773 - Anna Powers (Part 1): Make Millions Sitting at Home with Copywriting

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Today on the James Alteacher Show. Continuing the fact filled fest with Jason Pfeiffer. Again, I challenge people to almost write down the list of totally new facts and information you learn from this episode. It's great for c**ktail parties, and it just improves my life. So here's part 2 with Jason Pfeiffer. You know, related to technologies, changing industries and and the way we do things and the way we think about things, tell us about the elevator. You did some of the recent work on the you did a recent podcast on the elevator. That was fascinating. That's good. And Steven Johnson has, of course, written about this, in in 6th grade inventions that changed everything, but, I forgot to read the book, but it was a a Steven Johnson number. That changed something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a very smart series that he does. Yes. Yeah. I mean, the elevator is funny. I had no idea where you're going with that transition, but I'm happy to talk about the elevator. People are fascinated by it. So the elevator absolutely revolutionized our our world. I mean, one small example there's so many different things to talk about the elevator. But, but one small example just so you can kind of understand the scope of the change here. So before the elevator, buildings were generally no higher than 6 stories tall, and the rich lived on the bottom and the poor lived on top. Because, of course Right. That's why you look at you look at, like, pre war buildings in New York City. Let's say ones that are 10 or 11 stories that were still walk ups at the time in the 1800 when they were built. But the apartments at the top, if they haven't been redone into penthouse, apartments at the top are the smallest rooms Yeah. In the building, in a lot of prewar buildings in New York City because that's where the help worked. Because it was the hottest the hottest. And, yeah, the water. And and and it was the schleppiest. Right? It just it took a long time to get up there. Whereas the rich wanted to just walk in on the ground floor. And then once the elevator was invented and popularized and made safe, which are all takes quite a while, then suddenly the rich were like, oh, wow. The views up here are amazing, and I can get away from the hoi polloi on the ground floors. And so the so there's a there's a kind of vertical gentrification where the rich move up and the poor get shoved down to the bottom. And and, you know, it's it's just you wouldn't think, coming up in our modern world where that is just a given, right, where where the the wealthy are up top, and you think, of course, the wealthy are up top. You know, you you I I always love discovering the origins of things because it turns out that every little thing that we take for granted, actually has some kind of some some starting point. So the elevator the elevator did change our world, but it also forced us to confront all sorts of really interesting questions about our culture and what we trust. And so I'm gonna give you 2 things where I I'll lay them out so that I make sure that we hit them both. Number 1 is, the 1800 debate over whether men should take their hats off in elevators when women walk in. That's number 1. And then number 2 is you flash forward, like, a century, and, and there is the debate over whether or not to step into an automatic elevator. Both are both are fascinating, and so let me let me tell you both of them briefly because they're fine. Okay. So first of all, there's a very quick history of the elevator. Elevators start really as a tool for miners, but it, you know, like people who mine. Like like Yes. I was just trying to find people who mine, people who go down into mines. But it's basically a box on a rope, and the rope snaps and people are are plummeting and dying all the time. And then and then eventually, that concept gets brought into more commercial buildings for for the average person. And this is I I I my dates are always a little screwy, but I think we're talking about kind of early 1800s here, but, early to mid 1800. And it's still quite dangerous. Elevators are plummeting on a regular basis, and people are dying. And then the revolution that really kicks off is Otis. So if you walk into a elevator today and you look at who makes the elevator, it is almost certainly the Otis Elevator Company. Otis was a real guy, and, this is his last name. I'm kinda blanking on his first name. But he what he invented was the safety latch that would stop an elevator from plummeting. So he he debut this at a world's fair style event. It wasn't actually the world's fair, but it was kind of like it. And he would they'd raise the elevator, and he would stand at the top of it, and he would say to his assistant, cut the rope. And the guy would cut the rope, and the elevator would start plummeting, and everyone would gasp. And then these jaws underneath the elevator would spring out and stick themselves into these these large grooves on the sides of the elevator, and it would stop the elevator from falling. And this now finally made the elevator a safe or safe ish thing that you could put into buildings that people would trust to get on. And so that is the thing that really kicks the elevator off, revolutionizes, you know, our our our buildings. And so once this thing now we go through all sorts of different changes and, you know, who's operating these things and how they're moving. And, there's still a lot of, kinks that have to get worked out. Like, people are people are stepping into, empty elevator shafts and plummeting because because the doors aren't quite timed. Anyway, it's a crazy thing. But, but, eventually, we've got elevators