Pod Insights Modern Wisdom How Role Models Change Our Lives | Fiona Murden | Modern Wisdom Podcast 223 About this episode Fiona Murden is a psychologist, executive coach and an author.
We might think we're sovereign beings with independent will & agency, but the examples set by those around you are constantly shaping your behaviour, let's find out how much...
Are you really the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with? How important is your teacher in primary school? What impact do your parents' beliefs have on you when you reach adulthood? How useful are bad actors at identifying behaviour you should avoid?
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Transcript 10,854 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is another thing, this is ethical thing, okay, isn't it? We can't take kids away from their parents. But there's an example I love. I don't, I don't know if you've heard it, but there's a girl called Oksana Malaya, who was born in the Ukraine, in a really rundown village, and her parents were alcoholics. And one night, they left her out in the cold. They just left her outside. And looking for warmth, she curled up with feral dogs. She was three years old at this time, and she lived with the dogs for the next five years, until someone reported it to the authorities. She couldn't talk. She walked on all fours. She drank like a dog. She barked. And, I mean, she's one example. And you know, with science, you'll say you need thousands of examples to be able to say, this is actually what's happening. But to me, it's such a clear example of what happens if you don't have people around you.
0:45 Speaker 00 You don't know how to talk, because no one's talking to you. You don't know how to drink, or eat, or walk.
0:53 Chris Williamson? I'm joined by Fiona Merton. Fiona, welcome to the show.
0:56 Speaker 00 Hi, thanks, great to be here.
0:58 Chris Williamson? Pleasure to have you on. What is the mirror system?
1:03 Speaker 00 The mirror system is a collection of neurons in the brain, which enable us to observe what other people are doing, without actually carrying out that action ourselves. And how that functions is to enable us to learn, basically. Because for thousands and thousands of years, before we had the written word, the only way we could learn was through observing. And actually, through storytelling as well, which interestingly is also dependent in part on the mirror neuron.
1:34 Chris Williamson? That's interesting. So how does it work? How do I, I watch you doing a thing, you're whittling a stick? Or, I don't know what our ancestors would be doing, hunting a deer? How does it work?
1:46 Speaker 00 So, it's easiest to go back to how it was discovered, because it was discovered in Palmer by some Italian psychophysiologist, or I've got the name wrong there. But they were basic, they were looking at how monkeys grasp. And they had electrodes in, this is a bit mean, into the brains of the monkeys. And one day, they were eating their lunch, and they noticed that the monkeys were doing the grasping in terms of what electrical output was coming off, but they weren't actually moving. And so they realised that the same part of the brain was functioning when the monkeys
2:27 Speaker 00 were watching as when the monkeys were actually doing it themselves. And so if you think about it, if you think about a baby, for example, watching a mother or a mum or dad eating, they they might be watching them when they're not eating themselves. But each time they're watching, they're rehearsing it through in their brain, which helps to build up that capability of how to actually do that ourselves.
2:54 Chris Williamson? And this is just automated?
2:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, it's complex. It's so some people actually argue against the mirror neuron, but that's going down a really geeky path.
3:04 Chris Williamson? We love, we love, we love a geeky path.
3:06 Speaker 00 Oh, no, it's very, very geeky.
3:10 Speaker 00 From there's, there's still within the brain of humans, we can't generally do single neuron analysis. So that analysis that was being carried out on monkeys was single neuron. Within the brain of humans, we use something called FMRI, which is functional magnetic resolution imaging. And it gives us an idea of what's going on in the brain through blood flow, but can't help us get down to that individual level. And there have been some experiments where people have been having surgery for epilepsy and they've given consent for their brains to be looked at. But what some scientists will say, we haven't gathered enough data to be able to say this is definitely how it happens, or this isn't how it happens.
3:48 Chris Williamson? Is it just because in order to be able to do that single neuron analysis, you've got a trapan part of the brain or whatever, and then get a neuron? Is that that's it's literally like an ethical question?
3:57 Speaker 00 Yeah.
3:58 Chris Williamson? Oh, interesting. I thought it might have been due to like density or complexity or the number of neurons that we have or something like that.
4:04 Speaker 00 So I'm not a neuroscientist. I would probably put it to both points. But I think the major point is that we can't go around cutting open people's heads.
4:15 Chris Williamson? If you want, if you want to have a hole drilled in your head, comment below and Fiona will put you in touch with someone who wants to drill a hole in your head.
4:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, I know lots of people who who'd want to do it. I just.
4:25 Chris Williamson? Whether or not the board of ethics would let it would let it pass. Yeah, exactly. So the advantage that the mirror neuron gave our ancestors was expediting learning. Was that it?
4:34 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, it was it was how civilization progressed to where it is today. So before a written word, it was the only way there was a progression of of learning. So one one guy calls it collective learning. He talks about the big history of collective learning. So every generation builds on the learning from the generation before, and it gradually evolves how we learn and what we know. But before we could write things down, that was the only way that we could evolve from sort of just sitting with our stick whittling to actually building a hut or or sort of creating fire, all that sort of stuff.
5:13 Chris Williamson? I guess it's more scalable and less open to linguistic restrictions and or interpretation of someone trying to vocalise the thing that they're doing. Like, if I can hunt a deer, you can watch me hunt a deer and take the cues of me hunting a deer. But I might not actually be able to explain what it is that I do. We might not have sufficiently sophisticated language. You might not be able to hear the same that I speak, that blah, blah, blah.
5:40 Speaker 00 Exactly. And it's so that the example I give is if you look at how someone throws a ball up to serve in tennis. So if I was to explain that, I thought in the in the book, I've basically taken it down to various different steps. You read that through, if you've never played tennis and you've never seen anyone serve, you would think, what on earth am I supposed to do? Because it's just, it looks impossible. And it kind of makes you realise that even now, we have to see things to be able to do them. Because that's the way our brains evolved. Yes, instruction helps, of course it does. But we still fundamentally rely on that, being able to see.
6:23 Chris Williamson? That's so interesting, because if you were to think about any complex physical movement, dancing, martial arts, you never, even if you pay for a course online, it's never an instructor in front of you simply saying what you do. He's demonstrating along with it, right? So the vocalising, the linguistics, rap.
6:45 Chris Williamson? Additional information around perhaps the feel of the muscles that you're activating. So it's the stuff that you can't see, but the vast majority of the cues are coming from things that you can see.
6:55 Speaker 00 Absolutely, yeah.
6:57 Chris Williamson? I remember in Atomic Habits by James Cleary says that we've got 14 million sense, sensing cells in our body and 11 million of them are to sight, dedicated to sight, and only 3 million to the remaining four senses.
