S2E16 · Bonus Episode

All right, you wonderful people, season two of the Virtus Performance podcast is a wrap. I'd like to thank all of you for your listens, for your subscribes, for your reviews, for your feedback. It's been brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you to Simon for putting up with my shit. If you loved it, please share it, get it out there and send it to people. But before we go, before we have a couple of weeks off after season two, I have a little bonus episode for you. It's basically Simon and I solving the world's problems. We

take a couple of hours, we have a couple of beers and we save all of the world leaders the trouble and we take our own severely unqualified opinions to discuss all the big issues that we find with the world at the moment and what we would do if we were in charge. So here it is, enjoy, I apologize profusely ahead of time, but I hope you have as much fun as we did. Thank you for listening. Thank you being wonderful. Catch you later. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite. Let's do this, come on.

It's too damn hot for a penguin to be just walking around. Three, two, one, eagle. Are these two doctors? I'm afraid so. And here we go. It's recording. Let's begin. All right, team, so here's the deal. We are back for season three. No, actually, we're not doing season three for a little bit, but what we are here for is Simon and I were chatting the other day, we were cooped up 1.5 meters apart. And what we've decided is that we are going to solve the shit show that is 2020. So you know, there's been murder hornets, there's been COVID, there's been Trump, there's been Scotty from marketing, there's been bushfires.

What other fun things have happened in 2020, Simon? That's about everything, isn't it? We closed the gym for a bit. We've been hanging out at home. People fought over toilet paper. I don't know, it's been a riot. It's been uneventful. I know. And here's the deal. We figured that we as 28 year old, middle class, you know, wise males, we know the answers to all the problems that are going on in the world at the minute. Makes sense. I think so. What we're going to do is we're going to spend the next hour or so solving these problems, putting the solutions out there.

So your Dan Andrews of the world who's had a rough time, hasn't worn his North face jacket in a little while. So that your, you know, the leaders, the people out there that are making the decisions, that they can go, you know what, I think it's time we listen to the bonus episode of the Virtus podcast to figure out how we should go about unfucking 2020 so that 2021 is just brilliant. You're welcome. Thoughts? You know, obviously over the last couple of weeks, like David Attenborough has kind of sorted the environment stuff. He nailed that in his doco.

Josh Frydenberg sorted out the money stuff. Like today budget came out, maybe TBC, TBC, but it seems like he's, he's got it sorted. Dan Andrews is doing a good job. The numbers are going down. So what we want to talk about is like the important stuff. So what, what are the topics? I'm asking you mostly because we're, you can tell us where we start. We're looking for the people's challenges. The ones that the people can solve together, we, we come as together as one to bring some solutions to the surface and you know, make the world a better place.

Cause that's what we're all about. That's what we're all about. And this podcast is actually called we as the people from now on, this is episode one of we as the people with Simon and Lachlan and Simon and Lachlan save the world. Uh, all right, let's, let's do this. I think maybe a good place to start, uh, seeing as we are trying to educate the masses is uh, the guys at the top, the guys in charge. Yeah. Uh, all right. So question for you, Lachlan pose me a question. If you were to, uh, I've got, I've got two questions for you.

Here's question one. If you were to change the education system, uh, as a whole, what would you, what would you change? What would you do? So you know how in Sparta, how they used to have the rite of passage where they'd send them out into the wilderness and they'd have to kill a Wolf before they could come home. Something like that, but maybe with koalas or, um, no, I, I don't know. I, so I think the education system is obviously a lot of it is industrialized from the way the industrial complex work, the way like the rows of classrooms are set up.

And I guess the way that here's the curriculum, teach it. It's it's it's knowledge. It's not knowing. And I think the way I would fix the, I don't know if I can, I haven't really thought about these questions. But here's how it, here's how to fix it. There'd be a rite of passage for maybe like age groups. So like say five year old and eight year old and 11 year old or 14 year old where they have to do something. So you know what you think back, and this is me posing a question to give me a little bit of time to think of it and decent answer.

Think back to the times in your life where you learned the most, were you in a classroom or you were out, were you out in God's classroom? I was out in God's playground. God's playground. Yeah, for sure. I do like that. Yeah, so yeah, so you're outside, right? But or you are with a wise elder. And here's here's the thing that we fucked up with Western society is we we don't pay enough attention to our elders. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And we and we don't provide the support and and maybe frameworks in our society to utilize all of the learned knowing that the older guys are have have accumulated over the years.

Guys and girls, of course, like I, you know, I'm sorry, but I've been having some pretty cool conversations with my nana lately about the books she's reading and because, you know, I'm just playing it with books because you can't see anyone because, you know, the shit show that is 2020. And learning some great things. It's wonderful. Yeah. And I think that, you know, there are older codgers like, you know, Trump and, and Biden and all of those people in the US and maybe SCOMO is getting a little bit. And there are people that we don't

want to listen to, we just want to but I'm reading this book at the moment and it's right next to me, so I'm going to pick it up. Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it. And this is from a philosopher slash author, Daniel Klein, he's in his 80s. And he wrote this in 2018, I think, and it's brilliant. Like why aren't we listening to people like Daniel Klein, he's super duper. And then, you know, maybe that's maybe that's the wrong way to go because some could look at the age of all the people in charge in the US and be like, this is why the world's going the wrong way, maybe.

But yeah, it's because the people in power in that society are from a certain background or a certain they've been educated in a certain way that makes that they're the ones that make the decisions. Something about being educated in rows that fucks people up. Yeah, it doesn't. It's not like if we think back to tribal days, and we keep we keep going back to this, we keep going full circle. But if we think back to sapiens and being in tribes, you always learn from nay pandering, you learn from the elder, like they passed down knowledge

through the ranks and, you know, the the hunters and the gatherers took the kids or the, you know, the juveniles or the the, you know, the next generation and kind of took them under their wing and showed them the how to do the things. What you're saying is we need to get the wings out. Yeah, like we need to open the wings and let the youngsters come under them so that we can teach them things. Here's the actually is that's a good point. So on another book that I talk about all the time sapiens, Ray Dalio, one of the more successful people in society's regular version of success, he's had some pretty epic failures as well.

And it's I guess that's what one of the things I love about him is he, in his book, he talks about his three he's had three stages to his life. The first stage is where he was like coming up and he felt like he knew everything. And then there was a big failure. And the second phase was where he kind of had to reconsolidate and find his feet again and kind of build it build the thing again. And now his third phase is like, I've kind of done all the things I want to do, for lack of a better term.

And now it's my turn to teach the next generation or teach teach people who want to learn and who want to listen. And potentially, some of its we don't want to listen or we don't put ourselves in positions to listen, but part of it might be, you know, those generations don't teach the way that we want to learn. I don't know. I think the structuring in a way where where the people that have done good things and and have the experience can create, or we can create a system that use them as, you know, certain touch points throughout it.

The rite of passage is maybe like that early on the childhood into adolescent and things like that. We have certain things for kids to do. You know, it might be a week long camping trip, it might be whatever it is a certain test of resilience or whatever. But I know I've learned more about myself. And this is, you know, part of the conversation around education is what do we actually deem as important knowledge or what we actually need to learn like the self awareness piece could be, you know, for people to go way off the edge, it could just be termed or looked at as like mental masturbation, whereas you're just like, we're not actually getting anywhere.

Whereas, you know, just learning Pythagoras theorem for the sake of learning Pythagoras theorem, if I have no necessarily intention of needing that. But what I've found, and I'm just talking, talking to my ass here, but what I've found with like those conversations that we had at school, oh, when are we going to use this miss? I don't see anyone driving past in a truck with 30 watermelons for my math equations. I think, think about how quickly the rate of information sharing and spreading has happened over the last 20 years. Every single piece of information that we would need is like at the tips of our fingers, literally, like, yes, I want to learn Pythagoras, I can watch five minute video.

Yeah, so it's not an information problem now. It's a it's an, it's an adaptive problem. What's the teaching how to think not what to think? Yeah, and I think it starts with like, knowing what is important, like what you said before. It's we're not teaching kids to be to know this thing for the sake of it. It's teaching them, like, these are the things that are important to thrive. To have like, what would you say happy life? What would you say the three things that you wish everyone knew? And I'm, there's intentionally no gap, like no framework to that question.

But if there were three things you could teach kids, what would that what would they be? Like a conceptual level, I would say that the knowledge that you're responsible for everything in your life. And like, I think you would have the same answer that I'm not anymore. I think the other thing might would be around, like failure and knowing that failure is is inevitable, and that you will fail at things, but that's not a an indicator of like who you are as a person and you that failure is an opportunity to learn and to carry that knowledge forward into other things.

I had a sidebar for a second, I was I've been writing little notes in my phone, just like things I think of. Success is married to failure. So to be successful, you have to fail, but failure is not married to success. Yep. So you you're not guaranteed to succeed if you fail. But there is no way you're going to succeed if you don't fail. Fuck it. Love that. And then I read afterwards failure is imminent, pursue it, enjoy it and learn from it. Yeah. Put that on a t shirt. Oh, yeah. I interrupted after too. Sorry.

The third one. That's a toughie. It probably something around like I was gonna say something around like the the the meaning of life. Oh, every time I find them in your life, I change it. So, yeah, it's fluid. It would be something around like, the meaning of life isn't money, or fame or superficial stuff. I really want money, fame and superficial stuff. Sure. Are you telling me what my what the meaning of my life is? You can. Don't you project your meaning on me. You take your meaning and shove it. I will do with my meaning whatever I wish.

Yeah, well, I mean, of course, that's my perception of the meaning of life and what's important. But yeah. And maybe that's it, like not to accept what meaning or success is and to kind of like create your own definition of that. That's the I think that's what I took out of uni, like if I could boil down what spending three years in undergrad, one year quit, cancelled, failed my masters, I'm a failure. If I could take like boil it down into one thing that I learned, it's I learned how to think critically, I learned how to realize that everyone's just winging it.

Most of us are full of shit. And we're all just trying our best. So that the because I think when you grow up, there's absolutely like you feel as though there's absolute authority, and the older you get, you realize how how batshit crazy that absolute authorities like, you know, our parents are just kids that grew up and had kids. But we for, you know, the first first chunk of our life we go, they know everything omnipotence. So I think the ability to think critically is definitely has to be one of them. But you know, how

do you teach that you teach that through failure and through learning what it what through learning how science works and how the scientific methods formulated and you learn it through, you know, reliability and validity and things like that. But it's you can't expect everyone to, you know, go to the bottom of the rabbit hole and all of these things because you don't have time for that. So you've got to take things at face value. A lot of the time. It's toughy. Maybe this isn't why the education system isn't perfect. Because there's so many different schools of thought on it.

Well, yeah. And like, there's obviously evidence based practices in education. So we need to, well, I like to think that it's all there for a reason. Yeah, I think that the system just hasn't been able to catch up with the times that we're living in. Maybe cool graph the other day on the speed of technology over like the last 2000 years and it's like me. bump. See you later. Crazy. But that's it. Like the schooling system is effectively the same as what it was 50 years ago. Yeah. Apart from a couple more iPads, smart smart whiteboards.

Yeah, but learn to think critically, learn to practice gratitude and kindness. Yeah. Like don't be a C word. And and understand perspective know that you are like, you know, perspective can be taken a couple of different ways. Like you can look at it in relation to like time. Or you can look at relation to like, I guess, size or importance or significance. Yeah. And for some people, I guess, if you die, if you if you go over the cliff on that one, you could, you know, be like, what is the point of it all? But yeah, I'm of the school.

And we've had this conversation for but you know, I'm of the school of thought that there is no point of it all. Make up your own shit and have fun while you do it. And make the book but you got to make the world a better place like that comes first. Like making your world and the world a better place, then have fun with it. Yeah. And that's where, like, if we could teach kids, you know, that the the holo quality thing, everyone's equal, everyone, everyone deserves, you know, to be happy, healthy and, and loved. Then, you know, we teach me how to think critically and teach me how to problem solve.

I guess that's, that's, that's fun as well. Yeah, here's how your brain works. Not. This is what a cell like this is what a cell looks like this is what's in a cell like, no one gives a shit about that. If you know, yeah, if you need to study it, study it, but we should go This is why we think this way. These are the different. These are different pathways that occur for us to think this way. And then it's like, this is why these things happen. This is why these things happen. It's almost like an explaining why rather than just, which I guess is the same thing.

But rather than just understanding, like, you know, we want to learn about the natural environment, right? Like, rather than just say, this is a duck, this is a cat, they have cells, these are the things that happen in their body, you know, fucking go out and see a duck. Like experiential learning for me is so much more beneficial than book learning. Yeah, yeah, like, I think it's just there needs to be a blend of both. I think, like, I like what you said about a perspective thing and like understanding your place in the world, like that we each are the masters of our own of our own universe.

But we are also like a tiny speck in the cosmos. Everyone should, they should just show kids cosmos once a year. Get a bit of Carl Sagan in there is and Carl Sagan out talking about little blue dot just be like, you ain't shit. You're gonna die. You know, you may as well have some fundamental place along the way. Yeah, yeah. And it still blows my mind that there is so much inequality in this world. And like, we have the we have the opportunity to teach it to our kids. There's a there's a brilliant and you know, for anyone not driving at the moment, jump on your phone, Google Carl Sagan, socialist.

