in the app.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Do you think they need to hit you with all those alerts all the time?
Speaker A:Do you think they need to share on the screen how many times this has been shared?
Speaker A:Like why, why does it need to show?
Speaker A:Why does it need to show that?
Speaker B:Because it wants to encourage you to share.
Speaker A:Yeah, it wants to show, like, you should also share this.
Speaker B:Of course.
Speaker B:The one thing this does unequivocally, data backs us up and all the books we just talked about earlier, this amplifies outrage, it taps into tribalism, and it's clearly addictive.
Speaker B:It rewires the way we think and interact with one another because you're tapping into that type one emotional, visceral, quick response much faster and you're at an increasing cadence.
Speaker B:It's not just, I saw an idea, it's I saw an idea, I saw an idea, I saw an idea.
Speaker B:Reinforce the idea.
Speaker B:Reinforce the idea.
Speaker B:Reinforce the idea.
Speaker B:By the time you get to type two, you're so mentally reinforced from that type one quick responsiveness that there is no logical process that goes into it.
Speaker B:You have now been convinced because the algorithm has triggered your brain to think that way.
Speaker B:The algorithmic amplification of extremism, YouTube's recommendation algorithm nudges users towards increasingly extreme content.
Speaker B:This is data driven.
Speaker B:That is not speculation.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Facebook's engagement based ranking rewards polarizing and divisive posts.
Speaker B:Misinformation spreads faster than truth because it's more emotionally engaging.
Speaker B:If you spread misinformation, it triggers the emotional knee jerk response of somebody either agreeing with you because you've confirmed their confirmation bias, or you've pissed somebody off by going against their confirmation bias.
Speaker B:And because it's so polarizing, it gets shared, it gets liked, it gets commented on, and the algorithm returns priority, which.
Speaker A:Is arguably even more engaging.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A:When some, when something is wrong and noticeably wrong, right.
Speaker A:It almost makes people want to engage even more.
Speaker A:People, people like to prove.
Speaker A:Just look no further than the comment section.
Speaker B:And I do this all the time.
Speaker B:I go right to the comment section with a bag of Popcorn.
Speaker B:And I read through going, oh, man.
Speaker A:Because you do.
Speaker A:It's one of my favorite pastimes.
Speaker B:It's the greatest.
Speaker A:It's the greatest.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I live in comment sections.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's just reading.
Speaker A:Just reading.
Speaker B:Well, social media played an interesting role in political radicalization the last couple years.
Speaker B:Fisher examines how platforms fueled far right extremism, conspiracy theories, QAnon, for example, and political violence.
Speaker B:Examples include the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar where Facebook amplified hate speech.
Speaker B:The rise of authoritarian.
Speaker B:Authoritarianism, big word as leaders exploit digital tools for propaganda.
Speaker B:Tech companies new, of course, all of this and they ignore the consequences.
Speaker B:Just like McDonald's did about their food.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Internal documents reveal that Facebook and Google researchers reportedly warned executives about the harms of their algorithms.
Speaker B:Profit motives, of course, in fear of losing market share, led companies to suppress or ignore calls for reform.
Speaker A:I think I want to hear.
Speaker A:I want to say Chamath spoke about.
Speaker B:This recently, not too long ago.
Speaker B:But the interesting thing is, is if you're somebody who wants reform, Right.
Speaker B:And you want your message heard, you have to use the same platforms that are likely to suppress your method to get your message out there.
Speaker B:And the only way to get it to go viral is to be inflammatory, to be stigmatizing, to trigger the fear.
Speaker B:Because people fear fear way more than they want to win.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And we talked about earlier in the show.
Speaker A:Yeah, we've noticed it before on our own content.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Unless you came out with a, you know, definitive claim and you said it.
Speaker A:You.
Speaker A:You said it with your chest and you believed in it.
Speaker A:You can't just come out here with some basic comment.
Speaker A:It's not, it's not going to get shared.
Speaker A:It's not going to get like, you got to.
Speaker A:You got to tell people, really, what, what you believe is going to happen.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You have to.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And it's a problem.
Speaker B:So can social media be fixed?
Speaker B:Well, Fisher explores potential reforms such as stricter regulation on our algorithmic amplification.
Speaker B:I don't see that happening.
Speaker A:Probably not happening.
Speaker B:Stronger content moderation to limit harmful speech.
Speaker B:Don't see that happening.
Speaker A:I feel like their engineers are better than their engineers.
Speaker B:Yeah, somebody's going to win this argument, and it ain't the guy in the public service.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Transparency on how platforms rank and promote content.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's definitely not going to happen.
Speaker A:It's too late, bro.
