 I wanted to know, I have never had a productive networking event. I networked pretty well. I've never gone to a networking event where I got much of anything out of it. So what would you label as a productive result at a networking event? I don't even know. I mean in general I end up with people's cards, they end up with my card, nothing much happens, some vendors usually try to contact me in a very direct way. I have in general found this to be useless. So it may be that I'm not the right person to be talking to about these things because in general this isn't any way, I have no insight as to how to get a networking event to work for you. Well there's, I think a lot of the old ideas was to go in and run the room and be seen and collect all the cards and now you have all these contacts when we're trying to get people to settle in on, if you go out and you make one or two good connections that evening of some partners that you could do some work with or even a new friend who has similar interests that you guys can develop together, that is more successful than the guy who run the room, collected all the cards and then make a connection with them. I would argue there's even a small, it may seem imperceptible to you, but there's a small amount of value to meeting you in person, seeing you in a room full of people in person versus just listening to you on audio. And we've been doing this for 12 years and the reaction that we get, although our audience is not nearly as big, when they meet in person it personalizes the experience of getting to know you, they feel closer to you and ultimately maybe not immediately in your inbox the next day, it's probably led to more opportunities, more people paying attention to you, more people viewing you in higher regard and over time we're saying these are compounding effects, right? So it may be small and imperceptible based on that one networking event, but if you stuck with it, you would probably see better invites, you would be stuck on this podcast with us, you might be on some bigger podcasts over time, right? So that's the compounding effect that we're preaching. But before we get a little too far off course, I want to ask you as someone who's very similar to a lot of our audience and feeling that you overanalyze and there's opportunity cost, have you developed any guardrails to allow you to make a decision in a more timely manner to lower the opportunity cost? No. Yeah. Well, let's unpack that. How have you struggled with that if you haven't reached that conclusion? What have you tried? What could be helpful to our audience who's feeling indecisive, who's feeling really analytical and now is realizing that there's opportunity costs to this? I mean, I think the way I would say it is I don't have a lot of advice for people who wish to remain generic. If you want to remain like I'm a rationalist or I'm a Republican or I'm a motorsports enthusiast and that's my thing, great. I just don't know what to tell you. What I do know is that between almost every pair of ears, there are crazy thoughts that you're trying to suppress, right? And you don't want anyone to know that you're thinking these thoughts. Occasionally, they may slip out of your mouth and you might hear gasps. Surely you don't think that. If you can figure out one or two of those things that you actually believe and you can commit to them and you can get through that initial negativity, you will find that the most interesting people will be saying, you know, I didn't catch your name. I asked somebody else. I hope you don't mind that I'm using this email address, but I'm holding a private gathering and we're discussing this issue. The thing that you fear getting out may be your most valuable asset. It may be the thing that distinguishes you. And one of the things that I'm very angry at the LGBTQ community for is monopolizing the concept of a closet. Closets have nothing to do with sexual orientation. A closet is simply any structure that is keeping you from clearing your throat and saying what you believe to be an outside, untrained, unfavorable, unpopular opinion. And when you actually find one of those things that you have the courage to scream and you come out of the closet and there's no going back, right? There's no return ticket. It's a one-way ticket. You will find out whether you are actually crazy and you should have stayed in the closet or whether there's a world that says, thank God, somebody finally said it. And what I would say is if your audience is who I think it largely might be, you've got gold that you are sitting on and trying to keep the world from hearing about. And what I would admonish you to do is to think about, all of you can build a website, build a website and start to put cookie crumbs out towards that thing that you actually are. And if I can say it just the most disturbing way possible, most people will die never having heard their own voice. And that is, I don't think people realize how profound a situation that is. And I would go a step further reason with yourself. So not only the suppression of the thought, but whether it's hitting record on the podcast or putting it out on YouTube or writing the blog. That level of commitment entails reasoning and developing out that thought further. And yes, there may be a nugget of gold, but you got to clear off all the dirt around it by actually vocalizing it, whether it's an audio form or written form or video form. I think the sad part is a lot of us have these thoughts bouncing