0:00

So I'm gonna send you... Oh,

0:02

the sirens in Park Slope. This

0:05

is gonna be a fucking problem all episode, isn't it? Welcome

0:07

to New York. The Big Apple. Keep

0:09

in something about you being in New York for this

0:11

episode. That way we get weirdos in our mentions

0:14

being like, but you're still doing it on Zoom? This

0:16

is what is so fucking fascinating to me. It's like I

0:19

started...

0:20

God, there's like a starter's pistol going on outside. Oh,

0:23

so no, that is a... There's construction

0:25

near you. I'm like two blocks from

0:27

the Harman building going up. That

0:30

is some sort of construction site,

0:32

Flintstones horn. Within

0:35

limits, of course. Wait, sorry, there's a siren

0:37

outside. There's sirens a lot in New York. Has anyone

0:39

talked about this? No one has. Do people know

0:41

there's noises in New York? This is why every Brooklyn-based

0:43

podcast just has sirens and sometimes

0:45

you're like, oh,

0:46

they should have waited for the fire

0:49

truck to pass. No, you can't. There's no way

0:51

to do it. And so... Now

0:53

there's a fucking helicopter. I

0:55

love, but Micah Hobbs appears in

0:57

New York in real time. I can't, I'm never coming

0:59

back.

1:14

So I have noticed that most of our episodes only

1:16

get good when we start talking about the book. So

1:19

I'm going to dive pretty quickly into this book. Peter,

1:21

do you know anything about the 48 Laws

1:23

of Power? I've heard of the book, but I don't really know

1:25

anything about it. My high

1:28

level memory of this is that this

1:30

is like lessons that

1:32

this author learned from like observing

1:35

powerful people about how to acquire power

1:37

or something like that. I think you're basing that on the title.

1:39

I think you know the title and you're extrapolating. That

1:42

is possible. You're like, I think there's 48. How

1:44

many are there? Early in this podcast, I used

1:46

to at least look up the Wikipedia

1:49

of the books you were doing. And

1:51

then I was like, no, you have to be fresh. This is my whole thing, Peter.

1:54

And now you do nothing. And now I do

1:56

nothing. And now I do nothing. And this is

1:59

what you get.

1:59

The Canadian Laws of Power is by a guy named Robert Green,

2:02

who we will talk about later. It is published

2:04

in 1998. As usual,

2:06

it's basically impossible to get decent numbers on

2:08

how many copies this book actually sold, but

2:11

the number you usually hear is between

2:13

one and two million copies.

2:15

It seems to have spread

2:18

mostly through word

2:20

of mouth among like CEO types, but then it

2:22

made its way to hip hop. So

2:24

there are lyrics in Jay-Z

2:27

and Kanye West

2:28

songs referring specifically to

2:30

this book. Oh, hell yeah. And you are going

2:32

to rap them for us right now. Yeah, that's the rest

2:34

of the episode. It's just a series of couple of episodes. It

2:36

also says on the Wikipedia entry

2:38

that Drake is developing

2:40

a series called The 48 Laws of Power, but

2:42

it also says that he's developing

2:44

it for Quibi. So I don't know if

2:46

that Wikipedia just hasn't been updated in a while.

2:49

And then according to the author, it's

2:51

now been read by Fidel Castro,

2:54

among others like heads of state.

2:56

And this book

2:58

doesn't really show up on the sort of best

3:00

business books

3:01

ever, like most influential self-help books. It doesn't

3:03

really show up on those lists, but it does show

3:05

up on a lot of lists about the best

3:08

self-help advice for men. Oh, okay.

3:10

So

3:10

this really bounces around

3:13

the sort of polite version of

3:16

the men's rights activist world.

3:19

This is seen as a kind of Bible

3:21

for like how to be

3:22

a man in the world. That's an

3:24

interesting framing because now I'm picturing

3:26

like 70-year-old Fidel

3:28

Castro being like, how do I be a man

3:30

in this world? Wearing a fedora, doing

3:32

magic tricks at the other end of the bar in LA. Okay,

3:35

so this is the first paragraph of the book. The

3:38

feeling of having no power over people

3:40

and events is generally unbearable

3:42

to us. When we feel helpless, we

3:45

feel miserable. No one wants less

3:47

power. No one wants more.

3:50

In the world today, however, it is dangerous

3:52

to seem too power-hungry, to be

3:54

overt with your power moves. We

3:57

have to seem fair and decent.