Speaker A:Yeah, way too late.
Speaker B:This has been happening since way before social media on the news.
Speaker B:You know, celebrity stars, I mean, different celebrities have had entire careers because of political allegiances and things that other Celebrities had done.
Speaker B:And that's absolutely the way it works.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Like it or not, Rick James is a great example.
Speaker B:Rick James walked into an office from a famous A on our label is a great story about this.
Speaker B:And he basically popped off of the mouth.
Speaker B:He was high.
Speaker B:He was like on cocaine.
Speaker B:He was demanding his money.
Speaker B:And he basically made an inflammatory gesture towards this high level record producer.
Speaker B:And he got on the phone and said, put all of our money and promotion into Lionel Richie.
Speaker B:Rick James is out.
Speaker B:And that's how Lionel Rich's career took off.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:True story.
Speaker B:These things happen all the time.
Speaker B:Well, before social media.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I'm here giving you real life examples that you can relate to.
Speaker A:Yeah, you could.
Speaker A:You could also.
Speaker A:I mean, it's not apples to apples, but look no further than when Leonardo DiCaprio back in the day will come up and accept an award.
Speaker A:And he likes to talk about the environment.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Leo, bro, this is not who you are.
Speaker B:The narrative is all that matters.
Speaker A:You take private jets, bro.
Speaker B:Listen, I take private jets so I can spread the word.
Speaker B:Okay?
Speaker A:But I care about the environment.
Speaker B:I do care about the environment.
Speaker B:And I wish I didn't have to take these private jets.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:But unfortunately I have to come talk to you and you're everywhere.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So this is on you people.
Speaker A:Leo, pick a better cause, bro.
Speaker A:You don't care.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:You don't care.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Why it matters.
Speaker B:The chaos machine shows how social media doesn't just reflect society, it actively is shaping it currently, including the economic information that we get on the show we talk about all the time.
Speaker B:It's being shaped in dangerous ways, frankly.
Speaker B:It's a wake up call for governments, tech leaders and users to recognize and challenge the digital systems that manipulate our thinking.
Speaker B:Of course, there are ramifications for this.
Speaker B:Once again by Jonathan Haidt, the Anxious Generation.
Speaker B:How the Great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness.
Speaker B:So this isn't just Kristen Said mouthing off because we're old guys.
Speaker B:Although we are.
Speaker A:Yeah, we're old guys now.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Yeah, we're officially there.
Speaker B:In the Next Generation, which came out last year.
Speaker B:Shut up.
Speaker B: g adolescents since the early: Speaker B:He attributes this trend to two primary factors.
Speaker B:The discipline of play based childhood.
Speaker A:The decline.
Speaker A:Sorry, you said the discipline.
Speaker B:Did you just crack me?
Speaker B:Sorry.
Speaker A:I mean, it's.
Speaker A:It was an important.
Speaker A:You said.
Speaker A:He attributes it to two key factors.
Speaker B:The decline of play based childhood.
Speaker B:Side was correct.
Speaker B:The discipline disrespectful and the rise of smartphone centric lifestyles Hate argues that these shifts have fundamentally rewired childhood, leading to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges.
Speaker A:I mean, do you.
Speaker A:I don't, I don't even remember at what age I.
Speaker A:I learned what anxiety was.
Speaker A:Now you got kids in grade school.
Speaker A:Grade, grade school talking about it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Literally saying, I think I have anxiety.
Speaker A:That's why I was so, I was so against my kids watching the second, I think, was it Inside Out?
Speaker A:Is that the popular movie where.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I was like, I know that one of the characters I, I had heard one of the characters was anxiety.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I'm like, I don't even want to introduce this to them.
Speaker A:I don't want them to even, like, like, okay, it's okay to be nervous.
Speaker A:Just talk to me.
Speaker A:We can always talk about our feelings.
Speaker A:I don't want to implement like, you have anxiety.
Speaker A:This is anxiety.
Speaker B:It's a real thing, man.
Speaker B:And I've heard a lot of younger people, more so now than ever, talk about these things and say that they're talking to therapists and stuff.
Speaker B:And on one hand I'm like, okay, it's good.
Speaker A:It could be very healthy.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:On the other hand, I'm like, man, like, what do you have to be anxious about, though?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I remember growing up, for me, I mean, I had, I didn't know the difference between a therapist and a psychologist.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you think to yourself, okay, this is very healthy.
Speaker A:From people that I do know that have talked very positively about therapy is.
Speaker A:They say it's.
Speaker A:It's better to start it before you need it.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You don't want, it's like going.