in buildings everywhere, and people are using them. And now we come to this question, which I really love, which is, should a man take his hat off in the elevator when a woman comes in? And the reason I love this question is because it starts to challenge some of the structural, cultural norms that people have at the time. So when imagine it. First of all, the elevator is different from what we walk into an elevator in now. Right? The The elevator is designed like a living room. So you walk in, there's, like, a rug, there's some places to sit. You might you might there might be a coat rack. There's it it looks like a room. And the the the etiquette at the time and and that makes sense. Right? Because because it is a room. It's only later that we think of it basically as a kind of temporary transportation spot, but but it is a it is a room. It's a moving room. And so when men or when people were in there, they were they were operating under the cultural norm at the time. The cultural norm at the time is that if you're a man and you're wearing your hat in a private space and a woman walks in, you take the hat off. So, for example, if you're in a, you know, if you're in a home and somebody walks in if you're in an office, somebody walks a a woman walks in, you take your hat off. But you don't have to do that in a public space because that would be nonsense. Right? They would just you'd never be wearing a hat. So if you're, you know, if you're on a train and the woman walks onto the train, you don't have to take your hat off. It's a public space. So the question was, is an elevator a public or a private space? And people debated this for decades, like, decades of debate. I found all these fascinating newspaper stories are, like, the the celebrities of the day were weighing in on it. Mae West was asked about it. And this is you know, I I mean, I'm sure that we have our own versions of this today, which are kind of nonsense in their own ways, but are really revealing, I think, a shift in cultural norms where people don't exactly know how to adapt what they think of as proper and appropriate to a new set of tools and expectations. Well, we see we see it in terms of any new it it seems like there's a tipping point where if technology affects a certain percentage of people, there's suddenly gonna be issues of ethics, morals, politeness, like in this case, you know, cultural norms. Like, just, you know, the addition of genomics is a big issue, whether it's ethical to clone Mhmm. Somebody. And, you know, that's an extreme case, but, you know, the elevator certainly hit such a tipping point early on. I didn't know that it was such a cultural controversy whether and I don't I still don't even know why someone would take their hat off, in a private space, but, again, it's an argument, a 150 years old. So so so how did they decide that, a elevator room, if you will, or an elevator, you know, cart car is a a a private space? Yeah. Well, well, they eventually they eventually decided it's a public space, which is how we treat it now. Right. Opposite. I mean, I think that the answer is that is that more and more people had access to it to the point where it didn't make any sense to think of it as a private space. Right? When you walk into an elevator in any building now, nothing's private it. Right? Any old people are gonna come on. And you know what you know what I bet it is? Actually, this is not I I didn't hear this in any of the research, but as I'm talking, I'm thinking, as soon as you have lots of people who are walking into a space who aren't like you, it no longer feels private. You know? So when you because because at the I I bet that there was a time where the the first elevators were probably installed in high end residential buildings and high end commercial buildings. So the people who could afford In the north, probably. Probably not in the south because it's too hot in the south. Oh, yeah. No. That's that's a good point. So you would have these people who are largely being surrounded by people who are like them walking in, and so they're all operating under the same cultural norms. But as soon as elevators start entering more common office buildings where people of different demographics, people of different income levels are, you know, visibly different people income levels are walking into the same space, I imagine that people stopped feeling like this was a private space where their personal cultural expectations could be upheld. And that's probably also when things like the couch and the rug went away. Because why would you I mean, it's like, walk around New York City. Right? Why there's no purpose to make some of these things nice. There's no reason to make a subway nice. It is too much wear and tear. There are too many people coming through it. It's gotta be a it's it's gotta be a utility at this point. Wait. There was couches in No. No. No. No. Back in the day? Or No. No. There were cou no. There were couches in in in elevators. I'm just saying, like, the elevator became, like Ah, I didn't know that. Became like the subway. It it it started to be just a regular space. I mean, you know, people do this with airplanes. People used to get dressed up to go on an airplane, you know, because Yeah. Now now they're dressed down because it's like, no one's gonna stay on the air. Spirit Airlines, and it's like a zoo. You know? I mean, it this is this this is another it's another shift. Right? We we this used to be a space where it was fairly elite. If you went on to the to the airplane in an early commercial flight, you could generally assume you're gonna be surrounded by people of a similar demographic and and income level to you. And now that's not the case anymore. And, and also it it's it it, you know, it doesn't it doesn't