495: Todd Rose—One Good Thing

Todd Rose https://www.toddrose.com/, bestselling author of Collective Illusions https://www.toddrose.com/books#/collectiveillusions/, former Harvard professor, and co-founder of Populace https://populace.org/, joins Mike for a conversation about the surprising gap between what people really believe and what they think everyone else believes. Together they explore the collective illusions that shape our society, the barriers that keep us from living our best lives, and the disconnect between public perception and private conviction. They also dive into Todd's newest brainchild, Be The People, a growing movement that empowers ordinary citizens to bridge divides, strengthen their communities, and prove that meaningful change often begins with one good thing. Follow Be The People https://bit.ly/4yv9gAD on Instagram to see how Americans are coming together to solve problems, strengthen their communities, and help one another. You might even find your own way in.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hello friends, it's me Mike Rowe. This is The Way I Heard It with what I dare say Chuck would be a, let's call it a very, a very important episode.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  It is important actually. It brings with it the potential for curing what ails this country.

• 0:20Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, man. Look, I know that sounds a bit grand, but Chuck is not overstating it. Todd Rose is my guest. We're calling this episode "One Good Thing," although we could just as easily call it "Be The People," which is an initiative we talk about at length later in the conversation, but I just want to mention it now because I think it's, well, it's going to be a pretty consequential campaign that is going to attempt to rally the country in a way around, call it civic-minded action, maybe some volunteerism, maybe just something that I think a lot of people feel like we've lost over the years.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Doing something good in your neighborhood. It's a bottom-up solution which our friends that stand together really appreciate.

• 1:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, and look, I mean, I'm already regretting everything I've said so far because it sounds too earnest, but it's only because it's important. And what Todd does and the reason I want you to listen to this whole episode at normal speed, because I don't want you to miss anything. He has an enormous brain in spite of the fact that he got out of high school with a .9 GPA.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Wasn't it a .09?

• 1:30Mike Rowe?

  No, it was a 0.9.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, 0.9.

• 1:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, he was a disaster. Academic disaster. A few years later, wound up being a professor at Harvard. And then a few years after that, set up one of the most important think tanks in the country. It's called Populous. And they do a lot of private opinion surveying that has led to an enormous amount of research that, among other things, is being used to debunk a long list of collective illusions. These are the things that we come to believe with certainty that are not in fact rooted in reality. So, the way Todd thinks about the things that are threatening our country.

• 2:18Mike Rowe?

  At the top of the list is the danger of the manufactured consensus.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:25Mike Rowe?

  And we are awash in them. We believe so many things that aren't rooted in reality. We're so sure that we're so completely divided, probably in unprecedented ways. And there is just nothing in the research or the science that proves it.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:43Mike Rowe?

  There's nothing there. And Todd is on a mission to share this research with the world. And he's succeeding to a certain degree, but not to the degree that he must. Because it's a giant undertaking with huge consequences.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  It's a national security issue, which he points out that our adversaries want nothing more than for us to be at each other's throats.

• 3:08Mike Rowe?

  Correct. Yeah, there's a clear and present enemy. We'll discuss that enemy in the course of the conversation. And there's a clear and present strategy, which involves, unfortunately, the device you're probably listening to this conversation on right now. And all the social channels that are attached to it. And the reality of bots that are shaping opinion. And man, he's just so much fun to talk to. It's a little scary. Well, it's a lot scary, but it's also wildly optimistic.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:39Mike Rowe?

  And I think that the solution, if you're feeling like things are getting a little wobbly up there. And if you're really worried about the country, I implore you to listen to this, especially through the end. You'll learn some things about Todd that I didn't think we were going to discuss. And you'll learn some things about his research that are truly important. And it all starts with one good thing, right after this.

• 4:10Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries and the maddening policy that allows meatpackers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well, shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising.

• 4:51Mike Rowe?

  Given a choice, most people would prefer to buy their meat from American ranchers. And Good Ranchers is the number one company in America that delivers 100% American meat straight to your door. They partner with over 100 local farmers and ranchers to deliver pasture-raised meat with no antibiotics and no added hormones. They've got 25,000 five-star reviews on TrustPilot. 25,000, including my own. This month, when you visit GoodRanchers.com/row, you'll get a free Angus ground beef bundle with your first order. Again, that's GoodRanchers.com/row for four bonus pounds of ground beef raised right

• 5:33Mike Rowe?

  here in these United States, and that's guaranteed. Support your local ranchers by insisting on American meat delivered at GoodRanchers.com/row.

• 6:00Mike Rowe?

  Thank you for making the time, dude.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  My pleasure.

• 6:03Mike Rowe?

  This is so long overdue for me. You know, we've talked, I don't know how many times, long distance, which, you know, all things considered, lockdowns and so forth, it's a fine substitute. It's better than nothing.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Better than nothing.

• 6:16Mike Rowe?

  But it is a prophylactic, you know?

• 6:18Speaker 02

  It's great to be here, man.

• 6:20Mike Rowe?

  Rarely, in my experience anyway, have I seen the headlines catch up to a scientist in ways that made their work so incredibly relevant for the time that we're in. Does it feel that way to you?

• 6:37Speaker 02

  It does, actually. It's, I'm incredibly grateful to be in this moment and feel like we have a little bit of knowledge about what's actually going on. And more importantly, we know what to do about it.

• 6:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  So it's exciting times.

• 6:50Mike Rowe?

  I only want to talk to you about everything and regular listeners surely will know The End of Average and Dark Horse and Collective Illusions. Is there a fourth that I'm forgetting?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  There was the first one, which I don't like to talk about.

• 7:04Mike Rowe?

  Let's talk about that.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I figured you might like this is, it was the first book called Square Peg. This was, okay, I'm just gonna give you this back. Like, it was fine, but I didn't mean to be an author. Some reporter said, can I interview for my book? I said, yeah, sure, of course. I was just a professor. Nobody knew who I was.

• 7:22Mike Rowe?

  At Harvard at this point?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:23Mike Rowe?

  I was just a professor.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  But I mean, like, nobody, yeah, but, and so the president of the publishing house was like, well, why don't we have a book by this guy? And so they're like, well, just write it. And I was like, all right. So I actually just worked with the reporter, right? But it was just like a memoir, but I was like, in my 30s. I'm like, that's just ridiculous.

• 7:42Mike Rowe?

  You know what? That is the, one of the worst conceits in the literary world is the premature memoir, right? I mean,

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Like, back when I was young.

• 7:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, back in the aughts.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  But here's what I learned. This is the problem. It's really fine. But unless you are Stephen King, you have no control over the title of your book or the cover. There we go. So listen.

• 8:02Mike Rowe?

  Look at it. We're coming in hot. The one thing you're ashamed of is what Chuck puts up right out of the gate.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  I had to gussy it up by saying I was El Todd Rose.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  But I was like, they show me the cover and I said, what in the actual hell?

• 8:16Mike Rowe?

  What is happening?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  And I said, well, what, what is it? It's not me. I, it's not like, and they said, it's art. I said, that is not an answer. And I said, look, maybe all I did there was capture the pedophile crowd. That was about it. Because I don't understand what this kid with luscious lips and a lollipop stuck to his face has to do with.

• 8:36Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  And I wanted to call it troublemaker. And they were like, nobody wants to be a troublemaker.

• 8:41Mike Rowe?

  They want to be a square peg.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, obviously, right?

• 8:43Mike Rowe?

  But you open the cover and of course, the next thing you expect to see is a round hole. And now, like surely the metaphor, I bet I can guess at what you were, you were probably trying to capture the dichotomy of being a square peg in a world.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:58Mike Rowe?

  That is offering up nothing but roundish apertures. And what do we do? Do we make the hole fit us? Or do we round off the edges, et cetera? Something like that?

• 9:07Speaker 02

  The only thing that the saving grace of that was that I had a really great experience where I went to Taiwan and I was invited by the leadership there and I gave two big talks and to see mothers and particularly mothers, but mothers, fathers come from all over the country to line up to me and talk and they didn't speak English, the translator just telling me, like, you're just like my kid. And there's that moment of like, oh, there's a universal humanity, right?

• 9:35Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  We have these experiences. We think we're so different. And yet here's a mother worried about her kid who doesn't fit in.

• 9:41Mike Rowe?

  That's obviously been the thread through all your work, right? I mean, every book to some extent, sort of dances under that net. The world is not quite what we were told it is. It's not what we think it is. And the more certain we become about what we believe it to be, the more profoundly we're ultimately going to be proven to have been mistaken. It's like there is abject humility shot through everything that you do.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 10:12Mike Rowe?

  And you're welcome. And it's not a compliment.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  I think I'm the most humble person.

• 10:18Mike Rowe?

  Well, clearly, when it comes to humility, you are the best. No one even comes close. But for the people who aren't totally up to speed with your curriculum vitae, yes, you were a professor at Harvard. Today, you're running this think tank called Populus, still up there in the northeast. Once upon a time, you were a high school sort of graduate with a 0.9.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  0.9 GPA.

• 10:44Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  But I do have a GED, so that's good.

• 10:47Mike Rowe?

  So those were the circumstances that first attracted me to you. The idea that you could completely reinvent yourself and your relationship to education, seemingly single-handedly, although, of course, nobody ever really does anything single-handedly. But now, four books in, where are you with the thread that you keep coming back to? Because it now feels like a rope, or maybe even a cable, or something more substantial.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  I really do appreciate that you've seen the sort of underlying things that tie these all together, which for me is, you know, given my life experiences and my scientific work, I feel like there's a basic truth that is, we woefully underestimate what people are capable of. And we've sort of ultimately put a limit on what we can accomplish individually and as a people.

• 11:43Mike Rowe?

  Why? Why do we underestimate capability?

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of it is just coming from the legacy. As I wrote in End of Average, look at this, my publisher would be so proud. The, like, we had these theories and these ideas. It's always theories. It's always these academics that we think don't matter, but they get all their stupid ideas. End up like, we live in those shadows. But ultimately, I think, you know, we lived in an era of scarcity. We had these ideas about why some people succeeded, some people didn't. We ended up with like, pretty profoundly wrong views of like, a bell curve of talent, and it's largely innate, and like, you know, some people are worth it, some people aren't. But in End of Average, you're talking about the standardization problem, and right?

• 12:27Mike Rowe?

  I remember the Chapter where the where the Navy or the Air Force wanted the perfect cockpit.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 12:33Mike Rowe?

  That would suit the majority of pilots. And so they threw the lens of average, handled all the dimensionality and came up with a cockpit.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Thought they got it right and it turned out it literally fit nobody. And it was what a great, that was one of my all time favorite stories to open a book with.

• 12:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  And the poor guy that had to figure this out, a guy named Gilbert Daniels, it was so cool. Cause he had gone to Harvard as an undergrad and he got sucked into the military. He was gonna had to do this stuff, but he was a kind of a grunt at first. So he gets tasked with, you know, after they realized something's wrong with these, they'd just gone from propeller planes to jet powered aviation.

• 13:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  And they're like, the promise to Congress was, oh, we are going to be sold back. We are gonna, these things are gonna make us lethal. We're gonna be efficient, effective. The exact opposite happens. Like they couldn't even keep control of the planes. It was like, what is going on? And so they had come up with this idea that the real problem was just that we hadn't updated the average body size for pilots. Cause we'd gotten more nutrition since the last one. So they tasked this poor guy, he was just a kid, to go around to every Air Force base. And by himself, measure every pilot, there were over 4,000 pilots. On over a hundred dimensions of body size, chest circumference, you know, hips, everything.

• 13:54Mike Rowe?

  Everything like wrist size.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Everything. It was comical. Lucky for me, his work got declassified before the book came out. And he's writing this technical manual going, yeah, I'm the one doing all the measurements. And something's not right here. So he starts to think that the problem might be the idea of average. So he goes to the generals, he's like, I, I think you're wrong. And he's like, can I, I have another idea. And they said, you, okay, you can play around all you want on your own time. So he decides, he asked a very simple question, like, how many of these 4,000 pilots? Who were picked because they actually do fit in a cockpit, right? Like, like if you're super tall or overweight, you're not getting in anyway.