And he's got a brilliant I think it's like an 80 second clip of him saying why he thinks socialism stupid. It's basically around like, we have the capacity to end world hunger because of the wealth distribution, but the wealth distribution so skewed that, you know, selfish, selfish men who are only interested in and women, I'm sure there's some selfish women out there who are only interested in lining their own pockets. The main reason why why the world is the way it is. And yes, we can argue that if like, you know, child mortality rates, you know, quality of living is going the right way.

It's exponentially improving, but, you know, while certain companies and certain people own vast amounts of the world's wealth, whilst there's still inequality and poverty and things like that, we're like, what, what's the point? I have no issue. Okay. Let me finish that the whole thing. I have no issue with Jeff Bezos owning, having $200 billion worth, whatever it is, if that the bottom level, the bottom level is above the poverty line is everyone has it as a place to live. You know, the Maslow's hierarchy needs, everyone has safety, everyone has belonging, everyone has shelter, everyone

has the physiological needs sorted, do whatever the fuck you want, like accumulate all you want, but it's genuinely, it's like, it's genuinely like the human equivalent of a dragon just sleeping on a pile of gold. It's Smaug just sitting on the fucking gold. Is it Smaug or is it Smaug? I don't fucking know. I read the books mate, I don't, I don't get J.R.R. talking to, to, you know, read it to me. But last night, last night, apparently I worked KP out because like I was talking about Lord of the Rings, like while I was fast asleep.

That's elite. You mentioned Lord of the Rings to me on our walk yesterday. Yeah. She's like, you're talking in your sleep. Oh. Oh dear. What were you going to say? I was going to say, here's a loaded question for you. Do you think that true or total equality is possible? Do I think true or total equality is possible? No, but I don't think it's necessary. Remember what we said before about success and about what we, what we desire and it's all different. So total equality would mean everyone has the same things. We don't all want the same things.

But I think there should be, you know, it's a term of poverty alone before I think that there should be a level, not just above it, a fair way above that, a couple of levels above that where, you know, where this is where we should be as a society and as a society, as a global society. But you know, maybe that'll come. Maybe it won't. But here's a, here's a bit of a fun fact that I read the other day, and I have no source of this. I've no, I cannot confirm whether it's true or not.

But 60% of the wealth in America is inherited. That's wild. Which means six out of it, every 10 people didn't earn the money they have. Which means that, for me, that means that, sorry, there's a fly flying around. To me that means that we're almost like, there's a big chance that that person will be a wonderful humanitarian who will do brilliant things for the world around us. But there's a big chance that they'll be a fuckwit because they've never had to suffer or go through the hard yards or do hard things to figure out, you know, holy shit, like, they just maybe that's the entitlement play or like conversation or whatever.

But isn't that scary? Isn't that scary? And again, wealth isn't everything. But wealth gives you the capacity to do, you know, crazy things. I wonder, I wonder if, imagine a world where, at the end of your life, all the money you had earned just went into a big pot somewhere. Like a cooking pot, or like a witch's fruit pot, or a big cookie jar that the UN had in their kitchen. The UN? I don't know. Whoever controls the money, the World Bank, and it just gets circulated back into the economy or something. But money is directly related to power.

And I love the quote, absolute power corrupts absolutely. So you know, you're a good guy. You care about the people around you. You want to make the world a better place. You care about your constituents, you know, as when's the next election after this one? As you know, as one of the newest and brightest political minds on the peninsula, I'm putting you up for a election. You're welcome. But if you had infinite resources, would you use them for good? Yeah, of course I would. Yeah, but here's the thing, how would you know? If I had infinite resources.

So if I had like a never ending bank account. Yeah, maybe infinite's the wrong word. If you had an immense amount of resources, if you had Smaug's style of gold, or if you had Jeff Bezos level wealth, because here's the thing that blows my mind with capitalism is that someone like Jeff Bezos can be, you know, obviously the pandemic has significantly increased his net wealth. And again, a lot of it's made up because it's just in the value that people place on it. But we can argue all day about how made up it is. I think I read the other day that Amazon actually has never made a profit.

Yeah, but it's value, like it's perceived value. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This this beer is only worth as much as I'm willing to pay for it, or someone's willing to pay for it. Sorry. I'll pay for it. Yeah. So it blows my mind that and yes, perceived but that he can't take some of that and pay his staff a living wage, and then some. Yeah. Like, what is this? This plays into like a broader economical question, because if he were to start paying his workers, let's say like a grade one worker, let's, let's like classify them as that then.

Let's say seven year old. Let's say you started paying them the equivalent of like a grade two worker, then all the other grade one workers in the country, they're gonna go on strike because they're not getting as much as a great the Amazon grade ones. Don't fucking work at Amazon, or the the other, you know, the, the Elon Musk's of the world, or the you know, I'm just and I'm using figureheads because it's easier to throw throw rocks at a person rather than an idea or an invisible because like companies are made up right? Yeah,

they own things but but the the idea of a company like vertice doesn't exist, but this is just like the space exists, it's an ideal, the whole thing's an idea. So and it's easy to pick a figurehead. So don't I don't have anything as Jeff Bezos. I don't. Like I said, I'd like if my if you're listening, pay your fucking workers a little bit more. But surely that would eventually and again, I don't know how fucking the economy works. I've read like two books on the economy and it blew my mind. And I learned more in those two books I did at school.

And I've read them very recently, so it's on my mind, but the surely that that would do good things. And again, there's got to be a level right and it's got to be systemic and it's got to take time. Yep. It can't just be like, hey, I'm paying you four times the minimum wage. But to look at the the way the economies around the world are going in terms of like the cost of living is rising every year, much faster than the wages raising or growing. So surely there's something I don't have an answer, but

I think that there's a have you seen Trumbo, the movie, but it's about communism and it's about it like a Hollywood director who was, you know, got lost all his stuff because of his communist. But he I've only watched like the first 10 minutes. I have no fucking clue how the movie ends, but there was there was a line early on that they kind of caught me. You know, he said to his daughter, I think his daughter might have said, Daddy, you're communist, he said, or not am I communist? And he says, well, if you

have your lunch in front of you and someone over there doesn't have lunch, are you going to give them their lunch or are you going to eat it all yourself? And she goes, well, I'll share it. And she goes, well, you're a little commie. Fair enough. And this is the this is the thing like where people talk about different systems like they're absolute. Yes. But how long how long is capitalism? We live in a capitalistic society. How long is capital capitalism been around in the Western world? A hundred years, maybe not long. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like, how long is the human race been around?

Oh, way longer than hundreds of thousands of years. Yeah. It is a very new invention. Yeah. There's a there's a Nicholas Nassim Taleb quote that I love. And I just asked that question to to slow down a little bit so that I could find it so I didn't butcher it. But with my family, I'm a communist. With my close friends, I'm a socialist. It's my state level. I'm a Democrat. At national level, I'm a Republican. At the federal level, I'm a libertarian. Yeah. So it's like that as the scale gets bigger, we care less about the individual person and more about the thing as a whole.

But Simon, as I don't know who said it, but what is good for the Max Aurelius, I think what is good for the hive is good for the bee. Yeah. And what is good for the baby is good for the hive. Money also isn't a thing to be so made up. Honey is a thing. So obviously important. Back to education. Went off the rails there a little bit, but yeah, like education, how did you fix it? What about the concept of school as a as a thing? We need it. So we're not throwing the baby out of the bath water.

I like the idea of I don't know how this would be implemented, but I like the idea of project based learning where students are given an objective that is time bound that they need to work with other people. They need to allocate resources. Why do we hate group projects so much at uni then? Because we weren't taught how to do it properly. We all work together. Yeah. I don't know. Like obviously in a project, there's like a team leader or a project leader. There's people who each have their roles. And I think one of the downfalls of group projects at uni was that we didn't have that.

No one taught us that how to manage a project. Just like everyone's that everyone's equal. Yeah. So potentially you could have like pre. So to all the uni lecturers here, we just fixed uni group projects. You have to pre-determine roles, pre-determine roles. And you know, the dependent on the role depends on what percentage of the mark you get. Therefore you have to do a, but here's the thing, accountability doesn't exist in something like that because some people like there's varying levels of commitment to something like university or education as a whole. So that's the other thing about education, it's compulsory.

So should school be compulsory? I don't know. Because we open a Pandora's box if it's not. What do you think about this one? And this is devil's advocate because I don't necessarily know if this would fix or change anything. But what about teachers being under skilled? Do you think they need to stay, spend longer at school? And I'm not saying that I don't work hard. Like some of the hardest working people I know are teachers. But I'm saying that, you know, if teachers had to be had to have a master's to be a teacher, and they were remunerated financially in relation to that, do you think schools would be better off?

I definitely think that if we pay teachers more, we would have, it attracts talent. It's like in a business, if you offer more remuneration, then you attract high performing people. It's the same with with schools, if we like, if what if, what if we flipped it, and we paid our politicians 60 grand a year and paid our teachers. I know you didn't want to have government as a topic. But can I throw my two cents in about government at some point? You may. I think I've fixed it. I think I've fixed it. Let's nail teaching first, and then once we've solved that, we can we can move on.

All this stuff is intrinsically linked. And this is this is the thing. Yeah. So it's a social problem. If you're looking for money for teachers, by all means, take it from the pollies. Yeah, but like, if we think about it, they are in charge of educating our youth who are going to be the future of this world. So that is a great responsibility and would they be in charge of educating our youth? It is like the best time in the history of the universe. So far. Yeah, but should they be responsible for the youth? Like, you know, where is the responsibility?

Is it does it shift from the teachers to this to parents, parents to the teachers, teachers to the kid? Like, you know, yeah, I say a little six year old or you have a responsibility for your own for your own education. Good luck. Go out kill the koala. We'll see you in a week. Maybe we have a koala killing bit. But if we but this comes back to like, if we're teaching the metaphor, obviously, teaching children to be that you are responsible for your for your life and for the effort that you put in which then, when do you start that conversation before Fox when do you when do you start responsible for your life on Fox?

I think it Yeah, like I've been telling Lucy for 10 months that she's like she's in charge. She's responsible. And she's giving me fucking nothing back. She still expects to be too early. Oh, she started shoving this out. It's actually pretty fun to watch. She gets everywhere. It's like, how is there food in your ear? Wait, how's the food in my ear? Welcome to my world. Simon. We love Lucy. It's brilliant. Fantastic. I love it. I don't know. But I think it needs to be like, it's always like we avoid having hard conversations. And that is a hard conversation to have.

Because we don't know how to have it. Do we avoid having hard conversations like me and you? Is there anything that we need to talk about? Let's take this off here. I think like, I guess we have an open dialogue most of the week. But like I said before, our parents are just kids that grew up and then had kids. Every single person out there, right, you look at Lucy and you're like, Lucy's adorable. You look at, you know, any baby and you go, this baby's awesome. Yeah. Every single person on earth was once one of those.

Doesn't that freak you out? Like, you know, who's someone that, who's someone that we don't like, as a human? I have no dislikes. Just pick someone. Just pick someone. No, you pick someone. Vladimir Putin. All right. One of the more authoritarian leaders that we've ever had. He was a baby once. He was your little Gucci, Gucci, Gucci, Gucci, Gucci. Right? So how did he turn into the man that he is today when he was the exact same as you and me when we were that age? Maybe he's a great guy. I haven't met him. You know, if you're listening, mate, more than happy to catch up for a beer or a vodka.

Over Zoom, of course. Oh, shit. But the, when did he turn? I don't know. Like it's not a, it's a, it's a degreasing, I think in terms of someone isn't born bad. Right. But they eventually get to a point where there's more bad in them than good and they make bad decisions that may be conscious, maybe unconscious, maybe because, and this, this gets the conversation of like, what is the self? Like how much of us is, there's a, a thought experiment that's like, if so, if we're in a planet, right? So I'm going to, I'm going to butcher this, but I don't care.

Say we're on earth and most of our species have moved to Mars. Right. And I'm one of the last people here and I can't take my body to Mars, but they've worked out this new technology where they can take all of my thoughts, all of my memories over fucking satellite or whatever, to Mars and implant it into a new body that is exactly the same as my current body. Right. It's not me. It's a new body. It's like Wallace number two. Yeah. Is it like when my first body dies and I move over there, am I still me?

Depends what you classify as like you. So here's, so here's the thing. So, so much of it is in the self is it's, it can't be measured. It's you know, it's, um, that's what I'm looking for. I swear I've gotten dumber not having conversations with people every day, can't think of words anymore. Yeah. Anyway, I can't, I can't remember what the word is, but the word, but the it's conceptual in a way because it's like, I've got to decide where I draw the line. There's no, um, you know, scientific body of evidence to show me that this is, this is what the color blue.

