 Welcome to the FeeCast your weekly dose of economic education from your friends at Fee as you may have noticed I am not Richard Lawrence kidding my name is Sean Malone I'm director of media for the foundation for economic education and the producer of this fine show and I'm guest hosting today How are you guys doing? Fantastic, we're excited you're here. Welcome. Yeah, welcome to the site of the camera. The hazing begins now I'll take it. I'll take you know I've been on that side of the camera for long enough you guys can you know mock me as much as you would like Very specific initiation Rituals between us. I'll tell you about it later. Okay. Yeah, we'll do it between segments. So yes so Welcome everybody our fine panel of Anna Jane Perrell and Dan Sanchez Mary Ann March as everybody knows I just wanted to kick it off. Just kicking it to Dan for a minute Like what's what's going on the website man? Like what what articles we got going on? Well, we have one particularly great article Called the podcast bros are doing more to inspire individuals than politics ever could and it's by Brittany Hunter And I just noticed that like all four of us are pretty much podcast fans I thought we could just talk a little bit about what our favorite podcasts are. Yeah, I know and Jane You're like huge huge in Big time I mean I listen to all of them You know the grandfather all podcasts this American life I feel like I listen to kind of more niche ones like I don't even watch The Kardashians are keeping up with that. I don't keep up with them at all But I do listen to dedicate two hours of my life every week to a podcast That's just two women Discussing they're like the Kardashians live that's substantial. It is so interesting to me And I don't know why how because it's more like is that divided up over drives Oh, no, it's all they go for two hours. You're just you're just out to Nat Nat and Kathleen You just sit down on a Saturday in two hours. Yes. Oh, yeah Yeah, and it's it they literally it's not even that they discuss what happened on the show It is that they break down like I saw on their Instagram They did this and then I heard they want on vacation here And did you hear about this beef between a rapper that knows somebody and like all encompassing Kardashians news amazing Kardashians news and commentary. It's well. It's interesting to me about that is that it's such a niche Feel that we you can have really small Audiences that are sustainable like whereas before in the era of broadcast is just like mass It's like media. It's like radical individual choice in this in entertainment. It's like it is very yeah You're not subscribing to a cable package where you just hope that a show you like is on and you hope it's an episode You think is interesting instead you can go in and say I want to listen to this very specific Kardashian podcast And I just want to listen to what they talk about, you know Tristan Thompson cheating on Chloe for two hours Thing is one of the most interesting parts because never in old media Would you spend two hours talking about anything even believe it or not issues that are more important than the Kardashians? Now we are able to sit down and go into these really deep dives on subjects Yeah, and I personally am a Joe Rogan fangirl and his podcast a lot of times will go on for three hours No, it's nuts. I can't I mean I I like listening to Joe Rogan I do it once every like three months or something because of that like it's so in depth Yeah, and I think that's just so counter to like the prevailing Narrative that you know, everybody has such short attention spans that like Twitter is the definitive media because it's so short But meanwhile Vine went out of business with Vine has the micro And Joe Rogan is doing great Yeah, he's the second most popular podcast right after Oprah. Oh, I didn't know I had a podcast but that Perfect sense. Yes. I'm it's weird like I'm I've been a an Adam Corolla fan for a long time So I listen to his podcast quite a lot and he's actually gotten longer over the years He started doing like an hour and now he does two hours every every day, but it's split up It's kind of an interesting model where he'll do One segment which is usually like an hour long roughly where they'll just kind of you know Take calls or they'll talk about whatever and then the second half is like a guest or whatever So, yeah, and then I also listen to a to like hour and a half long Comic book podcast from some dudes in Australia who I absolutely love Well, I think there are there are these like really long and information heavy ones like I think there's called it's called like hardcore history Which is like And that's like and then but then you've also got like I love reply all which is about the internet about phenomenon on the internet and It's they can be as short as 10 minutes depending on what the subject is And so I think that it does come back to choice and how much I just think that it's it's such It's like a rich environment for not only like I guess Exploring what you're interested in but Defining yourself sure. Yeah, I just wonder how many people, you know sign up for like the required history course and then Never listen like never get in actually engage in history If anything they get turned off by history because they're forced to to learn to mean like history History in school. Yes. Yes as opposed to this hardcore history is like a really popular podcast That's so many people are just engrossed in these historical stories, and I hate to be I get you know I hate to be cheesy, but that's the market at