• 14:36Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  How many of these pilots were average on any of these dimensions, right? Like, and the idea was like, well, most of them, obviously. So he just picks like the top 10 dimensions of size. And he finds out like, nobody, zero, no pilots, none of them, none of these, they were all white male pilots who were picked because they seemingly fit. Right. It didn't fit any of them. What he discovers is what I call the average, the Jaganist principle, which is when we think about being a human being, like almost everything that matters is not just one dimension. So size isn't, height is one dimension, but size is made up of a bunch of

• 15:21Speaker 02

  things, right? And when you take all those dimensions, it turns out they don't correlate anywhere near that we like, we think they do. And if you think about this, the tallest person you know is probably not the heaviest person you know, right? So we think in our mind, there's like, like clothing size, like there's a small, a medium, a large, an extra, and it's just a bigger, bigger version scaled. This is not how it works. Every single human being ever studied in physical size is on the upper end of some dimension, on the lower end of others, and in the middle on other ones. Everybody, everybody. And so Gilbert Daniels figures this out and he's like, oh, right. He, to his everlasting credit, convinces

• 16:01Speaker 02

  the generals to ban the use of averages in design, that this was the problem. And they introduce literally adjustable seats in cockpits, things that just weren't there. They invented the whole field of human factors and ergonomics as a result of that work. So instead of trying to cut down the pilots to fit your stupid average thing that you made up, how about you start making the environment fit the pilot? And the result was incredible, not only incredible performance success, but one of the unintended consequences. And I write about one of my favorite pilots at the end of the book, which I won't tell you about. So you have to, you guys, I know you've read it, but the other, everybody else has to go, you know, Killer Chick was the pilot. But the unintended consequence

• 16:46Speaker 02

  was it actually opened opportunity for women.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Because we were just like, well, tough luck. We had to average it. You tend to be smaller. So it turns out women are actually physiologically better suited to be fighter pilots. They handle G force better, their bodies do. Turns out now, out of our top pilots, a majority of them are women.

• 17:04Mike Rowe?

  You know, we've noticed something, I don't know if it's corollary or not, but it rhymes a bit with the welding world right now. Women seem to have a facility for that particular trade inherently masculine, historically testosterone driven, and yet, in our little foundation, time and time again, we find these jagged little pills, these women who have it, I think Gladwell called it a disagreeable quality. And I wonder if, was it Gilbert? So was it the work that he did that actually led to the breakthrough?

• 17:45Mike Rowe?

  Or was it his disagreeable quality or whatever it was in him that gave him the self-possession to go to a general and say, hey, you just might have your head up your ass.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  It's a great, it's a great question because like, I got to know him, he passed away shortly after, but I got to, to meet him and talk to him and interview him for the book. And he just said, there was just something inside, he was, he said he was raised to have a healthy respect and healthy disrespect for received wisdom and authority. And so it was like, good for you that you, you could look at something that we just thought was God's truth forever. I mean, and he's born into it and say, I don't think this is right. And instead of just complaining, you did something about it.

• 18:33Mike Rowe?

  If you work in boots all day long and your feet sweat, I feel your pain. And I'd recommend trying the socks that I wear every day from Camel City Mill. These guys sent me a box as a gift long before they sponsored this podcast. And I started wearing them and eventually I reached out to them because I love the product. And I wanted more sponsors on the podcast who make things in America. And now here they are again sponsoring another episode. Campbell City Mill makes their socks in North Carolina with American wool in an American factory. Their merino wool blends help wick sweat away from your skin and their no sweat vent lets heat and moisture escape. That helps keep your feet dry and comfortable when you're spending long days in work boots.

• 19:17Mike Rowe?

  They also reinforce the heel and the toe with double plated nylon to stand up to the wear those boots put on your socks. Remember, it's not the feet that wear out your socks, it's your boots. And they back their socks with a 10-year durability guarantee. If you get a hole or a tear in the first decade, they'll replace them for free. If you're a hardworking guy dealing with sweaty, uncomfortable feet, I'm telling you, these are worth trying. I wear mine every day and I'm glad to have the company on the podcast. CamelCityMill.com. Use code ROW, get 10% off my favorite work socks. CamelCityMill.com, code ROW. That's a quality, I don't, do you think that's a choice?

• 20:00Mike Rowe?

  Is that a muscle that you can choose to exercise? Because it seems like it really doesn't form a lot of your work. Like who in the mob is the one who goes, hey, you know something? I didn't sign on for this.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:15Mike Rowe?

  And drops the pitchfork and walks off.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  What we found is there is a bit of dispositional stuff, right? Like, so some people seem to be born with a little more being okay, I don't need to quite be aligned with the crowd entirely all the time. It makes sense that there's a distribution of how sensitive people are. Because in fact, when you run the models, if everybody is a maverick, society doesn't work. If everybody's a conformist, society doesn't work. You need that little bit of the 10% that are just constantly like, but is this right? Is this better? Now, what we've seen is people can can move themselves a little bit, but where the real win comes is when you start to promote norms in society that say, what does it mean to be part of this group? So my need to belong, which would normally lead me not to question?

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Is actually, no, you speak up, you respectfully speak your truth, right? Like, when you do that, then the very people who would normally be like, I'm not rocking the boat. What it means to not rock the boat is to be honest about your views.

• 21:14Mike Rowe?

  It's so fungible, though.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:16Mike Rowe?

  I mean, it's like, the minute you have a consensus, then you have a thing that you can conform to. But the moment that confirmation, I guess that's where we get a confirmation bias, right? We get used to a thing, and that's when you find the people who go, oh, wait a minute. You know what? It's, it's more cool to not be a part of the thing that I used to equate coolness with. And it's, that's what interests me the most. The fact that you might be able to choose. I mean, Chuck and I, we were kids. What, what is more uncool than being 12 years, 15 years old? And being in the Boy Scouts and singing in a barbershop quartet?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Probably nothing.

• 21:57Mike Rowe?

  Nothing?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  No, I'm kidding. I didn't sing in a barbershop, but I was in the Boy Scouts, so this is good.

• 22:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, I want to get to that, too, because this whole notion of these, these groups in our society that appear to be frayed and disappearing strikes me as really bad.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Really bad. But by the way, can I say one thing, just to close the loop on what you put your finger on? So for me, my, all of my life's work, the thing I'm the most interested in is, okay, if, if we've underestimated what people are capable of, and we want people to be able to live more self-determined lives, make better contributions to society, then I'm interested in every internal and external barrier that keeps people from that. And so whether that's our belief in an average, and that's leading us to standardize things that ignore people's individuality, or the more recent stuff, because we're social creatures and we care about being with our groups, how that can be manipulated into getting us to live less authentic lives.

• 22:54Mike Rowe?

  And how quickly it all is in flux. Like, one minute, I, I don't know why this popped to mind, but Black Lives Matter, terribly important movement, absolutely essential. You'd have to be out of your mind to oppose it in any way, shape, or form. Stay tuned. Ideas change.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:14Mike Rowe?

  I've just never seen them change so fast.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  So fast. This is the problem, right? Which is, the mechanisms by which we generate consensus and even to new ideas or old ones.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Our brains are not meant for social media. And so, and right now, the chaos is largely our biology slamming up against these new technologies. And AI is going to make that even like worse. So what's interesting is before these new ideas could form and they were emerging organically, based on some consensus even of a smaller group that then starts to persuade and people start to join. Now with our technologies, it's so easy to manipulate that process.

• 23:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  That you can artificially boost a fringe idea, give it the veneer of consensus and get people to go along with stuff they just don't want and.

• 24:09Mike Rowe?

  You know what you just described? I don't know if you've riffed on this as a metaphor before, but this is fashion.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:15Mike Rowe?

  You're talking about fashion, right?

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:18Mike Rowe?

  And when I look at what is fashionable, historically, anyway, I was always sort of amused by how quickly it could change. Like you look at some cat wearing bell bottoms now and you're like, dude, that you did not get the memo. Unless he's responding to another memo that actually, Mike, you dummy, didn't you get that memo? It's back in style now.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  What's so great about that? It's such a perfect metaphor because, you know, modern fashion, as we know it, really emerges hundreds and hundreds of years ago in Venice when they tried to create laws about what you could wear and how affluent you could look. Like, you know what? Your buckle on your shoe, we're getting out of control. People are too fancy. It has to be this size.

• 24:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  And so there's always that, there's always that 10% that are like, whatever people are doing, I want to do something else.

• 25:05Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  And so they would find all these ways, these small ways to just push the envelope a little bit, just so you weren't conforming to what the, these officials wanted you to do.

• 25:17Mike Rowe?

  How awesome would it be just as some sort of exercise? Like the ultimate punk. Let's say you're 21 years old, you've dyed your hair purple, you've put rings in orifices that have never been violated before. You've got a tattoo, you got, you are so, you're out there. And the next morning, everybody looks just like you. Now what do you do?

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:39Mike Rowe?

  It's this constant, like, so that's the fashion world. And I've always kind of understood it, but I feel like what social media has done. Has forced that dynamic into our ideas and our thoughts and our actual identity. And to throw one more metaphorical thing into it, back to the the end of average. What is a fit model? A fit model is the very definition of average in fashion. A perfect forty two, a perfect size six. I dated a fit model briefly, right? She was not average in any way, except that way.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:24Mike Rowe?

  And so, wow, maybe fashion, maybe we can learn something from.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  We can. And what's funny is is you could take it a little step further, which is as our industrial technologies enabled fast fashion, the cycles of fashion have accelerated, right? And you take it into the space of ideas, what used to take quite a while to form, whether it was a good idea or a bad idea, that consensus would form over time and it had some durability because it actually did recruit people to it. People did start believing it and then stick around a little longer. And now we have these almost ephemeral sort of like, well, this seems like a good idea. I guess is what we do. And then it's just gone and we're on to the next thing. And it's always a telltale sign when you see these ideas emerge out of nowhere and then just collapse, that it was always rooted in a collective illusion.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Because I can easily manipulate group consensus now. With an army of bots, it's drop dead easy. Can I sustain it? No, I need to I need to do a bunch of stuff to keep it around long enough for people to internalize it. I'll give you a good example of one we just participated in. Remember the defund the police movement?

• 27:31Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Vividly. I mean, listen, I'm all for ensuring police don't violate our rights. But I don't know a single person besides like a really crazy fringe who thought it was a good idea to replace cops with social workers.

• 27:43Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Okay. So

• 27:46Mike Rowe?

  Man, they got a lot of, man, they got a lot of attention.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  They, it did. And I'll tell you, it was kind of funny. So I'm a registered independent.

• 27:53Mike Rowe?

  I

• 27:53Speaker 02

  I don't like politics at all.

• 27:54Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a nasty thing that has to happen. I want it as small footprint in my life as possible. But we got called to meet with Biden and his team when he was president. They had read collective illusions and said, um, listen, we want to talk. It was really funny. My media advisor, who's my advisor, who's a, who's a dyed in the wool liberal lover deeply. She goes, yeah, Todd, no offense. If they're calling you, we're truly

• 28:21Mike Rowe?

  We're

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I was like, what? Okay. Well, thank you very much. So they're like, okay, well, what, what should we be considering? I said, well, look, we have the data. I'll, I'll give you one. It's this defund the police movement because publicly you had 55% of registered Democrats saying they supported it. It was 9%.

• 28:40Mike Rowe?

  Okay, wait a minute. Wait. Just so people are trying. You're minding your business. You're living your life. You're running your little think tank. You got a call from the Biden administration and they want to understand how real the enthusiasm is for this

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, what they want to do is like, hey, listen, is there something we can learn from this? That was the general thing, right? And so we would take them through all the data, what stuff might matter. It was coming up on the State of the Union address when the Ukraine crisis blew up, which was kind of like two State of the Unions. We had, literally it got the question asked of me. If you were writing the State of the Union address.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  So I don't know what this is. I don't know what's going on here, but, um, and so we, I said, look, here's one example, right? And I talked them through the neurological mechanisms, how this happens, why you can't trust your brain anymore. Loudest voices repeated the most your brain reads as the majority, as we talked about last time.