around that we actually don't even try to reason with internally, let alone share with the world. And this is getting comfortable and finding your voice, getting comfortable with that voice and then being able to express it to other people. This is hoisting your flag so that others are able to see it and able to salute it if they if they wish. And that takes a certain amount of comfortability with themselves. And and and that's why I love self development because self development lay. There's so many different ideas how you can go about getting more comfortable with yourself to allow yourself to shine for other to express yourself to other people. Well, OK, but this is super dangerous advice we're talking about here. And I want to highlight. You can use reason. You can try to figure out the packaging. But if I look at somebody like James D'Amore and his memo at Google. I mean, that guy killed his life as a caterpillar working for Google. That stage of his life was over. Now, I don't think he necessarily maximized his butterfly potential on the other side of it. But the world was watching this thing. Certainly was. And many people myself included said, that's a very weird thing to get fired for. You asked. You Google asked for feedback. You had a seminar that was intended to help people develop as managers. Somebody gave you feedback coming from a big five psychological inventory. Perspective quoting a professor from the University of Toronto. And you got fired and you got humiliated, but you also got celebrated. And so this is one of these very weird things about what holds us back. Is you are going to be offensive to large numbers of people. That's the market of ideas, right? So if you don't have any ideas, maybe you can get by without it. But what where I learned about this, I didn't mean to cut you out. Come back to it. I did this podcast with from a live event with Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris at the Masonic in San Francisco, and it was the perfect Rorschach test. I needed to have done this to have learned the stupid fact. For everything we were praised for, we were vilified as well in the comments. And that was the thing was like, oh, Ben is a joy to listen to. Finally, somebody arguing for the religious perspective in a rational way. What is Ben Shapiro doing on this stage? This guy is a complete hack trying to argue for the religious perspective from a rational perspective. OK, because of that, I learned a very stupid truth, which is some people love you for the exact thing that other people will hate you for. As a result, you have to make a decision. Are you not willing to be hated for anything from a reasonable perspective? Right? Because if you say anything, there is a reason to hate what it ever it is that you that you said, maybe maybe you've made some comment about Taco Bell and somebody's, you know, aunt was killed in a Taco Bell. And they think that you're being insensitive. We don't need any Taco Bell emails, please. We've had enough. We've had enough. That's Taco Bell. So in that in that setting, what I came to understand is, oh, there's no way of keeping these people happy. There's no it is literally provably impossible. Ergo. You have to decide what your butterfly stage is meant to be after you kill your caterpillar to your caterpillar stage is usually trying to get along with the world, trying to get along with the employer. If you get fired, try to get fired for the right thing. Try to get fired for saying something brave or noble. You know, my brother effectively got fired for opposing the idea that one group should tell another group that they should get off campus for a day symbolically, you know, and he was absolutely right. And he was dealing with racists and bigots who happened weirdly to be, you know, black and brown bigots as opposed to white bigots. And most of us are mostly used to dealing with white bigotry. OK, well, that was that was a little unusual. It wasn't that unusual. And is he happier? And is he better off after having this situation blow up on him? I would say, yeah, because closets are small and they're uncomfortable and you can't actually live in them. So find your closet and break out of it. Skip the networking events. Build a website. Say something of interest. Watch the world beat a path to your door. Be prepared that you're going to have to go with that income for a few months because you're going to piss somebody off and it might be your employer. So make sure that you've got, you know, a certain amount of supplies. And when you clear your throat, don't put too many wiggle words in it, because quite honestly, courage and bravery in the service of something noble or attractive and it is a wide open opportunity set out there because everybody is scared to talk. And and people were looking for that. I mean, hence the the the crowd that the IDW had collected when everyone spoke their truth and stood for what they believed in and and everyone was like, I want more of that in my life. And so, of course, let's follow that crowd around because they are they are speaking that truth to and it's their truth and whether or not I'm going to believe what they have to say on all points remains to be seen. But I want more of that. I want to have this discussion. I think and I think we're all trying to get comfortable with that at this point. Well, I think we are. I also want to focus. I mean, I guess I'm a little bit worried. We haven't explicitly talked about gender in this conversation, but