work to me It's like they if you want to be listen listened to and you want to talk about something That's really awesome to you, which is history then you have to push yourself to be the best in terms of entertainment Yeah, I think I think you see it. I think you see a big lesson there for educators in general I mean but really for everybody but like, you know, how many teachers are there out there whose only benefit is they have a captive audience Yeah, it's the only thing like so bored in every class that I had You know like 90% of the classes in high school and college and yet you will spend, you know Six hours listening to Dan carlin and here we have an almost infinite variety of entertainment choices And we choose to spend it with podcasts. I've listened to many hours of Dan carlin's history podcast And it's fascinating. I know all kinds of things about the Mongols that I never knew about They're the exception, by the way I know a lot about pigeons that I don't want to know about like you guys want to know some pigeon podcasts I got a few there one that I listened to is the Tim Ferriss podcast and he he started with the four-hour work week and so he He writes a lot about entrepreneurship, but then he kind of shifted more into self-improvement in general So a lot of his his books are divided into like healthy wealthy and wise and so he talks a lot about you know supplements that that optimize your your your brain activity or or Or how to get the best kind of workout or how to sleep or but but also like how to invest and and how to be productive Yeah, so one one that I actually enjoy listening to. I'm not With anything it's like hard for me to be a regular listener of anything because I'm often making things So it's very hard to do put something in your ear. Yeah, you Doing these at the same time But but I'm a big fan of Gary Vaynerchuk and he has a lot of the same He doesn't get into the the health stuff so much, but you know, this is a this is an entrepreneur who is like the most inspiring You know kind of go get him kind of guy and that sort of gets us back to britney's article Right. So we were talking about the podcast bros and I if you guys want to explain this a little bit I I know there was a new york times article and some other stuff What was the criticism that we were kind of exploring with like or what was I guess The initial what was the initial like statement made against these guys? Sure. There's a new york times article That coined the the term podcast bros. So so it characterized it sort of as a movement And so the the article featured Tim Ferriss it featured joe rogan olly marcus And one thing that they found interesting about them is That they eschew politics that they they don't get into ideology that they actively pushed back against collectivist identity politics and focused that it's a very individualistic Focus it's it's about what you can do to improve your own life and the new york times article Criticized it to some extent because it said that it Neglects structural inequalities that knowledge more like oppression and and our external forces to an individual's Irresponsibility or their own choice and the author molly warthin poses the question of What does putting butter in your coffee? How does that make you better equipped to solve? Like bulletproof coffee or like sleeping 30 minutes at a time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there and to be fair There are a lot of those kinds of things where it's like sort of weird fad diets are like weird You know like here if you if you sleep two hours now and then you wait and you sleep But honestly, I don't think that's what most of this stuff is about right? Yeah, and I think motivational. I mean motivational speakers or really people who are I mean their their capital is Inspiration and it is encouraging people to be their best selves. You can definitely like wade into the water of okay Strange sleep habits or eating habits or whatever But I think that yeah, let's not let's not throw out like the inspiration baby with the butter coffee water Well, and you could always you could always focus on one particular Piece of advice right and and make it seem like that that's all they're talking about When it's just one part of just thinking very carefully about your choices about your own lifestyle And that in general is what the emphasis that is so refreshing in a world Where so many people are preoccupied with changing the world when it when an individual can really change their own life Much more than they can change like fix the world economy, for example So I think that's that's a really good place to end this segment I think what we'd like to do is in the next segment get into this a little bit more talk about What it means to change the world and and how people actually do that kind of stuff So just bear with us. Just one moment. We'll take a short break and be right back For there's truly something to satisfy your interests go to feed out org slash books to learn more. Thanks for listening Welcome back to the fee cast everybody. Well, we were gone. We were talking about More a little bit more about the podcast bros and what they're doing for people And one of the things that and jane just said that I thought was pretty interesting was it's it's as much as you May criticize it's still kind of the market speaking. They are they are benefiting a lot of people Yeah, they're popular people are listening to them They wouldn't be referencing an article if there wasn't a group of people out there Whoever they are that find them interesting and