• 29:34Mike Rowe?

  Sure. What? 10% of the people on Twitter are creating 80% of the content?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  So, so, and I'm showing them the data and they're like, listen, we agree with, we think your methods are sound. We agree with, um, in general, we think you're wrong on this one. I said, why? Oh, we get, we get a lot of calls.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  I'm like, could we see the call logs? You know, it's like, it's like 15 people calling a lot and yelling at you. And it's just, your brain is just, it still feels like it's everybody.

• 30:05Mike Rowe?

  So, okay.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  So we got one line, I will say, we influence one line in the State of the Union address, which was where he said, it's not defund the police, it's fund the police. And

• 30:14Mike Rowe?

  Well, there's a distinction.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I got a nice little note from them, might've been from the auto pin, I'm not sure. But like, they said, thanks for showing us the emperor has no clothes.

• 30:22Mike Rowe?

  Right? Wow.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  And so I was quite proud of that one, but I use that because like, all of a sudden, you've got a fringe who has an agenda. They will shame you, force you into, if you're not, you know, you're not supporting this. Are you racist? Are you like, we can't have a conversation about how we? So like you and I talked about last time, it's like, we usually agree on most outcomes. We just usually disagree on process.

• 30:45Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  And, and then you, you see, well, look, you know, other politicians in places like Seattle, San Francisco, they fell for the illusion and they implemented policies that were disastrous. And you don't take my word for it, those same politicians have reversed course.

• 31:02Mike Rowe?

  Not, not to put too fine a point on it, I just want to be crystal clear. The consensus among the administration was that 55% of Democrats supported a movement to defund the police.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  That was a, in public opinion, that's what it showed every time, including ours.

• 31:21Mike Rowe?

  And the science.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  The private opinion research.

• 31:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Said it was 9%. So, but when you ask them.

• 31:28Mike Rowe?

  My God.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  What do you think other Democrats believe? They thought overwhelmingly, we believe in this. And now because of tribal sort of identity politics, it's like, well, if I'm a Democrat, I'm not a Republican, I'm not those guys. So what does it mean to be a Democrat? And this is where it gets very, very sticky and why we feel so polarized now is I can move in your little group, I can take a fringe idea, I can use bots and things to give the impression that this is consensus. And now you're like, but I'm not that other side.

• 32:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  So I guess I gotta move a little, I'd rather, you know what? I don't really want to defund the police, but I also don't want to get kicked out of this group because I'm certainly not Republican.

• 32:07Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  So I'll just inch over here, I'll say what you want me to say. I don't really believe it and I'm going to be mad when you implement the policy. But

• 32:15Mike Rowe?

  You're part of the mob.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Uh huh. And this is just happening. I mean, we've documented this same phenomenon in over 100 issues in the country.

• 32:27Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week, I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name because his medical history is complicated and personal, but his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast, and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason, to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right

• 33:12Mike Rowe?

  for them. It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are, too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you.

• 33:52Mike Rowe?

  Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter save an average of $1,100 a year. 804-Chapter. That's the number. Call it today. It's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804-Chapter. What other ones are keeping you up?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny. Our latest round of data that'll come out next week, one of the things that was super interesting is while our elections certainly have problems, and I don't doubt that there's shenanigans here and there, the idea of like widespread like manipulation.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Republicans publicly, a majority will say, oh, no, this upcoming election will not be free and fair. In private, the majority actually thinks it will be.

• 34:42Mike Rowe?

  Huh.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Now, that's dangerous, right? Because if you just only look at public opinion, you get the sense that a majority thinks that there's something fundamentally wrong here.

• 34:55Mike Rowe?

  Because when it comes to policy, what's the difference between perception and reality?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Nothing.

• 34:59Mike Rowe?

  Correct.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Nothing. In fact, I would argue it's how most of the world just works. It's really less about the truth. It's what you believe to be true that ends up, I mean, it's called, literally, there's a sociological term called the Thomas theorem. It is like, look, if enough people believe something to be true, it is true in its consequences. And

• 35:17Mike Rowe?

  Who the hell is Thomas?

• 35:18Speaker 02

  You know, it's really funny. Some guy, some sociologist, it turned out his wife came up with the idea. So he didn't, she didn't get credit for it.

• 35:24Mike Rowe?

  I wonder if

• 35:25Speaker 02

  It should be Thomas's wife's theorem.

• 35:27Mike Rowe?

  Maybe it was his last name.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Probably.

• 35:29Mike Rowe?

  What a crazy thing to have a theorem named after, like the Mike theory, the Todd theory. Anyway, wow, it's just mind boggling to think how easy then it is. So, all right, give me some other examples of big consequential

• 35:46Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 35:47Mike Rowe?

  collective illusions that that are currently

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Current. So overwhelming majority of Americans across all demographics care deeply about diversity, care about immigration, and also think you should just secure the border. But they don't want to shut things down. But publicly, on the right, it's like, oh, yeah, we just shut the border down. Like, you don't believe this. You don't believe this. You don't. And the other one, which is, you've already seen collapse. When we started this work with private opinion research, right, to get around social pressure, it was hard to show people, like, this is true. Because how do you know? Right? How do you know what that we have truth and the public opinion polls are wrong? There's only so many ways that you can prove that. So we've predicted a bunch of trends. We've talked

• 36:31Speaker 02

  about last time, education shift that's happened. We were five years ahead on that.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Even though I don't like politics, voting is always a good one, right? We ended up predicting Trump's final vote percentage in the last election within a half a percentage point, six months in advance. Because it turned out Gen Z was lying about their willingness to vote for him.

• 36:53Mike Rowe?

  Why I missed your victory lap on that.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  I didn't want that victory lap, meaning I don't want, it's like, I don't want to do horse race polling. It's just, we were like, you know what, there's only so many ways you can be like, look, we were right. And publish it publicly, right? And just like, hey, this is what private opinion says. Didn't think it would be that accurate. It was the most accurate prediction. So now everybody thinks we know more than we do.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  It went from how do you know to what else is true?

• 37:17Mike Rowe?

  Well, what's wrong fundamentally with polling mechanisms?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  So it's not, this is what's really important. Some of my best friends are pollsters. But it's a, it's actually, they do a really good job. It's really hard. But all opinion polling assumes you're at least trying to tell the truth. There's no amount of math or sampling methods that will get around you lying to a pollster.

• 37:45Mike Rowe?

  I've got a book for you.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Is it called Collective Illusions?

• 37:49Mike Rowe?

  Would you autograph it for me? No, it's called Everybody Lies. Would you mind Googling this, Chuck? And the author's last name is a hyphenate. This book, Todd, he wound up getting permission from Google to dive deep into search histories.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  I do know this.

• 38:10Mike Rowe?

  Anonymous people, right? But the point, and I won't belabor it, but everybody lies about everything to a pollster. Pollster's job is to ask better questions to unmask the prevarication. That's it. Everybody lies. Big data, new data, what the internet can tell us about who we really are by Seth Stephens.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  That's worse than El Todd Rose.

• 38:35Mike Rowe?

  Point being, man, you can't lie in your searches.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 38:41Mike Rowe?

  Because if you do, you won't find what you're looking for.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 38:45Mike Rowe?

  So what can we learn from people at any moment in time based on their search histories if you have millions of data points to cull? And the answers are mind boggling.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  And that is such a great thing. I mean, this is such a good example of another mechanism at getting at private truth. Right? And it's so funny. We've recently been doing a lot of work with the creatives, like musicians, showrunners who are like, well, wait. Could we use private opinion to like tell better stories that people? And a former executive at Netflix told me, she said, oh, no, no. We already believe your theory because we were trying to do this kind of cool little crossover with with Facebook. Where we thought, you know, it'd be good to start pulling more people in is have people post to their friends. What it is they're watching, you know? And she's like, but they sort of forgot that we know what they're watching.

• 39:42Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And so she said, it was only accurate about 30% of the time. So you would sit there and tell all your friends, oh, I just saw the best documentary. I just like, shut up, you're watching Real Housewives and you know, like, just like, are you kidding me? Like, it's just, and so they're like, yeah, we thought, well, this will be great. It's like, no, all we got were lies. And then the problem was is that like, your friend group usually likes what you like, too. They certainly didn't like those documentaries, so that it didn't actually work, right? People like, I don't want to watch that, like.

• 40:12Mike Rowe?

  Isn't that something like, I think they call it the warm market. So the power of a friend recommending a thing is exponentially.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Exponential.

• 40:23Mike Rowe?

  Huge compared to a critic.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:26Mike Rowe?

  Or an ad, which is probably lower on the on the poll than it's ever been before. But wouldn't a social media essentially enable a warm market interaction?

• 40:40Speaker 02

  It should.

• 40:41Mike Rowe?

  It should, but that's where the bots can come in and completely hijack.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. Because we look for the, it's in the work we do, especially under collective illusions. When you want to do something about it, you have to deploy a strategy called social proof, not persuasion. Right? And that comes in just three flavors. It's cultural artifacts. So if I watch a movie and it's talking a certain way, I'm like, oh, that might be what we believe. It's people I admire, right? So you say something, I might be like, okay, hold on. But the most powerful one is people like me. Right? I don't care what a Silicon Valley billionaire thinks about education. If I'm a middle-class person with a lot of constraints, I'm like, good for you. Right? If I had a billion dollars, I probably wouldn't wear either.

• 41:24Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  But when my next-door neighbor starts to talk to me about it, I'm like, well, you kind of live in the same constraints I live in. We go to the same church, we go to the same, you know?

• 41:32Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  So those become by far the most powerful signals of things. And so that sort of warm market is one of those things. We just trust that signal a lot more. And then what you realize is, okay, well, we could actually weaponize that.

• 41:46Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  And this is what's going on. You know, one of the things that we've been a part of since we last spoke is as people started recognizing that collective illusions not only were a thing and they were doing real damage, what started to be unearthed and we've started to become a part of this, these coalitions is we realized that foreign adversaries recognized the value of this idea and intentionally weaponized it with bots. And the level of this foreign malign influence on our people is like shocking. I mean, I'm deep into it and I'm still shocked.

• 42:22Mike Rowe?

  You're talking about China?

• 42:22Speaker 02

  China. China's the biggest player. Russia, Iran, Venezuela was. Weirdly, their bots went silent.

• 42:32Mike Rowe?

  Odd.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know what happened.

• 42:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Something went on.

• 42:34Mike Rowe?

  A few months back is how I recall.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  It was, but it's funny, I had written a little bit about the Venezuela one in Collective Illusions. And then it just, what's been going on in the world stage, it just came out. And then I've been going all around the world, doing things that's kind of cool. I didn't, I mean, it's good for me, bad for society, but there are trade-offs, right?

• 42:54Mike Rowe?

  But you do get around. I mean, you mentioned that Taiwan trip and I didn't want to gloss over that. I know you were over in Israel right after October 7th.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:05Mike Rowe?

  That must have been a hell of a trip.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  That was, it was one of those profoundly life-altering experiences because...

• 43:13Mike Rowe?

  Who invited you? What can you tell me about that?

• 43:15Speaker 02

  So I can tell you a little bit. So I had a Jewish-American friend who also, and another Israeli friend, and they had, after the attacks on October 7th... One of the biggest things that emerged in the US that really frightened a lot of people was that Harvard Harris poll that said that 60% of Gen Z believed Hamas was justified in the rape and murder of 1,200 innocent Israeli civilians. Not, "We are worried about innocent lives and we should be careful," which anybody that isn't, I would think is a monster, but that they were justified. And if that was true, if that tapped real sentiment, then I think Israelis were in big trouble, right?

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Because they were like, "We are at risk."

• 44:02Mike Rowe?

  We were in big trouble.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  We would be, I mean, there'd be a rot at the core, you know, a worm at the core of the apple, if you will. So we did, they said, "Well, we need to show you something. We think it has to do with your work." And I'm like, "Cool, well, show me." And they're like, "Well, you have to come." I was like, "Wait." This is like six and a half weeks after the attacks. So they're at war.