7:14 Speaker 00 It's really interesting, but actually on that point, mirror neurons are thought to be associated with auditory as well as visual.
7:23 Chris Williamson? Okay, that's interesting.
7:25 Speaker 00 And there's, I mean, a good example of it is actually when you come to storytelling. So if you, if you tell, there are experiments have been done where you've got someone tasting a certain taste and you describe the taste. So this is linguistics and you explain how something sounds, something smells. And it's if you think about Martin Luther King, so on the, I'll get it wrong, the quote, you know, if you think about the, the red hills of Georgia in the sweltering heat and apologies to any Martin Luther King.
8:01 Chris Williamson? You just butchered his quote.
8:02 Speaker 00 I am a fan, but I'm not very good at remembering things.
8:04 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
8:04 Speaker 00 It's, it bring those metaphors enable us to create the image in our own head. And when, when neuroscientists look at people listening to a story, it will activate the same areas of their brain as what is being described in that story.
8:22 Chris Williamson? That's cool. Does it start imprinting from birth? We start imprinting before birth? Can we imprint when we're still in the womb?
8:29 Speaker 00 I mean, that's, that's another geeky one.
8:32 Chris Williamson? I'm just, I'm just, so you remember you said about tennis, I'm just throwing up a bunch of balls that you want to, you want to hit because you want to go down the rabbit hole.
8:39 Speaker 00 I'm missing them all. Um, there's something called epigenetics, which is where our genes are actually turned on and off themselves by the chemicals that they're soaked in. So epigenetics will influence that. There's.
8:56 Speaker 00 So there's a lady called Celia Hayes, who's at Oxford University, and she believes that the mirror neuron begins developing once we're born, but very, very quickly. So it potentially might have formed in some sort of way before we're born, but it's when we're born that it starts developing.
9:15 Chris Williamson? Not imprinted before that?
9:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:18 Chris Williamson? So is there a period, I don't know whether this is possible again with the ethical questions that we've got around brain imaging, is there a period in which the most imprinting is done?
9:30 Speaker 00 I don't know the exact answer to that, but obviously kids are very susceptible to stuff, but kids will mirror their parents predominantly until they're about 12, 13, and then it becomes peers, teachers, all those sorts of people as well. But still predominantly, actually, for all of us, it's our parents. But teenagers, their brain is wired to be social because that's how, again, in evolutionary terms, that's how teenagers operated. They were going to reproduce, so they had to be social, had to meet people. And so their brain's quite malleable to what's going on around them, and they need that information being fed to them. But the brain continues to develop until we're in our mid to late twenties, something
10:15 Speaker 00 called emerging adulthood. So we used to think it stopped, but it doesn't. And then even when we're adults, it's still, again, something I'm sure you've heard, is the term plastic. So our brain, we used to think, especially psychologists, that our brain, our personality, everything was fixed once we hit a certain age, but we're learning more and more, it's not.
10:36 Chris Williamson? You said about parents being the key determinant there. I'm going to guess that a parent's accent is a key example that everyone can understand. Is that mirroring the fact that if you're Irish and your parents sound Irish, you've got a bit of an Irish twang?
10:54 Speaker 00 Well, I mean, it's a cultural, it's a cultural norm. So you're picking up the values, but you're also picking up what's around you. And I find that really interesting because...
11:05 Speaker 00 My daughter's got a friend who, we live in southeast of England. And she's got a friend whose mum's from Manchester. And we've known them since she was three, so she's thirteen now, nearly fourteen. And she speaks with a Mancunian accent.
11:21 Chris Williamson? No way.
11:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, and so, and so that's clearly the influence of her mum. It's not her mum saying, you need to talk like me. But there'll be that influence there, that she's picking it up from her mum, rather than the people that are around her in her environment.
11:37 Chris Williamson? But that's, surely that is a control variable. Here is where it's imprinting from, like, unless there's someone that's from Manchester sneaking into a bedroom at night and whispering, whispering.
11:49 Speaker 00 It's her mum, it's her mum, surely.
11:50 Chris Williamson? Whispering into her ear at night, alright mate.
11:53 Speaker 00 You will talk like me, you will talk like me.
11:59 Chris Williamson? That would be funny, or just Liam Gallagher's Rogue at night whispering in small children's ears. So what happens if I grew up with sheep? If I was born and left and I went down the stream in a wicker basket, like some biblical myth, and I wake up and I'm surrounded by sheep?
12:17 Speaker 00 This is another thing, this is ethical thing, okay, isn't it? We can't take kids away from their parents. But there's an example I love, I don't, I don't, you've heard it, but there's a girl called Oksana Malaya, who was born in the Ukraine, in a really rundown village, and her parents were alcoholics. And one night, they left her out in the cold, they just left her outside, this is how the story goes. And looking for warmth, she curled up with feral dogs. And she, she was three years old at this time, and she lived with the dogs for the next five years, until someone reported it to the authorities. But she couldn't talk, she walked on all fours, she drank like a dog. She barked.
13:01 Speaker 00 And so when I say drank like a dog, there's video of her, and she sort of licks as the tap drips, you know, she's licking. And.
13:09 Speaker 00 I mean, she's one example. And you know, with science, you'll say, you need, you need thousands of examples to be able to say, this is actually what's happening. But to me, it's such a clear example of what happens if you don't have people around you. You don't know how to talk, because no one's talking to you. You don't know how to drink, or eat, or walk. So although we're sort of like, you know, you might say, well, why didn't she learn to walk upright anyway? Because everything, everyone around her was walking on all fours.
13:41 Chris Williamson? That example's so mind blowing. It's, it's one of these things. This is why I can't wait. Well, if we're living in a simulation, it doesn't matter. There's no ethics anyway. But this is why I can't wait until we can properly, properly do simulations of consciousness. Because all these questions will just be answered. Right, okay, let's create a universe in which you live with sheep, or you live with this, or you live with that. And oh my God, look at that. The bleeding and trying to grow wool and, and jumping, jumping over fences when people can't get to sleep and everything. So can we choose not to imitate other people when we're young? Do we have enough agency below the age of whatever, 13? Can I choose to not be like my parents? Or is it kind of, is there a glass bottom to that?
14:26 Speaker 00 Again, I don't know the hard answer. These are good answers. I think a question's good.
14:31 Chris Williamson? Drilling away this evening, trying to find the real point. That's what I'm here for.