cater to people that way. Now it caters to a mass audience who are going to be price sensitive, and so you have your you could there's lots of different ways to fly, which I think is good. You know? I mean, we start we often start these innovations often start being only accessible to the elite, and then they shift as they become more broadly available. And that means that the way that we use them and the way that we think about them changes. But that's ultimately a good thing because we're democratizing access to great things, and that's that should be the point of creating great things. So, anyway, that's that's point 1 on the elevator. You wanna know the, the other the other battle? Yes. So the other battle. Remind us of what 0.2 was. 0.2 was automatic elevator. Mid 19th mid 19th hundreds, around I think I I I could be wrong, but I think the 19 forties, 19 fifties, the technology starts to be developed such that the elevator can move itself. Now for most of the history of the elevator, there was a human being moving the elevator. Sometimes it was with a crank. Sometimes it was with a rope. Right? If we think about an elevator operator today, we're thinking about some kind of throwback where somebody's sitting there and pressing the buttons. But in the early days, a person was literally moving the elevator. They were, like, pulling a rope to move the elevator. But, eventually, we got to the point where you didn't need somebody to be in the elevator. The elevator could move by itself, but people didn't trust it. Because, think about it, there is no other example in our world that the average person has access to in which you walk into an enclosed space with no windows and no human operator and it moves you. There's nothing like it. There's nothing else like it. And so it's scary. And people were not sure whether to trust it. There were there was there was a great, newspaper headline that said, what does the elevator think? Right? Because now now you're asking this thing to move on its own, to make decisions on its own. I mean, it's very much the conversation It's almost like it's almost like Exactly. I was just gonna say. It's it's it's the conversation that we're that we're having now about self driving cars. It's it's the same conversation. And, and so and then there were there were a lot of people who, it was in their economic interest to kick up fear about these things. So the elevator operator union, really, really hated automatic elevators. And so they waged a campaign claiming that buildings that had automatic elevators had a lot more crime than buildings that had elevator operators. But, you know, there was there was a lot of force to embrace the automatic elevator. It meant it it was, cheaper for buildings. So buildings would would prefer to have an automatic elevator. Also, elevator operators, the unions kept going on strike. So people would, in the middle of the day, suddenly discover that their elevators no longer had operators and they were stuck in their buildings or they had to walk down 50 flights of stairs and they didn't like that. And, also, funny enough, when you had an elevator operator, that person didn't work 24 hours a day, which meant that you could miss the last elevator of the day because they, you know, they would go home at 6 or 7 or whatever, and that's the end of the elevator. So people didn't like this. There was a there was a there was definitely a a a trend towards accepting the the automatic elevator, but the problem was that people just didn't People were afraid of the technology. It was very uncomfortable. And the solution or one of the solutions, which I I I guess, like, I would be afraid too. Like, I even if it's irrational, I would think to myself, oh, at least somebody is risking an employee here so that somebody must think it's safe. Mhmm. As opposed to they're fine if I die, but they don't want their employee to die. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is it's it's scary. I have not. Have you because I have not. Have you stepped into a car that just takes off and drives somewhere all by itself? I haven't done it. No. And I think that I will be afraid the first time I do it. I will be scared. Yeah. And because even though it's rare than like, you know, self driving deaths, which have occurred now Yeah. Are are much more rare than regular driving deaths. The only news you hear about self driving cars is when someone dies. Yes. That's that's right. That's right. And, and then we're gonna hear a lot more of them because that because it's gonna happen. And so we're gonna be afraid. And yet, if somebody finds this conversation a 100 years from now and they listen to us, it's gonna sound crazy. It's gonna sound like people talking about whether or not to trust walking into an elevator because it'll eventually become so common. But we're at a moment of transition where we haven't done this yet, and the idea of putting our physical bodies inside a thing that's going to move us without any human control is very, very scary. And so that's what people were afraid of. And the solution that the elevator industry came up with was wonderful. And it is this. You put a soothing female voice into the elevator that narrates the experience. Going up, going down, floor 1, floor 2. Right? I mean, either some elevators still have this today. That that wasn't the only thing. There was a whole marketing campaign and all that that had to go with it. But that really got people comfortable because it did this thing that I think innovators often forget to do, which is to build a bridge of familiarity, to identify what of the old thing do people need in the new thing? Right? People don't like new things. People like old people don't let me say that again. People don't like new things. What