Speaker A:You don't want to go to the, Go to the doctor when the problem is already too large to fix.
Speaker B:I've seen a therapist a number of times in my life, not necessarily for a specific problem, just because I felt like I was a safer place to talk about things from a work perspective, from a personal life perspective.
Speaker B:And I didn't want to tap into friends because friends will tend to gossip.
Speaker B:So I was like, you know, I'll just pay somebody and have a professional relationship where I don't have to worry about anything getting out.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And, yeah, that's me.
Speaker A:So do you, do you still have that?
Speaker B:It's been a while.
Speaker B:It's been a couple years.
Speaker A:Really.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The problem is it's hard to go routinely to talk to somebody when you don't have an underlying problem.
Speaker A:And then maybe what if you don't know that you have a problem?
Speaker A:What if there is a problem?
Speaker B:Like I'm a narcissist is what you're trying to say?
Speaker A:Not that, but maybe.
Speaker A:Yeah, sure.
Speaker B:No, I get it.
Speaker B:Like a social anxiety disorder.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, there could be things going on subconsciously that you have no idea about.
Speaker B:No, I like those thoughts.
Speaker A:Those are the ones.
Speaker A:Those are your favorite ones.
Speaker B:Those are the ones I don't talk to anybody about.
Speaker B:But yeah, I love those site.
Speaker B:I'm thinking about them right now.
Speaker A:You think about them right now.
Speaker B:All right, we're deep into the show, so let's go ahead and wrap through this real quick.
Speaker A:Why does this all matter, Christopher?
Speaker B:You want to go right down to that?
Speaker B:Huh?
Speaker A:Oh, no, just saying in general.
Speaker B:I mean, I had like more topics.
Speaker A:Yeah, I want more topics.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Why it all matters.
Speaker B:Historically, children engage in unsupervised outdoor play.
Speaker B:This fostered resilience, social skills and independence.
Speaker B: Starting the: Speaker B:This overprotection deprived children of essential experiences needed develop coping mechanisms and emotional strength.
Speaker A:Yeah, that.
Speaker A:That was a key topic.
Speaker A:I believe in the book Coddling of the American Mind.
Speaker B:I believe that's it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And that they talk and it's.
Speaker A:It's not the same anymore.
Speaker A:Like you can't just let your kid go outside and play unless the.
Speaker A:The entire community has bought into this.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B: dhood experiences starting in: Speaker B:A surge of smartphones and social media use among adolescents, increased screen time replace face to face interactions and leading to social isolation.
Speaker B:For a lot of people, exposure to curated online Personas and cyberbullying contributed to negative self perception and heightened anxiety.
Speaker B:Keep in mind this could be done 24 7, not just when a kid was at school in front of his friends.
Speaker B:There was a mental health crisis which developed from this data indicates that similar and significant uptick in adolescent mental health issues including higher rates of depression and anxiety, including substances and instances of self harm and suicide.
Speaker B:So lots of uses of chemicals there.
Speaker B:Not to mention self self damage.
Speaker B:The trends are observed across various developed countries suggesting the widespread phenomenon is not located to where we are as Americans.
Speaker B:It's located all over the world where phones are.
Speaker B:There's four foundational harms of social media.
Speaker B:Social deprivation, reducing in person interactions and hindering development of essential social skills.
Speaker B:Sleep deprivation, late night screen use disrupt sleep patterns affecting mental health and physical health.
Speaker B:Attention, fragmentation, constant notification and multitasking impair concentration and cognitive development.
Speaker B:Basically forcing you into the type one perspective, not allowing you to get in the type two perspective.
Speaker A:Do you do that?
Speaker B:Do you.
Speaker A:When you get in.
Speaker A:When you get in bed at night, are you still on your phone?
Speaker B:I will.
Speaker B:I will use my phone occasionally, not every night.
Speaker B:I will only read news.
Speaker B:I will not scroll social media.
Speaker B:So I feel like reading still has some values.
Speaker B:I have all.
Speaker B:I mean, I have all the.
Speaker A:How much downtime do you have to read the things that you want to read and.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:I mean, it's rare, man.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's very rare.
Speaker A:You have to find.
Speaker A:You have to pick your poison.
Speaker B:Almost most nights I'm just so exhausted that I'm just going straight to sleep.
Speaker B:My wife will stay up and scroll.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:That's her thing.
Speaker A:We go through cycles where literally I'll have to charge it.
Speaker A:It's inside the drawer, the charger.
Speaker A:So you charge it, put inside drawer and boom, it's done.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Addiction is also part of the problem with social media.
Speaker B:Compelling nature.
Speaker B:Social media leads to habitual use, displacing healthier activities.