14:35 Speaker 00 So, um, what, what is what's called counter mirroring? And if you think about it in, you think about it in your own life, there'll be times where you've seen someone doing something. And you can imagine this in a playground. So you can imagine a kid in the playground smacking another kid around the head. And, and you look at it and you think, do you know what? I know that he got that football back from that guy. But
15:03 Speaker 00 He got in a whole load of trouble from the teachers about that. And and that there's a decision point because it's conscious. As soon as it becomes conscious, it's something you can make a decision on. And there must, I mean, there must be times where we unconsciously make a decision on not imitating, but a lot of the time to make it to to not imitate, we have to stop and actually pause and think, hang on a minute, do I really want to behave like that? Or do I want to behave like that? And you find that in business, because I profile a lot of senior executives. And I go through their life from um sort of teenage years up to where they're at. And it'll be, I had this awful boss.
15:47 Speaker 00 And I decided there and then I was never going to lead like that. And that's a prime example of counter mirroring, saying, I had that boss. I didn't like what I saw, and so I decided I'm never going to do that.
15:59 Chris Williamson? I'm going to guess as well, there'll be a lot of people who might have the um the father who uh drank a bit much, so decides that they're going to control their drinking. But perhaps only after beginning to move down that path as a young adult. And then almost using latent mirroring or latent counter mirroring as like, here is something I did see in the past. This is something that I know that I should avoid in the future.
16:28 Speaker 00 Yeah, and I know people like that, actually, who had alcoholic parents and who've who've made that decision. I don't want to be like that. They they may be slipped, they've started slipping and and realised, actually, well, um, you know, Joey over there, he can drink ten pints and he just has an awful hangover. When I do it, I want to do it again and again and again. Um, so there's that recognition, whereas Joey might end up an alcoholic.
16:54 Chris Williamson? Have you read Robert Plomon's Blueprint?
16:57 Speaker 00 No.
16:58 Chris Williamson? Oh, I need to get you on this. If you are, if you have space in the reading uh list.
17:03 Speaker 00 Put it on my list.
17:04 Chris Williamson? So he is a.
17:07 Chris Williamson? I'm going to get this wrong, behavioural geneticist.
17:10 Speaker 00 Oh, cool.
17:11 Chris Williamson? And basically, he's the leading twin studies, adoption studies guy on the planet. And his most recent book, Blueprint, is phenomenal. Basically, the synopsis, the golden rule of behavioural genetics is that everything, every psychological trait that we have has a significant genetic factor contributing to it, and that 50% of everything you are is because of your parents, 50% of everything across the board. And one of the main things that he looked at, one of the key things, key areas that he looked at was alcoholism and addiction.
17:51 Chris Williamson? And alcoholism and addiction correlates, it's like 0.8 or like 0.7. It is insane. So what I've been, I'm a big fan of a meritocracy, right? As a lot of, I guess, young sort of entrepreneurial type people, like, I'll, you know, make it on my own, all this stuff.
18:11 Chris Williamson? And upon finding out about just how sort of deterministic our genes are, and then reading Mirror Thinking, your book, and realising that a lot of the stuff that we do has been imprinted on us, it's almost like a, like a one-two from our parents and the environment that we grew up in, right? You're given this particular nature that is then probably backed up in part by the nurture.
18:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And that's where I think it's so powerful, because, you know, on one hand, people say, oh, you know, we're role modelling or observing, it's really obvious. And I think it is obvious, but that doesn't mean that we take conscious control of it or that we use it to help society. So my bugbear, my bugbear is that commercial organisations use an understanding of our sort of limbic system, basically, to hook us onto social media.
19:09 Chris Williamson? Have you watched, I'm going to guess you'll have seen the most recent Tristan Harris documentary on network.
19:13 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah, I had a few issues with some of that, but yeah, just because, just from the, no, just from things like when they talked about psychometrics, and I'm like, that's not psychometrics, but.
19:23 Chris Williamson? It must be a curse to have expertise in a particular area.
19:27 Speaker 00 Watching it, to be honest.
19:28 Chris Williamson? Oh, wow.
19:29 Speaker 00 So I think, I think he's brilliant. I love him and I follow him and I love that he's got such an extreme view. But when I was actually watching this, I was thinking, I can't believe that a psychiatrist from Stanford is saying this. What she said was completely correct, but then it was taken out of context within the rest.
19:46 Chris Williamson? Is that Susanna Zupov? Which one?
19:49 Speaker 00 I can't remember her surname.
19:50 Chris Williamson? Do you want with the huge hair?
19:53 Speaker 00 Don't think so, no. She had her two kids on it. I had to stop watching it because I was getting too annoyed.
19:59 Chris Williamson? I do remember the person who had her two kids on it. It wasn't the lady that I was thinking about. But yeah, I always think about that. I have a friend who's a doctor and when you have specialist knowledge, you're just cursed with seeing. Like, I can just enjoy it in ignorance and believe that it's all true, whereas you're like.
20:16 Speaker 00 It's just winding me up. I was just going, I say, all due respect to these guys. They created some really interesting technology. They did hook people. That was their intention. But they don't have a deep understanding of psychology and you don't need to have a deep understanding of psychology. But that's also what's so scary about it. It's like these commercial organisations are taking over. But that's like the, the most primitive part of our brain. And then the more advanced part of our brain where we have meaning, purpose, we give back to society. That bit needs nurturing, empathy through, through mirroring and through making a conscious decision of what we're going to absorb and how we're going to absorb it. And then I also think it's, you know, you're saying about deterministic and you think about these kids that are born into really underprivileged environments.
21:02 Speaker 00 And unless we step in and we say, because let's put, let's help them, let's give them positive role models. Let's enable them to fulfil their potential. How do they? Unless there's one particular person that's gone down a certain route, who's stubborn or whatever. There's, there's a guy, I am, it's like getting excited now, but there's a guy that did a little video clip for me at the beginning of this. Beginning of launching the book and he's called Junior Smart. And he went to prison for ten years. And he describes his role models to me on this video. It's only like three minute video.
21:41 Speaker 00 And basically, he said when he was in prison, he decided, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not going to be involved in gangs and all that sort of stuff. And then I kind of analyzed it as a psychologist. And of course, I don't know the exact answer, but I would hypothesize if you look at it, it's because he had a great mum. Who really cared about him. He had a great sister who really cared about him and he had a few people in his life. So whilst he got pulled into doing, you know, doing crime, gang, being violent, he now. He now works with kids to stop them getting involved in the same thing.
22:14 Chris Williamson? That's really cool. I had a Chris Doh QC, Queen's Counsel lawyer, one of the best known criminal law advocates in the UK. I had him on for his most recent book. Uh, justice on trial. Uh, and he's advocating close all prisons, legalize drugs, full works as a QC.
22:32 Speaker 00 Really?
22:32 Chris Williamson? And one of his main reasons for it is the recidivism rate, just the sheer, he calls prisons universities of crime.
22:40 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:40 Chris Williamson? And he says that you go in and you've just surrounded by this. So to have a person who.
22:45 Speaker 00 Brilliant.