valuable. They these people their message adds value to their life Joe Rogan is quoted as saying that he gets 30 million downloads every month That doesn't surprise 30 million people download and listen to his podcast. I'm a little jealous Brittany hunter explains it right behind them right behind Brittany hunter explains the appeal in her article she she says self improvement has become so popular because It offers an alternative to the powerlessness fostered by the prevailing victimhood narrative And and I think that that is true that especially in a world where people are made to feel powerless By politics because the message of politics is saying that like you can only get Your life in order if you prevail over these enemy population groups Your values can only be enforced by the people in power is also kind of the message to me of all politics Yeah, well right on both sides right like you can only you can only succeed if you defeat the bad people You can only win if you align are aligned with the good people that so that gets into the article that I I wrote with a lot of dan's editorial help the other day Actually, don't even remember what we called young minds are determined or un What undermined yeah, I can't even read Young minds are undermined by today's fashionable philosophies and what what I was trying to get at with that was It actually came out of this thing that we're doing at fee In the way that we're doing messaging and trying to figure out how best to Talk to people and how to think about talking to people and that some of that got built off of this idea called scarf, which is Like talking to our audience, right? Yeah talking to our audience And honestly, it's kind of helpful in general. So scarf is this this motivational model Motivated that's sort of the wrong way of saying it motivation. That sounds like yeah, but it's it's a model of the way that people are motivated um created by this guy named david rock who's a You know a business consultant and a psychologist and and scarf stands for status certainty autonomy relatedness and fairness And the idea is that these are the things that everybody's sort of seeking to either Like you're either seeking to gain In those things or you're seeking to avoid losing those things, right? So it's like, you know, all of us are all the time sort of, you know In this constant battle of like trying to seek You know improvement versus avoid pain and like what's s what's s again s is status So like if you think about you know the way that people look to get a promotion or Just look for more respect among their their peers, right? And so uh, one of the examples would be You know, if you were a boss or if you're a manager who's which is what david rock usually is talking to Um, you know, if you recognize this you might say Okay, I'm now I know that to get the best work out of people and to get them really fired up and motivated about doing Whatever it is that we want them to do I will praise them super publicly speaking to their status. Yeah speaking to their status and say like You know what? I'm the boss. I have high status. I say great job, right? Yeah, that way Their status bumps up and they feel like like doing more work But the point that I'm making in the in the article is that a lot of our pop philosophy a lot of the ideas that get Expressed in tv and film and in academia are kind of oppositional to a lot of these things Yeah, especially the philosophy of the victim hood narrative that um, britney talked about in her article That it opposes as you raise in your article It especially opposes autonomy Because you write that meanwhile the notion that nameless faceless institutions and society at large dictate everything important about people's lives Is now extremely popular the result is the belief that outcomes in your life aren't a consequence of your own decisions But of random forces well beyond your control and I like to think of it in terms of the uh, the serenity prayer It's like it's like give me this the um, what is it? Give me the strength to change the things or give me the courage to change the things I can give me the strength to accept the things I can't change and give me the knowledge Right and and there there's also a notion of like the the locus of control where you if if you focus on things that you're That are outside of your control you're going to be constantly feel frustrated and powerless Whereas if you focus on the things that you can actually control like your own life Then you actually Start to Feel empowered. I think we all know those people that do blame others for any sort of anything. It can be really small I mean, I think that we all encounter people in our daily lives that do blame Kind of the outside world for what they're experiencing any negativity And I think that so what you're saying is that one of the pop philosophies That we're talking about here is kind of acknowledging or I guess over-acknowledging systematic oppression As as an antagonistic attack on the the importance of autonomy Yeah, and and look I and I'm not trying to say in the article or anywhere else that there aren't those things right like that That stuff all exists. I mean to to one degree or another depending on who you are or where you are or what we're talking about but they're That shouldn't be the defining factor for your life because if it is You're going to feel really disempowered all the time, right? You're you're never going to feel like somebody who can get ahead And that's that's kind of where I was going with some of these other things I just kind of