3:59

So we need to be subtle, congenial yet

4:02

cunning,

4:03

democratic

4:04

yet devious. It's a real problem. We

4:06

all want power, but we can't just be like telling people,

4:09

hello, I would like more power. I immediately don't

4:11

relate, I have to say. Yeah, I struggle.

4:13

There are many situations where I want less power. I

4:16

also am a little concerned that he seems to be

4:18

portraying power as he

4:20

defines it as

4:21

somehow conflicting

4:24

with fairness and decency. He says,

4:26

we have to seem fair and decent.

4:29

Right off the bat, he's like, you know how we're all

4:31

big pieces of shit? Yeah, I think one

4:33

of the tensions that showed up for me literally like

4:35

within words of starting this book was

4:38

like, where in modern life

4:40

are people engaged in power

4:42

struggles like this? Right.

4:43

Yes, there's office politics. Like, you know,

4:46

we all kind of exist within hierarchies that

4:48

like on some level, you have to do a little bit of like

4:50

strategically. Yeah, you know, there's various

4:52

other things of like, maybe you want to be the president of the

4:54

PTA or like you want to coach your

4:56

kids little league team and somebody

4:58

else wants to

4:58

as well and you got to, you know, kind of lobby

5:01

a little bit. But like,

5:03

he

5:04

makes explicit reference throughout the book

5:06

and especially in the intro to like the French court,

5:08

how there were all these people like around the king. And

5:11

you had to suck up to the king, but you

5:13

couldn't like make it obvious that you were sucking

5:16

up

5:16

and you had to beat the other like courtiers

5:18

and kind of scheme

5:20

and backstab and do all this kind of stuff like this sort of

5:22

Game of Thrones conception of,

5:24

you know, human societies. And I just don't

5:27

see it.

5:27

This is immediately conjuring up Game of Thrones

5:29

to me. So I'm glad you said it because there's something weird

5:32

about a framing where our everyday

5:34

lives are a struggle for power. If

5:37

you read that paragraph and it resonates with

5:39

you, you're probably conceptualizing

5:42

your life as like this elaborate realpolitik.

5:45

Yeah. And you're actually living out a

5:47

fantasy just by reading this.

5:49

Right. This reminds me of a lot of like the

5:51

watch marketing and things that

5:53

are pitched at men.

5:54

Okay. And you're going straight

5:56

into personal attacks. It's

6:01

like, you know, you're hiking mountains

6:02

and you're out in the elements and you're like on a sailboat

6:05

in the middle of the night trying to survive and whatever

6:07

and you need

6:07

this watch because you're such an extreme person. Maybe

6:10

I should have said Patagonia or something,

6:11

but it's like it's selling you this

6:13

fantasy of your life as like much

6:15

more exciting than it is. Most of the people

6:17

who drive SUVs are not like

6:19

busting sand dunes in the middle

6:22

of nowhere and going over streams. Man, you're,

6:24

you keep preempting me. I

6:27

was like, I mean, as soon as you were talking

6:29

about this, I was thinking about those commercials of SUVs

6:31

out in the desert. Yeah, yeah, yeah. An authentic

6:34

SUV commercial is like you pulling

6:36

into a Texaco. This book could have

6:38

been called Think Like a Straight Man and

6:40

now I do. That's what you're picking up on. When you said

6:43

Think Like a Straight Man, now I have a, made me think

6:45

of that Steve Harvey book and now I have like, like

6:47

act like a gay boy, think like a straight man.

6:50

That's going to be the title

6:52

of our book when we finally do one, Peter. Our

6:54

powers combined. Okay, so here

6:56

is the end of the intro. He is laying

6:59

out what the book offers and kind of

7:01

how it is going to work. What this book is going

7:03

to contain. Consider the 48 Laws of Power,

7:05

a kind of handbook on the arts of

7:08

indirection. The laws

7:10

are based on the writings of men and women who have

7:12

studied and mastered the game of power. These

7:15

writings span a period of more than 3,000

7:17

years and were created in civilizations

7:20

as disparate as ancient China and

7:23

Renaissance Italy. That they share common

7:25

threads and themes together hinting at

7:28

an essence of power that has

7:30

yet to be fully articulated. 3,000 years.