22:46 Chris Williamson? Peels off and is the exception to that rule is, is really, really cool.
22:50 Speaker 00 I might get in contact with him. I totally agree because basically you're mirroring, you're mirroring the environment you're in unless you make a conscious decision not to.
22:58 Chris Williamson? What are some of the most important factors that are influenced by our parents?
23:03 Speaker 00 Our values. So our values remain influenced by our parents throughout life. Unless, unless we make a conscious decision to change them, which we generally don't unless we have some sort of major life event.
23:16 Chris Williamson? That's interesting.
23:18 Speaker 00 So even teenagers, whilst they're being influenced by their peers, still look to their parents in terms of values.
23:25 Chris Williamson? What sort of values?
23:26 Speaker 00 So the type of stuff that under, in some communities, you'd put under religion. Um, if you're agnostic atheist, whatever you would, it's about being good to other people. It's about whether you give money to charity. It's about having a good work ethic. Um, it's about.
23:49 Speaker 00 How you treat other people, how you how you contribute to society, all those sorts of things, which really, again, sort of relate to the advanced thinking brain when it comes to being human.
24:00 Chris Williamson? But stuff like the value of money and or materialistic desires, how you show love to other people, how you show appreciation to other people if you come from a materialistic household, is that the sort of thing that could be imprinted?
24:14 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
24:15 Chris Williamson? I've got this, I've had a theory for a while that we all have a materialism set point in life. Everyone knows the person, kind of like the hedonic set point, right? Everyone knows the friend from school whose parents were always keeping up with the Joneses, had like real extravagant birthdays, dad always had a new car on PPC or whatever it is. And then you know the other people who perhaps aren't like that. And my argument during all of the financial conversations that I've had on the show has been if you know that you come from family A, keeping up with the Joneses, you better hope that you get a good job and you better hope that you are earning a lot of money.
24:58 Chris Williamson? Because unless you can deprogram the connection between your sense of self-worth and the amount of materialistic success that you've got, you are always going to feel kind of a little bit tarnished. And I'm yet to see someone for whom that isn't true unless, and this is something I'm fascinated by, you keep on talking about it, of stepping into our own programming. And that, for me, is the most interesting part of life.
25:23 Speaker 00 So I'm guessing you've heard of, read Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.
25:28 Chris Williamson? Multiple times.
25:29 Speaker 00 So if you, yeah, so I mean, I think everyone quotes him. If you look at Viktor Frankl, when he looked at the, when he was in Auschwitz, was he in Auschwitz? He was in one of the concentration camps.
25:42 Chris Williamson? I can never remember either.
25:43 Speaker 00 No, thank you. And the people that survived were the people that had the most meaning. And then there's a guy called Todd Kastan, who's a psychologist, who, an American psychologist, he looks at curiosity and purpose and meaning and wellbeing. And him and his colleagues have got loads and loads of research so that if you have a sense of purpose and meaning, you are happier.
26:10 Speaker 00 As opposed to the hedonistic type gains that you might get through money. But what I found really interesting is because I've worked with a lot with senior leaders and some of them are in, you know, they bucket loads of money and it's never really appealed to me. But then I look at my background and it's never been a high priority for my parents. So to your point. But there's one guy who I absolutely love, who's CEO of a really cool company. And we talk a lot about this sort of stuff because we sort of get geeked out. And he talks about his friends and there's one friend in particular who was just driven to earn millions and millions and he did. And he was miserable.
26:51 Speaker 00 And you know, it's the classic story. He then said, well, actually now I think I'm going to go and work with that charity. And suddenly this guy is so much happier than he's ever been. And that's because he suddenly he's got a sense of purpose rather than chasing something hedonistic, which is a short term goal.
27:08 Chris Williamson? Couple of things. Firstly, Roy Baumeister wrote a wonderful Purpose and Meaning article. Have you read it?
27:15 Speaker 00 Yes, I mean, yeah, he's one of my, I think I've referenced him either in my first book or my second book, yeah.
27:21 Chris Williamson? Um, so that is wonderful. Anyone that's listening, just search Roy Baumeister Purpose and Meaning. Uh, and he kind of distinguishes what purpose is, what meaning is, how it contributes to our lives. Second thing is my friend, my good friend who's coming on the show in a couple of weeks, Morgan Housel. Do you know who he is? So he's just written a book which comes out in two weeks and it's lying on the floor there because I haven't finished it. Sorry, Morgan. Um, and it's called The Psychology of Money. Um, timeless lessons in wealth, greed and happiness. And it is awesome. Only 200 pages, real short. He's, he's a blogger kind of by trade. So it's written in 20 blog.
27:57 Speaker 00 Oh, cool.
27:58 Chris Williamson? Kind of, um, wonderful. And in that he's, he had this quote on, on an episode that he did with me, which just totally nailed it. And he said, um, wealth is the Ferrari that you didn't buy. It's the square footage in the house that you didn't purchase. And that very much talks about the differential between what do you earn, what do you spend, what do you need to be happy and what do you have available? And it's weird, there's not many things that have an objective measure. You know, I can't see objectively how happy you are. I can't see objectively how fulfilled, meaning purpose, all that sort of stuff. But I can't see how much you spend and how much you earn. And those are two sort of fairly good objective metrics that kind of trickle back down, right?
28:39 Speaker 00 Yep.
28:40 Chris Williamson? I love it, I love it.
28:41 Speaker 00 That's really, that sounds brilliant.
28:43 Chris Williamson? You'll really, really enjoy the book. What are friends for?
28:47 Speaker 00 What are friends for?
28:48 Chris Williamson? What are friends for in the term, in the, the purpose of the, the mirror system? What are they for?
28:54 Speaker 00 Well, there's an interesting piece of research and I use this carefully because a magazine approached me and asked me to write an article, how to think yourself thin. And I was like, no, no, no, no, that is wrong on so many levels. I'm not going there. So suddenly this piece of research, I was slightly more cautious about sharing, but I'll share it now. And it's a piece of research carried out in 2010. Sorry, wrong piece of research. 2007, 12,000 participants over the course of 30 years looked at how much weight people gained and looked at how people around them in terms of, not physically around them, in terms of the proximity
29:34 Speaker 00 of their friendship, if you like, so how close they were, how much weight they gained. And if someone close to you gains weight, you're, you're dramatically more likely to gain weight. And if it's a close friend, it's 171% chance that you will put on weight.
29:54 Chris Williamson? How does that work?
29:56 Speaker 00 So basically it's.
29:57 Chris Williamson? How can you have more than 100% correlation?
30:01 Speaker 00 Well, it's not a correlation, is it? It's an increase.