there is a feeling that your audience is mostly male, mostly. No, no, no, actually, the most vocal section of our audiences is women. Let's talk about what they're what they're going through. And is it different in your demographics? So and we have run women's programs. We have one all women's program coming up in October. And their perspective is really twofold. Number one, most of the men who come to us in terms of socialization, there's a certain level of requirement that they approach people and strike up conversations, right? That's the social norm, the construct that men do the approaching. Whether it's in a business networking setting or in a social setting. Women are used based on the social constructs culturally here to being approached and they feel that if they actually approach someone, it signals a level of intent that as men were not signaling as strong. So because of that, there's reticence on their part to approach people. They don't want if, hey, even if they're a fanboy of yours or a fangirl of yours to walk up to you and strike up a conversation thinking, oh, well, maybe he's going to see me as hitting on him. The men don't really have that concern in their mind. So that was the first thing we sort of eye opening for us of like, wow, OK, we do approach exercises in class and then go out and talk to people. And we didn't realize that there was going to be that sort of barrier in their mind. Now, having come out the other side of the program, they realize that, wow, breaking that barrier is really powerful. And I've been limiting myself and opportunities by not approaching people that I want to talk to. Right. Right. So it's been helpful for them. The second thing is the way they're perceived in their career and the way speaking up in particular is perceived. So and and you could argue that we saw this in the last election with the way that Trump's language was perceived by the masses as being strong, powerful and a leader and Hillary using similar terminology was seen as, you know, cold, bitchy, whatever you want to call it, the labels were put on her. And you take a step back and like, but they're essentially trying to say the same things, but they're being perceived in a completely different way. So their concern was, how can I speak up and speak my voice, but get the same benefits that men seem to be receiving in the workplace? And for me and Johnny, we're pretty honest about it. We're like, hey, let's have a conversation about this. But if we look at where we are in history and what you're talking about this specific environment and scenario, this is a new world for us. Realistically, in humans history, you know, women in the workplace taking on leadership roles, whether you like it or not, this is new. So we're trying to learn it to, hey, let's learn together. Let's figure out a way to communicate more effectively. We don't necessarily have the correct scientific answer to how to do that. But that was a deeper underlying concern for the women that a lot of men don't come to us with. For them to even have that conversation in a safe environment where they wouldn't feel judged for wanting to have that conversation was extremely powerful and extremely productive and good for them. So I mean, we're trying to continue to have that conversation because it needs to be had in an environment, because obviously if you open your mouth about something that you feel strongly about and you're going to be judged harshly over it and that's the first time that you spoke up. That might be a while before you go ahead and do that again. So as we all know, we have to we have to come out of the closet on our own terms and and have these conversations and show that there's nothing wrong with having these conversations. In fact, it allows everyone in the room to feel more comfortable if we are having these conversations. Well, not everyone. I mean, you know, one of the. I guess I think about this a lot in terms of female colleagues, my wife, my daughter. And I think that the pressures that women are under are very often somewhat invisible to us as men. Absolutely. We completely agree with and a colleague approached me recently who had just moved into a management position and she said, I'm trying to figure out how to avoid some of the gender dynamics with telling men what to do and do you have any suggestions? I actually put a lot of thought into it and I came up with a rubric, which is I said, you know, do you feel that you were promoted because you are in general more on top of your game technically at this point? She said, yes. And I said, OK, why not bet the men in your group when you think that you're right and they think that they're right? A beer or a round of drinks. And that way, if they win, you are still in a powerful position because you are the provider of the round of drinks, which is a traditional commanding position so that you show that you can acknowledge because I think one of the fears that a lot of men have is that a lot of women bring things immediately into the gendered setting. In other words, we're having a disagreement. And if I was having it with a with a fellow man, I would say, you know, let's let's settle this. But if the woman says, wow, you really just don't get it because I'm female. You're just thinking like, OK, I've got no tools. I do not know how to come back from that. It could be the exact same point, but we don't want to get into that gendered issue. So in this setting, I think that my friend was very