7:33

The 48 Laws of Power are the distillation

7:36

of this accumulated wisdom gathered

7:39

from the writings of the most illustrious strategist,

7:41

statesman, courtiers, seducers,

7:45

and con artists in history. Who

7:47

would you listen to if you were trying to figure

7:49

out how to coach the Little League team? Oh

7:51

my God, the con artist thing is. Right

7:54

away, he's like, I've learned these things from

7:56

con artists and now I'm teaching them to you.

7:58

I should also mention the

7:59

This is a spoiler, but when he says statesman,

8:02

he

8:02

exclusively means dictators. He

8:05

never refers to like Winston Churchill

8:07

or anybody. And it's like, Mal, like

8:10

over and over again. And like

8:12

Julius Caesar and shit. Right, we're not talking about

8:14

the secretary of the treasury here. No, exactly.

8:16

But then I think this is an important thing to know about this

8:19

book is that this book, the copy that

8:21

I have is 478 pages long. Oh

8:24

my God. It is the opposite of

8:26

filler. I've never seen this. The actual chapters

8:28

are like very dense, like historical

8:31

anecdotes. Like that's most of the book, is these

8:33

like long historical anecdotes.

8:34

But then also the margins

8:36

are also filled with

8:38

like Swahili Fable,

8:40

quotes from philosophers and shit. So it's just

8:42

like this black brick of words

8:46

shining in your face for like a month

8:48

on end. Like this was the experience of reading the book for me.

8:50

God, that is hellish. I mean, the, I will

8:53

say the one thing that's great about the books

8:55

that we do is that they have so much filler that

8:57

you can sort of mentally skip over.

9:00

I know. And how many times have we said this, that

9:02

like these books so

9:04

often present themselves as the

9:07

sort of like inheritors of

9:09

this ancient wisdom? How Alexander

9:11

the Great's conquest can teach

9:13

you how to get that promotion

9:16

instead of Josh.

9:17

Before we get into like the

9:19

sort of patterns that the book is doing, I

9:21

want to talk about how this book works.

9:24

So one thing that I will say for him is

9:26

that he's a very structured thinker.

9:29

These aren't just like a series of kind of random rants.

9:32

Every law is broken up

9:34

into like very clear sections.

9:38

For example, law one is

9:40

never outshine the master. And

9:43

after each law, he gives a sort of basic

9:46

premise of this law. So he calls it the judgment,

9:49

right? And so he says, always make

9:51

those above you feel comfortably superior

9:54

in your desire to please and impress them. Do

9:56

not go too far in displaying your talents or

9:58

you might accomplish the opposite. Fire fear

10:00

and insecurity. Make your masters look more

10:02

brilliant than they are and you will attain

10:05

the heights of power." So that's what

10:07

he's about to lay out, right? And

10:09

then he has these historical sections which

10:11

he calls observance

10:12

of the law or

10:14

transgression of the law. So

10:17

for this one, he uses Galileo

10:19

who didn't quite invent but

10:22

massively modified and improved

10:24

the telescope. And when

10:26

he looks

10:27

up at the sky, he finds

10:30

four moons of Jupiter and

10:32

no one had ever seen these before and it was like a whole big

10:34

fucking deal because people thought that everything rotated around

10:36

the Earth but here are these things rotating around Jupiter. It's

10:39

like a massive

10:40

deal. And his patrons

10:43

are the Medici. I didn't even know Patreon was

10:45

around back then.

10:46

They're at the $10

10:48

tier

10:48

so they get the bonus moons.

10:51

And so he decides to

10:53

name the four moons after

10:56

his like four Medici backers. He

10:59

kind of goes out of his way to basically imply that

11:01

like the very heavens

11:04

are like recognizing the brilliance

11:06

of the Medici. It's like, well, there's four of you and

11:08

there's four of them and it's a much

11:10

longer anecdote. So you've

11:13

done this show before, Peter. You

11:15

know how these books work. I've just told

11:17

you

11:18

a historical example. What

11:20

am I going to tell you now, Peter? Presumably that some of

11:22

the facts contained within

11:24

that example

11:25

are incorrect in important

11:27

ways. That's what I'm anticipating. Perhaps

11:30

I'm going to say the funniest outcome is that that's not

11:33

who the moons are named after.