30:03 Chris Williamson? Oh, okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
30:05 Speaker 00 Yeah, so, but I just say it's, it's bananas because what it demonstrates is how we sort of, we just absorb things by osmosis. It's, we're absorbing what our friends are doing. We absorb moods, we absorb stress. There's loads of research that shows, you know, even if a teacher goes into a classroom stressed, pupils become more stressed, their cortisol levels rise.
30:30 Speaker 00 We're just so interconnected. It's just bananas. No one is.
30:35 Chris Williamson? So I'm looking here at the research from Robert Plowman's blueprint, how DNA makes us who we are.
30:44 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
30:44 Chris Williamson? This is average ratings of 5,000 UK adults, and it's the results of genetic research. And weight is, wait, people thought that the genetic component to weight was 40%. So that was what most people estimated. It's 0.7. You are 0.7.
31:03 Speaker 00 0.7%?
31:04 Chris Williamson? No, it's 0.7 of 1. So it's 70%. You are 70% likely to have the BMI or 70% is the correlation, your parents BMI to yours. And he's done this with twin studies, adoption studies, people that are away.
31:17 Speaker 00 And is that a genetic correlation or is it that he's saying it's environmental genetic correlation?
31:22 Chris Williamson? So you can take twins that are born to the same parents, either mono or by whatever it is, dizygotic or monozygotic, either of them. And you can take them and put them in different households. Their correlation to their adoption parents is zero.
31:41 Chris Williamson? Zero.
31:42 Speaker 00 It's really interesting.
31:43 Chris Williamson? I would love to hear what you think about his book, because obviously.
31:47 Speaker 00 I'm gonna read it.
31:48 Chris Williamson? I don't have the wherewithal to be able to criticize it, but I would be really interested to see how that, how that sort of ties into what we're talking about here.
31:57 Speaker 00 I'm not sure I do either because I'm definitely not. What did you say he was?
32:00 Chris Williamson? Robert Plowman. He's a genetic, a behavioral geneticist.
32:06 Speaker 00 I'm just the behavioral bit, not the genetics bit.
32:08 Chris Williamson? I get it. So we've got what friends are for. They can sort of also mold our, our actions. So if that's the case, if it's both good and bad, is social conformity just part of trying to fit into the tribe? Is it just trying to feel part of the group?
32:25 Speaker 00 Yeah. And I mean, I think this thing, this sort of thing's been discussed quite a lot over the last few years. I did discuss it in my first book that wasn't published before everyone was talking about it, but I won't go there.
32:35 Chris Williamson? Get it back out. Get it, get it back out again.
32:36 Speaker 00 He's a bit weird now, I think. Anyway, I might do, I might do.
32:42 Speaker 00 But yeah, the social conformity is and and that you'll have you'll have heard the research that says we all think we're not really conformists, but then if if you go you do certain experiments and we all demonstrate that we do actually all conform to to norms. So we'll do things like adjust our music taste in in experiments. They've shown how someone would align their music tastes to the people they're around without even realising they're doing it. People will align their um how whether they think someone's attractive or not, all sorts of things just happen without us really consciously thinking about it. Um unless you're really stubborn like me, where I deliberately as a teenager wanted to wear something different always to what everyone else was wearing. But that was just
33:26 Speaker 00 all a bit. It's hard work being like that, to be honest.
33:29 Chris Williamson? It's hard, isn't it? Well, it's far easier to use the mirror system.
33:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:33 Chris Williamson? Because it does a ton of the thinking for you.
33:36 Speaker 00 Absolutely. But that's where so we've got commercial organisations leveraging our psychology for one thing or behavioural science. I think we should be as society, as individuals, leveraging our natural mechanisms, which mirrors thinking is in effect for good. And that's for good for ourselves and for other people.
33:58 Chris Williamson? This sudden implication for something I've been talking about a lot recently, which is I get I was on Love Island. I was on the first season of Love Island. I was the first person through the door.
34:08 Speaker 00 You didn't see I've written on Love Island. I criticised it on Digital Spy. I didn't know you were on that. Sorry, I'm being naive.
34:15 Chris Williamson? It's absolutely fine. I'm gonna go and check out.
34:18 Speaker 00 Now you know.
34:18 Chris Williamson? Go check out your article and I'm gonna tweet you something nasty if it was about me. No, um.
34:22 Speaker 00 It wasn't about you.
34:23 Chris Williamson? My issue with Love Island that everyone that's listening knows um is that it picks up people who very well might be talented or not, but doesn't choose them for their talents. Tommy Fury was this great boxer, wonderful amateur boxer just about to turn pro, but he got famous off the back of being a guy with a tan on TV. And what it does is it then gives people who haven't earned it a platform. And the sad thing about giving people who haven't earned it a platform is that now two million people listen to the person who won Love Island 2016 and think that they by virtue of the size of this platform.
35:03 Chris Williamson? Should be able to comment on stuff like the general election.
35:06 Speaker 00 Don't even get me on this. This is just a rabbit hole for me. So I'm not criticizing you. So not criticizing you at all. I think that, I mean, I think one of the, one of the issues with Love Island is I think you take people vulnerable in one way or another as well. And then you put them in a situation that makes them even more vulnerable. And then they don't have the support afterwards. That was one of the things, I was only interviewed for this digital spy article. That was one of the things I was talking about is I think it makes, it increases the vulnerability and the pressures and all those things. So there's that piece. But then I also think it creates a hugely unrealistic norm for the rest of the population because they're looking at these people sort of scantily clad, young, tanned, and they're thinking that's what I should look like.
35:49 Speaker 00 Now, that might not be something they consciously think, although often I think youngsters do. But it's something that then, if you talk about imprinting, creates a norm. And that norm is an unrealistic expectation. And then, the final thing is what you've just said is the platform, which drives me potty. Because, I mean, it's partly personal because I think, you know, I trotted along quite successfully in my career. Doing stuff with really important people and being taken very seriously and being listened to. And then suddenly I launch a book and I'm told to go on social media. And firstly, I don't really like social media. But secondly, I just spend every day feeling like a failure.
36:32 Speaker 00 Because I think, why is no one listening to me? Because, you know, I, I, I studied for seven years to become a chartered psychologist. But, but no one's listening to me. And it's, and so that's my personal bugbear. But in reality, you know, it taking a sort of a step back and looking at it. It does worry me because you have people who advise on mental health. Whilst they might have experienced something and it's great to share a story, whatever your story, you can't advise unless you're trained. You shouldn't, you shouldn't be able to.