I really like the way that you just framed that it's not that To to blame systematic systematic downfalls or systematic. I guess problems For your failure is not necessarily that somebody's wrong in doing that It's that doing that is going to make you suffer as an individual. Yeah Yeah, and I and I think that's so part of the the point of writing that for me was was I was thinking about scarf, but I was also For whatever reason at the moment. I was sort of inundated with stuff about Teen depression and suicide and you're looking at all of these these things where you see evidence Suggesting any way that there are a lot of negative feelings out there among young people And then I spent a lot of my time looking at the ideas that are presented to people mostly through film and television But I mean that's what we care about here at fee. It's like how do we communicate ideas to young people, right? So I I look at something like status and I see a world where you know People there are a lot of people who really reject even the idea that status should be a thing or that You know hierarchies are always bad and you hear a lot of those kinds of things Or that you are bad for striving for Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean that you're you're bad and and it's and it's weird too because there's this level of You know, we say oh these people in power privilege or whatever. They're they're bad people But instead of saying well, I'd like everybody to be raised up to a point where they all feel super empowered A lot of times we go, let's knock the the people at the top down. Yes And so when you think about that across the board, you know through all of these other things I feel like we're sometimes creating a world where it's sort of set up for people to feel bad about themselves Yeah, and for those people who aren't Socially there's not really a space for them socially to be proud of who they are Speaking to you white men that by trying to better themselves. What else could they possibly do if who they are Is offensive to people then What can what can you do besides put butter in your coffee and just try to be better than you were yesterday? Yeah, I think that's kind of true. It's it's it's tough I think for a lot of people, but you know not white man. I think everybody, right? I mean, I think it's it's difficult to find your place in the world. It's difficult to Feel like you are successful and competent and that you matter You know, and if a lot of You know, one of the things I talked about in the article I briefly mentioned is sort of Nathaniel Brandon's approach to self-esteem, which is and the self-esteem movement as it exists today Which is that you know self-esteem is really built off of earned success real self-esteem, right? But we've spent the last 25 years or so telling people that we can just give people trophies and Hey, you're great, you know, and that's the same thing and it's not really the same thing No, yeah, because people you we can tell kids that but kids know the difference between real accomplishment and And just a pat on the head and a pat on the head is just not enough Like they that there's an inner drive in the individual to actually achieve Because you know, evolutionarily speaking that You know, we know if we're going to thrive and survive Or or not and and just a pat on the head isn't going to put food on the table Yeah, and that's that's where I actually think the pod some of these like podcast bros or whatever are kind of doing a good thing because To the extent that they're helping people Get better at actually accomplishing stuff that is meaningful to them and that they want to accomplish and getting themselves into a Place that's better in their careers or whatever else they're helping people You know gain that self-esteem that self-worth, you know, all the things that are sort of at odds with depression and you know Suicidal thoughts and all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of we just we want to blame external factors for our for our failures But that just creates an environment where we are all Feel like failures, right and instead of saying I can control the things that I do and I can control My future my destiny, which is a very cheesy thing to say I mean, it's meaningful It's just interesting to me how the pursuit of self-improvement is being aligned with vanity and maybe there's a reason for this there's a quote from the british publication the spectator about the About the podcast culture and the quote is that the new narcissist The new narcissism is about being vain and virtuous at the same time That is instagram if I've ever heard it. Yeah, vain and virtuous To me the ultimate vanity is to think that you can like fix the world economy like When you can't even clean your room so so I I have this article called Clean your room change the world and it talks about how jordan peterson His big message is he keeps telling people also a podcast bro. That's right. That's right Is you know, there's all these young people who are talking about like how we need to restructure the world economy When they can't even centrally plan their own closet All right on that note, so we're going to take a short break, but we will be right back after these messages Oh boy, you know starting out in the in the music business or in just any business You have to have the carrot dangling. You have to know what your goals are I think if anybody goes in without a goal, you're pretty much doomed This is a family business my daughters My son-in-law my brother we we can't walk away from this