Yeah. It's a certain amount of green, a certain amount of other colors. Like we can objectively know what the color blue is. Yeah. I can't objectively describe what the color blue is to someone that's never seen blue, but we can, as a species agree that this is this, but there's no way to describe what, which, when I see spinning me or if I see spinning me. So the back to the old little bloody boy, you know, it's not like he ends up being a continent 12. He's like Taz's 11th birth, his 12th birthday and works out.

He's like, all right, let's go punch on with some bears. Let's, let's ride a horse with no shadow. And again, might be a great guy, you know, hit me up, mate. It's not on socials, email me, but the, you know, the, I like to think that we all do the best we can with what we have. And I like to think that maybe that's me being naive. Maybe that's me not understanding how the world works well enough. Um, I don't know, just be nice to the people around you. When we were talking about the golden rule today, like what's the golden rule, Simon?

Of the neighbour, as they self. Yeah, exactly. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, right? Which is a perfect, uh, thought process to go. If I treat other people the way I want to be treated, they'll treat me the way they want to be treated and we'll all live happy and harmoniously. Really everyone in the world can understand that concept. Why is the world so full of, you know, hate and pain and suffering and good people, bad things happening to good people and things like that. It's because there's layers to that golden rule that we potentially don't talk about enough.

Like the, I'll treat you the way I want to be treated as long as you treat me that way first. Yeah. Yeah. It's like being for you to treat me well, before I decided to treat you well. It's like, you know, it's like guilty before you go first compared to, yeah. And then, you know, there's obviously levels, levels or degrees of how well you treat someone, you know? So, you know, obviously we, we all have people we like and people we don't like, so you determine how you treat them based on those preconceived feelings. But certain people maybe don't have the same moralistic values as other people so they can push the boundaries of that rule a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. And like, like I was saying today and obviously everyone else isn't privy to that conversation. So maybe I should just say it like I'm saying it for the first time, but I was saying that like there's so in super thinking that book I was reading a couple of months ago, there's a thing called the freeloader effect. The freeloader effect is basically like a rules grade if it works, if you know, 99% of people do it, but when it gets to like 76% of people, then it falls down. Yeah. And I was, and I

was kind of saying, well, if 99% of people treat people the way they want to be treated, the world will be magnificent, but that gets to a point. If too many people decide that they want to be an exception to the rule is the rule ceases to exist. And, you know, like vaccines and herd immunity, eventually it gets to a point where enough people are not doing it, that the whole fucking house of cards come crashing down. And it's a shit show, right? Like imagine just put your little future hat on for a moment, imagine if in 30 years times polio is back because the Karens decided they didn't want to vaccinate their kids anymore.

Like in the scheme of things, that sounds ridiculous, but there's measles, resurgences in the U S and different countries because of this. And it's like, I don't know, maybe there, maybe back to the education thing, maybe we just need to teach kids at the place they hold in the universe, but it's like, it's insignificant as it gets, but at the same time, these are the people that your decisions influence. Yep. Yep. If, if they realize that it's not about them and it's about others, um, and every action has a consequence, uh, and like you kind of said, like it's not just a single decision.

It's the combat effect, compounding effect of multiple decisions or multiple people making the same decision that caused the big changes. Um, this is one of your favorite beers by the way, the bearded seal from shout out from home nation. Get around the labs that makes an excellent beer. I'm also drinking hot nation. Oh, unofficial podcast sponsor. Love that. Um, what are we talking about? Education and stuff. Uh, little, little actions turning into big consequences, basically. Little levers move big rocks. Give me a lever long enough and I'll move the world. Oh, Archimedes probably, I don't know, probably should start misquoting everyone.

Just start saying, saying things and giving it someone completely different to infinity and beyond Abraham Lincoln. Should we switch to a different topic or should we like, I know that they get, there's going to be swings and roundabouts and they'll come back, but how about, and I've got four topics written down here, um, that we're potentially going to talk about and education was at the bottom, so you kind of threw me at the start because I was like, Oh, he'll talk about one of the big ones first. But education is a big one. I guess education is important.

Can I refine how I think we should, we can fix government. Here we go. Welcome to my TED talk. So just so you know, I have no fucking clue what I'm talking about, but this is, this is a fun, this is an unqualified opinion. Correct. Correct. So if you want to know about stretch, shorten cycle and how to get the most out of your, your, you know, one K time or, you know, potentially bench press, or if you want to play good footy physically, then I can help. But this, you know, take it with a grain of salt, um, you know, where that saying comes from.

I don't know that neither do I, um, so government, here's my thoughts and, and, and, and, and plans around it. Where do I start? There's so many things. All right. So over the last couple of hundred years, there's been a, a clear separation of church and state, which has been, you know, brilliant for the state because maybe the church isn't, uh, isn't the most evidence rich belief system, which is fine. Um, you know, I'm probably gonna believe in a deity in 40, 50 years when I'm on the verge of losing consciousness forever and I need something to, to keep me, keep it going.

But church and state separation has been very, uh, beneficial for the, the, the, the social movements that have shaped our last hundred years, right? Human voting, uh, you know, equality for all these kinds of things, um, it needs to go further, right? There needs to be separation. So there's church over this side, there's state in the middle, there needs to be further separation between science and state, right? So here's the deal, 99, I'm just using climate change as an example, but if 99% of scientists believe that climate change is happening and the evidence is overwhelming, why the fuck is it politicized?

Why are we talking about it? It like, I don't give a fuck if there's one guy, one scientist that has the conversation because only one person can be, sorry, one scientist that is arguing that it's not happening, but he gets the same amount of time as the 99% others, like, come on. So here's what we do. All the important issues, and we've got to find out where we draw the line on important issues. It's like, you know, what lockdown rules do we think are ridiculous and we think are not? There's a line somewhere, yeah, outdoor pool's open, gym's not, come on.

But anyway, so we draw the line at the things that can drastically impact our quality of life on earth and our ability to stay here for longterm, yeah? So climate change, great example. Thanks for bringing it up. And if you haven't seen David Attenborough's new documentary, watch it. He gets a little heavy on the humans or a plague thing, but I'm fine with it. Wow. So did I lose you? No? Good, yeah. Wait, so I'm going to come back. I'm back. Oh, there we go. So what I'm thinking, like the internet itself, is that we draw the line around things that can actually impact the longevity of the human race and of the world as a whole.

I've generally, you've paused, I don't know if it's recording, I don't know if I'm seeing you. Keep going. It's just going to hold. Just think amongst those would do. I genuinely can't see you. I can't hear you. Lost everything. Can you hear me? Can we leave the video for a second and turn it back on? If it's, it's still recording on my end and we can't hear Lachlan. So hopefully he, hopefully we get back in touch soon. In the meantime, he's a little ditty. Oh, he moved. He moved. Can you have life? All right, we're back.

Well, I saw a thumb, did you do that like do you? I can't hear him, can't see him, I'm just gonna hang out, talk to myself. He says keep talking. Okay. I think I lost me buddy, me train of thought. Why is it called train of thought anyway? So what was I talking about? Science. There's a line we draw and it's an arbitrary line, but I don't care. We can move the line like it can change down the track, but the stuff that the consensus is like maybe above 85% on or 80% on, then we run with it.

Yeah, we let the scientists, the people that have studied their whole life on the thing, we let them decide what we do with the important shit, okay? Then in the middle, we've got the state, we've got the politicians, we've got the way that different countries and things are run, which this can be up for debate, certain parts of it because of different cultures and different police systems and things like that, yeah? Like I don't expect Timbuktu to run the same way as New Zealand, yeah? You can do your own thing, but we start from the top.

The people running it have to be in the stage of life that Dalio is in now, yeah? We spoke about it before, in the third stage of life where they're like, I've actually done something. I'm not just a career politician that realised that this was a great way to make a few bucks and fly around the world and go to Hawaii when there's bushfires, et cetera. There's someone that's actually been a contributing member of their industry for a certain period of time, and I don't know, maybe this is a radical idea, but the health minister has to be someone from the health system, yeah?

The education minister, their sole qualification for being the education minister can't be that they went to school, yeah? They need to have been in the thick of things for a while. - Like a teacher. - Like a teacher or an educator of some sort, yeah? And maybe there's a rule, they're not dealing with the important shit, like whether we burn the earth alive or not, they're dealing with the slightly less important shit, like how do we teach our kids? Still important, but slightly less important. And if we do that, no career politicians, gone, have to be in your industry for 10, 15 years, have to actually have runs on the board before you take up public office, yeah?

Then, and obviously there's different levels of public office, I'm happy with that, I'm happy with local, I'm happy with state, I think COVID's shown us that we need state governments. - I agree. - Local governments seem like a bit of a wank, a little bit, but I see the utility in it. But maybe there needs to be a better, I don't know, I would feel more likely to vote for people in, or to want to vote for people, want to get around the local government, if I knew that these people had done things, yeah? I

don't care, like what you believe is fine, but what you believe off the back of what you've done is more, what you have done is more important. So if I know someone that's ran three small businesses and has been a part of the local community and has done this, this and this, I'm gonna be more likely to vote for them than someone who says, "I'm a hero for small business, but I'm 19 and I haven't done anything." I have no issue with young people doing good things, but it's like having a life coach at 18.

Like they can't be 18 year old life coaches, you haven't fucking done anything and I'm not underplaying your experiences, but I was a fuckwit when I was 18. I was an idiot, I didn't know what I was doing, I don't know what I'm doing now. But if someone gave me the keys to teach someone about life, I would have had a crack, I would have done a horrible job. - You would have backed yourself in. - I would have, but this is the problem. Like the arrogance and ego of 18 year old Wallace was insurmountable at times.

So that's how I'd fix it, there'd be three levels, church, state, science, we'd have clear lines and obviously there's movement between the lines. I don't think one guy should be in charge, which is a fairly, there's a consensus there. I think we should have, like I said before, we pick like the 12 different areas, it might be like business, education, environment, health, et cetera. And we have a, maybe the science fiction movies got it right, maybe we should have a council of elders and they don't have to be old, but they've just got to have done something.

- Yeah, they've got some skin in the game and they've done. - Exactly. - Yeah. - Anyway, that's my thoughts, government, discuss. - Oh, you're done. - I'm done, I think that gives you my idea of how I feel. - Yeah, I like that. - I just don't understand how there can be 99% consensus between scientists yet, we're still, it's 2020 and there's still argument or conversation or to use the US as an example, and obviously it's happening at the moment, but for them to not bring up climate change in the last, in the debate, that should be 80% of what we're fucking talking about.

- Yup. Yup. - It's, yeah, I think one of the biggest issues is that there's almost like way too many factors and it just like muddies the water, there's too many people that the politicians are trying to please. - Isn't that the best way to stop water from muddying? - Just let it sit for a little bit. - Just stop and just watch it, see what happens. - Yeah. - I think you're right, like you're spot on, it just gets muddy and muddy and muddy and then we don't know, we're in, in this analogy, we're in the water, we're submerged, we don't know how from down because it's so dark and we don't know where we're going.

- And we're gonna drown. - Well, it's like, I watched a movie the other day around the Tasmanian tiger, Willem Dafoe, who is potentially the greatest actor of any generation, he's a king, love him to bits, he actually don't know why he was in a movie about the Tasmanian tiger, but that's not important. But I was thinking about the loggers, 'cause they do a little bit of environmentalist stuff there, how the greenies would tie themselves to trees and the loggers who would be like, you're taking our jobs, you're taking our lives and they're like genuine, people I believe were killed in the last 50 years in Tasmania around like the damming and the hydro stuff.

I just think it's so short-sighted for the loggers to be like, if you don't let us cut down these trees, we'll lose our jobs, like we've all seen the Lorax, we know what happens when the one slick cuts down all the trees, yeah? - You know what I haven't seen, the Lorax. - How have you not seen the Lorax? - I love how you so outraged about this. - Oh, the Lorax is like, the Lorax is the movie that shows you why capitalism isn't gonna work long-term. It's like, I don't like watch David Attenborough if you want, but just fucking watch the Lorax, read the book.

- To do list, watch the Lorax. - Put it like tomorrow, like I'm not letting you start work tomorrow until you've watched the Lorax. - Deal. - Deal. If there's a movie to watch, it's the Lorax, but the one slick cuts down all the trees, so he had a deal with the Lorax, who's the protector of the trees that he's not gonna cut down the trees, he's just gonna pick the fur to make the- - Don't give it away, spoilers. - No, this is important, I don't care. You've had your chance. The movie came out in 2010, the book was probably from like the '70s when Dr.

Seuss was, you know, pumping. - Up and about. - You've had eight years, all right? You've had your chance. There's a, what's it called when you've got a certain amount of years until things become public domain? What's the term? - Not sure. - Ah, it's gonna bug me, and I'm gonna think of it as soon as we're off podcast. No, I don't have it. You've had a certain amount of time, and then bad luck, spoilers don't exist anymore, all right? - That's fair, that's fair. - Like, if I'm talking about "Alien" from 1973 and you haven't seen it, and you're like, "Oh, no spoilers."