11:36

I feel like you're – there's a clever Hans thing going on, right? I feel

11:38

like you're picking up on the fact that

11:41

the – by far the biggest twist of

11:43

the episode is that this

11:45

story about Galileo is like roughly

11:47

true. And basically all

11:50

of the anecdotes in this book are true. Like

11:52

I fact checked them. I was like, okay, here's the part where I

11:55

go googling around about Galileo and then I find

11:57

out that it's bullshit. No, they're real. I mean, as

11:59

a research – As a researcher for this podcast, that

12:01

is the worst. Yeah, I know. I'm like, now what do I do? You're like,

12:04

one of these has to be fucking made up. This

12:06

is my whole career. You're destroying. Now we just

12:08

have to talk about the content of the book.

12:11

I just don't learn things about historical figures.

12:13

Jesus Christ.

12:14

I love that this is the only author we've

12:16

done so far that has integrity. Yeah, yeah. Clearly

12:18

a sociopath, but he has integrity.

12:20

After all of the historical examples, he then

12:22

gets to something called the keys to power, where

12:25

he lays out like the little lesson. Like, what are the themes we're

12:27

pulling out of this? And I'm not going to read it, but in this one,

12:29

it's basically like,

12:30

Galileo was good at sucking up to people

12:33

who were essentially his bosses. And so like, be

12:35

good at sucking up to your bosses. Which ultimately

12:37

is like fairly good advice. I think if

12:39

you're going to do like office politics and shit, like

12:41

figuring out, okay, what does my boss want? Right?

12:43

What does he want from his boss? And like, how can

12:46

I help give that to him? It's like, that's kind of reasonable.

12:48

No, it's totally reasonable. It's just that the

12:50

like, the framing of it is

12:52

like, here's what Galileo

12:55

did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What he's really talking about is

12:57

like, the head of regional sales.

12:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get him coffee sometimes or whatever. Like,

13:01

that's how it translates to like a normal human being's

13:04

life. So

13:04

then he also does a weird thing. So at the end

13:06

of every chapter, after he's laid out the lesson, he

13:09

then has a section

13:10

called reversal, where it's like, well, sometimes

13:12

this law doesn't apply. So in this one,

13:14

he says, you can't worry about upsetting

13:16

every person you come across, but you must be

13:18

selectively cruel. If your superior

13:21

is a falling star, there is nothing to fear

13:23

from outshining them. Do not be merciful. Your

13:25

master has no such scruples in his own cold-blooded

13:28

climb to the top. Okay. So I mean, I

13:30

guess you could say that

13:31

there's like a kernel of decent advice in here, right?

13:33

Sure. Your boss is unfavored within

13:36

the organization that you work for. Like, yeah, maybe don't

13:38

be like, oh, I'm Jeff's guy. Like, when you think of Jeff,

13:40

think of me. It seems so far like you could rewrite

13:42

this book with all of the same

13:45

lessons, tone down like the

13:47

language and framing, and it would just be

13:49

called like,

13:50

how to get a 15% raise at your job. But

13:53

then also, I mean, one of our kind

13:55

of central critiques of these self-help books is

13:57

that they give these overall

13:59

rules

14:00

of like, you should do this. But then obviously,

14:02

there's

14:02

there's numerous situations where

14:05

they don't apply, right? You can't actually give people

14:07

meaningful advice unless you know the specifics of

14:09

their situation. Yeah, I break up with my boyfriend.

14:11

Sometimes you should sometimes you shouldn't kind of depends

14:13

on what your boyfriend is like, there's no, there's

14:16

no like, generalized advice

14:19

about this kind of stuff. But it's so amazing

14:21

to me that he just seems to realize that right?

14:23

He's like, always suck up to your boss. But

14:25

sometimes you shouldn't suck up to your boss. Yeah,

14:27

I'm still kind of impressed though, that he's

14:29

so rigorous, like all all the anecdotes

14:32

appear to be like more or less correct.

14:34

Yeah, he's hedging so that he

14:37

doesn't get like too aggressive in his prescriptions.

14:40

Yeah, I can't wait for this to get weirdly sexist

14:42

or whatever is about to happen. Oh, Peter, I set you up

14:44

so perfectly. I was like, I'm gonna make Peter think

14:46

that this is chill. We're gonna cover the next 46

14:49

laws of power in parts

14:51

two through 24. The

14:55

next two years. So

14:57

we're not obviously going to read

14:59

all of the fucking 48 laws to like

15:02

this extent, I just wanted to get like the structure

15:04

of the book down. Yeah, from now on, what we're

15:06

just going to talk about is like the patterns of

15:08

the book, like all of these books, it's unbelievably

15:11

repetitive. So at a certain point, you're just

15:13

like, ah, okay, that goes in this bucket. Like I was just basically

15:16

dewy decimaling

15:16

the rest of the book shocking that he did

15:18

not identify 48 distinct non

15:21

overlap. They're

15:23

either repetitive or contradictory.