37:07 Chris Williamson? So this is a really hilarious paradox that we've stumbled across, which is the only people on the internet qualified to give advice are the people prohibited by law at giving that advice. So we have a doctor who's one of my best mates and is always on the show, Youssef. And he always prefaces anything he says on the show with, I am not your doctor, please speak to your GP, but this is what I think, or just doesn't say anything. Whereas some guy who has read a book about the carnivore diet or the veganism or watched the Game Changers movie can tell you everything that he thinks about how enzymes and protease and all this sort of stuff works.
37:50 Chris Williamson? Because precisely because of the fact that he's unqualified and doesn't have anything to lose. Well, as Youssef says, what board are they going to be struck off from? Like, there's no, there's no sort of winning board for that to happen. But I, I think we both could sort of tumble down this, this Love Island rabbit hole for a while. But I certainly have, I have faith increasingly in social media's ability to select for people that are adding value. I think we're seeing this with Instagram removing the like counter. I think that we're seeing this increasingly with people turning away from the flashy influencer, pro influencer Instagram lifestyle that we've seen maybe for sort of 2014 to 2019, 2020.
38:36 Chris Williamson? I think we're starting to see that just look a bit tarnished. It's just a bit beggy now when you see people, they're in Mykonos. Everyone's in fucking Mykonos all the time. Why is everyone, they're in Bali, they're in wherever it might be. And I think it's, you're seeing as an influencer, somebody who works with, with companies sponsored for the podcast, sponsored for other bits and pieces as well. They're now looking to pivot more and more away from asking me to do stuff on Instagram and instead asking to sponsor pre-rolls on the show. They would much sooner be associated with something which has a bit more reach, but pay a ton more for it because they know that the platform has been created through
39:20 Chris Williamson? hard work and virtue and intellectual interest and curiosity and genuinely connecting with an audience, as opposed to this bizarre situation where you can go from nobody to 2 million followers in six weeks when you haven't interacted with a single member of the people that follow you, other than passively through a camera. So I think my form is temporary, class is permanent, and I think if you keep continuing to put out good stuff, you get what you deserve in the end. So I'm sure that that will happen for you as well.
39:47 Speaker 00 I mean, aside from that, doesn't matter. My aim, I guess I get frustrated because my aim is I've worked with all these privileged people, helping them understand psychology and what have you, and I thought I want to give it to everyone else. And then everyone else isn't there to give it to.
40:06 Speaker 00 But to your point, I mean, I do, I do have, I hope, rather than I have faith, I should say, I have hope that it is going to turn on its heel a little bit. But I still, you know, I think it's still just like media would have done at any time, exploits are vulnerable. So I've got my cousins, and I'm hoping that none of them watch this. I don't think they will listen.
40:33 Speaker 00 Well, my cousin's daughter is a model and she's up to 100. When she was here a couple of years ago at Christmas, she was on a few thousand followers on Instagram. And now she's on 100 and something thousand. She's absolutely stunning, but she shows her bottom and her tits too much. And actually, it really upsets me because she's an eighteen year old and I worry because I think she's in, she's, she grew up in Australia and she's now in LA and I think she's so vulnerable. And actually, that's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the fact that she's being exploited for her and, and her vulnerability is, and I know that's an age old thing that goes back centuries.
41:14 Speaker 00 But it still, it still makes it far easier, doesn't it, when you've got social media platforms?
41:21 Chris Williamson? I had Ashley Mears, who is a social psychologist on the show. And she studied the behaviour of party girls in the VIP clubbing scene in New York.
41:31 Speaker 00 Oh, really?
41:32 Chris Williamson? She did ethnographic research.
41:36 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:36 Chris Williamson? So she became a party girl for six months and followed the biggest.
41:39 Speaker 00 Brilliant.
41:40 Chris Williamson? She used to be a model when she was younger and now is a sociology professor, like head of sociology at like New York State Union, so like real good. And um, she became a party girl and followed these girls around. And there's an interesting counter to, to the, um, they're being, they're vulnerable and they're being exploited. Because it's quite easy to say that you've got these girls who basically don't get paid. They just go out for free with the promoter and they're filler. And they go to the, the big tables with the guys who are spending all the money and they drink for free. And they get free food before they go out, but it's not the best sushi. It's like the cucumber rolls and stuff like that. And she said to the girls, like, look, if you all banded together, you could firstly, cut the promoter out and secondly, actually get paid for doing this, rather than just getting stuff for free.
42:24 Chris Williamson? And none of the girls wanted to do it. They knew that they were being exploited. But they said, well, it's just kind of fun, you know, it makes us feel special. I don't really want to be paid for it because it makes it feel like work. I would much just rather kind of come out and just have it for free and I'm with the girls. So there'll be a little bit of social conformity in there. But I also, I also think that, um.
42:46 Chris Williamson? People like being made to feel wanted by society and by, so I wonder whether you would be able to even red pill your friend's daughter or cousin sufficiently.
42:58 Speaker 00 My cousin's daughter, yeah, so she's related to me as well.
43:02 Chris Williamson? Yeah. I don't know whether you'd be able to red pill her enough for her to see that. I think that she might love the adoration that she gets so much, even if she was in full presence of all the facts, that she'd be like, actually, do you know what it is? I prefer the likes. I prefer the free charcoal toothpaste and the whatever else you got.
43:22 Speaker 00 And then there's the comfort, isn't there, of the life that you find yourself in. Whereas, like you've said, she was saying, if you band together, well, that's, that creates discomfort because you're then up against conflict straight away. And so, but it is, I mean, the model lifestyle is interesting. And, but in the book, in the book, I talk about prestige because what's interesting is, if we see someone doing something successfully, from an evolutionary perspective, so say Fred went out and caught the antelope that we've been trying, the type of antelope we've been trying to catch for ages, and we can't catch that antelope. So we go out with Fred, and we go out a few times, and then we learn how to catch that
44:07 Speaker 00 antelope. And we come back to the village, and everyone's like, wow, you caught that antelope too. I want to be able to catch that antelope. But they can't distinguish between the rain dance that you did before you went out on the hunt, or the song you sang when you came back from the hunt, or the way you ran in circles from what you actually did. You take it as a total. You say, okay, I need to do all those things in order to catch that antelope. And that's how our brain sort of works. So we'll see a star advertising cologne, and we think, we don't sort of sit there and think, well, in reality, he might wear that cologne, but that doesn't mean that if I wore that cologne, I would then
44:51 Speaker 00 be really attractive. All we see is, actually globally speaking, if I buy that cologne, I might pull those girls as well. And so it becomes this sort of scenario, which is where, again, the two million followers, you think, well, they've got two million, not you, but people think, well, they've got two million followers. Therefore, I will do whatever they say and like whatever they say because they must know what they're talking about.