Speaker B:There's lots of proposed solutions here, but basically encouraging free play, delaying smartphone use and collective action, urging parents, schools and tech companies and governments to do all right things, which we know they're not going to do.
Speaker B:So why all this matters, of course, is Hate's analysis underscores unintended consequences of technological advancements and societal changes on youth development.
Speaker B:Basically saying that what we're feeling now and what we're dealing with now from a news cycle perspective in this divisive change in the country is likely to get worse as the mental health issues from the next generation continue to add to this problem because they've grown up with nothing else.
Speaker B:So let's tie this all together.
Speaker B:The big idea.
Speaker A:What is the big Idea?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I just put it all here.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The economy isn't just about data and numbers, okay?
Speaker B:It's about how people feel and what they believe.
Speaker B:The narratives are so important and the stories they tell themselves.
Speaker B:Each of these books show how our financial and political decisions are deeply shaped by psychology, misinformation and technology.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Hugely, hugely important for you to think about the stories that drive the economy.
Speaker B:According to Shiller's narrative economics.
Speaker B:Economic cycles are fueled by viral narratives.
Speaker B:Housing bubbles, stock market crashes, inflation fears.
Speaker B:We don't act based on pure logic.
Speaker B:We act based on beliefs and emotion which spread like memes the flaws of our decision making.
Speaker B:According to Kahneman, think fast and slow.
Speaker B:Humans are wired to make quick emotional decisions even in complex financial matters.
Speaker B:We all fall for the biases, the overconfidence and irrational fears, even when the data says otherwise.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Don't just rely on the headlines that are coming across your, you know, your screen.
Speaker A:Read the narratives, read the stories.
Speaker A:Make a sound decision yourself, because what you'll come to find out is, and something that we all know subconsciously is these things, these stories that shape people's values and beliefs will ultimately influence everyone's behaviors.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker B:So why are we so divided over money in politics?
Speaker B:Well, liberals and conservatives think, frankly, they think differently.
Speaker B:Different parts of their brain.
Speaker B:This leads to clashing views on capitalism, taxation, government spending, and so on and so forth.
Speaker B:We don't listen to each other because we see the world morally, not rationally.
Speaker B:There's a consistent theme here that we don't use our rational brains, that type 2, deeper logical brains.
Speaker B:We tap into that type 1 much, much faster and much, much more frequently.
Speaker B:So how social media worsens the problem.
Speaker B:According to Fisher and the chaos Machine, algorithms prioritize outrage, making economic debates more polarized and emotional, thus triggering that type one all over again.
Speaker B:And it's this parasitical loop.
Speaker B:False narratives about the economy spread faster than facts, leading panic and bad.
Speaker B:Leading the panic and bad financial decisions.
Speaker B:Of course, how this affects the next generation, well, you already know.
Speaker B:People are growing up, glued to the screens, missing out on key development skills.
Speaker B:They feel more anxious about the economy, less financially literate, and more pessimistic about the future, which is why we're here.
Speaker A:So are you actively monitoring how much screen time Carter is getting?
Speaker B:He's been getting more.
Speaker A:I mean, are you monitoring it or is just like.
Speaker A:Okay, like, we see that, you know, he's still behaving the same way.
Speaker A:We're not seeing any major changes.
Speaker B:He does like games on his iPad and we've recently introduced him to stuff that's non virtual world.
Speaker B:So he can't play with other people.
Speaker B:He can just play on the games.
Speaker B:Like there's a Hot Wheels game, stuff like that.
Speaker B:He does his homework from Kuman math and reading on a tablet.
Speaker B:And he was one of the first kids in the state to do it that way.
Speaker A:Oh, wow, I didn't know they offered that.
Speaker B:That he's, I think, one of the first to do it and they're demoing it with him and the.
Speaker B:I don't know their words.
Speaker B:Not mine.
Speaker B:Yeah, but so he, he has an Apple pencil and he does work on, on the tablet, which has got some interesting benefits from an AI grading perspective.
Speaker B:But, you know, he has to be.
Speaker B:I don't want to deprive him of being ingratiated into what's current technology for society.
Speaker B:But at the same time, do I want him outside playing at the park still?
Speaker B:Yeah, to.
Speaker B:To date, he still wants to go outside and play with his friends.
Speaker B:He'll do that.
Speaker B:The game thing, when that's not an option.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Yeah, we.
Speaker A:We tend to.
Speaker A:So we give a, you know, extend the leash a little bit.
Speaker A:A little bit further.
Speaker A:If we start.
Speaker A:See, okay.
Speaker A:Behavior has been really good lately.