people like are new versions of old things. And so you need to take the new thing that you've created and make it feel like a new version of an old thing that they already know. And So Yeah. So related related to this is what is it true that the door close button in an elevator actually doesn't work? But if there's an open button, people feel like they need to see a close button? Question. I I know I've heard that. I don't know the answer. My guess is that the answer to that depends upon the the the vintage of the elevator. But I wouldn't be surprised because By by the way, if I if I Google, does the close button like, it's just starting to red door button fills it right in. It says it fills out with on elevators work. And it says the button really does work. It's just set on a time delay. So so suppose the elevator is set so that the doors close automatically after 5 seconds, the close door button can be set to close the doors after 2 or 3 seconds. Uh-huh. The button may be operating properly when you push it, but because there's still a delay, you don't realize it. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I've been Yeah. You know, an an elevator has to have some kind of theatrics. It's scary. It's still scary. Have you ever been stuck in an elevator? I have. Yeah. It's I don't mind it. You mind it? It's like it's like a little break from from the world. I mean I don't mind. I had it Now if there was no air conditioning, I'd be upset. I mean, I had it drop. Not not significantly, but it dropped a little bit. It's spooky. You know? And and I think another reason is because you don't really understand what you're in. Like, I don't I don't understand how the elevator works. I mean, I understand that I'm in a box and that there's a lot of machinery holding it up and that the chances of it falling right now are slim to none, but I don't understand it. And so anything that happens that deviates from the normal course of how this should work makes it feel like any damn thing could happen, and that's scary. Yeah. So what got you interested in, like, researching the elevator? I mean, I guess it's related to big changes change society in unexpected ways. Like, if if you figure, the elevator combined with air conditioning is the entire reason that there are cities in the south. Yeah. Because you couldn't have urbanization in the south. You couldn't have skyscrapers without air conditioning and elevators. Sure. Like, you couldn't have urbanization anywhere if l if if you didn't have a vertical city because you would New York City would not be able to fit 8,000,000 people if it was just 3 stories tall. Right. But you couldn't do that in the South because it was too hot. So air conditioning, which was basically invented for for first use of air conditioning, I think, was in Florida. But air conditioning combined with elevators allowed for skyscrapers in the South, which which basically saved the South from economic distress. Well, I think I think the air condition I haven't done a lot of research on air conditioner, but I believe it I mean, it was originally a, it its original purpose was to keep factories working longer. Right? Because in in the heat, a lot of the materials would, would warp or melt, and you so you couldn't operate these things. The reason I got interested in the elevator is because so, you know, like like I said, I have this show called Build for Tomorrow, which is this podcast in which I try to understand the things that shape us, the unexpected things that shape us, and how best to understand narratives that we have that hold us back from the future. Like, what is it that holds us back from progress, from embracing progress, from feeling like we can adapt to new things. And I feel like looking back at the future I'd be looking back at the future. I was twisting time. Looking back at the past and understanding why people were concerned about something and the and what ultimately got us to shift our behaviors or understandings of the world can help us understand the versions of that that we go through today. So I think that there are lessons to learn in the, in in, for example, the the the the building a bridge, familiarity, in getting people into those automatic elevators that'll ultimately be very helpful once it's time to get everybody into self driving cars. And I I feel like we are very often ignorant of the changes that happened in our world to build what we know now, and, and that if we were more aware of those things, we might be less afraid of the new things that we confront today. I have this philosophy called you come from the future, and the idea is that you are the product of all the things that used to freak previous people out. Like, everything that you do and know and love and use on a daily basis and the way that you dress and the way that you think, all of that was terribly scary to people that came before you. But you don't think that you were terribly scary. You think that you're full of, like, good things, which means that when change comes to you, you say, stop it. Like, I have all the good things. Are you gonna change the way that I communicate with my friends? You're gonna you're gonna take this thing away or replace it with something else? Don't do that. I have all the good things. But if you can recognize that you actually are the product of change, like, you are literally the evidence that change can be good, then, hopefully, that opens your mind up to the possibility that the things that are coming next, weird and scary as they may be, and I get it. Believe me. I get it. I I'm not I you know, like, I don't know. I I'm not very good at TikTok. I I don't I can't I don't know what I'm looking at. Egaming. That's what I really don't understand. I don't understand why people are watching other people play video games. I don't get it. But you know what? I I I don't it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I think because I am the product of change, and I should be open to the possibility that the things that I am not familiar with have value too. It's interesting how much we take these things for granted. We take them for granted so much. You were just talking about the elevator, which is a you I think of as a relatively simple invention. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I didn't know that that that's what mister Otis did to make elevators popular, which is basically preventing them from falling. I didn't know that that was the way we got rid of the elevator operator. But, but it but it it does always make me think. And maybe I've asked you this before because I asked a lot of guests this. If you were to be transported back in time, like a like a 1000 years, you know, you show up in King Arthur's Court in a 1000 AD. So at least let's assume they all speak English and you speak English. Sure. We're not offering diseases immediately. Yeah. Right. Right. So assume that's not happening. What could you or maybe assume that is happening. What could you do that would be helpful given that you're from a 1000 years in the future and there's all these amazing things? Like, do you know a single g*****n thing about the world around you that could actually help the people from a 1000 years ago? That is a really wonderful question, and I can't bring anything with me. Right? You can't bring anything with you. Because if I could, now we're really talking. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Then whatever. Then then, like, I have a light I have, like, a flashlight, and I am and I am I I will I I would rule the kingdom. Well, once the battery's back, I will do it. Nothing. Alright. So, so then then it would appear that my magic had worn off, and then they would throw me into the river. So Kill you. What could I teach them? I mean, you know, this is interesting. This is a really interesting question. Right? Because the the first thing I think is ideas, but ideas out of context are completely useless. People have to like, cultures have to evolve into ideas. And so my sense of how, a a community or a society operates is so foreign to people from a 1000 years ago that it is useless. And I I I can't really build anything. I can I can write, but people back then could write too? And you know what? The things that I write about were not things that interest them, and the ways that they write are Right. And, also, it might might get you It might make you kill. Very quickly. If you wrote about the elevator, maybe they were maybe they would think, oh, you're trying to be God. They built the tower of Babel already. You're this is blasphemous in elevator. These are, I mean, you know, these are these are you're going back a 1000 years. You're entering an almost exclusively, like, religious driven society where if you rewind a 1000 years, you're going back to I mean, so what is this? So do we like, you know, 1 I mean, if you did this in England, you're what are you doing? You're, like, not even in the middle ages yet. So you or you're an early mid no. No. I'm sorry. I'm wrong about that. You're in early middle ages. You're in early middle ages. It's a dark age. It's a dark area. No. No. No. It's a yeah. Because it's that time between the fall of the Roman Empire and Right. Let's say the Magna Carta. Right. The I mean, the the Norman conquest is still a couple 100 years away. Like, yeah, you're in, like, very, very early middle of the times. So you're in a tie I I was just having a conversation with some historians about emotions. And one of the things they pointed out, which I I share just as a way of showing how, like, completely different we think about the world and understand the world. So we think of, emotions as internal experiences. Right? If I'm happy or sad, I am happy or I am sad. There are things that drive me to be happy or sad. There are things that could change the way that I feel. They thought of emotions as external experiences. Something is making you Right. Like, a deep and possessive. Happy or sad. And, this this had come up in the context of boredom. They're like people's understanding of an experience of boredom, which isn't a word that existed until the 1800, but but, like, you know, a 1000 years ago, they would have called it a sadia, or the ancient Greeks would have called it a sadia. And, and so, they felt like it was a sin. It was a it was it was something that happened to you. It was a thing that that that drew your attention to God away. And so you can't even have You know, I I I just on that point, I wanna mention. In the in the old testament, you know the only time Satan is mentioned? You know, most people think it's in the story of Adam and Eve, but that was a snake. Yeah. It wasn't really referred to as the nemesis of of God. The only time Satan is mentioned is when, there was one point when king David, the, you know, let's say, 2nd king of Israel, king David raised or created taxes. He wanted a tax. He wanted to create taxes on everyone. And everyone complained, and, he he he backed off. He said, Satan made me Really? And he backed off. That's amazing. That's hilarious. So, basically Yeah. It's So it's like So even the even the Earth just made an appearance in the Bible. I didn't realize that. That's really funny. I mean, well, hey. People have hated taxes, if it was a time immemorial. Yeah. Yeah. So Since biblical times. Anyway, the point is, like, you the foundation that you would have to even understand somebody's experience would be so wildly different. I I don't know that I can offer anything. Yeah. I don't I don't know if I can offer could. I