This is something we pass on I mean you're always going to run into the wall. It's just can you figure out how to go under it around it over it That makes For longevity of a business. You can't give up. You just don't let yourself give up Watch mama gold tone and more documentaries about women in business in our how we thrive series at fee.org slash shows Welcome back once again to the fee cast Just before the break. We were talking a little bit about The sort of jordan peterson the the anthemic jordan peterson refrain of if you can't clean your room You can't change the world But I want to know if that's sort of true. I mean there's a lot of people who You know have done really big things in the world who have not necessarily had the most clean or pristine personal lives You know, I mean some people that we're fans of even a lot of the time Spent most of their effort on the big picture stuff and did have some successes there So, I don't know. I just want to take yeah, who are you talking about when you say that? Well, I mean rand is a pretty good example. You want to talk about I'm rand is uh, it's pretty messy personal life pretty messy You know as an individual maybe did you not have the cleanest room possible But she did change the world But yeah, she made some some really big impacts on people But I mean, I think you see this a lot. Uh, paul johnson the the historian has a great Great article from many many years ago called the heartless lovers of humankind Where he talks he talks about rand. Um, he also talks about carl marx is very interesting carl marx was I mean Ideological problems aside marx himself was a terrible terrible guy like he He was awful to everyone. He got his his uh, he he lived off his his father's money You know, basically indefinitely and then when that sort of got cut off. He started living off of angles money Uh, and then he he had a kid. He had a illegitimate son that he rejected He had an illegitimate son with I think one of the maids That cleaned his house and then tried to pass off that son onto angles like really really bad Bad stuff, but yet marx, uh made a powerful impact on the world of ideas, right? So I don't know. I'd just like to open it up to to that conversation a little bit Yeah, I mean, we don't know if it was A positive impact for any any given sure like we have strong opinions but big Yeah, yeah in general, but and and so the and then there's the world of of just ideas In terms of just like convincing people of your ideas And then there's like the market test too and it would be interesting to to ask like, okay Are there great entrepreneurs who do amazing things with their businesses, but Would have messy rooms. Oh, Steve Jobs didn't like yeah jobs Stick his feet in the toilet when he was stressed or something or jobs was it was a lunatic Yeah, like so many ways and also I just read a heartbreaking article A few like a few days ago. Maybe a week ago about Lisa his daughter who he never Acknowledged as his daughter on like his deathbed. He was like, you're not my daughter go away And it was just you know, like there's like Drake and his daughter Great artist I will say that you know, there's the biography by Walter Isaacson that was pretty harsh on Steve Jobs And I read one called becoming Steve Jobs that Talked about his his growth that he actually there was a growth arc that wasn't really captured in the Isaacson bio And I that's not I mean, that's good No, I don't want to be dismissive of dismissive of that, but I think to the point You know, you can be Some of these people but also I think it's worth keeping in mind that these are incredible outliers, right? Like jobs is not a person that I think anybody should legitimately aspire to Not necessarily because you don't want to be like Steve Jobs, but because you can't be like Steve Jobs Like there's just not anybody who's going to be that guy But the reality is Steve Jobs was just a guy I mean, we're all just people and we can't escape that fact and so I think we should just engage in a little bit of maybe managing our expectations and refraining from engaging in hero worship because We all we all have, you know skeletons in the closet. There's all we all have things speak for yourself. Is that external? It's really it is the it's the misdirection of the external Again to me it's like saying yeah, that person has achieved this amazing goal Instead of saying I'm going to achieve this amazing goal or I have exactly Hero worship is denying the hero within you. Yeah Well one one thing I will say as maybe you know just to shift back On to the the sort of scarf topic and the the topic of ideas and society and stuff Um, I would say that everybody that we're talking about rand or jobs or marx or really almost anybody you can drake Oh, well drake probably too. I mean, um probably I didn't know them personally and didn't know any of these people personally But I would I would imagine that very few of them Well, I know for a fact ran didn't feel this way because she's written about it a ton But did not feel like They were beholden to the rest of the world They were waiting for other people to make their mark. Right. They were empowered as individuals They went after it on their own. It's definitely true of drake In his lyrics like yeah, that's true of drake Anyway, uh, no, I think that's a perfectly good. I think if you look at the most successful people, um You you'll find that to be a pretty common trait, right? Like this this sense of self that That extends beyond that I did this. Yeah, not you gave this to me But also this this sort