• 44:24Mike Rowe?

  Good grief, so it's like Thanksgiving.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Uh huh. I literally was on vacation for Thanksgiving in the Bahamas. And I get this call, I still remember, I'm on a golf cart going to dinner. Pull over and I'm like, "Okay, I guess I gotta go."

• 44:39Mike Rowe?

  Todd, who called? I mean, is it the Mossad?

• 44:42Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 44:42Mike Rowe?

  Like who? Who in the administration is trying to like get El Todd Rose on the line?

• 44:48Speaker 02

  El Todd Rose, no. The, and so the only way you could get there was on El Al. They weren't letting anyone fly in. I learned that El Al has missile defense technologies on their planes, which made me feel good.

• 44:59Mike Rowe?

  On the commercial flights?

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Uh huh. So it was great. And what was really wonderful is, you know, both, it turned out it was true. They had, we deployed our private opinion methods on that same statement and found that it was not 60%. It was only 7% of Gen Z actually believed that. But when you ask them, what do you think your peers believe? They thought eighty-five percent of their peers thought Hamas was justified. Which, by the way, if I think that and I just want to belong. One of the most powerful motivations that we have as humans is to be part of something. And if I think my group believes this, and here's the thing. Most of these young people couldn't have pointed out Gaza on a map. Have no understanding of it.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  So that's the best way you can manipulate, right? You have no real understanding.

• 45:48Mike Rowe?

  So wait, wait, is it just so I understand? But from the river to the sea, I've seen the protests. I saw the Ivy League.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 45:56Mike Rowe?

  People are camping out. I saw that disastrous testimony from McGill and Gay and my God. Right. So we're not imagining that this is happening. But what you're saying is the number of people who were participating, who actually had conviction.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Truly believed it. Tiny. And in fact, that number has collapsed over time. It is now, in our latest research on this amongst Gen Z. It is now in private, down to two percent. And here's the thing. So what they had found was that, so wait, wait, so why is this happening? Right? How does that happen? And it turns out that it wasn't organic. So there are people who believe it, right? This is how it always works. There are always fringes that you can get a small percentage of people to believe any dumb thing. Right? What they did was, what they discovered was that China was manipulating the algorithms of TikTok to drive that antisemitic sentiment amongst Gen Z specifically. Now, it wasn't because China is particularly hates Jews or something. I don't think they care less.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  And if you Google this now, you'll see a lot of it's become public. So I can talk about that. They saw TikTok as a weapon, a psychological weapon. And it is. It's so clever, if you think about it. Like, Facebook was at least your friends. X is, you choose to follow.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  TikTok was the first algorithmically driven. It's virality. It's pushed to you. And now everybody else has followed suit because it turns out to be your super addictive. Right? What a clever mechanism to be able to manipulate. So if all I'm seeing on my feed over and over again is certain things liked and reposted and stuff like that, it's very hard for your brain not to be like, I think this is what we believe.

• 47:45Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  And then you get them out in the streets protesting. I still remember one-

• 47:48Mike Rowe?

  And you assume that everybody else is seeing the same thing.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Correct, even though they're not. That's the beauty of it is it's so customized. It's unbelievable. And so, um, you know, the, the documents that were stolen and made public was like, it wasn't about Israel, it was about Taiwan. So the ability, it's refining that weapon so that when they want to take Taiwan, they activate it and our young people are out in the streets saying, hands off, hands off China, you know, like they did with hands off Iran.

• 48:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  What are you talking about?

• 48:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Hands up, don't shoot.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's just, and so, you know, it was, you know, thank goodness, uh, there was a forced sell, you know? And it's funny, when Congress tried to get that, you know, ByteDance to sell and they were like, we will not. And we're like, yeah, China will not let you. The algorithm was a state secret. And what's funny is, is only a few years earlier, under the same national security laws, we had forced the sale of, was it Grindr? The, seriously, like-

• 48:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  For national security reasons. And they were like, okay, fine. So like, oh, interesting, but not here? Um, and so it was-

• 48:52Mike Rowe?

  Grindr was deemed an overt threat to national security?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:01Mike Rowe?

  The service I'm about to recommend to you is absolutely free and it can easily save the average user over a thousand dollars a year. It's called Chapter and it's the best way to make sure the Medicare plan you're on is the one you should be on because every year Medicare plans change and so do you. And just because your plan might've been the best choice when you were 65, doesn't mean it's the best choice today. At Chapter, independent advisors compare Medicare plans nationwide. They look at your doctors, your prescriptions and your- Budget to help you find coverage that fits your needs and they're not paid more to recommend one plan over another. You don't need to sort through all the options yourself. You can talk

• 49:41Mike Rowe?

  to somebody who understands them, ask your questions and get help comparing the costs and benefits. So if your current plan is still the right fit, they'll tell you if there's a better option, they'll tell you that too, and they'll help you switch. Again, the service is free and a review can take less than 20 minutes. This is the time of year to make sure you're squared away for 2027. So if you haven't checked your Medicare coverage lately, give chapter a call. It's a simple way to make sure your plan still works for you. And with potential savings of $1,100 a year, it's worth a free review. 804-Chapter. Call them today. 804-C-H-A-P-T-E-R.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  So for the same mechanism, if you control the means. So what's funny is this, that one was taken off the table. Okay. But what's important is the mechanism by which I can manipulate consensus and these foreign adversaries can do it. Doesn't depend on you controlling the algorithm. You just need your bot armies. And it is if you just Google it and look at this, the China stuff that's come out that we've been going after, and I can say a little bit about it, is called the cognitive domain operations. So it's cognitive warfare. Yep, CDO is much better, right? CDO, where they literally lay out, I was half proud that it's just my work.

• 51:04Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  And half mortified. Because it's so funny, someone wrote a summary of this and it's like, Todd Rose explores this from more of a defensive, like, how do we save civilization? They weaponized it, but it's like verbatim, right? It's like, oh, we don't need to spread disinformation. That doesn't work anyway. It just doesn't. I'm going to manufacture a false consensus and get your conformity to do the rest.

• 51:28Mike Rowe?

  So that's the game, right now.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  That is the whole game.

• 51:30Mike Rowe?

  Manufacture a false consensus.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  This is, what I would say is, as you know, I'm a reformed academic, so I always have to have one, one thing.

• 51:38Mike Rowe?

  0.9 GPA, folks. Just always remember that.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Super smart and humble. There's a book called Guns of August. By

• 51:46Mike Rowe?

  Tubman.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:48Mike Rowe?

  Early days, World War I.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Exactly right. So you're a nerd.

• 51:51Mike Rowe?

  You know.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  And it is. And her thesis, right, was that why was this so awful was that in part, the technology for war had changed exponentially.

• 52:00Mike Rowe?

  Tactics versus tech.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  But we our strategy and tactics had not caught up. So we were still digging trenches and fighting over small amounts of land.

• 52:09Mike Rowe?

  With Maxim guns.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  We have machine guns, chemical weapons.

• 52:13Mike Rowe?

  But Todd, we made that mistake. That's, I mean, history, what is it? History doesn't repeat, but it sure as hell rhymes.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  So I believe we are in a Guns of August moment right now when it comes to propaganda and manipulation. The technologies have enabled a new form of propaganda in the form of manufacturing collective illusions.

• 52:33Mike Rowe?

  Sorry, I just want people to understand what you're saying. You're talking about like the some. You're talking about eat prey.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:39Mike Rowe?

  One and two. You're talking about mustard gas.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 52:41Mike Rowe?

  And Maxim guns and people marching into battle as though it was still the Napoleonic Army.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  As if someone's got a rifle and they can shoot one of you. You know what I mean? It's like.

• 52:52Mike Rowe?

  What happened in Shiloh? They found those guys.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 52:55Mike Rowe?

  Six dead, killed by the same, by the same round out of a sharp rifle because suddenly that thing's got a three mile range.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so imagine, so at the US, at the level of our government, and I unfortunately know this now because of our work to have to fight this is we are completely caught off guard. Our entire effort to protect our digital borders, if you will, from manipulation was entirely oriented around disinformation. Nobody's really trying that. It doesn't really work. So meanwhile, they've got these bots that just swarm in and it's shockingly sophisticated. It just blows my mind. Like basically, online, if you have 5% of your interactions are with

• 53:38Speaker 02

  bots, those bots can almost always determine what consensus is. And second, the reality is, right now, today, conservatively, the typical person in America, about 20 to 25% of their interactions online are with bots and they don't know it.

• 53:58Mike Rowe?

  I have no idea.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  They have no idea. And they're so sophisticated now. The AI enabled bots. We just saw some security levels that was just blew my mind because most of the bots are just dumb. Like they don't even bother to put like a picture on the account, right? They're just like frontline infantry. Just.

• 54:11Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Just put them in. The AI ones are shocking. So there's these sleeper bots. So you'll go on a Reddit forum on cooking and you've been on that forum for two years. You think you know everybody. Here's some guy, Steve, that's only ever talked about cooking. It's just an AI bot and you don't know it. It's learning the language of that micro group. And then when you want to activate them, they start ratcheting up, start quoting fringe views, start to amplify, start to, and then they'll bring in secondary bots. So let's say you fall for it and you say, oh, yeah, Steve, that's a, okay, I guess, yeah, yeah, I guess I agree with you. Then other bots come in and approve of what you said.

• 54:52Mike Rowe?

  But what's the goal in a cooking forum? Is it to get you to buy Hexclad?

• 54:56Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 54:57Mike Rowe?

  Like, what's the?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  It turns out it's the best place to radicalize, not cooking per se.

• 55:04Mike Rowe?

  Just one order.

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Betty Crocker.

• 55:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that's the last thing we need. Never trusted that hag.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  No, it's, it's, it's the place you would least expect it, that it's most effective.

• 55:13Mike Rowe?

  Can't believe you just besmirched Betty Crocker.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  She's a saint.

• 55:18Mike Rowe?

  She's the best.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  The best. So basically, if, look, if you were in a political forum, you'd sort of be

• 55:23Mike Rowe?

  Too obvious.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. But if I'm, I'm a big New England Patriots fan. If I'm on some forum or talk football and then someone starts to ratchet up other conversation, I'm like, wait, what?

• 55:31Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  It's just very clever that way because I start to think of those as my peers and my friends.

• 55:37Mike Rowe?

  And the neighbor you just referred to earlier, who has a bigger, who has more credibility in the warm group. So the bot in the cooking forum earns your trust over time with a consistent series of predictable posts that reinforce the same, the sameness.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  They're literally mirroring you.

• 55:55Mike Rowe?

  The warmth.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  They're mirroring you.

• 55:56Mike Rowe?

  Those clever.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  It's so, it's so good. And if you think about this, so in the leaked documents from China, they laid out the argument for this essentially cognitive warfare is like, you really can't beat the United States militarily right now. Probably can't beat us economically. What do you do?

• 56:14Mike Rowe?

  Against us.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  You weaponize culture with these technologies and it's pretty cheap. It's shocking. You think about like what we spend on our, you know, an interceptor to deal with missiles. You can have, for one interceptor, I could have an entire couple million bots in my army.

• 56:30Mike Rowe?

  Dude, I'm telling you, I mean, can you overstate the ramifications of false manufactured consensus, Riddler?

• 56:40Speaker 02

  No, and I'll tell you what some of the the consequences right now are. We already talked last time I was here. Like, right now, eighty something percent of Americans think we're extremely divided as a people.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  It turns out this is not remotely true. We have more private opinion data on the American public than any organization. It's just not true. We are have a shocking amount in common.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  But more importantly, as as I start to think that the people around me not only don't share my values, they share the antithesis of that, right? Like, up is down, left is right, good is evil, evil's good. I'm like, what is going on? Right? I don't. So we, first of all, we retreat into smaller groups, right? This experiment of ours as Americans, this imagined community.

• 57:25Mike Rowe?

  This melting pot?