mean, even if you told people, listen. If you wanna slow the spread of disease, wash hands. Wash your hands. This wasn't really known until germ theory in the 1800. Resisted. And even then, when it was it was resisted. Even though it was statistically proven, the guy who first suggested it, Igor Semmelweis, was putting it in the same asylum. Absolutely hated it. They thought he was, like, a obnoxious young doctor who was telling people that they didn't know how to practice medicine. Right. We well, look. I mean and this is because we have so so this is I I love this question, and I think that the conclusion is that I am basically useless, in the, in the early middle ages. But what I what I would resist is the belief that, therefore, we have done something wrong. Because there there is like, today. Because there is a there is a strain of thought that goes like this. Technology has made us weaker. It has forced us to it has it has caused us to lose skills that are valuable, and, and so we have done some kind of irreparable harm to ourselves by relying upon our technologies. And if you sent us back a 1000 years, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. And and I and I think that that's just that's just, fundamentally incorrect. And the reason for that is because, we develop the skills that we need based on the resources available to us. And, and it's not to say that we lost the ability to develop those skills, but rather that we didn't need to develop them, and we could develop them if we need to. And so this does I I don't know how to build a fire. I just don't. And the reason is because I've never needed to build a fire, and it's not a skill that I need to to develop. I I once interviewed the head of the Pew Internet Center, the Pew Center For Internet Research, something like that. His name is Lee Rainey. And he made this wonderful point to me. And he said, look. A generation or 2 ago, the sign of intelligence was an ability to retain information. Right? To learn and retain information. And now a sign of intelligence is an ability to quickly find and process information. And that's because, of course, we have the tools. You have already displayed it a couple times during our conversation. We have the tools to find information very easily. So the skill of simply retaining that information, in most cases, not all cases, but in most cases, is not as valuable as it once was. But the ability to filter for information, to find it very quickly, and to process it, and to make some use of it, that is very valuable. Is that better or worse than the previous skill? I don't think that that's the relevant question. It's just different. And I would disagree slightly with him in that, yes, that's important. The ability and and you you you refer to it in 2 different ways. 1 is you the ability to find information, and then you also said the ability to filter information so you get the correct information. But I would argue that the real sign of intelligence now and and I do agree. The ability to retain and memorize and then call back, that that was important and to some extent still is a little bit. But I think the ability to dis to discover new information is really the sign of intelligence. And that's something they could teach you all day long about history in college, but until you're able to discover new ideas and new connections between various fields and and so on, Discovery to me is a sign of intelligence. Maybe that's just my personal opinion. There's no this is not based on anything at all, but that's the sign of an entrepreneur. They're discovering new ways of of doing things. That's sign of, you know if you could look at what's happening in Afghanistan now and and whether you're right or wrong, be able to say, you know, this is similar to what happened in Vietnam. And then from 1975 to 1980, America sort of fell into this malaise. It was specifically called a malaise where Mhmm. Other countries lost faith in us and lost trust in us. Our economy went down. Countries small countries like Iran held our citizens hostage, whereas nobody would have thought of that before. So what you could if you could make the comparison, say that might happen in the next 5 years, I feel like that sort of thing is intelligent as opposed to just memorizing things. Yeah. I I I would agree with you on that. Yeah. I mean, I I don't think that there is only one sign, there's not only one sign of intelligence. There's not only one, valuable skill. Right? We we have we have multiple, but but the value of that exercise to me is in recognizing that as our world and the resources available to us shift, so will the skills that we are going to want to develop. And that doesn't create or shouldn't create specific value judgments. Just because one thing is valued now in a way that it wasn't valued before or vice versa doesn't mean that new skills are better or worse. So there are all these people who if you go online, you'll find all these sites that that romanticize, you know, being able to do all of these these, off the land things. Right? You know, build a fire, make a shed by yourself, whatever. Those are cool. That's cool. That's great. If that interests you, then then by all means, go do it. But just because a a modern person living in an urban environment does not know how to do those things doesn't mean that we've lost anything because we don't need to know how to do it. And I guarantee you that if you took a bunch of those people and put them in an environment where they did need to know how to do it, they would learn it because we don't lose the ability to learn. The ability to learn is literally what makes us human, but we have to make decisions about how best to spend our time and our brain space. And so we are going to develop the skills