No. - You know what I haven't seen? - It shoots out of the chest. It's brilliant, brilliant film. - I've seen that bit. - Yeah. Yeah, but you're just great. Watch some fucking movies. - Play on. As you were. - Educate yourself. Here's how we should change education, everyone should subscribe to my letterbox, and I'll teach you about good movies. - I was too busy learning about Pythagoras to watch films. - See, not important. I don't care the long side of a triangle, I'll just ask someone else to check it. Or like, what were we talking about?

Lorax cutting down trees. - Willem Dafoe. - Willem Dafoe. - Oh, yeah, so the loggers, right, would, and that whole industry is just like, we've got to cut down these trees. There is a finite number of trees, yeah? So if we decide that climate change isn't a thing, then, you know, eventually we're fucked. Yeah? A line from David Attenborough that I watched last night, so it's still somewhat in my head. He's just like, if we can't do it forever, it is by definition unsustainable and we need to change the way we're doing it. So for the loggers in Tasmania, they're short-sighted because they go, you want to cut down trees, I'll lose my job.

But if I keep cutting down trees, everyone will lose their job. The world will go poof into a big fiery ball and we'll all die. But it'll just happen over a couple of hundred years and it'll be slow and painful and there'll be lots of human suffering and I guess that's better than someone not having a job making. It's just, again, it's just a matter of perspective, like, ooh, realising that the hole is greater than the sum of its parts and seeing that, like, imagine if all of the world's resources were pulled together to solve all of our big problems.

What are our big problems that need solving? Climate change. Climate change is always number one. Poverty. Yeah, inequality. What? There you go. You need to tell me to shut up. Have hard conversations, you can tell me to shut up. There's a 20% chance I'll listen, consensus is that I should shut up, but I'm not going to. We should get a poll going. I am the single climate change denying scientist and you will hear me roar. You will hear me roar. I will voice my opinion, climate change, poverty, inequality between gender, race, religion. Genders don't exist anymore.

Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot. So yes, they're the big three. They are the big three. Well, you could say world peace. All war is just a fight over resources and power, right? Yeah, and we are fallible beings and power will always be a thing and war will always be a thing. Potentially, like, we just hit people in the naughty corner rather than shooting them in the head, maybe. Like, potentially there's a different way to wage war. Just give them a time out. Let's wage psychological war where we talk about the meaning of life and bring

large groups of people into existential angst and make them question the question on the ground they walk on and the thoughts they have and where their self is and if we were to go to Mars and they were to be beamed up like Captain Kirk, would they be them or would they be something else? Like, these are the questions we should be asking, but we only are able to ask those questions as, you know, people who live in a brilliant part of the world and are very lucky and weren't, aren't lucky by their own doings, they're lucky because we were born here.

We inherited that. And I think that's what too many, maybe not enough people, that is a perspective play. Not enough of us or not enough people understand that, you know, when you hear that 60% of wealth in the US is inherited, then obviously all of the poverty is inherited, too. So, you know, we have a heightened sense of accomplishment as to the things that we do. But I am who I am because of where I was born, the people that were around me when I was brought up by my parents who raised me. I am not who I am because of the things I've done.

I was that person. I'm that person regardless of the things I was done, that I've done. Yeah, I can fuck it up. And yeah, I can move the needle a certain amount. But there's a bandwidth to that. I wasn't born in the slums of Brazil with no money and no hope and no family that can raise me. There's a bandwidth, you know, to parents that owned a home and, you know, dad was able to work. Mum was able to look after me. I think that the perspective, and it's made back to the education, if we

learn that birth lottery is a thing and we learn that, like, yes, we have to, I don't know where I'm going, but if we, yes, we have to play the cards we are dealt. But if we're playing, if we're dealt good cards, we almost have a responsibility as humans to be able to help the next, the generations of people that don't have good cards. Let's give them, let's give them, let's chuck them an ace if we can. Yeah. But there's, there's people hoarding piles of aces. This is not a normal 52 card deck, Simon, if you were wondering, I was not, there's people hoarding the, all these Kings and aces, well just fucking give them out.

You only need a couple. Yeah. That's all right. That's bring back, bring out the cookie jar, the UN cookie jar, we're back to the cookie jar. Let me finish that line of thought, because I want to tell you why the cookie jar is flawed. What are you doing as cookies? If when you die, let's say like a there is a, an X amount, a figure that is passed on to your, your children or your family. So that is a captain mount rather than like, rather than like 10%, because there's a big disparity between like one person's 10% and another person's 10%.

But if there's like a cap number that's passed on to your, your family and the rest of it is pulled together and is put toward solving these big, big problems. Then all of a sudden this inherent, this inherited wealth thing, isn't a problem because people have to earn their way out the ladder. They need to... We're assuming that it is a problem. Let's assume it's a problem. That's our assumption. That is my perspective. That is the... But yeah, all of a sudden it means that everyone starts off from the same starting line. An effort and commitment towards something is rewarded.

People can't just sit back and become lazy and spend their wealth on frivolous, superficial things that don't actually add value to... But what if they want to? Well, then they have to earn it. So I don't know what the percentage is, but I would imagine that the amount of, so think of the things that we buy that we don't need, TVs, phone chargers, beers, but, but there's nothing like who gets to say what we can buy and what we can't. I am... This beer is doing great things with my inner chemistry at the minute. The perceived value is high.

Right. The perceived value is high. So who the fuck are you to tell me I can't buy my beer? You can buy your beer if you want, because you've worked hard to earn the money to buy it. But there's the work hard thing. Like it's like, has someone who inherited 400K or a million bucks or whatever the number is? Yeah, sure. They've worked hard. But you know, the guy, the cleaner of the shops or the guy, you know, the guy sweeping up after people or the guy doing the... The woman working three jobs to support her family.

Yeah, exactly. The, these are the people that they work hard. So hard work isn't, doesn't determine whether you end up wealthy at the end of your existence or not. And this is the thing that I think I definitely thought that early on. I definitely would have had that belief system when I was growing up. Was it, well, the harder you work, the luckier is a product of hard work. The harder you work, the luckier you get. So therefore if I work hard, I will get what I want. But that doesn't, that's not how life works. You know, the, you could work all of your life and get to here.

And some, some guy could be born into a family with wealth that starts here. And then, you know, you're, I die here, this guy starts here, it's like, where's the, where's the equality? Yeah. So yeah, it doesn't exist. The question is, what do we do about it? Don't you fucking say cookie jar. If there's a cookie jar, then the less fortunate can just dip in and grab a couple of choc chips, you know? Okay. So are you saying like a, excuse me, a redistribution of resources in terms of money? So are you saying that universal basic income should be a thing?

I am. So I agree. I think here's the thing we have in our, in our minds over the last couple of years, we've gone from doing whatever the king wants, depending on which part of the world we're from to, we have to work 40 hours a week. Like how long's a 40 hour work week been around? I'm Googling it. Surely since the industrial revolution, which was like, yeah, but a couple of hundred years ago, 1700s onwards, 40 hour work week origin. I'm basically, that's like the evolution of the factory worker and like mass production and industrialization.

1866. There you go, right, so second question, how long have humans been homo sapiens? 200,000 years, right. Which is the number I had in my head. I should have just said it with some authority and it would have sounded smart, but I didn't because I check my things by one Google search. I've done my research, done my research. Thank you, Google. Thank you, Google. So 200,000 years, right? Yeah. You're good at math, Simon. Work out what 1866 to now is how many years? Plus round up to 200 years. So yeah. What's, what's percentage? 0.001 or something.

I'm Googling things really well, so. Yeah, I did not get the right answer. So it's a very, very small percentage, right? Of all of the human existence and all of the things that we've learned and gained along the way, we've decided over the last 150 years, that 154 years that the 40 hour, Oh, you're good. The 40 hour work week is, hold on, you've got the right zeros. Thank you, Pythagoras. Do you want a medal or do you want a participation trophy? We should talk about participation trophies. Oh man. So for 200, so 0.001% of our, of our existence as humans, we've decided that the 40 hour work week is a thing.

I think that if we can get robots and automated machines to do our jobs for us, great. Because then we can have important conversations, like what is the meaning of life? How do we fix climate change, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We can actually do shit that we love to do. We don't have to be stuck in a cubicle or stuck doing something that we don't love. And I don't think we should love everything. I think there's hard things. If we do a job we love, there's going to be massive amounts of difficulty and struggle with it, but we love that.

It's good. We like doing hard things. But if we are able to utilize technology to redistribute wealth better, which, you know, at the moment we're kind of getting to the cusp of it happening, but that wealth is being funneled into really narrow humans, like Jeff Bezos, for an example, again, figurehead. Jeff's getting ravaged tonight. You know what? I don't think Jeff gives a fuck. He's sitting there on his fucking mountain of gold with his fucking dragons going, this guy. But there's the like, we understand that, right? The US politician who is pushing this stuff is Andrew Yang, and I really like some of his ideas.

So, you know, chuck a quick Google search, do your research and learn about him. And I think that there is so much utility to a universal basic income. What I was talking about before, about bringing us everyone on earth to the poverty line and then up a bunch of levels so that we can all start worrying about self-actualization, like we all want to belong. Great. And then if we're all self-actualizing, then surely the world becomes a better place. We've learned how to farm correctly so that we're, and sustainably, I said the definition of sustainably before we'd learn how to fish the ocean sustainably.

We learn how to spend our days sustainably. We learn how to do this and do this and do this, which means that all of the best minds in the world are spending time on the things that matter, which is for me, again, everyone's got their own meaning of life, but for me, it's, it's to live a life of contribution and enjoyment. They're probably the two things that I think we, we should do good things with good people and contribute to the world around us. And we should have lots of fun while we do it, didn't swear, pretty, uh, love that.

I, I agree. So we have, we, have we sorted it? It's not fixed yet. I think we fixed it. I hope Vladimir is listening. We should send this by direct, by, by air mail. Who do you reckon would listen? If like pick a world leader who would listen. A world leader? Jacinda? Sure. I was thinking the same thing. She seems very approachable. She does. She does. So we fixed, so what, so we fixed education or like, I think we, we threw education a couple of times, but we didn't fix it because it's so different, but I think there should be a desire based learning in education.

Like we talked about project based, desire based. What do you want to learn? Kid loves dinosaurs. Go learn about dinosaurs. That's like, um, like status schools that they do that. Um, and there is, like, I think there is utility to that, but there's not a lot of evidence to support that it is an effective way to learn. Yeah. I haven't looked into science schools enough, but I guess I I've had, and we've had the conversation on this podcast with Tommy and Sammy and Eliza about like what schools we wanted our kids to go to and stuff.

Um, like we did a couple of those podcasts and then KP got pregnant. Oops. Um, best thing ever though. Um, but now like I've actually got to start having those conversations slash thought processes slash do the, do my quick Google search research. Um, I'm actually not using Google fun fact I'm on DuckDuckGo quack quack. Yeah. So yeah. So which I hate because it doesn't have all of the, uh, the secret spy where following me around the internet, knowing exactly what I want to search. So I've got to, you know, actually pay attention to what I type in when someone doesn't follow you around the internet.

Yeah. But if you, uh, if you want to search engine and again, unofficial sponsor, but if you want to search engine to not follow you on the internet, DuckDuckGo is brilliant. Yep. And I'm going to, I'm going to give Gabrielle a plug. Great book. Good book. Super thinking. This is the best, one of the best books I've ever read. I can honestly say that about the last four books I've read, but I love that. Yeah. Um, do you want to talk about social media? Oh, I think we've talked about social media enough. Yeah. Don't do it.

It's a trap. Just have a month off. We'll see what you think. Do a Lachlan. Three months off. Three months. Just go the full hog. The whole hog? The full hog. The whole hog? Either one. There. Just find, find a hog. Um, well, you mentioned inequality, right? How do we fix inequality because you brought it up a couple of times. You obviously had some, uh, had some guilt associated with that. And you feel like you need to fix it. I think it like, I think for me, it just blows my mind that, uh, that we are that like women still don't have equal rights or, um, where do they not have equal rights?

Well, like the pay gap, that sort of thing. Yeah. There's reasons to, and I'm partly being a little bit obnoxious here, but there's reasons to, to, uh, like there's evidence to show that the pay gap is because of choices more than inequality. Yeah. And that's traditional choices that have built to where we are today. Yeah. And so the, uh, which we know a lot about is the assertiveness. Um, you know, you're, you're more likely, for example, you're more likely to get a raise if you ask for it. And if you're not, not as assertive, you're less likely to ask.

And as, and yes, I'm painting a whole sex with the same brush, but females are less likely on average to be assertive than males are, right? So there's, there's reasons like that. And there's obviously the child bearing reason and, you know, there's, there's a bunch of other reasons. Yeah, for sure. Um, but yeah, the KP posted something about it the other day and I was like, do you want to talk about it? She's like, nah, I don't want to talk about it. Cause I was like, question here, but she's like, do you, she was looking up super stuff and she's like, do you think it's a problem?