• 57:26Speaker 02

  Yes, becomes a threat. And we retreat to our tribes and we really hunker down there. What also you'll see the effects of of their efforts to do this to us is, have you seen the data? We have this data as well. On the percentage of of Americans who believe that other Americans are the greatest threat to their way of life.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  It is a majority of Americans believe that.

• 57:52Mike Rowe?

  Is white supremacy the greatest threat to America?

• 57:55Speaker 02

  It's eighty five percent of progressives think that other Americans are the greatest threat to them.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  What happens when you see your fellow citizens, who you may disagree with on the margins, as not just different, but bad?

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Like morally wrong. It's amazing the kind of evil you will allow when you think you're right and good.

• 58:22Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my God, of course.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  And so that's where.

• 58:24Mike Rowe?

  Of course, the curse of virtue.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's where we are. So this is the thing is, and we're seeing the secondary effects of exactly what China had hoped would happen. Right? We are at each other's throats. We can't get anything done because we don't trust each other anymore. Social trust, which is probably the best predictor of the health of a culture, is at the lowest levels ever recorded in America right now. We don't trust the other anymore. And our levels of resentment in America are higher than they were during the Great Depression. So that's the bad news. This is all that's the bad. There is some good news we can talk about. I actually.

• 58:58Mike Rowe?

  Nah, let's stick with the bad.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Let's just keep digging on.

• 59:00Mike Rowe?

  How do you measure resentment?

• 59:03Speaker 02

  What's great is you can do a couple of things. One, you got to do it privately because people. It was really funny. The first time we measured fairness and resentment in private when Trump was president the first time. Republicans, they're like, all we asked was, is society even mostly fair? Do we live in a mostly fair society? And they're like, yes, like, like 70%, something like that. Like, yes, publicly. In private, they were the most resentful of any demographic group.

• 59:31Mike Rowe?

  Really, Republicans?

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that it was, it was crazy. But of course, you can't say that, right?

• 59:36Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Well, then he didn't make America great again. If this isn't fair. So we have a number of different ways, but it's that resentment data is probably the most frightening data we have.

• 59:45Mike Rowe?

  That's why I'm asking about it.

• 59:46Speaker 02

  Because.

• 59:46Mike Rowe?

  That festers.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yes, it does, because there are a couple of things about it. One, we're hardwired to cooperate as humans. Like, it's actually our superpower. We can always do more together than we can do by ourselves. But cooperation makes you vulnerable. And if other people aren't cooperating, then you get taken advantage of. So we actually have. Like built in mechanisms neurologically to be exquisitely sensitive to violations of fairness. Because it's a good sign you should stop cooperating and start competing. Right. When you start to feel resentful, you become very zero sum in your thinking. So someone's got to lose. And you get to that sort of burn it down mentality. The behavioral economic studies on this are fascinating.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  If you and I are playing a fairness game. And you agreed, we're gonna, hey, we'll split the pot. But the game's structured so that we could take advantage of each other anytime. You take advantage of me once. And we keep playing. I will zero you out, even if I get nothing.

• 1:00:47Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  It's like I will literally cut my face off despite my nose, just so you can't win.

• 1:00:53Mike Rowe?

  Justice for all.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  And by the way, doesn't that sound a lot like our politics right now?

• 1:00:56Mike Rowe?

  I was just about to say, since you said burn it down, and since we're sitting here in Santa Monica, and since Spencer Pratt has completely upset the apple cart with regard to political messaging. And, you know, I have nothing but anecdotal evidence, but the conversations are, there's something simmering. Right now. People are beginning to get, I think, to a point where you would have to get. If you're confronted day after day after day after day with examples of no consequences. And the perception, or maybe the reality, but again, what's the difference? The feeling that everyone is getting away with murder, or maybe in this case arson.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Mike Rowe?

  Or just mass fibbing. I can't imagine the species has an infinite capacity to live or function with that feeling.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Correct. And the thing is, is that's why it's these sort of collective illusions, right? Where I'm going along with it, I think this is not right. But I'm pretty sure everyone seems to be okay with it. And so I'll go along with it for a little while. But they're so fragile because they're lies, that it doesn't take much to actually tip this. Right. If you do it right. The name sounds familiar.

• 1:02:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, he wrote and directed and produced Entourage.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:02:21Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  That's by the way, Entourage is one of my guilty pleasures.

• 1:02:24Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, how do you not love it? Especially in this town, in this industry. Well, he is all over the socials today.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Mike Rowe?

  His house was robbed.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  I saw it.

• 1:02:34Mike Rowe?

  Two masked, right? Two guys come in. He's got 15 cameras set up. All his neighbors have the same. He is sounding to me very, now he'd left a center guy, didn't vote for Trump, wants to be clear about all that. But he lives in a fairly isolated enclave and he is among

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Mike Rowe?

  the chosen in this town. And he's had it.

• 1:02:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Mike Rowe?

  And he's had it and his neighbors have had it. And he's making these videos and he is out of the closet.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:06Mike Rowe?

  And he's pissed and he's like, he's, it's his version of the emperor has no clothes. Somebody has to do something because there's no justice and this is insane and we can't. He literally called the people who burgled his home animals and then quickly explained that he's not going to apologize because they had masks on and he doesn't know what color they are, you know, if they're Jewish. He didn't care. They're animals and they should be in jail for 20 years, damn it, because they invaded my home, but they're not. They're not even being chased or investigated. And you can see this guy exploding with the frustration of a world without consequence.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  And from a shattering an illusion and driving the change you want, that's the spark, right? That's the, the people I admire, the people, oh, the, wait, the guy that did Entourage? You know, hold on. Okay.

• 1:03:53Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  Hold on.

• 1:03:54Mike Rowe?

  I'll listen. I'll listen to him.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  You know, it's, you know, it's really funny. I had a, I always try to tell people, okay, under collective illusions, it's a problem because they will destroy civilization. They really will. But they're also fragile because they're lies. And so if you understand the right strategy, you can actually shatter them and unlock change at a speed and a scale that would be unimaginable otherwise. But you gotta get the right strategy. And I'll give you the example of, the strategy is about social proof, not persuasion. You try, if I try to, so imagine you believe that nobody cares about free speech anymore, which is one of the illusions on the left. The left believes the left doesn't care about free speech. It's just not true in private. So I'm like, hey, this is a problem. We got to believe in free speech.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  And so I start telling one, listen, free speech is under attack. It's really important. We got to preserve it. If I'm under an illusion, that reinforces the illusion.

• 1:04:49Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  So the best example, by the way, so you never try to persuade when it's an illusion. If you know that's the problem, because it will make it worse. Best example of that, and then I'll tell you what the right way to do it is. Is remember the Stand On Drugs campaign?

• 1:05:02Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:05:04Mike Rowe?

  Nancy.

• 1:05:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that came about because the government noticed a very slight uptick in first time marijuana use amongst teens.

• 1:05:16Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five week, highly immersive pre apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 1:05:59Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI proof, six figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long term career in a skilled trade. If you or your spouse or your kid or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 1:06:42Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  In response, they spent a billion dollars, got the best ad agencies in the country to come up with incredibly clever or whatever, you know, and they ran it for years and years. And from an advertising standpoint, it was unbelievably successful. The typical American teen saw three ads a day for six years.

• 1:07:14Mike Rowe?

  That was also part of, this is your brain.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  Is your brain on drugs?

• 1:07:18Mike Rowe?

  On drugs.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  Any questions? Hard boiled egg. I'm like, yeah, how's it like an egg? Okay. But I had lots of questions, but here was the problem. The government assumed the reason kids were trying drugs is they were curious about drugs. But private opinion data existed at the time that they ignored or didn't know about that completely refuted that. Kids were skeptical. What they wanted is what every kid wants is to fit in. And they were under what I think is kind of a funny collective illusion. Most American teens back then thought most teens did drugs. So into that illusion, you blitz them with a billion dollars of ads trying to scare them straight. What they took from the ads? This must be what we're doing.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Why would the adults try to get us to stop? So as a result, scholars have pretty conclusively proven that that campaign directly caused an increase in drug use.

• 1:08:13Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  So we don't do that. You do not persuade.

• 1:08:16Mike Rowe?

  Is it possible that that same dynamic was at work with Black Lives Matter with regard to the immediate reaction by lots of people who said, wait, all lives matter? And then all of a sudden, those people were deemed racist because they didn't understand. So what was the underlying collective illusion there? Was it the fact that there's a real belief that cops are fundamentally corrupt and they in giant numbers unfairly target like?

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  No, they did a really good job. So my interpretation of it is that, so first of all, it tapped something that I think is right. Like any decent person should be against racism.

• 1:08:55Mike Rowe?

  Of course.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  Right? Discrimination of any kind should be unacceptable in a, in a pluralistic free society. There is racism and the folks on our side of things, we weren't really doing anything about, not really.

• 1:09:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean? And so into an event that had racial issues at play, there's no other alternative. So I see something that seems profoundly wrong. That wasn't right, what happened.

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  This side is very clever, and I don't mean this as derogatory as it can sound, but these are Marxists. The people that founded Black Lives Matter are about Marxists.

• 1:09:31Mike Rowe?

  Of course.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  It's just not my particular idea. I think it's a fairly evil ideology. I don't think they're evil. I think the idea is that.

• 1:09:37Mike Rowe?

  Fairly evil. Fairly.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Well, I think anything that has consistently led to the mass murder and starvation of

• 1:09:43Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  tens of millions of people probably.

• 1:09:46Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  So I disagree with their starting assumptions of how the world should work. But all of a sudden, you flood in with this thing that sounds, right, yeah, of course, Black Lives Matter.

• 1:09:59Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:09:59Speaker 02

  And then you get it's like, if I want to control that narrative, then I can't let it become about everybody, right? Because then that's not, I can't, we have a whole agenda. So the defund the police that came from them, that wasn't new. They had proposed that years before and got no traction.

• 1:10:15Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  So into something where you tap a real feeling like this isn't right, something should be done, and there's no other solution on offer. Like, you could have done something. That could have been the moment where we question qualified immunity. It's funny that our surgeons don't get qualified immunity. They have to pay for malpractice insurance.

• 1:10:34Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  You could have solved that problem by saying, we will go ahead and increase the salaries for cops to cover malpractice insurance, but we're removing qualified immunity. And if you consistently violate people's rights, just like a surgeon that keeps messing up, you will not be able to practice.

• 1:10:50Mike Rowe?

  I want people to really understand that. So say it again, just a little slower and with the assumption that my audience's IQ is. That I'm listening. That Chuck's here.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Okay, so I'll explain to Chuck. So there was a very straightforward solution, Chuck.

• 1:11:06Mike Rowe?

  Thank you.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  That if you want to solve this problem, I mean, look, in any profession, there are bad apples. How do you make sure they can't do a lot of harm? There was a very straightforward proposal. The underlying problem was qualified immunity. And for people that don't know, it's officers, it's anybody administering the law. This is why politicians didn't want it, because they are covered under qualified immunity too. If you are doing something in the service of your job as an officer of the state. You have some qualified immunity from prosecution.

• 1:11:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I'm a diplomat. I don't have to pay their car ticket.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it and it turns out politicians take advantage of that quite a bit. And the last thing they want to do is be held accountable for their behavior. And so you could have easily, if you said, okay, this was unacceptable. Let's understand what happened. Let's reform this. We should remove qualified immunity from officers. And again, not not to put them at risk because most, most police officers are fantastic and they're important. And we could replace that with malpractice insurance, the way we do with surgeons. Right? It's kind of sad that someone goes to medical school and all the residency stuff and training. And she's a surgeon.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  And for whatever reason, ends up making a bunch of mistakes, she will not be able to practice.

• 1:12:20Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  And we think that's okay, right?

• 1:12:22Mike Rowe?

  That's called a consequence.

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  Yes. So if we want to make sure there are personal consequences for bad behavior, you remove qualified immunity and you and they say like, there were even proposals to say like, we will pay for the malpractice insurance. This is not a attack on cops. We just want to hold individuals responsible for violating the rights of other people. That wasn't the agenda on the Marxist side. Right? And so the last thing in the world you want to do is is expand the aperture on what this is.