appreciative that there was a way of making sure that she could show that she was OK with being corrected if she was wrong, which was very important that she could be right where there would be no consequence if she was right, but if she was wrong, she would pick up the round of drinks. It spoke to understanding a male idiom, but without having to become male herself in her in her manner, we don't give women good advice. I just I'm absolutely convinced they're searching for it. I mean, they're listening to the show. They're looking for that answer. You know, the caveat that I would raise and tweak the rubric would be lunch instead of drinks, because for again, a lot of what we're hearing from our women's audience is I just don't want to go out for drinks with the guys after work. Like I want to be taken seriously at work. I want to be able to command respect and do my job really well. This was a person overseeing a group of exclusively. My understanding was exclusively men. Right. And so having to establish for our audience, just the idea of, hey, lunch is an opportunity. You pick up their lunch, hey, you buy my salad if I'm right. And I buy you a salad. Well, let's say probably steak sandwich, whatever you want to call it. Again, allows that opportunity, as you said, without forcing necessarily and the women that we've talked to is, you know, when we start bringing alcohol into this, it creates a whole other dynamic that we haven't. Well, that's why we have to be in a group that wouldn't be one on one. But it's still there's an unease for women and women in our audience of, you know, being the sole woman now with the group of guys having drinks. And science shows that we behave differently in those group settings. But partially the issue around certain kinds of group activities has to do with barriers and intimacy. And so the issue of male female intimacy in the workplace is an unsolved problem, just as with, you know, you could have similar issues with same sex, you know, with with gay supervisors. So there's no way around this. I think it has to be said that in part the workplace is an unsolved work in progress. Yeah, we completely agree. If you take alcohol out, you get one set of problems. If you have alcohol in, you have another set of problems. If you allow certain kinds of jokes, you have one set of problems. If you disallow them, you have others. So I think it's very important to recognize that at this point, like, I don't know that I agree with your advice. I know that it does solve certain problems, but I know that it creates others. If you ask me, you know, I'll buy your salad doesn't have the same feeling as I'll buy the first round, because that has a very specific significance in male culture. Right. We are all figuring this out. And I think this was one of Jordan Peterson's points that a lot of this stuff remains to be seen because we haven't figured out how this can all work. It's not clear whether it all has a solution. Well, I had shared a podcast with Johnny a while back that I found fascinating. And it really looked at the first women in the workplace to move into management. And it was a decade long study looking at the behaviors of the first women to really join the group setting with men. And they noted that there was a behavior change that took place and the women who stayed stuck it through essentially became one of the guys and would throw just negativity towards the other women, look to cut all the other women standing down in the group. And then when they remove them and ask them, you know, how are you getting along with your female colleagues? Oh, they said everything that you would expect. But that behavior change was noticed and it happened in sales context. It happened in a consulting context. And I think to that point where women are struggling when they come to us and ask for help is they want to be true to themselves, but they feel like they have to become someone else in these settings to be around the round of drinks or to be collegial with their colleagues that does not feel true to themselves. And they see other people who they feel are true to themselves, achieving success and they're unable to. And that's really where the frustration lies for them. And I see something, I see that and then I see a different thing, which is that a lot of the females that I deal with who are outliers in their field is just some power law and they're absolutely brilliant. Very often are very frustrated with female group dynamics, more than male group dynamics. And one of the things I've often run a seminar that is I've led questions, other people also have this role in my firm. When I lead the questions and I'm interviewing somebody from outside, I'm always looking for female hands because I want to make sure that I'm not making a mistake of going in just you're in a default guy, guy idiom. And we were having lunch afterwards. And I listened to a bunch of the women in the office talking about, oh, well, the eager beavers, you know, they're raising their hands at the end. I said, it's interesting. You could rustle, conjugate that to go getters and go getter and eager beaver are a positive and a negative conjugation of the same concept. What if we just flip it cognitively a little bit and said, maybe the idea is that you had the most interesting question. We all needed to hear it, but you sat on it because you didn't want to be an eager beaver. That was very interesting for me because it was clear to me that there was a female