that are most valuable to us now. Doesn't mean that we can't develop other skills later. Yeah. And it's gonna be unexpected. So for instance, let's say, the average age becomes, 200 instead of 70 because of advances in medicine and studying antiaging and and so on. Then one thing that'll have to change is our ability to invest because you're gonna have to invest for a much longer term. You're not gonna retire at 60 and and die at 80. You have to make sure, oh my gosh. I can continue this lifestyle till I'm at least Mhmm. 200. So that's gonna change investing. Who who knows what skills? So but it's interesting. So note to Jay who is listening to this. We should do a podcast on what skills one can develop that are both useful now and useful in 800 AD. Hypothetically, if if I'm ever transported back in time, I need to be able to solve this problem. And I would and and to Jason's point, making a fire could be fun, but that's not really a useful skill now or even in 800 AD where everyone knew how to do it. So it'd be interesting to find out what like, okay. If you could just as a sampler for an episode of this, if you could be a really good magician on a stage, that is both useful now and in 800 AD. Like, if if I could fill if I could fill every turn everyone's glass from water to wine, that's a an amateur magician trick, but I would be the messiah in 800 AD, and I'd be a great magician right now. I've got I've got so I've got a person that you should talk to about this who who is my go to academic for these kinds of weird questions. His name is Andrew Rabin, and he is at the University of Louisville. He's in the English department there, but he's a he's a medieval scholar. And he is r a b I n. He is so good at drawing the line from the experiences and norms of the middle ages to now. I called him recently to ask him this question that had popped into my head, which was I I did an episode on it, which was, what can I do today that only ancient royalty could do at in their time? That's really fascinating. Right. And, like, you know, beyond the obvious, like, obviously, I I can't, like, I can use a computer and nobody back then could do it. Like, that's boring and obvious. But, like, what what are we what what more fundamental things are we talking about? And he had some really, really interesting ones. Among them, I can wear whatever clothing I want to because in the middle ages, there were these things called sumptuary laws where, which dictated what you could wear based on your class or status in the world, the most famous of which is that only royalty could wear purple. Like, that that that isn't just like a royalty wears purple because they like purple thing. Like, it was literally the law that only royalty. And then some other ones, I can sit in a room alone and be quiet, which is not something that was available to the average person, but was available to royalty. It's so interesting because I have done some stuff on how solitude is a luxury Yes. That we don't really appreciate. By the way, I'm looking at his, some of his his a list of his writings on academia.edu. I'll he has, like, a sense of humor. Yeah. Gang violence in Anglo Saxon law, the problem of hotslish. Yeah. So He's great. I I almost wanna click on that and read it. I I I love talking to this guy. Like, I every time everybody should have a go to academic who who is just a wealth of knowledge and is willing to entertain your weirdo questions. And, and Andrew Andrew is has become mine. So I I I'd say once a year, I email him some kind of wacky thing. I mean, you know, he at the very beginning of our conversation, you had asked me about the good that comes from a pandemic. He is who I enter he's who I emailed to ask what good came out of the bubonic plague. And he, I mean, he has fascinating answers. Should I should I tell you what? I'll tell you what. As a as a this would be a nice little full circle thing. The medieval economy, as as you will remember from grade school, was a lord and serf system, which is to say that lords owned the land. They also owned the serfs. Serfs worked the land. It was slavery. And then the bubonic plague comes along mid 1300, and it kills upwards of 60% of Europe. It does not matter if you are wealthy or poor. Every everybody is just wiped out. The lords then at some point go back to the serfs, and they say, serfs, it is time to get back to work. We need to reoperate these lands, and let's start making some money. But the problem is that there are not enough serfs anymore for all the lords. And so the surfs start to experience something that they had never experienced before, which is the lord saying, come work for me. No. No. Come work for me. And the lords are now competing, and the surfs realize that they are in a position to ask for compensation for their labor. And this is really the first meaningful time, according to Andrew, that the idea of compensating somebody for their work, the idea of the employment contract as we know it. I mean, it's very rudimentary. It is, You know, it takes a long time to evolve, but but the very beginnings of this, the work has a value and that the person who does that work should be compensated for that work. That comes out of this moment, and it radically shifts the relationship that the lords have with the sirs. Now is it perfect after that? No. It's certainly not. There are lots of, like, serf rebellions and, you know, the the there's a African slave trade that develops and all that. But when you look back on it, what you see is a gigantic disruption that leads to a moment of change that evolves into the economy that we know now. It is really an epic wouldn't go back moment. Do we want 60% of Europe to be destroyed? No. Terrible, horrible things came out of the bubonic plague. But if we are to