• 1:12:51Mike Rowe?

  You don't want individual responsibility.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  No, no, no. And so you already have the defund the police movement that had gotten no traction. And all these other things that were just like antithetical to our fundamental values as Americans. But as the only game in town, addressing a very real thing. Again, racism is real, it's wrong, and we should all care about that.

• 1:13:13Mike Rowe?

  Are we a racist country?

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  You know what? I, I think that it's always a work in progress. And I think that it's never finished. And I think that our brains are very, very tribal and prejudice of any kind. You know, our brains use stereotypes all the time to navigate the world. It doesn't mean they're right. In fact, they're not right. So we have to work hard to overcome. That prejudgment and those things. And there are certainly a lot of racist people or some racist people. Do I think the country's racist? I do not. I think that fear makes us behave in ways that are probably

• 1:13:48Mike Rowe?

  What's the science say?

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Well, look, I can tell you from our private opinion data. It's just every way we've pushed the stuff around to try to understand it. It's like pretty shocking how eager we are to not judge people by the color of their skin or their gender, this, and really get what Dr. King wanted, right? The content of your character. That's still what people want in private. Now, what's interesting is when we ask people in private whether they think we are systemically racist, are we this? It, no, right? When we ask them, what do you think most Americans would say? Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.

• 1:14:24Mike Rowe?

  And what about the line between how you might actually feel and what you actually do as a result of the feelings? For instance, there's a, there was a chapter in that book, Everybody Lies, where the author's trying to answer the same question. And I don't know what he ultimately concluded, but he said, you know what? Let's search these billions of Google searches the day after Barack Obama is elected president. And let's see what we find. And well, as it turns out, there were a fair amount of requests for racist jokes. Now, where'd they come from? What part of the country?

• 1:15:08Mike Rowe?

  What demographic? They got all the info. Like, they're not identifying me, but they're saying, okay, well, there was a 62-year-old white user who searched for racist jokes within 24 hours of Barack Obama's election, and he lived in Baltimore. So what can we learn about this? Well, I don't know.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:32Mike Rowe?

  But it is interesting to see where those searches took. Because again, to our earlier point, that's not a pollster asking a question.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 1:15:44Mike Rowe?

  That's somebody all alone with their little keyboard going, I wonder.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:50Mike Rowe?

  Why? And what, if anything, do we glean from it?

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. What's interesting is most of our, again, our private views usually lead to our behavior.

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  There are distorting things, right? So like, in that case, because what's weird, for whatever you think, no one knows. Like, everybody knows what you're searching. Google knows everything. But there's this perception of anonymity. Especially when you go on like Safari, you're like, I'll go incognito.

• 1:16:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Like, I don't think you know what that means. Like, people actually think incognito means, nobody knows.

• 1:16:22Mike Rowe?

  No one knows.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  We're like, no, it means they won't store the cache. It means they know exactly what you're searching for.

• 1:16:27Mike Rowe?

  I know.

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  It's a, in fact, it's one of the easiest ways I can get you to like, this is like, just, what do you search on incognito? When people hit incognito, it's one of the best predictors of what they really care about and think, because they just think no one knows.

• 1:16:39Mike Rowe?

  You want to hear something really troubling? There's another chapter in this book, Everybody Lies, and the author says, "The most reliable source of truly unfiltered, real belief is on Pornhub." Because A, it's vast. It's vast. And B, if you're on Pornhub and you're searching for something specific, it says a great deal about a great deal.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  I know, you share all that with me all the time. I really appreciate those. It's really, really opened my eyes to that.

• 1:17:12Mike Rowe?

  I'm an open book. So like, what do you do with this? So the author's like, okay, are we a depraved people? Are we, like sexually? Like, what are we really into? What are we really? So he goes, got all this data from Pornhub. You know what the most searched thing on Pornhub is?

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  If you say dirty jobs, so help me.

• 1:17:33Mike Rowe?

  It's, "I want to see activity between a mother and a son." Hello Freud.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:44Mike Rowe?

  Hello Oedipus.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  It's a...

• 1:17:46Mike Rowe?

  Like, the most searched thing? Now technically, isn't it stepson?

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes it so much, right?

• 1:17:55Mike Rowe?

  That's okay.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:17:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Speaker 02

  Chuck, Chuck, you're fine.

• 1:18:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you're good. But I mean, look, I think that's such a good example of a poll that could never hope to be accurately conducted.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Ever, yeah.

• 1:18:08Mike Rowe?

  You're never going to get the truth of this.

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  I'll tell you something, we've been developing some of our preliminary data. We haven't made it public, but because we do.

• 1:18:17Mike Rowe?

  You're about to.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Well, here's, here's this, my poor co-founder is like, what are you doing?

• 1:18:21Mike Rowe?

  People do listen to this.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  We make this joke, yeah. That we, we always make this joke. Because the areas where people are going to lie the most are in some of these things that have to do with very private things like, like sex and stuff like that, right?

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  And so it's like, we've always wanted to do a full suite of things where like, are we like a kink tank? Is that where you are now? Like, what is this, right? Populist after dark. But, um, but is young men and young women from watching so much porn who think everybody, that women like to be choked?

• 1:18:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  And it is definitely not true.

• 1:18:54Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  But they think that men want it. Young men think that women expect it, when in fact, it's unbelievably dangerous.

• 1:19:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:03Speaker 02

  This is the kind of stuff where you're like, wow, we're all being shaped by what we think everybody believes.

• 1:19:08Mike Rowe?

  Have you read the studies on auto asphyxiation, death by misadventure?

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  It's so bad. It's so bad. How sad is that, that because I do think like the porn industry has gone so violent and crazy. And, but then these young kids, that that's where they're learning about what it means to engage like that? Like, it's quite bad. But the, on a happier note, if you see this, like, basically, what I would say to anyone listening or watching is like, number one, you cannot trust your brain to tell you what your group thinks anymore. You can't. Those days are over. We're never going back. It's just digitally in an online environment, they're funhouse of mirrors. That's the bad news, right? Good news is we're living under, most of the problems we face as a people are actually

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  problems of collective illusions. They are not, right now, not representative of ground truth. Right? If you just go on our website and download any of our private opinion research. You'll be shocked. Like, if I removed Democrat, Republican from the labels, you would not be able to tell me. Like, it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. And we're not looking for good news. Like, I don't, we just want the truth. Right? Like, like, like, like, look, if we have a problem over here, let's just see it accurately so we can try to solve it. That's just not what's going on. And I'll tell you, the data that is both the most interesting to me that we have and the most useful for the moment

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  we're in, we did the largest study ever on private opinion on what people mean by a good life. What do they mean by success? What kind of life they want to live?

• 1:20:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  Over 65 attributes that you could choose from, it's trade-offs. We talked about this last episodes, so people can go back and watch that one. If you wanted about the methodologies, that was in the previous episode.

• 1:21:06Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:09Speaker 02

  But it had everything from being the richest person you know, to having a family, everything in between, like, anything that could index a successful life. Every time we do those, we always have you answer in private for yourself, and then we always follow up with, what do you think most other people would say on this?

• 1:21:32Mike Rowe?

  I'd like to talk about initiative, if I could, for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants, but everybody wants it. I'm talking about the the quality in a lift driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking, or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves, or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you, in their own words, why they're interested in your

• 1:22:13Mike Rowe?

  job, not just why they're qualified, but why they're interested. This is a way that allows the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition. Great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. ZipRecruiter is the number one hiring site, in large part because of this new initiative that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within one day. Try it for free, ziprecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Build your team, build it sooner.

• 1:22:58Mike Rowe?

  Meet your match at ZipRecruiter.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  Try it free.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  Our perception of what other people view as a successful life is entirely about status, entirely. It is shocking. We think everybody, in fact, we've done this study a couple of times now. In one of them, the number one thing we think everybody else wants in life is to be famous. In private, it was dead last.

• 1:23:29Mike Rowe?

  No kidding.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  Dead last. What's interesting, and this was fun, in that same study, kind of circling back to stuff we've talked about before. For the first time ever, getting a certificate in a skilled trade ranked significantly higher in people's view of a successful life than a four-year diploma, an advanced degree, or a degree from an elite institution.

• 1:23:51Mike Rowe?

  Sidebar, before we sat down to start talking, I showed Todd a clip that I'd seen on South Park. And sidebar to the sidebar, Parker and Stone, I reckon, will be looked back on as maybe the greatest satirists of our age. And so much of what South Park does in an unapologetically puerile adolescent way is let the air out of the tire you talked about and tackle. I mean, if you really, you ought to do a deep dive on the collective illusions that South Park has either debunked or dealt with.

• 1:24:29Speaker 02

  Can I say, this is... I first of all, love South Park because first of all, they're equal opportunity.

• 1:24:35Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  Like, and there's always a little kernel underneath where it's not just, you're not just being mean.

• 1:24:42Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  Um, you know, Book of Mormon, such a good example. I mean, mercilessly, but and yet at the end, you're kind of endearing a little bit, right? There's still a

• 1:24:53Mike Rowe?

  Mormons love it.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  And Mormons, by the way, the Mormons, the greatest response I've ever seen to something like that. Instead of throwing a fit, they took out that full page ad in the playbill.

• 1:25:03Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  Said, if you like this, you'll love the real thing.

• 1:25:05Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  It's such a good, can we just

• 1:25:07Mike Rowe?

  It's called, it's called being in on the joke.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Yes, it's like, come on, like you can either look like you can't handle a joke or you can lean into it. I, I bet you they got so many people going, you know what? It's pretty great. So what I love about them is that I had this asked to me before, it's like, when would you know that you've succeeded? And I said, when South Park explicitly does something on collective illusions, like they've tackled them, but name it. Do you know what I mean? If that ever happens, then I know we, because everything's downstream from culture and South Park has been probably the most interesting, important driver of shattering some of these, whether they realize that's what they're doing or not. They've been so good at it.

• 1:25:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, that's a great point too, you know, back to your guy, uh, what was his name with the airplane seat?

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Gilbert Daniels.

• 1:25:55Mike Rowe?

  Gilbert, yeah.

• 1:25:58Mike Rowe?

  The work versus the personality trait that allowed the work to resonate.

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Mike Rowe?

  It almost rhymes, uh, but you know, I think Trey and Matt are mostly trying to amuse themselves. Right? And I think they're so good at it and they've got such a history of doing it that the people in the audience who are able to go along for that ride, they bought their ticket. You must be this tall to get on.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:26:24Mike Rowe?

  And we go, I watch them not religiously, but I, and obviously I doubt we see eye to eye on a bunch of stuff. But when they put Trump in bed with Satan. That is, that's what the court jester is supposed to do.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  But it's exactly right. We don't have the jester, right? Who can actually make fun of the king without undermining his authority?

• 1:26:49Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Right? That was the jester's job.

• 1:26:51Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:26:51Speaker 02

  And right now, we've literally, in the name of whatever ideology we're after, have neutered art and neutered this thing. And it's, but it is coming back. It is. And by the way, the fact that these guys are filthy rich, it's not just going. It keeps just growing and it tells you a lot.

• 1:27:11Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  Right? Because nobody has to watch it.

• 1:27:13Mike Rowe?

  Right. Right?

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  But it's what we choose to watch. And what's so interesting though, and we come back to this six, I think, I think is really important.

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  When we looked at the private truth about the lives that Americans want to live. Because nothing's more important. Like, we can talk about democracy. That's great. It's important. We can talk about all this collective stuff. There is no better indicator of a thriving society than when most people believe they have a shot at living the life they want to live. Call it the American dream, call it whatever you want, like, like.

• 1:27:44Mike Rowe?