Um, and she put a poll out on Instagram and I was the only one that said no. And it's not that I don't, I was, part of me was just being a little antagonistic. Um, but it's the same thing as like the people that start with a lot of money, make a lot of money. It's like, there's a reason why the billionaires have made lots of money during the pandemic is because they, they had the, had the capital to begin with that they can leverage to, to make more. Right. And like, there's a reason why guys, males have more super contribution than females is because of the reasons we've mentioned.

Um, so it exists because the reason this is what, like my conversation around equality is we don't need, everyone should be treated the same and I don't want to sit, come off the wrong way. Everyone should be treated the same, full stop. Everyone, people shouldn't be discriminated against because of their, their belief system, their sex, their gender, or their race. People shouldn't have to fight against the things they can't choose. It's just, to me, this is a non-conversation like, I, I would go, I would agree, but we're, we're having it because it exists. Yes. It's

like, don't be a cunt, people should be a non-conversation, but I feel myself repeating it more often than I would like to, and I apologize to anyone for saying the C word. Um, I said it for Infosys, Infosys on different syllables. Yeah, you're so easy to take off your, your, your thought trade. That just got me, what could they be right? Too many, too many beaded seals, too many, uh, Denzel's yes. The discrimination thing is just like, I'm not interested in having a conversation about anyone trying to adjust themselves, justify themselves otherwise, really. Yes. And

maybe that is very close minded of me not to be open in my, in my beliefs, but, uh, there are obviously systems in our society that are very slow moving and very, uh, yeah, they're very slow to change and there are a lot of people and groups within society that have, um, belief systems that they like identify with so strongly, which is why that they can't, can't, or aren't willing to change. Um, oh, and I look at it and go, okay, we understand that, but equality shouldn't, equality doesn't need to exist, but equity does. Yes. So that's it.

So there's a difference between equality and equity. Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. Equity is the access to opportunity. Uh, yeah. So it's like, if there's, you don't get, there's no bias because of your X, Y, or Z. Yeah. What is equality? Everyone gets a fair go. Everyone gets, everyone gets equal, equal share. And I don't think we, we should have equal share because people work different, like people value different things. People work different ways, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but then it, then it, then the issue becomes the, the, the structure of society where we're structured with a like salaried X amount of hours per week, this is your, your worth.

Like, you know, you need, you need to earn a living wage to, you know, exist, which is why didn't any adults tell me that this was what being an adult was? Yeah, like it's like starting a business. It's like, you go, Oh, this is going to be fun. We're going to do some things. What I've got to earn four grand a week before I actually make a dollar, what it's like as a human. Yeah. I wish someone told me that as a human, we need to make a certain amount before we can like anything becomes excess.

So like, you know, would, depends where we live and what we do, but mortgage or rent and then there's food and then there's safety and clothing and like, okay, we need to tick those boxes before we can do anything, which is fine, but it's almost like the we've grown to the gap between, gap between survival and thrival, which is over the last 50 years being in smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And you know, I like finding people. So let's play in the boomers. It's there. Okay. They got free uni and then they fucked up society and made us pay for everything because they wanted to make money.

God damn it. It's like in South in South by in team America where they're like, you know, the children were playing with Sean Penn children were playing gumdrop Meadows and, and having fun. And then there's the corporations up in their, their buildings being your corporation and they make money. That's pretty much what it is. It's a couple of people pulling the levers and making it harder for the next generation. And I could go on all day, but I've spoken about it before, but the, the thing, if there's one thing that frustrates me the most it's

people or generations or individuals who believe that I had it hard when I was growing up, like kids should have it hard to, or that like our generation was tough back in my day, this was horrendous. So everyone else should experience that too. The goal of existence in the Western society should be to leave it better than you found it to make the world a better place so that your kids don't have to worry about survival. They don't have to worry about the, where they're getting food. They don't have to worry about where they're getting shelter.

They can worry about what the fuck the meaning of life is. They can argue about stupid shit like that. Maybe that's just a false objective then, but at the end of the day, none of it matters anyway because we die and you know, the sun's going to explode in a couple hundred thousand years and you know, why not just kill the whales now? Maybe inherently, we just, we know that we're going to die. So we just don't care enough. I hate that. But if we're here and we have the capacity to think and the capacity

to look to the future, which among a thousand other things is the reason why we are in the position we are fucking up the world, why wouldn't we do something about it? Yeah. It's like Marcus Aurelius quote, "Don't argue what a good man should be, just be it." That's my favorite, that's one of my favorite quotes. Ooh, I realize that I say, that's my, that's my favorite book, quote, movie. Insert here. More than twice a day. Insert new thing here. Like this is my favorite book, but this is also my favorite book. This is my favorite shirt.

This is my favorite shoes. Oh yeah, I love you Strong Tom shirt. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. I was writing a blog post at the moment, which is like the, the 33 things I've learned since becoming a dad. And one of them was like, my favorite thing about being a dad is seeing how much Lucy loves her mom and how much her mom loves Lucy's love by her mom. And then like three things later, I wrote my favorite thing about being a dad is, and I was like, what am I doing? I've got too many favorite things.

Maybe I need to, you know how the word literal, no, what's the, the word literal means literal. What was the word that like got changed in the dictionary to mean literal? I don't know, I haven't heard that story. Oh man, I can't think. What is it? Talk about something else and I'll find out. Yeah. Fingrative? No, literally. No, yeah. I did, sorry, literally got changed to mean figuratively. Okay. Yeah. So it's like, I literally did this, you know, you didn't, but then it actually got changed because too many people were using it. I need to

get the, I need to protest or I need to put out a petition for the word favorite to get changed to mean a bunch of things that you like rather than your absolute favorite thing. But then what is your absolute favorite? What's the word for your absolute favorite? It's like my ultimate thing, but I can't say, I can't pick a thing. My ultimate favorite. When I say favorite, it's right in this moment with my current thought process. Like this is my favorite book, but I could make a great argument why this is my favorite book. Yeah.

Yeah. This is my favorite podcast episode so far. There's part of me in my head that's going, oh you fuck, it's the blue one. And the other part is going, you're a dickhead, it's the red one. And I'm going, well, I don't know which one it is. Maybe it's one of those ones. I don't bloody know. Do we have to have an absolute ultimate favorite? No, but it adds weight to when I'm saying, when I'm talking to Simon or whoever it is, let's say it's you and you say, what book should I read? I say, well, my favorite book is this.

It adds weight to I say, well, you should read this book. It's just language we use. It's all made up. We just throw shit at a wall and some of it's sticking and you know, maybe we should just read Harry Potter because language is just syntax and grammar. Oh, I hate that. You say that as well. I do hate that though, because it's like, like one sentence can take one of the most brilliant inventions of humankind and turn it into like a trivial, trivial thing. And it shouldn't. It's like people say social media is bad, which, and again, I'm off social media at the moment for three months because I am better than everyone that's currently on social media.

I realize that I am morally superior and that I actually understand the way the world works better than you all. So everyone, I apologize for my friend. I can't help it. I can't help but realize, you know, after six days and nine hours, my moral superiority about being off social media, but like people tar out with a brush of it's bad. It is the most brilliant thing that we've ever come up with in terms of connectedness and being able to connect. But it's a tool in a toolbox. Like Jeff emailed me back the other day and said, I'm a toolbox and I, oh no, it was in the survey.

He said, like, he's a toolbox and I'm just like, I still don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing with Jeff. It's probably as, as a morally superior human, I'm taking it as a good thing, but there's like anything we can say there's good and bad to it. Right. Um, can we talk about how we fix the fitness industry? Might break us. Sure. Or is it too close to home? Is it too? I think that almost deserves like a full episode. Part of, yeah, part of this conversation is more enjoyable because we have no fucking clue what we're talking about.

And we know we've got no clue. Like we know that we're just making like throwing shit at a wall actually in terms of invested in the industry. Sure. There's a little bit of context. Like the education minister. So I can talk about school so I can talk about education, you know, like the environmental minister, I live on planet earth so I can talk about climate change, you know, like the health minister. I've been to a hospital. That actually, those, those things probably properly riled me up because I can't, like, it's the, I get if you're in a position of power that you want to look after your mates.

I get that. Like, you know, I want to be able to do things for people at Virtus because it ups my social standing and makes me feel good about myself. But when the fate of the free world is at stake, and I don't think that's hyperbole or hyperbole if you're that way inclined, salable, salable, always made up I can say however the fuck I want grammar and syntax, everybody. So this, welcome to grammar and syntax with Simon Wallace. So why do we not call you Simon? It's happened before. Has it? Where? Oh, there was a, oh, tell us about the time you went to the UK.

This was actually in, where was it, in Bosnia. So everybody here's a sidetrack. 16 Bosnia, staying in an Airbnb. And a little old man, he welcomed us into his home. He was, he was a beautiful man. And that night Salian was unwell. And so this old man, I can't remember his name, I should remember it, but Simon, Simon, you must run down the street and get her some bread. So it's raining outside, I've run down the street, gotten Salian some bread. He's made, he's made us some, some tea, some traditional tea. So chivalrous. Yeah. And anyway.

Where's the story going? Salian was unwell and I got back from bringing her back the bread and she was, there should be more. She was sitting on, so I got back, she's sitting on the couch with, with him and his family watching some Bosnian television, waiting for me to bring the bread back, because she had a sore tummy and it was a delightful, delightful trip. All right. So you know, I've made a couple of references to pop culture and you've said, Oh, you have seen Billy Madison, correct? Correct. Okay, so the way people are going

to finish this podcast in, you know, probably 90 minutes because I've got things to talk about is they're going to say, we are now dumber for having heard that. Yes. That story is how I felt. Wow. It did not add any, any value to my life whatsoever. You asked me when someone called me Simon, I told you. Well, I guess, I guess in that, like, can the story have a lesson or something? Like, I feel as though you could have padded out the, the lengths you went to, to get the bread, like potentially you ran

down the street, like you, and again, probably, but you went to the store and it was closed and you thought, Oh no, Sally Ann, like I need you to have bread because gluten is important for digestive health. And then you're like, and then I, I looked at my watch and I saw that the bakery next town over would be open in 30 minutes. And it was seven days away, which as I don't ride because my name is Simone and I have sore feet, then I would be, I would be able to run across. So you

went to the next town and you got the bread and then you stole some, some bike and you ride back like pedaling hard and just, just trying to get through it. And it started raining and then, and you were drenched, but you're holding your bread because you love Sally Ann. And you got back and you gave her the bread and you said, Sally Ann, got your bread. And she's like, why did you take so long? Well, the story is you got to pad these things out, you got to make lessons. Life is just lessons. And maybe, maybe if we, if we changed schooling rather than a transfer of information, it's literally just storytelling.

Yeah. My stories would improve. You're right. And, and that is the story of the puppy who lost his way. I like books. I like books. So I want to, I want, I want to open a bookstore. Carol's have kind of got the monopoly in Mornington, which is fine, but I want to open a bookstore and call it. I like books. I've said it is, or is it, it's just called, I like books and yeah, we sell books. I, I would love to own a bookstore one day, I think it would be brilliant. Do you want to work there?

Yeah, sure. You need to get on with pop culture references to get through the interview process. Watch Alien, watch Lorax, read the puppy who lost his way. Of all the movies that I could have brought up, the Lorax is up there, but Alien isn't, isn't one of my top 50 movies probably. It is? No. Oh. It's, it's, it's brilliant. I have a propensity to like, to like movies that are a little bit more recent than Alien. You have to find the journal. What's your favorite movie? And I know favorite is subjective and, you know, obviously it changes, it's fluid, but what's your favorite movie?

I don't think I have an ultimate favorite. Oh, shut up. Just tell me your fucking favorite movie. I really like... My name's Simon, I live on the fence. Do you get tired of sitting up on the fence all the time? Yeah, because I'm constantly climbing back and forth over the fence. Just pick a side and just camp out. And then this is, maybe this is why the world's in such turmoil is because people pick a side and they're not like Simon and climbing over, but you know what, Wallace, future Wallace is made of, made a gate so you can just walk through and you can just, yeah, you can pick and choose.

Why is there a fence in there in the first place? On some issues on this side, knock down the wall and then everyone can be together. Good. We just fixed the world. There we go. Favorite movie, go. Get rid of fence builders. That's a whole industry. That's like vlogging 2020, we can't tear down the trees so we're tearing down the fences. People are going to be pissed, mate. There'll be new jobs popping up. There'll be bogan larrikins, you know, chucking barbs at the watering hole. It's a pub, whatever, at Willem Dafoe. It's a great movie. I actually can't remember what it was called.

It was, I'll find it. Anyway, tell us what your favorite movie is. So one of my favorite movies is The Departed. Jack Nicholson. Oh yeah, good. Matt Damon. Matt Damon's Italian, Irish accent in that is hilarious. Yeah. When he says like, brilliant cast, brilliant movie. It's up there. It's not my favorite movie of all time, but it's definitely up there. The Departed, give me top five. I'll take top five. Can Lord of the Rings be one entrance? Yes. Yes. Favorite character in Lord of the Rings? Legolas. Obviously. Oh, he used to be my... Aragorn. Yeah. He's a...