dynamic in this group that was selecting for different behavior. Maybe it was going to select for more regularity. Maybe it was going to select in general for cohesion, but it wasn't going to select as much for an outlying behavior. And so the question of our men holding back, are men holding women back at work to some extent? Are women holding other women back at work? Yes, also to some extent. Then there's this question of, is there going to be a one time cost for really integrating the workforce where previously all male fields, when they break into more even distributions, maybe it's not going to be that tough to enter in and to find some new idiom that women won't have to be behaving in a male idiom. I don't know about any of these things. Per se, what I do know is that we're all scared to be talking about this because we need to not have this immediately go personal. And this is one of the things that I think is destroying our ability to have conversations, you have to talk at some level of abstraction to create safety rather than say, well, Jim, you just ignored me two meetings ago. And then suddenly, you know, that's all that's going to be heard or talked about for 30 minutes and it's going to leave everybody feeling just incapable of actually talking. Well, this is why I love your advice of put your truth out there, move from caterpillar to butterfly, because anyone who does that understands that there are going to be people who dislike you. And too many of us are the ones to hit the dislike and leave the negative comment. Johnny and I laugh. You know, we listen to a lot of content that stinks. Yeah, I'm not in there hammering in the comments and saying what's wrong with you, why you on your phone. I just tune in the next episode or go find something else. But when you put yourself out there in a position to actually get the arrows, you are less likely to be slinging arrows. It's building that thicker skin, I think, would help everyone because this thin skin is creating an environment where we can't have conversations like this. Three guys trying to talk about workplace dynamics where we're interacting with women, we're trying to elevate them. There's going to be a significant contingent of people who are going to say, you're wrong. I'm wrong. Johnny's wrong. I'm sure the ladders will come. Yeah, but it's coming from people who haven't put themselves out there to develop a thicker skin and not personalize this conversation. This conversation doesn't have to be about you and that one time out at drinks where someone clumsily made a move on you. This could be us trying to grapple with dynamics that listened are pressing and we don't have the answers to. Yeah, I think it's also the case that we need to say why we're having these conversations. I mean, I'm very clear on what matters to me here, which is that I watch people walk away from contributions because they don't like dynamics. And if you imagine that 50 percent of the world's best minds are on female shoulders, how many women are walking away from their special voice, their contributions? You know, I think about this one woman who stood up to the pharmaceutical industry and said, I don't think Thalidomide is as safe as you guys are claiming it is. It's not going to be approved until you actually can show me the data. We did not have the problem with flipper babies that Europe did because this particular tough lady, you know, took it on herself to stand in front of a juggernaut and said, not on my watch. OK, well, we have we males have an interest, like a selfish interest. If we want to live in a world with better medicine, better inventions, better democracy of solving these problems, it's not all about some sort of public spirited. Well, what can we do for the women? I mean, I'm just not interested. I'm more much more interested in this out of greed that we are just giving away almost half of humanity by not solving this problem. And it's not public spirited in the slightest. I think we need to also be more honest and open about what our motivations are. I've just watched a couple of women not push brilliant discoveries through because it was too unpleasant. And that that's what really animates me. It's much less fairness and niceness. It's much more this is just a massive loss. And we appreciate you for coming on, having this conversation with us and our audience. And obviously, we know that's what you're doing at the portal. So can you give our audience a place to check out more? Obviously, the portal is a great spot to start your new podcast on the cast network. I appreciate that. Look for the portal at Spotify, Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. We also have a YouTube channel you should be able to find. And on Twitter, where I probably have my largest following, I'm Eric R. Weinstein. And who are you super excited to have on the portal next? Honestly, I would love to have Eric Lewis, Priya Natharajan. I would really like to have some mathematicians that you guys have never heard of. I would love to have Eric Lander or Ed Boyden, George Church. It is also the case that I want to do celebrity interviews. But what I really want to do is to take a bunch of people that your audience is probably only dimly familiar with, if at all, and show people all the amazing things that are happening that aren't really getting any play and any attention at all to find the spaces that we don't know how to break through to. Awesome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.