of chip that says like, okay societal barriers Whatever, I don't care. Yeah. I'm I'm going through this. Yeah, and I'm gonna do we were talking in the in the pre-production meeting about harvey milk a little bit who was a for those who don't know was a Politician in san francisco is one of the first openly gay Politicians and harvey milk was a great example of that somebody who faced tremendous odds You know, this is in the 60s and 70s and uh, and yet Uh, did not let that stop him for a second, right? Just bulldozed his way through a lot of those things Yeah, but I also what distinguishes the podcast bros for me is that they Are heroes who tell people to be heroes themselves? Whereas there are some kinds of demagogues Who um, basically make people feel that their only value is through them And I think that's the difference between like a true self-improvement You know a guru so to speak and and a political demagogue. What do you mean through them? Like that that the only way like that you can make an impact on the world is if you vote for me Sure, or I mean, you know talking about What I see in film and television a lot is is a lot of these You get this in kids movies a lot where where you get this like everybody's the same Nobody's any better than anybody else kind of stuff And then you get the occasional movie like the Incredibles or whatever where it's like No, wait our our powers make a special And we should we should use them we should be doing stuff with this We should actually be changing the world With the skills that we have and the talents that we have instead of being sort of pushed into this blob of You know, everybody is exactly the same kind of egalitarianism and I don't even know if it's Legitimately egalitarianism, you know, I the stuff like that just always feels a little Sad to me Yeah, and and and I think there's like True core within us that responds to The messages of Incredibles like that's why Incredibles is such a big hit in whereas Whereas a lot of these like educational programming that have these sort of like watered down egalitarian message that You know, if that's the only thing on then people kids will watch it, but it's not like they go crazy about it I think it's important to kind of thread the needle on this though because Individualism is great and I definitely support people Doing and trying to improve themselves but We do get a lot of benefit out of our communities, of course support and love and Especially for people who transition from communities where they aren't accepted for their immutable characteristics The things they can't change and into a community Whether where they are accepted and loved for those things that is Powerful. Yeah, and I think we sometimes unnecessarily pit you're right I think we unnecessarily pit individual responsibility and and kind of autonomy against systematic or It's sort of external One of my saying stimuli That you can't be individually responsible and enjoy the benefits of identity Communities or on the flip side that you can't be individually responsible and still see the inequities on a systemic level Yeah, and say hey, I want to fight these too. I think I think that's I think you're right I don't think that's mutually exclusive at all I think the area where I get afraid of some of that stuff is when you turn identity into a divisive For us we were talking about this earlier this idea You know when we were talking about scarf talking about relatedness is one of the values The motivations that people have we all want to feel connected to each other. It's the are in scarf Or scraft as I was calling it There's different ways of feeling related and one way that again the demagogues make people feel related is in Mutual antagonism for an out group. Yeah, and and that's what scares me that that stuff scares me anything where somebody is saying We're related because we're part of this tribe, but everybody over there You are so unrelated that we can't even talk to you if I catch one of you talking to them I'm gonna ex-communicate you from this group if I catch you You know even thinking or saying anything that might signal that you're open And the only way that we can advance as a group is at the expense of that other group Right that what's keeping us from advancing is the fact that that their Activity is holding us back some way and war is the only way that we can because Ultimately this identity politics is sort of like low-key war. It's just that like We can only advance by you know taking Goodies from other groups or by exploiting individuals. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, and that's the stuff that I think that I think worries me and it plays back into this idea of like If you look around and you want to look at what ideas are going to make some people Feel more empowered feel happier feel more You know feel more self-esteem Versus the ideas that are going to make people feel detached isolated antagonistic or combative with their fellow human being It matters to me a lot that we're kind of trying to create a society where One of those sets of ideas is the prominent one and the other one is kind of left to the dustbin of history But on that super happy note. I think it's actually time to end but Thank you guys. This has been a wonderful discussion I was happy to be a guest this week and I loved having you hopefully do it again I'm speaking for myself. Yeah, like oh, maybe maybe not everybody. You've been great But we'll be back here uh next week. Uh, you'll catch us every single week on fridays So thank you and enjoy your weekend