He reminds me of me. I'm kidding. I'm more of a Merry. I knew you'd love that. I knew that again. What else? I've watched too many movies lately. The Hunter, 2011. There you go. Willem Dafoe. It's brilliant. Nice. It's on Stan if anyone is watching at home. Our third unofficial sponsor for the evening. No, get Stan. Give me two of five. Let me sit on it. No, you can't. You have to pick. Oh. Oh. We've got stuff to talk about. I'm going to talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall. That's important. Jesus. Going back a ways.

You've got three more. Go on. I honestly can't think of it. Oh, something that I watched recently. All right. Here's the correct answer. Prisoner. Prisoner. Prisoner. Very good, four and a half star movie. Okay. Good. Very good movie. Great cast. Great. Great execution. Yeah. Good story. Directed beautifully. It's not usually my type of film either, but I enjoyed it a lot. I think the star power of Paul Dano, and Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hugh. Who? Hugh. Hugh came up with a conversation today with us, didn't he? He did. Yeah. Brilliant movie. David Fincher. The director. I'm pretty sure it's David Fincher.

Anyway. Good. Here's the correct answer to your top five movies. Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi, probably friends with Jacinta. Probably. Grand Budapest Hotel. Not seeing it. Where's Anderson? Just brilliant. Bit of Bill Murray, bit of Jason Swartzman, bit of Ralphie Ann, bit of Jeff Goldblum. It's just... All right. You're not working tomorrow. You're going to have Day Off, you're going to watch The Lorax, you're going to watch Jojo Rabbit, then you're going to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yeah. Then you're going to watch Her with Jacqueline Phoenix. This is where you'll fall in love with Scarlett Johansson without actually having to see her for the whole movie.

It's brilliant. Then it gets a little muddy, like the waters get a little muddier. Like I've got a lot that I could choose. But based on my current, current mindset and mood, seven goes in there. Seen it? I have not. Oh, what is wrong with you? Bit of Brad Pitt. I usually think we resonate on a lot of things and then we have these kind of conversations and you're just like, well, I don't like good things. It's all of you. It's not that I don't like it. I just fill my time with other things. But go on.

Number five. Three. Well, I could, so on my letterbox for anyone that's still listening, if you are still listening, Bravo. Secondly, I have a letterbox account, which is a great app for social media and movies. I've got a 30 top movies list, which brilliant. It'll change your life. If you watch all those 30 movies, life is just wonderful. The existentialism like just floats away into just a brilliant appreciation for life. Many billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, I think is one of the most underrated movies ever made. Lost in Translation or Portrait of a Lady on Fire for number four.

You've listened to about 12 films. No, this is my fifth. And then, I don't know, Moonrise Kingdom's up there, The Lobsters up there, Whiplash is up there. I don't know. You've seen Inside Out. You've seen Inside Out. Surely you've seen Inside Out. I have seen Inside Out. See, Inside Out, brilliant film. Like poignant message, brilliant execution. It's just, it's, yeah, it's just good. See, these are the things. Anyway. I thought that was brilliant. How do we fix the fitness industry? Absolutely brilliant. Fitness industry. Because the fitness industry, like many industries in 2020, is driven by the social media-ification of our society.

And it's driven by what's considered cool rather than what works. So actually, here's the answer how to fix any industry. Make it meritocritus rather than, is that a word? I think it is. Is meritocritus a word? Meritocracy is a word? Make it a meritocracy? Yeah, but I feel that meritocritus is a word. I don't care. I'm running with it. It's a word now. Check it out. Oxen, you're welcome. We're the official sponsor of the podcast. But we make it a meritocracy where the best ideas win out. It doesn't matter, popularity, et cetera, et cetera, the best and correct ideas win out.

It is the separation between science and state or whatever the equivalent in the fitness industry is. It's that way. I love it. Yeah, Logan, in the podcast that we did with him, number 84. All right. Number 83. 83? Yeah. You're one off. You're welcome. He talks about fitness industry and how it is meritocratic. Meritocratic, OK. The level of failure in the fitness industry will be unacceptable in any other industry. He uses the automobile. What's that industry called? Automotive. Automotive. I got halfway through. I was like, I don't know how to finish this word. Automotive industry. It's like, imagine if you got your car and turn it on and 40% of the time it didn't work.

Yeah. There is a fitness industry in a nutshell. There is. Yeah. Like what you said, everyone just wants the latest, sexiest, most Instagram worthy program workout diet to use and they stick with that and they don't have the commitment to the things that really matter, the hard work and the showing up every day in order to actually achieve what they want. Yes. And that leaves a big hole of unsatisfied, unhealthy people, unhealthy people who feel, I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, people who feel unable to actually reach their goals. It's almost like a defeatist result in the fact that they're like, "Oh, I tried and it didn't work."

Well, that's fine, but did you try the right thing and did you try it for long enough? And that's the biggest gap I find in people who don't achieve what they want to achieve. It's like the, and I'll use fitness examples here, it's like, "Oh, I didn't put on enough size. I didn't put on the size I wanted, but I only trained six months," or "I didn't lose the weight, but I only tracked my calories for a third of the time I was trying to lose my weight." You're so close. And this is a frustrating thing.

It's like people, and this goes for like everything, and we talked about government, we talked about climate change, we'll fix conspiracy theories next because I can go off the deep end for that. I feel as though, like I said, if we know better, we do better. And if we are able to do better, then we're able to be better consistently and we're able to upskill and transcend our previous capacity. The problem is, is that majority of the world's issues aren't due to the nefarious outputs or decisions of humans, which a lot of people would like to believe, they're usually just due to incompetence and our inability to derive the result that we're after from the work we put in.

So when it comes to things like fitness, which is just a part of the whole social construct of how the world works, fitness is obviously like part of the self-actualization stuff because we want to be fitter, we want to be healthier. If we don't have somewhere to sleep and we don't have food, then no one gives a fuck what you bench. Just public service announcement, no one gives a fuck what you bench anyway. But the majority of those people who decide to stop trying or fall off the wagon or say it's too hard or say it didn't work or whatever, usually it's just a war of attrition.

They haven't tried it for long enough and/or they haven't tried the right thing. So if you're someone who hasn't achieved the goals you want to set, if you're still listening, do you know anyone still listening? Surely. Surely it's someone with nothing better to do. If you have nothing better to do, I applaud you. Thank you. Send me a big long walk. Big, bloody big long walk. Then just keep at it because there's two alternatives. You keep at it, that's one alternative I guess, keep at it, you keep moving forward and you either eventually get there or you die anyway or you give up.

You're definitely not going to get there. And then you definitely don't get there. And you die anyway. I don't know, I'd much rather date the first one. Here's the thing, here's the thing that all the Instagram trainers and things don't tell you is that the principles of training and fitness and health don't change regardless of the program that you're doing. The principles to lose weight or to get strong or to gain muscle or whatever the goal is or the thing is, they don't change. The science is there and like you said, it's often just a matter of incompetence.

I think a lot of the issue is that people want to help. They think that they're doing a public service by creating programs that people will sign onto. But when really they're just adding to the noise and the growing pool of things that aren't going to matter or things that don't make a difference. When you say pool of things that don't make a difference, is that more of like the low quality programs or activities that may be more prevalent than the high quality ones? Yes. And again, we put our rose colored glasses towards sports science and strength and conditioning and exercise science because that's what we study and that's what we do.

But the simple question that will give you the answer that you need is think of the thing you're doing now and ask yourself the question, how is that working for you? And if your answer is it's working great, carry on. As you were, keep doing good things, brilliant. If the answer is it's not working, then the follow up question is, is that because of your commitment to the thing or is it because the thing you're committed to isn't what it should be? Yeah, it's the wrong thing. And this is the hard conversations we were talking

about before, is if I've said, hey, I'm going to do the 10 to 15K program that Mitch has put together and I get to week four and I start skipping sessions and I start not doing things and then I kind of say, oh, I didn't improve my 10K time or my 15K time, Mitch's program is bullshit. Really different conversation if I go, well, I did all the sessions and I improved that Mitch's program is brilliant. It's like you've got to do the thing to get the thing. You can't decide to pick and choose. And it's like it's a cliche quote and guess what, I'm a quote guy.

But it's a cliche quote in that you don't get upset that you didn't get the results for the work you didn't do. And it's like in the fitness industry, you can use brute force to hammer a square peg into a round hole. And what I mean by that is if you want to lose weight, you can flog yourself. You can eat nothing and you're going to get where you want to get to, or you can take a little bit of time to decide, OK, how am I going to hammer this square peg into a square hole?

And you can go, well, I don't actually need to force the fucking thing in. I can just eat well, take a longer, more sustainable approach, look after my health and well-being. And obviously, for girls and guys, that has different implications. I just ran a brilliant seminar on the cycle last week, if you want it. Send Simon a message and he'll send it to you, probably. And that's the thing. There is-- everything that we do in life, there is a best way to do it. There's the path of-- yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a best way to do it.

As humans, we might not have yet decided the best way to do it, but it's only through trial and error do we refine what the better ways to do it is, and we keep getting better and better and better. We'll fear the ceiling and we'll do best. I'm pretty sure I've nailed how to make a steak, how to cook a steak. If anyone wants some beautiful eye fillet, post-lockdown, give me a yell, come over, I'll cook you dinner and it'll be brilliant. I've nailed steak. I've perfected steak, I've clocked steak. I may not ever get better at making steak, but I'm happy with where I'm at.

Pop Nation, with their bearded seal, may have nailed DDHI as the RPA. I don't-- I can't see it being better. And if you want it to be better, prove it. Make something better, all right? Grant Rogers, Blake Bowden, make a better one. I challenge you, OK? What was I talking about? I don't remember. For the people that say that sucks, for the people that-- I don't know if I want to go back to the fitness example, but say we go back to fitness example and we go, F45 sucks. Do something better, don't be the guy that sits on the high horse and says that it sucks without actually doing anything about it.

Decide what the thing is that-- or how you make it better, and then give it to the world, and then the proof, as they say, will be in the pudding. The frustrating thing about the fitness industry is that a guy comes along who says that he's got a better thing than the last thing, does a brilliant job at-- maybe they're like a marketing genius and they market it brilliantly. And they've got a system that works to bring people in, they become super successful, and everyone sees that everyone else is doing it, even though they aren't getting the results because they're not showing the results.

And that guy wins. Yeah. And then it becomes a conversation around why are we doing it in the first place? And what is the intended outcome that we're looking for? And this is where it gets a little muddy. The waters get a little muddy that we're talking about before, those waters, like we've been splashing around in a little bit. And we go, OK, well, obviously, results is important. And I think that's what everyone in the fitness industry should be judged on, ultimately. But there's also the experience part of it, which is the, did you enjoy what you did?

Did you enjoy the people you did it with? Did you connect? Did you grow or develop from that? And if we tick off the results and we tick off the experience, and then the other part that's probably less paid attention to is the education piece. Did I actually learn about why these things happened? We talk a lot about being process orientated rather than results orientated. And I would like to think that when anyone leaves Virtus for whatever reason, and it's easy for us to pump up what we do because we think it's the best and

et cetera, et cetera, because that's why we choose to do it the way we do it, because we think this is the best way we figured out so far. But when people leave Virtus, I would like to say that, I would like to think that they could leave, go train somewhere else, and be able to utilize all of the principles and all of the learnings that they acquired along the way to improve their training somewhere else. Whereas I don't know, don't know being an important part, it may be true, I may be wrong, I don't know that F45 can say the same thing, or that your core can say the same thing, or that CrossFit can say the same thing.

I also don't know. So what we're saying is we're on the fence. Didn't we knock down the fence like an hour and a half ago? Did we get rid of fence builders? The fence builders have started a rebellion. They're not overly happy around our derailment of the fence industry. Yeah, and as long as people aren't going backwards, as long as like, if a gym or a method is focused on the experience piece, awesome. But if people are going backwards, or if they're staying the same, then that is, again, not what we are here to do. Yeah, and this is the difficult part of this conversation.

It's like, well, obviously part of the responsibility lands on the facility, the gym, the system to deliver results. But here's the thing, you are completely responsible for everything in your own world, as Simon would like to teach all four-year-olds out there, that's basically what I heard before. So it's a level of degrees, same as old Vladimir Putin that we mentioned before. When did he become Vladimir Putin, and not just a cute little four-year-old? It's a level of degrees. It's like, well, how much of it is the responsibility of the organization, and how much responsibility is the person?

And actually, rather than degrees, I've changed it, here's what I think it is. It's all responsibility, put that down. It's all responsibility, you are completely responsible. So to all the Virtus members, you are completely responsible for your health, well-being and ability to do good things, right? Put that down for a second, full stop. We are also completely responsible to teach you and to help you get to the point or position that you want to be to do good things. We are equally responsible, then there's no distribution of responsibility, there's no handballing. We are all responsible, so do the thing.