Speaker A:Okay, we can.
Speaker A:We can watch TV up until this time, right.
Speaker A:At the end of the night after dinner or whatnot.
Speaker A:But then if we start to see that, hey, like, you know, it's becoming a little bit more difficult to put you down at night, and it's, you know, you're not listening that well, or we're starting to see other things, like ripple effects, then, okay, then we, like, have this.
Speaker A:We scale it back.
Speaker A:And it's never like a punishment thing where we tell them like, oh, you're acting.
Speaker A:You're acting this way.
Speaker A:I have to take this away.
Speaker A:It's more like, listen, buddy, like you.
Speaker A:How do you feel about what just transpired?
Speaker A:How do you feel about the way this just happened?
Speaker A:And they'll say, oh, not good.
Speaker A:I'm like, well, this is only because, you know, we watched.
Speaker A:We had too much screen time, and they go.
Speaker A:And they.
Speaker A:When you.
Speaker A:When I talk to them like that, they.
Speaker A:They process it and are welcoming of a change.
Speaker B:Yeah, well, that's a deep show.
Speaker A:It was a great one.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Those are some good books.
Speaker B:There are some good books.
Speaker B:They all.
Speaker B:They all really tie well together.
Speaker A:A couple of them I haven't read, so I'm gonna definitely have to.
Speaker A:I'm really interested in this stuff.
Speaker B:So I do have a closing remark that I wrote down earlier.
Speaker B:I got some takeaways.
Speaker B:If you want some big highlights before we call it a wrap, please do.
Speaker B:If we understand how stories drive financial decisions, we can make better, better ones.
Speaker B:If we recognize our cognitive biases, we can avoid bad investments in economic fears.
Speaker B:If we see past political tribalism, we can have smarter economic policies.
Speaker B:If we control social media's influence, we can take back rational decision making.
Speaker B:If we give the next generation better tools, they won't be prisoners to this anxiety.
Speaker B:And my closing message for everyone is the economy isn't broken.
Speaker B:I know we talk about it a lot on the show, and we challenge a lot of the traditions of what's good and bad.
Speaker B:Our way of thinking about the economy is what's broken.
Speaker B:We're hooked into this ecosystem that's politicized, that's inflammatory, it's being driven by algorithms, sensationalism.
Speaker B:Once you understand these hidden forces, you gain a huge advantage.
Speaker B:If you can stay tapped into your type 2 brain and think logically and rationally, in moments, it'll be all the difference in the world and how you earn money, how you manage your money, how you respond to the news and how you invest.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Way more pragmatic.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:That's a show, baby.
Speaker A:That's a great show.
Speaker B:Is it?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:A little bit of a swerve.
Speaker B:We're back to normal financial news in the next week or so, but there's some topics I want to cover.
Speaker A:Good, though, because this kind of goes into what I was saying not too long ago is like, episodes like this should help you, you know, reframe your mindset towards everything.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:The mindset work.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:But it's like, okay, I, I always wanted to have the discussions about it.
Speaker A:Never make money, never make a profit off of it.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think it's important, I think it's important to hear stuff like this and be like, okay, how, how much of the decisions that I make are influenced based on, you know, my past behaviors or things that have been gamified on my phone or.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, and how much of it is truly me deciding to make this decision because it's the best decision for me and my family.
Speaker B:And that's a question you have to ask yourself pretty much, pretty regularly at a cadence to where.
Speaker B:I mean, so much of.
Speaker B:Around us is giving us information at all times.
Speaker B:You have to stop and be cognitive of that.
Speaker B:But yeah, I'm happy with the, with the fact that we talked about it.
Speaker B:I'm happy with how it was structured.
Speaker B:I think, I think me having the sniffles and being sick probably didn't help my, my energy levels.
Speaker B:I was sick as a dog yesterday.
Speaker A:Oh, man.
Speaker A:You're fine, you're fine.
Speaker A:But be like Esther, go and leave us an honest five star review.
Speaker B:The only type of review that is honest is a five star review.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, we got a lot of them, bro.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:A lot of different platforms.
Speaker A:Yeah, a lot of different platforms.
Speaker A:You can leave them on Spotify and look, if you don't, you're not on Spotify, you're not on Apple.
Speaker A:You just like tuning in to see the faces.
Speaker A:Just leave us a comment.
Speaker B:Yeah, say hello.
Speaker A:Yeah, if It's a good one.
Speaker A:I'll read it.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker A:Back to the impersonations.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker A:Got anything else?
Speaker B:Nope.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker A:Good night, everybody.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:Bye.
Speaker A:Goodbye.
Speaker B:Goodbye.