15:26

The first pattern that we are going to

15:28

dive into is utterly

15:30

sociopathic advice backed by

15:33

irrelevant anecdotes. Hell yeah. So

15:35

I'm going to send you the first couple

15:38

paragraphs of law to

15:40

never put too much trust in friends,

15:43

learn how to use

15:44

enemies. You often do not know your

15:46

friends as well as you imagine. Friends

15:49

often agree on things in order to

15:51

avoid an argument. They cover

15:53

up their unpleasant qualities so

15:55

as not to offend each other. They laugh

15:58

extra hard at each other's jokes.

15:59

I don't trust him. Since honesty rarely strengthens

16:02

friendship,

16:03

you may never know how a friend truly feels.

16:06

No honesty. He's never had a friend, right?

16:09

I mean, it's okay. This man lives in

16:11

John Gray's cave with him. He's just never come out. I'm

16:13

very upset by this. Like, sir, you need

16:17

therapy so bad, dude. We're already

16:19

at you need therapy. Well, not to, Peter.

16:21

So fast. Not to. Oh,

16:24

God. Be wary of friends,

16:26

but hire a former enemy and

16:28

he will be more loyal than a friend because

16:31

he has more to prove. In fact,

16:33

you have more to fear from friends than from

16:36

enemies. If you have no enemies, find

16:39

a way to make them. Go make enemies, Peter. You

16:41

can just write that first paragraph about your friends

16:43

and then show them that. Then they'll be your enemies.

16:45

I just got you. I'm sorry. I don't mean

16:47

to circle back to the friend stuff, but I'm just so

16:49

upset that he doesn't seem to understand that these are all

16:52

like nice elements of a friendship.

16:54

People who know you, people who like you. Right. Friends

16:57

often agree on things in order to avoid an argument. First

16:59

of all, I don't even know that that's true, but like

17:02

your friends being like, well,

17:04

I don't really agree with what Michael

17:07

just said, but like, I know

17:08

Michael. We don't need to fight about this. That's

17:11

like a normal and good quality of a friendship.

17:14

And also to say that honesty rarely

17:17

strengthens friendship. Don't tell people stuff.

17:20

It's not just like, oh, does this guy have

17:22

friends? It's also like, has he like read a

17:24

book? Were there a friend? Just

17:28

as a sociological phenomenon. Right. Have

17:31

you like seen a movie where two people have

17:34

a friendship? If you watch Good Will Hunting, it's

17:36

actually a speech that Ben Affleck gives.

17:39

What's funny about this chapter is that

17:42

like the actual advice that he gives is

17:44

just like, if you need to do business stuff, don't

17:46

hire your friends. That's good

17:48

advice. Not terrible advice. These are like evil

17:50

and scheming. I know. But it's like

17:53

he expresses it in like the most sociopathic

17:55

way possible. But what we're

17:57

diving into, Peter, you're seeing

17:59

this like. this kind of general rule of

18:01

like friends are bad, right? And you're like, okay, what

18:04

example is he going to give, right? Because every

18:06

law has these fucking anecdotes in it, right? And they

18:08

have these like fables and shit on like

18:10

the margin. It's just gonna be like Caesar. No,

18:12

this is so he illustrates this with a

18:14

fable. Okay, it's a little bit long. But

18:17

to me, it's important to like really revel in this

18:19

story and like get the full picture. Actually,

18:21

why don't I send it to you? So this is like,

18:23

he says like African proverb or something. I

18:25

don't know where he's pulling this from. A

18:28

snake chased by hunters asked

18:30

a farmer to save its life. To hide

18:32

it from its pursuers, the farmer squatted

18:34

and let the snake crawl into his belly. But

18:37

when the danger had passed and the farmer

18:39

asks the snake to come out, the snake refused.

18:41

It was warm and safe inside.

18:44

On his way home, the man saw a heron

18:47

and whispered what had happened. The heron told

18:49

them to squat and strain to eject the

18:51

snake.