Yeah. And when people neglect that responsibility or handball it to someone else, then that's when the wheels fall off, because nobody's going to come to save you. Oh, I love that quote. And we've seen it the last, like we've been locked down six and a half months, we had two weeks of beautiful artificial sunshine. It was bliss, it was heaven, this is what I imagine heaven will be. And the distribution of responsibility to Dan Andrews or to hotel quarantine or whatever, it's mind-blowing because there's no utility in that, there's no utility in saying, fuck Dan Andrews, this is bullshit, like, just let me live my life, my mental health is deteriorating.

All of those things might be true, but there's no utility in saying that, there's utility in saying, what can I do, me, to look after myself better, so that when, so that actually right now, so that right now I can be in a better position than I was yesterday or 10 minutes ago. And obviously that puts us in a better position for that point of time in the future where we do get to go back to normal existence, for everyone listening at home, if you're still listening, I did the quotation marks, the bunny ears, the,

like, you've got to understand that it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what you do, our thoughts, who we aspire to be, our actions are who we end up being, determined who we end up being, sorry. And I think that that was, that was some Wallace journaling a couple of days ago. And I think that like the, the free will debates and an easy example, and how long you got? No, I'm not going to go long, I've got 30 seconds, 30 seconds of this, the free will debates and easy example, right? Like, okay, we, we understand that just determinism is probably a thing.

We have no saying at all, life just happens, bad luck, chaos, et cetera. Or if there's 0.00001% of a chance the free will exists, then it's a non conversation. It doesn't matter if we have, if we have the ability to alter the future by the way we act best, we get to work. Tommy Haffey quote to finish the great Richmond superstar and college coach, which is probably the way you spend his life the best. I actually ran into him at the hospital when my, just before my pa passed away. And it was, it was one

of those, like, you see this person that you've grown up, like idealizing in different ways and he walked past me and my dad and he's like, Hey lads, how are you going? And I was like, Oh, Tommy Haffey said hi to me, anyway, so great man. But one of his quotes was if it is to be, it is up to me. And if he's education, figure out a way to teach our kids that and give them the tools to go out in the world and do good things, then the world's going to be a better place.

Imagine if everyone put their energy instead of putting it toward protesting things that don't really matter in the scheme of things and put the energy toward doing good, productive things that helped people. Like what, like, what, what's your example for processing that doesn't matter? Doesn't matter to me. This is my bias opinion, but the wearing of masks, like it is a minor inconvenience to have something on my face at the recommendation of scientists, terrible lid anyway, so doing everyone a favor anyway. Well, so for square matrix, should I talk to that? Because I think that's important.

So all right, we're right about math, so sorry, scientists are right about mask and they improve the spread, then if we wear it, great, the world is safer. If we don't wear it, we're fucked. Yeah. So if we're wrong about masks and we do wear it, we got a piece of cloth on it over our mouth. That's my biggest inconvenience. And if we don't wear it, then nothing happens. So of the four, four options of my square is great. It's yeah, inconvenience. It's nothing happens and it's, we're fucked. And the two options are wear the mask, don't wear the mask, wear the mask, don't wear the mask.

X and Y axis get mixed up, then wear the mask because like it's the same thing with climate change. If we do something about it and there's actually no such thing as climate change, the world is happier and healthier and we get to live in a better place. Anyway. Yeah. Don't do anything about it and climate change is, turns out to be correct, we're fucked. Let's not be fucked. Yep. I don't know, I just, I guess that's the, that's the extent of my argument. If anyone listening has a different argument, feel free to put it in the suggestion box right here.

I was listening at home, I picked up a bit. I don't know, I just, there's, there's my logic and I'm sticking with it. I'm more than open to a conversation around how I might be wrong about this because you know, if I take the last 28 years of my life, I'm probably wrong about this, but I just, I just think that if you can do better, if you know better, you should do better. And the mask one, it just blows my mind that that is an actual conversation. Did you see the video of Trump breathing

today, just a little sidebar, so basically, so he's decided that after being diagnosed with COVID as an obese, unfit, 70 something year old that he's going to spend two days, who's, who's got the best medical care on the planet available to him. He's decided he's going to leave the hospital to go back to the White House. So there was a video today of him, I think standing maybe outside the hospital or the White House, I didn't actually check, of him. He took off his mask and he's like winceing in pain and he's like breathing, but you can tell that it's like someone, have you ever been punched in the solar plexus Simon?

Were you like, choking for breath, I love that too, I don't actually know if it's that time of year or not, but the, who knows, I've only been the puncher, not the punchy, the feeling that I guess I would assume, you know, lung cancer patients and people with emphysema and things like that deal with, like, he was visibly uncomfortable and visibly gassed me for a breath. So it's Tuesday the 6th of October, if he is still, if his heart's still pumping in a week, then he's, he's potentially got through the worst of it. But it's,

it was fascinating to see his, I guess that stand for, I don't know, maybe it's like a, maybe it's like a power move or a, you know, whatever you want to call it. He doesn't do anything by accident, right? Obviously. Or, he's just throwing shit at a walnut and seeing what sticks and he's going, my, my followers need to see me up and about, but it may be the thing that kills him, maybe by the time we release this, he won't be Trump anymore, I don't know, who knows, he might have been Trumped. The thing

that makes me laugh is him saying, you know, I, I went to school, like I didn't just, I went, I went through the school, this is not just me, you know, reading the books, I experienced, I went through it. His quotes, if you read them, they are subjective, subjectively, or maybe objectively is a word I'm looking for, but if you read them subjectively from our point of view, we go, this is a fucking work of a madman, and I think it's fascinating, like, you know, people would be like, why the fuck are they talking about US politics?

This is the, this is the gateway to the modern world, like these are the, these are the people making decisions that impact us, they reverberate through the global society immensely, and I think it's important that we pay attention to it, and the, the thing that the kicker, the kicker is, and this is me talking from a very, very low base of what the fuck's going on, but the kicker for me is, when he tweets today that, you know, we shouldn't be worried about, like, don't be worried about Coronavirus, don't let it rule your lives, like, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but he said something along those lines, 200,000 people from your country have died.

Like, I get that the US has 320 million, so you could probably spare a few, but at the end of the day, I am, I am always, sorry, I have always been, I am currently of the belief that a life is precious, because once it's gone, it's gone, you can't get it back, right? Pro-life. I am pro-life, and not pro-life, before life actually is life, like, I draw the line that when, you know, if you need to go down the route of abortion, go down it. I don't have any issue with it, for those that

need a clarification, but the, but I've, I'm pro-life, like, here's the thing, if I lose my job because of this pandemic, and we lose the business and Virtus is gone, fucking that sucks, right? But at the end of the day, we're still here, we still have each other, you know, what's the Matilda, is it Matilda? But most of all, we have each other. Anyway. Madeline. No. Yeah. I'm pretty sure, but like, we have our bread, we have our butter, but most of all, we have each other, right? That's where we'd be if, you like that? See, pop culture reference, you're welcome, have you seen that movie?

It's not a movie, it's a TV show, and yes. I know. I used to love watching, I passed the test, one from seven, fuck, so, so here's the, like, we lose Virtus, we lose the business, and it's all gone, man, that sucks, right? That's rough, but we're still here, we have each other, and we can, and we can rebuild, okay? Like we can figure it out, you know, King's Landing gets burnt by the fucking dragons, they get to rebuild, might look different, but they'll rebuild, Bran, Bran the Builder, obviously is King, will rebuild. That still

makes me mad, but I don't wanna talk about it, but if, you know, grandma dies, grandma's dead, grandma's gone, and as morbid as that is, if it's a conversation between grandma and Virtus, Virtus can fuck off every day of the week, as much as, like, as much as this place is, like, is my life, and is everything that I love, it's not a conversation. Yeah. Like, even if it's six months with grandma, or 12 months with grandma, or five years with grandma, or 10 years, it doesn't matter, there's things, this book, brilliant book, one of the parts in there talks about, this book's about mental models, right, and it talks about irreversible and irreversible decisions.

The irreversible decision is letting grandma die, can't, can't do anything about that, you know, Voldemort had a crack, and he couldn't figure out immortality. Good job, Harry, I'm proud of you. Just snapping the other one. Exactly, he fucked it off, he went, it's like me throwing social media off the cliff last week. What was I talking about? Ultimate power. Ultimate power, yeah, he ditched it, he got rid of it. But the, the reversible decisions are if Virtus has to close and has to, and we go into liquidation or whatever happens there, haven't read enough books about the economy to understand what actually happens, say we close a business, we'll just start another one.

Yeah, then we can. I'm like, I don't get another grandma. No. Yeah, and that conversation might be too close to home for some people, but it's genuinely for me, so I lent it to the microphone, so sorry if I yelled in your ear, it's genuinely for me, that's the conversation. Yep. And if anyone wants to argue differently, fine. But for me, it's the, it's the loggers in Tasmania saying that we want to keep our jobs when at the end of the day, their jobs, that if they go ahead will, will burn down the world and they won't exist anyway.

That is all I have to say about that. Forrest Gump, you're welcome. Who? Oh, please don't do that to me. I tell you what, has Tom Hanks made a bad movie? Take all the time in the world, everyone at home, text me if Tom Hanks has made a bad movie. I haven't seen, what's the one with the pilot, how he plays the pilot? Honestly, it's brilliant. I watched it being like, this is going to be bullshit. It was elite. Okay. Like Sully, it's called. Tom Sully. Yeah. And it's just called Sully. Sullenburger. Yeah. That's the, that's the pilot.

It's just, it's just brilliant. It's, it's the way they, the way they build the narrative around the accident, sorry. The accident, the landing. And then whether it was intentional, whether it was an accident, what, like the, for those that haven't seen the movie, they, they bounced between him talking in the, in the desp, deposition, disposition, despacito, deposition. I'm okay with it. I love just talking shit for a couple of hours. It's brilliant. This is the, this is if, if my life could be, could be designed by me, this is what it would be. It'd just be me talking shit.

Lachlan, your life is designed by you. Why do you think we're doing this right now? Because I said, let's do a bonus episode where we talk shit for a couple of hours. And, and if it was still great, if they don't, we've had fun. Are you having fun? I've had fun. Is everyone at home having fun? I can only assume that there's a whole crowd of people going, Lucy does at the moment where I go, yeah. And she goes, and it's the cutest fucking thing ever. Oh God. You saw that video the other day of me cooking food and I was like doing this.

And she's just like, she just, she just loves good things. It's great. I'm teaching my daughter to just be all about good things. I've lost the train of thought, what are we talking about? Sully being in the disposition, Desposito. So it was in a deposition, like he goes through, it's like a commission around like whether he was a fold or not. And the way they structure the narrative because you just think, okay, planes in the air plane crashes in the Hudson. People are saved. Good job. Good movie. You know, we're four minutes in now. What are we talking about?

It's actually an exceptional movie. You know what movie blew my mind that was really good, Tom Hanks again was the Terminal. So here's my quick summary of it. Basically he's a, he's from a country that doesn't, I don't think it exists in real life. I can't remember what the country actually was, but he's from a small Eastern European country that he flies into the US and he's in the terminal and he's about to, I think bought another plane or maybe leave, like go to New York to actually, I'm just removing. So he has his father's ashes that, I'm probably going to butcher it anyway, but I think there was like a big jazz band that he needed that he wanted.

His father was collecting all their signatures and there's one person that he didn't get signature from. So he has his father's ashes because he passed away without getting that signature and he wants to go meet that person to get the signature. If I'm butchering it, sorry Tom, I apologise, just give me a bell and we can chat about it. But the premise is he gets to the airport and as he's flying in the air and as he lands in the airport, there's a coup in his country and basically all of the passports are basically like null and void.

So he has to stay in the airport for a period of time, right? Which Tom hangs in an airport, yeah, great, but he ends up like learning how to live in the airport and becoming a carpenter and working for one of the local businesses and doing all this cool shit. But it's like the balance of bouncing between him and like the guy who's meant to kick him out, but can't actually kick him out because of the rules around, you know, kicking out someone without a passport and, you know, it's like he needs to go home, but he also wants to do this thing for his dad.

So it's just good to and fro, and it's a wonderful movie and everyone should watch it. I watched it with the, like I went in with it with, you know, I was on a bit of a Tom Hanks binge. I think I just watched Forest and, you know, watched a few of his movies and I went, you know what, this is on Stan, fourth podcast sponsor for the day, and I think I want to watch it. So I left, I watched it and I went, I left the couch and moved into the bedroom because that's where I sleep.

And when that movie was brilliant. See what I rated it again, Letterboxd, if you're around it, I rate it four stars. That's four out of five. That's pretty good. That's 80%. And there's not many, there's maybe like 20 movies I rate for five stars. If you want to know those movies, follow me on Letterboxd, I'm not telling you now. Bad luck. Let's go playlist. It's not a playlist, man, it's just a list, all right. Also, if you want, if you want, if you want playlist, my Spotify is a lead at the moment. You got around my September playlist, what'd you think?