  The pursuit.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  If I believe I have a chance at that, a lot of other stuff gets easier in society. Right? When I feel like I have no chance at the life I want to live, why would I defend this thing? So, you know, when I think about how we actually revive it and ensure this American experiment continues, we've got to get back to what kind of lives do people really want to live? And how do we make that possible, right? The pursuit of it, not the guarantee of it, but the pursuit. So we're really interested. What kind of life do you want to live? Look, in private, it's remarkable, honestly. And it's worth reading, not just because we did the research, but it's across all demographics,

• 1:28:27Speaker 02

  every single one, the top trade-off priority for their view of success is that they want to do work that has a positive impact on other people. They want to contribute. That is their number one private trade-off priority for a good life. Also, in the top 10 for every demographic, including Gen Z.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  They want to be actively engaged in their community. That one, I was like, that, I just, I think that can't be like, I was shocked.

• 1:28:55Mike Rowe?

  This is a good place to circle back to the Boy Scouts. When I grew up, it wasn't just the Boy Scouts. It was Future Farmers of America. It was Skills USA. Uh, it was the 4H Club for kids.

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:06Mike Rowe?

  But then for adults, you had the Rotarians. You had the J C's. You had the Lions Club, right? You had the Elks Lodge. Like, there was so much grout between the tile.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  And, and this is, if you go all the way back to Tocqueville and Democracy in America, where people always forget, he was a French aristocrat. He wasn't in love with democracy.

• 1:29:25Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:29:25Speaker 02

  He was like, what's going on?

• 1:29:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:29:27Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  And it was like, his first real insight was, this is a nation of joiners. They don't ask for permission. Like, they don't even care who's president. Like, it was like, the mayor was way more important than the president.

• 1:29:40Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  And, and I love, you, you say, yeah, the thing I really like is, everybody thinks they're your equal. They all think they're entitled to their opinions. It just was so weird to me, right? He also, a, a little known thing that people don't talk about is, in his treaty on that, he talked about how weirdly, in a society that prized the freedom and equality, we were way more herd mentality. The social influence was really powerful. But we were a nation of joiners. And this is important because when you gut that layer, that middle layer of society, what's left is the individual and the government. And now, if we want to get anything done, I either do it myself.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  But there's a lot of stuff that is not something you can just do by yourself.

• 1:30:28Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  So now I have to go to the government and everything becomes political. That layer was decimated. You know, Bob Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, that really documented that decline. But

• 1:30:39Mike Rowe?

  Wow, what a great title that was.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so good.

• 1:30:42Mike Rowe?

  I mean, right up there with Square Peg.

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, right?

• 1:30:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  It wasn't as good a cover as mine, but um.

• 1:30:47Mike Rowe?

  He was licking a bowling ball.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  We can't all have luscious lips and and lollipops. But um, yeah, I know, right? But it's art.

• 1:30:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  You just don't get it.

• 1:30:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, but licking a bowling ball. I mean, is there a dirtier hole on the planet than a hole in a bowling ball?

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna leave that.

• 1:31:02Mike Rowe?

  All those hands.

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  I'm just gonna leave that. I'll let Chuck make that joke.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  You're forcing me to think of a lot of dirty holes.

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  I don't need that.

• 1:31:08Mike Rowe?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Um, so, but let me, let me just close up on this, because, okay, let me go back. So on these priorities that people have for the lives they want to live.

• 1:31:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  We also measure achievement on them. What do you care about and how you doing? Being involved in your community is the lowest level of achievement of any top priority. In fact, there's no kidding. More people in our research reported being debt free than engaged in their community at the level they want to be. And I was like, wait, wait a minute, like, where?

• 1:31:42Mike Rowe?

  Where do those two things live in the ranking?

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  People would like to have financial security. They don't need to be rich. They definitely don't want to be drowning in debt, right?

• 1:31:50Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  So we say, oh, that's a top 10 priority, just having financial security.

• 1:31:54Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:54Speaker 02

  Not being rich. How you doing? Oh, no, no, not so good, right? Or, okay. A higher percentage of people reported, oh, I'm debt free than I am engaged in my community at the level I want to be.

• 1:32:06Mike Rowe?

  But were they sad? Oh, oh, they're, they're saying.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  I want to.

• 1:32:10Mike Rowe?

  I'm dissatisfied with my level of engagement.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  It's a top 10 priority for how I deem, am I, is my life going well? And so we were like, well, hold on. This is weird, because it's like, all these things that are in the, that people care about, it's like, but you could just go do it, right? Like, so we, we did a lot of follow up, um, stuff on digging into with people in, um, focus groups and so, okay, well, so what's stopping you? Two things.

• 1:32:36Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God.

• 1:32:37Speaker 02

  One, the collective illusion.

• 1:32:38Mike Rowe?

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  I'm all alone. If I want to go out and do something, I'm gonna clean up the park, I want to, whatever, you know? I don't think anyone else cares.

• 1:32:47Speaker 02

  Some people still might go do it, but a lot of people don't want to be out of step with it and think it's okay. No one else is going to do it. So why am I wasting my time? Second thing is back to this gutting of the civic layer. Even the people said, well, I would, I don't know how. And it's really funny. I will say like, I experienced this, you know, I grew up in Utah and it was a culture of charity, a culture of giving.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  It's, you know, it was so easy to plug in and do stuff like that, to be engaged in your community. When I moved to Massachusetts, I realized without even thinking about it, I hadn't done anything for quite a while. And I realized, oh, it requires me to go figure out.

• 1:33:26Mike Rowe?

  Right. It's not coming to you.

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  No, literally like the, the, thank goodness, uh, the gym that I go to, the, the people that own it were like, we're going to start doing Thanksgiving stuff and Christmas. And it gave, made it easy for me to actually contribute in my community. So this is the thing that worries me the most. We're under this massive illusion that nobody cares about contribution. Nobody cares about community. We think everybody sees success as zero sum, sees it as status oriented. We don't want that. But we think our neighbors care about it. We think it's just so we feel alienated, isolated, right? We feel like we don't share values anymore. Um, so we don't trust people. This is why I think probably the most important thing I've ever been a part of.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  And I'm, I'm, I'm so excited about this is everyone listening or watching. One ask, there is a new initiative that is going to come online. Sorry, doing the stuff in stealth, that I, I don't think I've ever been prouder to be a part of something in my life. It's called be the people.

• 1:34:33Mike Rowe?

  Love it.

• 1:34:34Speaker 02

  If you go to Instagram, just at be the people, be the people.org. This is a 10 year effort to completely recapture the American spirit rooted in the data we just talked about.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  The things I love about it, politicians are banned. I don't care how nice you are, you might be good. There's a few good politi- sorry, can't be a part of it. Because the thing that's terrifying to me is not just that we now see, as a result of thinking we have no shared values anymore, we see each other as the enemy. And the other data that kept us up at night is, for the first time, a majority of Americans no longer believe we can solve our own problems. That is frightening because when you get to that place of impotence, the sort of strong man becomes tempting. And so, this is, I don't want to spoil this. All I want is, go follow this, because you're gonna be shocked. I don't want to spoil all the cool stuff that's coming.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  We are talking about hundreds of companies and civic organizations, and this is not it, this is not me doing it. I'm on the leadership council, I'm so excited about this. Because like, this is, I get chills thinking about this. This is an attempt to bottom up, shatter the most important collective illusion we face as Americans. What do we believe in? What kind of lives do we want to live? And get that identity back to the can-do, problem-solving. We just see a problem, you solve it. Get in there, right? Do something. Stop complaining, do something. This is replacing that layer right now. It's standing it up.

• 1:36:15Speaker 02

  It's gonna give people so many ways to just get involved. I'm not gonna tell you what you have to do. And you're gonna see, like, sports leagues. So, all kinds of people get involved because people are desperate for something that isn't political, that gets back to who we are. And like, if you feel like something is wrong in the country right now, and you, you still give a damn.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  You can't wallow in that.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  Get involved.

• 1:36:45Mike Rowe?

  Brother, look, I.

• 1:36:49Mike Rowe?

  It's not as on the nose as this, but you know, Dirty Jobs and somebody's got to do it and returning the favor and people you should know and every kind of TV thing I've ever worked on. Really was an attempt to check that box in some way and I didn't really know it when I, when I started, but the big lesson for me that began to emerge had to do with dignified work. And you know. For a long time, that expression gets thrown around a lot. I don't think everybody think it means the same thing.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:37:26Mike Rowe?

  And I think, you know, a lot of my progressive friends have asked me about, you know, well, what makes a job dignified? And they're coming from the place of the circumstances of the job.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:37:36Mike Rowe?

  Right? And it's like, okay, well, that, you know what, picking up roadkill is not dignified. I mean, God, you're covered in guts and that, that, that, and those, those poor people and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, man, I, I experienced a very different social anthropological awakening on Dirty Jobs. And for me, the big moment was, oh shit, you know what, man? Dignified work is work that blesses someone else.

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  You're.

• 1:38:05Mike Rowe?

  It's not you.

• 1:38:05Speaker 02

  That's right. It's not about the.

• 1:38:07Mike Rowe?

  It's not you. And then conversely, if you start to look, I mean, sadly, there is a lot of undignified work in this country and a lot of it exists in academia. A lot of it exists in consultancies. A lot of it exists in nonprofit.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  What do you do here?

• 1:38:23Mike Rowe?

  Activism.

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  Right? The NGOs that are.

• 1:38:25Mike Rowe?

  Right. Now, I'm not saying those people are bad, but I'm saying if you're really going to put work into two different categories, the line maybe ought to be between those, that labor which benefits you, period, hard stop. And that which benefits somebody else. And that's the meaning, I think, your research.

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  So this is it. If I could sum up how the vast majority of Americans view a successful life is that they find meaning in their life by contributing to the lives of other people.

• 1:39:01Mike Rowe?

  What if, say, five years ago, some big oil company offered a promotion that gave you a chance to lock in the price of gasoline at $2.50 a gallon for the rest of your life? Would you have taken that deal? Or what if a nationwide grocery store had given you an opportunity to lock in the price of ground beef at, say, $2 a pound for as long as you live? Would you have taken that deal? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, those deals were never on the table, but this one is. Today, as in right now, for a very, very limited time, Pure Talk is offering every American the opportunity to purchase unlimited talk, text, and data, along with a 30 gig hotspot,

• 1:39:46Mike Rowe?

  for just $29.95 a month for life. Not your phone's life, your life. No contracts, no commitments, just a very rare opportunity to lock into a ridiculously low rate for unlimited talk, text, and data for the rest of your life. It's the unlimited data plan from Pure Talk, and it will not be around for long. $29.95 a month for as long as you live. Taxes and fees not included. Some restrictions do apply. See puretalk.com for details. Offer ends 11/15/26. So chop, chop.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:40:30Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:40:30Speaker 02

  The deal moves. Yes, and so, and I love that idea. It's like, there's dignity in the work because it benefits somebody else.

• 1:40:37Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  It's not all about you, right? And...

• 1:40:41Mike Rowe?

  Is collecting garbage dignified? Well, the answer to that question is brought to you by Jimmy Stewart and It's a Wonderful Life. And let's just imagine a world where it's not gathered.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:55Mike Rowe?

  That's the answer.

• 1:40:56Speaker 02

  That's right. And so, it's fascinating because this is such an important issue, weirdly, because with the coming AI and it becoming the new operating system for society, I actually think we are not thinking about the right unintended consequence of that. Because right now, the conversation is, it's going to destroy humanity, right? The bots, the robots will take over, maybe. I think using that stuff's pretty overblown. I mean, I think we've got to be careful on some things, but I, like... But what's funny is the only thing that we seem to be able to muster on the positive side is, well, you might not have to work.

• 1:41:32Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:41:32Speaker 02

  Universe-based income, isn't that great? I'm like, no, no. Because guess what? Viktor Frankl was exactly right. We don't have a will to power, we have a will to meaning.

• 1:41:41Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  And I think one of the unintended consequences of AI succeeding is that we will generate enough abundance where work becomes optional at some level for a critical mass of people. And I think work, even when you didn't like it, was a forcing function for meaning because it made you have to give a shit about other people.