take as fact that terrible, horrible things happen, then it is worth looking at the world and trying to understand how massive shifts and massive disruption can lead to valuable things, which again isn't to say that I am endorsing massive shifts and massive disruptions. But when they happen, let us not just focus on the terrible things, but let us say, how can we turn this into an opportunity, which is what I think so many entrepreneurs have been able to do during the pandemic where terrible, terrible things happened, but also these grand shifts took place where people started to reconsider ideas that they thought were once impossible. And we got to places where we were developing new ideas, and we are setting ourselves up for some kind of evolved and different future that we wouldn't have had without this disruption. So, anyway, there's an idea. And I I I love when, completely disparate events are connected also. Like, when you say, the bubonic plague is here's this direct connection of events that lead to capitalism as we know it today. It's always amazing how history works like that, and and it's and it's it's unexpected That's right. But always true. But, but, you know, Jason, a lot of this stuff we talked about is also talked about on on your podcast. What's the name of your podcast? Thank you for asking. It is called Build for Tomorrow, and you can find it wherever you find this podcast. Anyway, Build for Tomorrow. Why why did you change it from the pessimist archive? Oh, yeah. So right. So the show used to be called pessimist archive, and I changed it for a couple reasons, but the biggest one was, you know actually, this is this is this this picks up on something we were talking about earlier, which is understanding your consumer. So I would hazard to say that most people don't understand their consumer nearly as well as they could, and that was certainly true for me. So I hired a consultancy to help me grow the show when it was called Pessimist Archive. And, the first thing that they did was they did some audience insights research. They surveyed my audience, and then this woman named, Rochelle Devoe got on the phone, brilliant audience insights researcher, got on the phone with a ton of them and interviewed them. What do you like about the show? What don't you like about the show? How does it fit into your life? Why do you listen to it? Why do you recommend it? Why don't you recommend it? Why didn't you listen to the show more? Right? You wanna know the positives and the negatives. And then she wrote this amazing report that gave me so much insight into my audience, and there were two things that jumped out at me the most. Number 1, why do you listen to the show? The answer, people said, was because it helps them feel more resilient about the future. Now I hadn't thought about that at the time. The way that I'm talking now that you've heard me talk for the last hour is an evolution of how I have thought about my work. Originally, I thought of this show as really just trying to understand why people fear things. Like, I was just very curious about that. Why do you fear things? But what I came to realize is that even though I was creating this show that was kind of I thought of it as a history show about fear, but people were experiencing it as something of a self help show. It helped them feel more resilient about the future. And so that was insight number 1. There is something here that is useful to people in a nonacademic way, and I should lean into that. Insight number 2 was that they told me that the name was a the name Pessimist Archive was a gigantic turn off. They had a hard time convincing others to listen to the show because the name was such a turn off, and they themselves often initially dismissed listening to the show because they thought it was gonna be pessimistic. Now if you've heard me for the last hour, you know my message isn't pessimistic, and I don't I don't present with pessimism. Right. The idea was to look at an archive of pessimists, but people didn't understand that with the name, and so they just thought that the show was pessimistic. And so I realized I have an opportunity to go bigger here by serving the value that people are getting from my work even though I didn't realize they were getting it. But that means leaning more heavily into that and maybe picking subjects that are digging deeper and drawing connections better between history and people's lives, and then, 2, coming up with a name that removes the barrier to entry that so many people were feeling. And so I I, you know, I I ultimately came to the name Build for Tomorrow because it corresponds with a book that I'm writing now that's gonna come out next August. And, and and then I, you know, I I I altered some of the subject matter in the way that I write and produce the show. But I I cannot if you are in business in any way or you're in content production in any way or whatever, if you're creating something for other people, I could not recommend to you more getting to know your audience in a way in which you are not doing yourself right now. Like, do it systematically. Bring somebody on if you must, but understand that audience in a in a in a true nuanced way. Be be consumer obsessed because it will reveal opportunities that you had no idea were there. Well, Jason, build for tomorrow. I can't wait for the book to come out. You're gonna have to, obviously come on for that, but you'll come on many times. You always have such fascinating things to talk about and to say. Always a welcome guest on the podcast. People could also find your writings on LinkedIn or and, of course, in entrepreneur magazine or at entrepreneur.com. And thanks once again, Jason, for coming on the podcast. James, always a pleasure. I really appreciate it.