September. It was. Yeah, I thought it was pretty good. Had it in the background while it worked. Got some good work done. So would you say that I'm responsible for all the good work you've done? Yes. You're welcome. Absolutely welcome. It's true. I can't argue with that. That's brilliant. That is some sound logic. What's your favorite book? I got like Dougie Boxell, Dougie Boxell, Dougie Boxell, shout out to Dougie. I was trying to say two words at the same time, he said what book should I read? And he's like, I'm compiling a big list of books and brilliant message to receive because I like books, hence the name of my future bookstore.

And I said, I posted on Instagram a couple of weeks ago with his 10 books I think everyone should read. But I also followed that up with don't read books for the sake of reading books, which I've fallen in the trap of in the past of going of like not just on the bookshelf kind of like at a book, I read a book, I read a book, I read a book, hey, I've read 80 books this year. There's a difference between reading a book and reading a book. So for those still listening, bravo, first of all.

Second of all, if you read a book, read a book. And this is like 2018 Wallace vs 2020 Wallace, this is where I transcend and include and I'm a much better person. When I read a book now, I read a book. When I read a book two years ago, I just read it. And I was like, sweet, I read a book. And yeah, I'd take bits and pieces. But rather than taking like 20% with me now I take 40 or 50% with me. And it informs the way I live my life more than it did back in the day.

Because I was just a fucking maniac reading books. I was like, I'm gonna read 100 books this year. So I read 120 books that year. And I was like, I can't fucking remember any of them. I remember a bunch, but I don't remember enough of them to make it worthwhile. So what's your favorite book? That was a bit of a sidebar. What's your favorite book, Simon? The alchemist is up there? Parallel? I have three different questions. Favorite book, most impactful book, the book that everyone should read? Okay. Book everyone should read probably War of Heart or Turning Pro.

Actually great. Very, very good. Steven Pressfield. Just get around them. They're really short. Very good. Here's two I prepared earlier. Yeah, there they are. For those watching at home, if you're listening at home, bad luck. You can't see it. You just have to jump on YouTube. Turning Pro, War of Heart. Turning Pro's tagline is tap your inner power to create life's work. Really what it should be is how to not be shit. The War of Heart is break through the blocks and win your creative battles. It's how to do nothing, how to not do nothing and do things that are good instead.

Yeah. Yeah. They're exceptional. I need to reread them, I think. I'm going to reread Turning Pro again soon. Most impactful book? Possibly Gong, right? Ooh, Logan. Pump up. How's that? That's pandering. It's because I think about it all the time. Do you think about it all the time because you know Logan and you have a relationship with Logan? Potentially. But also I think it's because it's very closely tied to the work that I do and like the change that I want to make. Well, there's utility in it as well. Like I think about when I

think about coffee, I think about common folk because I have a relationship with everyone that works with most people that work common folk and there's a direct connection there. I don't know, it's just maybe an interesting, maybe that's something we've died down. But if I think about like electricians, they go, the races in my life, they're my go-tos. Like I don't think of alternate current and direct current, I think of my fans. Fans. Fans. So you've done Impactful and you've done? What everyone should read. What everyone should read. Favourite book. Favourite book. Oh, I'm going to have a left of centre answer for you, I think.

I don't know. Are you just looking at your bookshelf with all my books that you need to give back to me? Yeah. Yeah, but I haven't read them, so… Hurry up! This is my materialistic outlet, I need books and there's a few important ones missing from my shelf. I like books. I like books. I don't know. Oh, this is a flashing light, you've got five seconds. It might be actually a fiction book. Yeah. Ready? Two. Possibly Ice Station, Matthew Reilly. Oh, love that. Matthew Reilly is a very, very good fiction author. He's Australian as well, which we love.

So, and he's, I've like, consumed, every time I read his books I just devour it. And I've read like his whole collection like three times. See that, that's cool. Like to be able to go, when I read one of these person's books or when I read this book, all I want to do is finish the book. Because life ceases to exist external to the book. And I find that with most biographies that I resonate with, like, especially Audible, I was like, I will listen to six, seven hours a day. I will do it when I'm working, when I'm walking, when I'm, you know, doing whatever, because I'm like, I just need to consume this book.

Yeah, actually, special mention, bonus mention. I didn't ask for four, Simon, I asked for three. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. Shoe Dog is brilliant in the fact that it shows us that everyone's just fucking winging it. And everyone, like the, and, and here's, and here's the thing that I realized about Shoe Dog when I was thinking about it the other day, is that we, we draw parallels to the lessons in Shoe Dog because they ended up, we know the end game, we know that they ended up a billion dollar company. Yeah. And Logan talks about this and going, right.

So it's not, this is not my idea, but it's, there's, there'd be millions, potentially thousands, hundreds of thousands of businesses that have gone through the same shit as they went through the same shit as Knight did, had the same cool stories, but then failed because life sucks and you know, people die and bad things happen to good people and, you know, not everyone's going to be a winner. Yeah. And that's the utility in Shoe Dog, it's just like, well, it shows that the failure, the failures that led to the success again, failure is very directly, success is directly married to failure.

As my beautiful notes, wisdom mentioned before all those years ago. And Shoe Dog shows us that you need to fail to succeed, but it's not his job to do so, but it doesn't remind us of all the, the shifts that wrecked along the shore to allow that, to allow that while Shoe Dog was able to have a safe landing. Yup. Yeah. Yeah, it is awesome. I just found that I just like wanted, I was listening to it on Audible and I just wanted to just keep listening and the way that he narrated it was awesome as well.

It's not him. No, it's not Phil Knight. No, I don't know who it is actually, but, but whoever, whatever the guy's name is, he's exceptional. I could tell you in a moment because I listened to it a couple of, couple of weeks ago, I finished it again, 17th time. Yeah. That's such a hard question though, to pick, narrated by Norbert Leo Butz, what is the dragon from Harry Potter? I find answering those questions so difficult because depending on what I'm currently reading will influence that immensely. Like the book, the book that I think everyone should

read right now, because I read it a couple of weeks ago, is The Obstacle is the Way, which, which I guess is, is probably a, it's going to be a longer term, it would be a longer term answer because it leans on the ideas of stoicism that I value so highly and the, the art of doing good, doing hard things. And, and, you know, the, the stoic philosophy that is kind of overshadowed by the Buddhist philosophy of like life is suffering, it's like, you need to do hard, hard things for good things to happen. And I love that.

What was that, the, what did I say, the book everyone should read. So most impactful? Most impactful for me, I read books like, like this one that I'm reading at the moment. And I'm just like, like every line, just like highlighting and writing stuff down. And like I said, I read books differently than I did a couple of, couple of years ago. The most impactful has to come back to Ray Dalio and principles, just the lessons and the simplicity of it and the utility of decide what you know is true, create less, create lessons or rules around it and live your life by those rules.

And they're, they're not hard and fast, can't, can't break them ever rules, they're, they're fluid but the ideas that he discusses and the way it set out in terms of like his story and the law principles and work principles is brilliant. And it's all, and it's based around the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell stuff, which is a bunch of just kind of walks up there that I think are very valuable. The most impactful has, the most impactful has to be that it has to be in terms of the, my favorite, you know, the book that I want to say is, is the beach.

The beach by Alex Garland, the beach by Alex Garland, which is the, obviously the same name as the movie with Leo. But I don't know if I've enjoyed a book that much. That's cool. As I did with that. Yeah. And I, and I watched, and I'd watched the movie a couple of times before I actually knew it was a book and then like middle of the last year, I was like, I was maybe in a bit of a rut with reading. And again, it's, this is impacted by my, the, the recency of me consuming it because it was middle of last year, but the story is just brilliant.

I just, I love it. I've, I've read three or four fiction books chasing that same feeling that I had or the same connectedness and, and link I had with those characters. And yeah, I had Leo in my head the whole time, but what's not to love about that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That's fascinating. I think it's special. Special mention. How many, how many special mentions I have, I've got like 47. You got one. We've already mentioned the Sapiens. So that's, this doesn't count, that doesn't count because we already mentioned it. Sapiens doesn't count. Meditations doesn't count because I've quoted Marcus Aurelius 14 times during this thing.

Yeah. I think a special mention would be the Salastine Prophecy by James Redfield because, so I hadn't heard of the book and Greg, the gray man, the fizz, the, the brew of Angus book. He said, he comes to me one day, he goes, I've got a book for you that I think will illustrate your, the last three or four years of your journey, just a couple of years ago, more than any others. And that was the, like, Susie said that I'm like, I'm sold, I'll read it, I'll consume it. I'll eat it up. And I actually read it on a little trip away with KP.

We went to Torquay for a couple of days. And it's one of those, it's similar to the Alchemist with a little bit more authority in terms of like, here are the lessons. Yep. So for anyone that's read the Alchemist, the Alchemist is basically like a parable around, like life is a journey. And Salasan Prophecy is the same thing, life is a journey, but it like goes, here are the rules to follow. And I followed that book up with the, it's cool, the Code of the Extraordinary Mind. Yeah, that is actually very important. Which is a brilliant book.

Vishen Lakhiani? Yes. And I think I read, I read them one after the other, which obviously highlights this family, but I finished them both in a couple of days and I was like, they're the same fucking book. Like one of them is the parable, parable supporting like story, like journey. And the other one's like, here's the answers. Yeah. And they're both as impactful and beneficial as each other, but it's like, here's the way to live your life. Here's one told as a story, here's one told as, as you know, authority or a framework from authority is a framework from an authority because the guy started Mindvalley, which is like massive.

And I think that's, that's immensely powerful in terms of like what we can actually. Books are the carriers of civilization, Simon. They are the second, second best use of a tree and they, and they create a, a, a lens into which we can see the way other people thought. And I wish I cared as much about books when I was growing up as I do now. I wish I, I wish I read more non-fiction growing up. Yeah. I read a lot of fiction, like I used to just like devour stuff. So did I. And then there was a big chunk of time where I didn't read because reading, reading is not cool.

How do we make reading cool again? Make reading cool. I like books. I like books. Go, come hang out at, I like books. Make books cool again. What's cool? What are the things that are cool? I don't know. Reading, doing work. Drinking beers. Laying in. Doing the work. Doing the work. Doing hard things. Basically the way we fix it. So what we're coming to is, is we're going to be full circle and the way to fix education is to make reading cool again. Easy. But reading, reading cool things that make the world a better place, not reading like the old Testament or anything like that.

I'm sure there's lessons to be learned. If you want, if you, if you, there's many lessons, there's many lessons, but all of the lessons, all of the lessons I've learned from the old Testament have been through, through the vessels that are books and the authors that write about the lessons rather than the lessons itself. So all of the lessons for me are second hand rather than first hand. There's the thing about education. There's like obviously this first hand knowledge, which is like you experiencing it. The second hand knowledge is someone telling you about experience and

maybe there's third hand, which is like the literature or, and all of them are important, but maybe depending on the topic will depend on what you will, which one you'll benefit from more. Bill and Ted's excellent adventure. Have you seen it? I have not. I can't be too mad because I only saw it a couple of weeks ago, just from like 1987 or something, but Keanu Reeves doing good things, but it's brilliant because it takes two idiots through time and they learn a bunch of stuff and it's a, it's a really cool look at all the lessons of the different times that human of human history.

Didn't we just do that? What? Two idiots like go through time. We pretty much did. So as a way to finish the podcast, I'm going to steal from Bill and Ted and just say, be excellent to each other. That's it. We're done. Do we want to talk anymore? Cause I could go all night, but we need to go to bed and it's been a long day and COVID still going. So it's been like seven months and we're tired and we're sick of staring at zoom. And it's been three hours. Like if you're still like, it's been three hours since we've been on a call.

We started like maybe it's been two and a bit, but the people walking and they're tired and they're ticking the legs over and they're like, can you two shut the fuck up so I can go home? Like, please make, please make this quick so I can go home to my family. And obviously we haven't so, you know, and I don't think there's anything else we need to solve. I think we've sorted it all. Basically what we're saying is read books, listen to good people, watch good movies, listen to good, good things, consume good content. The way you think is the way you are, you know, if you want a high quality life, have high quality thoughts, that's it.

Then turn those high quality thoughts into high quality actions. And you know, we look forward to seeing you back in the gym when we're back in the gym sometime in the future, because we have no fucking clue when it'll be, you know, hopefully, hopefully Dan Andrews wears his North face jacket sometime in the next couple of weeks and panders to the people and gives them what they want because I think we've done a brilliant job to, you know, I think no people died today. Zero people died today from COVID, which is a pretty fucking good thing.

So, you know, I talked, I talked, yeah, yeah, let's talk about Victoria. Like we're being a little, a little enclosed, but you know, we talked earlier about the value of life and if you, if you're listening there and you're still listening now and you, you saved a life today and I think we shouldn't undervalue that contribution to our world. So cheers to you, cheers to us, cheers to Hope Nation and I would just like to say be excellent to each other. I like Bill and Ted. Can you fucking stop recording? That's beautiful. Talking shit. You like that?

Just do good things and never postpone joy ever. Just do things if they feel good, but also make sure you contribute to society at the same time because there's a balance, right? Can't just do shit that feels good because you'll ruin the other shit. You need to contribute and do good things, contribute and do good things, contribute and do good things, be wonderful. There is one more thing, it's been emotional.