45:17 Chris Williamson? And they don't. Let me tell you from firsthand experience, those people haven't got a clue. It's interesting as well for me with the show is a really good example. We said that it's not often that you have objective measures of success, but I do with this this show. I have objective measures of impact. How many subscribers, how many play minutes, how many views, how many messages, how many blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The show hasn't changed. I've been doing this about three years. This hasn't changed. Got a tiny little bit less shit at interviewing people, but like, for the most part, it's just the same thing. I'm talking to the same people. But it's only now that we've reached about a million plays a month, that people actually care and start referring to me as
46:00 Chris Williamson? a host and think of me as some sort of authority. Oh, so much. It's just signaling. It's just that there is a trajectory that people can see the shows on. They think I'm some sort of authority at this now, when I'm just I'm swimming in imposter syndrome.
46:15 Speaker 00 Oh, my latest podcast, which goes out to about 80 people, what's on imposter syndrome. I mean, I come across imposter syndrome a lot, but what I also come across is hubris. Have you heard of hubris?
46:27 Chris Williamson? Can you explain it to me?
46:29 Speaker 00 Yeah. So hubris is again, it's one of these things that's contentious, but there's a guy called Lord David Owen, who's a psychiatrist, but he studied basically leaders in the US and the UK over a hundred year period to see who had hubris. Now, hubris is when you tip from being potentially a good leader to starting to believe your own rhetoric. So he uses the example of Tony Blair, and I don't want to get political, but Tony Blair, whether you agreed with his policies or not, you know, he was a good leader. He was a good communicator.
47:05 Speaker 00 And he ticked into hubris and I actually had written a policy paper on the Chilcot report and pulled it apart from cognitive bias and all that sort of stuff. But he started believing what he wanted to believe rather than believing what was going on around him. And they say it's the only acquired personality syndrome and it's it's basically you become narcissistic. But I see it so often and actually I warn sometimes when I'm seeing people are just becoming CEO for the first time, I warn them and I say, one thing you've really got to work out for is becoming hubristic, because as soon as you become hubristic, you become a bad leader. But the problem is, in celebrity world, which I'm encountering more and more through stuff I'm
47:47 Speaker 00 doing, is no one to say, actually, you're a bad leader, we're gonna, we're not gonna hire you for the next role, or we're not gonna elect you. People keep, keep following them.
47:59 Chris Williamson? Who's going to be that person that decides to drop an anchor on the rocket ship that's going to the moon?
48:04 Speaker 00 Well.
48:05 Chris Williamson? That's precisely the same with, with the show, with my other buddies that are like on upward trajectories. Um, no one gives a shit about what you think until you're successful, which is stupid, because you think all of the things that you think now are.
48:20 Speaker 00 Exactly the same.
48:21 Chris Williamson? Yeah, precisely. I have a friend, Michael Malice, and he had a book written about him that's called Ego and Hubris.
48:27 Speaker 00 Oh, really?
48:27 Chris Williamson? Yes.
48:28 Speaker 00 Oh, my God, I've got such a long book list for this conversation.
48:31 Chris Williamson? Um, I, I think that Ego and Hubris is the cheapest copy you can get now is about a hundred and fifty pounds. It's not available digitized. It's crazy. Have a look at the, the things that he's been on Joe Rogan like five times. He's wonderful. One of my, one of my very, very good friends, Michael. Um, let's get back to, let's get back to mirror thinking before, before we go. I love this quote that you had, which was teachers are the guardians of our mind when it is most malleable, which has got some really terrifying implications for choosing your kid's school and what they're being told by teachers. Really worrying.
49:01 Speaker 00 It is really worrying, but.
49:04 Speaker 00 Um. There's also a lot of the research around role modelling shows that teachers have a very, very small impact on kids.
49:11 Chris Williamson? Okay. So what does teachers are the guardians of our mind when it's most malleable mean?
49:15 Speaker 00 So when a teacher is bad, then then you see it really having an impact. Or when a teacher is exceptionally good. But most of the time, teachers through no fault of their own, it's through, I think it's through stress in the system. They're not able to be exceptional. So what I hear when I'm profiling people is I hear, I more often hear for the bad teacher than I do of the good teacher. So that's anecdotal, but I'll hear someone say, um, this, you know, you know, it's ridiculous. Things like people who are CFOs of big companies have got a fear around their capability in maths. And you're like, what? Why? It's because a maths teacher said something to them at one point that has stuck with them through life.
49:59 Speaker 00 That's what worries me because there are lots of examples of where kids have been taken off track. And I think the ones I see are the ones who've made it in spite of that, but if they've carried it with them anyway. But what about all those kids that then didn't even follow their dreams because they believed what that teacher told them?
50:18 Chris Williamson? The more and more that I learn, especially this year, this year's like the year of uncomfortable truths, probably for a lot of people, right? But like particularly with the stuff I've been reading, Robert Plowman's stuff about the, the sort of this predetermination of genetics and, and then mirror thinking as well. It's like, hang on. So if you're telling me that I want to live a consciously designed life, I need to first overcome all of the shit that I did in life up until the point at which I start to step into my own programming. And then let's say that I managed to, to work my way through that. I've then got just the like source codes that I'm made up of. The bootstrapped program that's kind of built into my genetics and I've got to try and, yeah, in a.
51:00 Chris Williamson? Society that's meritocratic, I think that's, it's an uncomfortable truth.
51:06 Speaker 00 It is, it is. And, and, and you know, the, the whole reason I wrote my first book, which is about helping.
51:12 Chris Williamson? Publish the thing.
51:13 Speaker 00 Oh, no, no, no, that's, that's my, so my, my very first book wasn't published. I mean, my first published book, which is all.
51:21 Speaker 00 So, so my very first published book was to try and democratize what I did with senior leaders. Cause I, I sort of go through the life and when I'm going through it, I'm piecing together what their drivers are, what their passions are, what, what their tipping points are, how emotionally resilient they are, how can they be more emotionally resilient? All those sorts of things. And then how can they optimize their behavior to help other people or to help themselves as leaders? And so I, I broke it down into a book. And I said, I said to a friend of mine, Northern Irish, she lives in Scotland. And I was like, yeah, Jill, so I've done this and it's to democratize learning. So like other people that don't have these opportunities. And she went, she works with underprivileged, sort of a really rough area.
52:04 Speaker 00 And she's like, Fee, all due respect, they're not going to read your book.
52:11 Chris Williamson? For fuck's sake, should have, should have done a, an infomercial or something on YouTube or TikTok. Can you do a TikTok?
52:17 Speaker 00 Oh, no, no, it's fine. I mean, I, I won two awards for that book, so it did fine. It's fine.
52:21 Chris Williamson? TikTok it, double, double your sales, I bet.
52:23 Speaker 00 Oh, I can't, I can't TikTok. And, and then, um, but the reason I wrote this book was because I, I think there are things that we can actually take from it in terms of how we help kids from less privileged backgrounds.