• 1:42:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  You contributed to their lives. And so I believe that the, the thing we have to get right as a people is we have to understand what it means to be able to engineer our own meaning now and not try and that. And so this is why, like, I think, you know, we've seen over and over again, under collective illusions, if you pursue the right strategy, they shatter and things change super fast, super fast, in ways that you just can't believe. The other thing that's really important about that and relevant to this meaning and the lives we want to live and be the people is that the secret is everyday people have all the power because they're the ones holding up the illusion, right? There's nobody that can save you when the problem is an illusion.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  Only we can do that.

• 1:42:48Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 1:42:48Speaker 02

  So let's take this idea as like, what matters most to us is we want meaning in our life by contributing to lives by other people. And we want to do that in real life, not online, in our own communities. Okay, and we're not getting that right now. Imagine this 10-year effort, there'll be, there's an air coming, it's, it's gonna be amazing, so you just gotta sign up for it so you can see it's shocking what's coming. But it's not about celebrities and politicians, obviously. It's about reigniting the everyday people to realize you have so much more power than you think, not to destroy, but to build. And when we get, give you the opportunities to contribute in ways that matter to you

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  and matter for other people, and then we show you that you weren't alone in that desire, that it's not just what you believe, it's what we believe, it's what it means to be an American, like, watch what happens to this country. Like, I don't say this lightly. I think that this is going to be the kind of effort that's written about in history. You know, there's always these times in history, civil rights movement, other things like that, where your kids and your grandkids are like, where were you? What did you do?

• 1:44:02Mike Rowe?

  This is your answer.

• 1:44:03Speaker 02

  This is it. And it doesn't require, it's us. So just all I ask, like, follow it, sign up just so you can stay in touch and do one thing. One good thing.

• 1:44:15Mike Rowe?

  Be the people, Instagram, anywhere, just Google it.

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  And you are the social proof to everybody else that this is what it means to be American.

• 1:44:24Mike Rowe?

  Are you spearheading this?

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  I'm not that smart. I'm on the National Leadership Council. Our research and stuff informed the opportunity. But this has gotten so big and there's so many amazing people. I wouldn't be smart enough to do.

• 1:44:40Mike Rowe?

  Did it come out of stand together?

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  They were part of it, but it's like literally what, as you could imagine, it's bottom up. So it's like, what I love about that is people who really believe in other people don't need to control. So you're going to create the conditions for everyday people to take a hold of this and make it their own and start living the lives they want to live and reveal for each other that this is who we are. And we'll actually solve some problems along the way.

• 1:45:04Mike Rowe?

  So do you believe this initiative really is sort of the pointy part of the spear that can pierce the bubble where the illusions are living?

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  I honestly believe it's the only way. Because number one, all these other illusions we've talked about, they affect your life in some ways. Right? But like, you know, okay. This is about, I get one life. This is the life I want to live. This is what I want for my kids.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Nothing matters more than the thing that is most personal. And the thing that's most personal is always the most universal. And when we start to realize that this was all bullshit, we were manipulated into seeing each other as the enemy. You can't say that to people. I can't teach, I can't just talk to you and convince you that. I need to see that the people around me care about what I care about and they're willing to do something. And here's the trick.

• 1:46:04Speaker 02

  If you get that right.

• 1:46:07Speaker 02

  The illusions have nowhere to hide. Like, you know what China doesn't want? They don't want you to sign up. They don't want you to have a conversation with your neighbor. They don't want you to go out and contribute. Because the second you do.

• 1:46:19Mike Rowe?

  The government can't.

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, they can't. The second that we start seeing that. And I'm in, you know, just outside of Boston. And I'm like, wow, who knew? In Burlington, we did this. Look at the thing we did. And I'm like, oh, cool. So Burlington. And then I'm like, wait, I just saw on TV that this was going on in Los Angeles, too. And in Wichita. And as if, hold on. Wait, is this just us?

• 1:46:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  And guess what? The single best predictor of social trust is perceived shared values. When you shadow that illusion and reveal our shared values, we start to trust each other more. And we start to trust each other more, we can actually tackle the hard problems where we do disagree.

• 1:46:58Mike Rowe?

  With regard to that kind of universality. And since you use the word personal, can I ask you a personal question?

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely. We talked about animals last time, so it's fine.

• 1:47:08Mike Rowe?

  Not that version.

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:47:10Mike Rowe?

  But look, I'm really struck. You're a scientist and the nature of your work can be, well, it's illuminating. It's eye opening. It can be upsetting, but it can also be really, really optimistic. In a way, you're kind of in the contentment business. Like, we, the search for truth ought to lead to some kind of insight that will hopefully lead to some version of happiness. You lost your wife a few years ago. Your dad is struggling in a huge way.

• 1:47:42Speaker 02

  Glioblastoma.

• 1:47:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. That's the most serious kind of brain cancer that I, that I know of. So grief is both personal and universal. And I guarantee you, people are watching this right now, who are in your shoes. And they feel lost and they don't know how to process that level of pain. And maybe they feel like they're alone. And of course, they're not.

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:15Mike Rowe?

  As a scientist, is there anything you can say to them? And that whole glass half full kind of thing you've been vibing on.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  Uh, probably not as a scientist, but as a human being.

• 1:48:26Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, okay, I'll settle for that. Some of our audience are, you know, as well.

• 1:48:30Speaker 02

  You know, as you, from the previous story, like, I mean, I got married when I was nineteen. It's funny, you don't realize you build a life and an identity together.

• 1:48:38Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  And then all of a sudden it's gone. And it just, it only happened a month after the, the last time I was here, aired.

• 1:48:48Speaker 02

  It's awful. It feels, I don't think I've ever felt more alone. But that's the weird part because if you're in a relationship, either you go first or they go first. It might be the most, the, the thing we all have in common.

• 1:49:04Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  But I'm gonna tell you, um, a piece of advice I got from a dear friend that was so profound, and I think it's, it's worth sharing. Cause you don't have to lose a spouse for this to also be true.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  Grief

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  like collapses in on itself. Uh, uh, best I can describe is it's dark and it just keeps getting smaller and smaller. My dear friend, Derek Johnson, I think you know, to called me. And he said, look, right in the thick of it, he said, can I give you some advice?

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  He said,

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  I need you it over the next week or so in the funeral and stuff. I, he said, I, I need you to pay attention to all the ways that people around you show you they love you in the small ways and not just the people who should have, but the people who come out of the woodwork and do stuff that you might just not even pay, because you're going to be like lost in your own grief. And then he said something which was really the hard part, but was the magic. He said, and then I need you to feel the gratitude.

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  What he didn't know, cause he's not a scientist, is, um, that, that

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  grief and those kinds of negative emotions don't coexist with gratitude at the same time. Gratitude is expansive. It's warm. It's encompassing.

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  It was unbelievable to see people I barely knew.

• 1:50:42Speaker 02

  People I didn't even think liked me.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  Just rallying because they cared.

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  And I think that, like I said, it doesn't have to be that deep, but we all feel that grief, the loss, the things. And as you feel it sort of caving in on itself. I would recommend the same thing. It is unbelievable. It is also extremely hard for yourself to feel the gratitude. You know, because you just want to be angry. You want someone to blame. You want something, but it was a saving idea. It might be one of the most important things that anyone's ever taught me.

• 1:51:19Mike Rowe?

  We're in such violent agreement on so many things, Todd. It's just, I mean, over your shoulder there is the sweat pledge. Everybody who applies for a scholarship from my foundation has to sign it. There are 12 tenets. The first one says, I believe I've hit the greatest lottery of all time. I'm alive. I walk the earth. I live in America. Above all, I'm grateful.

• 1:51:41Mike Rowe?

  Very hard to feel sorry for yourself. It's very hard to be angry at anybody. It's very hard to, as you say, really collapse into the grief. If that other G word is your north star.

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. And guess what? It also doesn't just counteract grief. It counteracts resentment. It counteracts all these negative emotions. In fact, you know what's really funny? And this will tie back to this bigger initiative that I want everyone to be a part of. It's, it's so important to me. The single best predictor of feeling gratitude is acts of service. It is losing yourself in the service of another human being, even for a moment. Isn't that funny?

• 1:52:23Mike Rowe?

  Dignified work.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  Yes, by contributing without expecting someone to return, right? Contributing. I feel gratitude. Seems like a little bit like counterintuitive, but it's true. So think about, if you're listening to this right now or watching it. And, you know, you don't have to have like, sorry, I get, it's a little, but the

• 1:52:47Speaker 02

  you're sad, angry, frustrated. You care about this country. You thought we were making progress and the wheels seemed to fall off.

• 1:52:57Speaker 02

  This little blip of the American experiment is a blip in human history. Human history is dark and mean. It's leviathan. Right? It's brutal.

• 1:53:09Speaker 02

  We built this. Our ancestors built this. And every generation has been asked in some form to either renew it or let it go. Here we are. You think, what would it matter that I sign up, that I go? Do one thing. It will heal you. It's what, if you're listening, it's going, wow. That is kind of how I think about the life I want to live. And if you're honest with yourself, are you really getting it? One good thing. You do it for yourself, but more importantly, do it for us. Shadow the illusion, reveal our shared values, renew the American spirit, and the next 250 years will be better than the first 250.

• 1:53:54Mike Rowe?

  What better way to celebrate? Our semi-qucentennial, is that what it is?

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:54:00Mike Rowe?

  Semi-qucentennial. Yeah, maybe you're not. Maybe things feel a little wobbly up there. Maybe you're coming off the rails a tad. You go to be the people, you sniff around. Maybe you find a civic organization, maybe you volunteer. You know, I read David Sedaris, living over in France, just started picking up the trash. Every day goes on walks, he's just started picking up the trash. Now they got his picture on the side of garbage trucks. They honor him.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  Isn't it amazing?

• 1:54:30Mike Rowe?

  You do one thing. So true. Jordan Peterson talks about it. Make your bed.

• 1:54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:34Mike Rowe?

  Just start.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  One good thing. We are a nation of problem solvers, not complainers. We build, we don't destroy. We've lost that, not because we don't believe it anymore, because we believe we don't believe it. This is our effort. We will shadow this illusion, we'll reveal our American spirit. That, this is what makes me so optimistic. And I know that, I know everyone that's involved. It is unbelievable what's about to happen.

• 1:55:01Mike Rowe?

  You've been among my favorite scientists for as long as I've known you. Now you're among my favorite humans. I appreciate you sharing that. And I know, I know it makes a difference in people's life. I think you're a real patriot and a, and a pretty great guy. L, what's the L stand for?

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  Well, listen, I used to, I used to be upset about that. My, uh, it was Larry Todd Rose. My dad's name's Larry. They never meant to call me Larry. Now every government document says Larry Todd. Now with my dad, this, I'm leaning more into that. I'd still like to call myself L Todd Rose. It just seemed, it seemed fancy.

• 1:55:35Mike Rowe?

  You'll always be L Todd Rose to me. Be the people, folks. Remember that. Go there. Be restored. You're, oh, I can't seem to end this episode, but you said it earlier. Sorry, Chuck. I know this makes you crazy.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  Let's just get some of that bourbon and we keep going.

• 1:55:50Mike Rowe?

  God, there's a song called Alone in the Crowd. It's an old song. All the old landmarks are gone from the town where I was born. There's an atmosphere that wasn't there before. And the friends who loved me true, they're up and well to do. They don't recognize me anymore. I'm so alone in the crowd. Don't feel at home in the crowd. Old friends seem to be total strangers to me. For I'm so alone in the crowd. Maybe you really are. Maybe it's an illusion. Feels pretty crappy either way. Maybe not be so alone.

• 1:56:27Speaker 02

  Isn't it worth finding out whether it's an illusion or not? One good thing.

• 1:56:33Mike Rowe?

  There's the title. I know I'd get it if we went long enough. One good thing with Todd Rose. Thanks, brother.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:56:38Mike Rowe?

  If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe?

• 1:56:44Speaker 03

  If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go.

• 1:57:12Speaker 04

  This is Colin Cowherd from the Colin Cowherd Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. All starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or a half-ton Tundra to a Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. For a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, shop toyota.com. Toyota, let's go places.

• 1:57:43Speaker 05

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.