52:40 Chris Williamson? So how can we use the mirror system to speed up our development? There's a lot of people listening who want to expedite their success and avoid failure. What are the, the takeaways that people can use for self-development?
52:51 Speaker 00 For people in, who are sitting watching this, I'm guessing they're not sort of stuck in a council flat somewhere. So there might be, might be, might be, and they.
53:02 Speaker 00 Whoever it is listening, it's about being aware.
53:07 Speaker 00 So deciding what, what do you want? Where do you want to go? Then being conscious of who is going to help you go in that direction. And then making sure, and this sounds a bit weird, but you're exposed to those people. So, um. You know, if you want to, if, so say you are stuck in, in, in a really rubbish area, a really rundown. There's no one successful around you. You want to be successful. Read biographies, watch biographies on TV. Think about what people are doing, watch them, observe them, see how they're doing things that mean that they have got to where you want to get to.
53:49 Speaker 00 Not the global prestige thing, but the individual behaviours. So Martin, um, Melson Mandela, when he was in prison for those 27 years, he read biographies non-stop. He wrote letters to other leaders. He, he sort of examined history. It, there's all the information is there, but it takes effort to find it if we're not surrounded by it. If we're in a more lucky position and we are surrounded by it. Make sure that if you want to be fitter, surround yourself by your fit friends. If you want to be a better communicator, listen to people who communicate well, but don't just listen. Think about how they communicate well. And so it's bringing everything into awareness, which is hard work. You don't want to do it all the time.
54:33 Speaker 00 So if you want a lazy way, you just surround yourself with people who you'd quite like to be like.
54:40 Chris Williamson? Is the, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with? Is that true?
54:47 Speaker 00 It's partially true, isn't it? But it's why you, you're attracted to people in the first place because they're like you. And then it reinforces how you are.
54:57 Chris Williamson? Such a confirmation bias, that thing, isn't it?
54:58 Speaker 00 Yeah, but then there's people like you who are really curious and you want to get underneath things. And, and so you're more likely to be surrounded by people who aren't necessarily like you. Um, and that's no bad thing either, because that stretches us beyond. Our comfort zone and I'm really, really proud. I think the power of curiosity is immense.
55:23 Chris Williamson? You're among friends here Fiona. It's I'd said it's on every podcast I've been on that's not been this one for like the last couple of years. Curiosity is the number one personality trait for the 21st century. Because it sits outside of the confirmation bias. It's a desire to ask why, to look into things, which inevitably leads you down sometimes like catastrophe. But more often than not, just like interesting adventures intellectually, physically, spiritually, whatever it might be.
55:55 Speaker 00 Absolutely. And if you meet someone who's not like you, if you sit there and you think they're not like me. And obviously, we don't sit in pubs and things anymore, but when we used to, you turn away. Or if you sit and you talk to them, firstly, you will find something that is like you in some way or another. But secondly, you can learn so much more about the world if someone's not like you. So how do they see the world? What do they find exciting and interesting? What can you learn from them? And then you can mirror that stuff if you want to.
56:24 Chris Williamson? And you can also make use, what was it, counter mirroring?
56:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
56:28 Chris Williamson? Yes. So you can also make use of a bad role model bizarrely.
56:32 Speaker 00 Absolutely. And actually, weirdly, it tends to have a bigger impact because people are more conscious of counter mirroring. Of saying, I don't want to be like that. So with doctors, there's been a lot of research, you don't mention your friend who's a doctor. There's been a lot of research in role modeling for doctors. It's the only way that they think you can pass on empathic skills as a doctor, which is interesting. There's also the fact that junior doctors that are with an unethical senior will either unwittingly take on some of that themselves and take that through their career. Or they will be so adverse to it that they go completely the other way.
57:13 Speaker 00 And they're like, I am completely ethical. I'm following the ethics. I am doing everything by the book.
57:20 Chris Williamson? The implications of our actions are so wide ranging. It's really terrifying, like the fact that we're not in open rebellion against each other or getting hit by traffic or, you know, like it blows my mind because the number of different ways that your actions can affect other people positively, negatively. It's just as well that we don't either have the capacity to or choose to
57:51 Chris Williamson? observe our thoughts and actions with the level of dexterity that we perhaps could. We would get nothing done. We'd just constantly be in inertia. But yeah, it is, um, it's mad. The butterfly effect of the things that we do is really crazy, isn't it?
58:07 Speaker 00 It is. It's immense.
58:10 Chris Williamson? Fiona, this has been really cool. Mirror thinking, how role models make us human will be linked in the show notes below on Amazon. Anywhere else that you want people to go? Any other stuff they should check out?
58:19 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah. Why not follow me on Twitter and Instagram? So I actually have some followers. That'd be great.
58:25 Chris Williamson? Great.
58:26 Speaker 00 And.
58:28 Chris Williamson? What's your Twitter? What's your Instagram?
58:29 Speaker 00 Fiona Murden, Fiona Murden, without a dot.
58:32 Chris Williamson? No dot. Yes.
58:33 Speaker 00 No dot. Fiona Murden, Fiona Murden, Fiona Murden on LinkedIn,
58:39 Speaker 00 Facebook, whatever. But also I've got a podcast and I've been not, not these amazing authors that you've been talking about, but I've spoken to some brilliant people like the CEO of Doc Martens, who's a friend and editor in chief of Marie Claire. And she talked about, you know, when she was, she was doing that ethnographic research as a journalist with Harvey Weinstein and pretending to be an actress. Yeah, that's a really interesting one. You'd probably like that one.
59:08 Chris Williamson? What's your podcast called?
59:10 Speaker 00 Dot to dot behind the person.
59:12 Chris Williamson? Pardon?
59:13 Speaker 00 Dot to dot. So joining the dots on behavior.
59:16 Chris Williamson? Dot to dot behind.
59:18 Speaker 00 Behind the person.
59:19 Chris Williamson? I like that.
59:20 Speaker 00 And so it's basically exploring people from what I do. Behind closed doors, but trying to give other people some insight into that as well.
59:30 Chris Williamson? Well, if that sounds interesting, go and check it out. Fiona's podcast will be linked in the show notes below. Let me know what you think. I think this, there's a lot of implications. I know we've been through quite a lot of different rabbit holes today, but comments below or drop me a message at Chris, Alex, wherever you follow me. But for now, Fiona, thank you so much.
59:46 Speaker 00 Thank you so much. Thanks a lot.
1:00:01 Speaker 02 Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
1:00:10 Speaker 03 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
1:00:18 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.
1:00:22 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
1:00:25 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
1:00:26 Speaker 03 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.
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