18:52

When the snake stuck its head out, the heron

18:54

caught it pulled it out and killed it. The

18:56

farmer was worried that the snake's poison might

18:58

still be inside him and the heron told him

19:01

that the cure for snake poison was to cook

19:03

and eat six white fowl. You're

19:05

a white fowl, said the farmer. He grabbed the

19:07

heron, put it in a bag and carried it

19:10

home where he hung it up

19:11

while he told his wife what had happened.

19:14

I'm surprised at you, said the wife. The bird

19:16

does you a kindness, rids you of the evil in

19:18

your belly, saves your life, yet you catch

19:20

it and talk of killing it. She immediately

19:23

released the heron and it flew away, but on

19:25

its way, it gouged out her eyes. Oh,

19:28

what is the lesson here? What? I don't even understand

19:30

the ostensible theoretical

19:33

reason for the bird gouging out the

19:36

wife's eyes. Exactly. She's the good one in the story.

19:38

It's literally like if you try to be nice,

19:41

it will backfire because the person you

19:43

were nice to will take advantage

19:46

of you, possibly attack and try to kill you. What

19:48

the fuck is this? Also, what was

19:50

this snake's plan for the next several

19:52

days? We're then we're going

19:54

to do one more of these, Peter. Okay. In law

19:57

three, conceal your intentions.

19:59

He says, most people are open books.

20:02

They say what they feel, blurt out their opinions

20:04

at every opportunity, and constantly reveal their

20:06

plans and intentions. Many believe that

20:08

by being honest and open, they are winning people's

20:11

hearts and showing their good nature. They

20:13

are greatly deluded. Honesty is actually

20:15

a blunt instrument, which bloodies more than it

20:17

cuts. Your honesty is likely to

20:19

offend people. It is much more prudent to tailor

20:22

your words,

20:22

telling people what they want to hear, rather than

20:24

the coarse and ugly

20:25

truth of what you feel or think.

20:28

During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1711, the

20:31

Duke of Marlborough, head of the English Urmi, wanted

20:33

to destroy a key French fort because

20:35

it protected

20:36

a vital thoroughfare. Yet he knew

20:38

that if he destroyed it, the French would realize

20:40

what he wanted. Instead, he merely

20:42

captured the fort and garrisoned it with some

20:44

of his troops, making it appear as if he wanted

20:47

it for some purpose of

20:48

his own. The French attacked the fort and

20:50

the Duke let them recapture it. Once

20:52

they had it back, though, they destroyed it, figuring

20:55

that the Duke had wanted it for some important reason.

20:57

Now that the fort was gone, the road was unprotected,

21:00

and Marlborough could easily march into France.

21:02

What the fuck is— What? It's

21:05

not like—it—conceal your intentions is really, really

21:07

good advice if you are in the

21:10

midst of medieval

21:12

warfare. The ability of

21:15

that to translate to my everyday

21:17

life, where most of my interactions are with the

21:20

kebab guy, I just don't

21:22

see it. Like, what does this even get

21:24

me like in the workplace context?

21:27

This is what is so fascinating to me, is like after a while,

21:30

the anecdotes get very repetitive. It's

21:32

like ancient China, the Roman Empire,

21:35

ancient Greece, he has a bunch

21:37

of stories of Nikola

21:38

Tesla, there's a ton of stories

21:40

about Nikola Tesla, he has a bunch of like

21:43

Louis XIV, like French court,

21:46

pre-revolution France things. He

21:49

does not have,

21:49

I'm not exaggerating, a single

21:52

anecdote in this entire book from an office.

21:55

To give you this little aphorism of like,

21:57

feel your intentions or something. And then the next—

21:59

paragraph will be like,

22:02

in 252, the

22:02

Emperor so-and-so of

22:05

China wanted to conquer the general something

22:07

something and you're like, why am I hearing this? I'm

22:09

just picturing Jay-Z

22:11

reading this shit. That's

22:17

why he has so many lyrics about the Duke of Marlborough. A

22:20

huge percentage of this book is

22:23

basically just like unbelievably

22:25

sociopathic advice. Law seven,

22:27

let others do the work for

22:29

you but always take the credit. No doubt.

22:31

Law twelve, use selective honesty and

22:34

generosity to disarm your victim.

22:36

He uses the word victim throughout, which I think is how

22:38

it is. In

22:41

that law, victim is like

22:44

your friend, right? Yeah, or

22:46

like my coworker who didn't get the promotion,

22:48

and I did. In law

22:50

fourteen, pose as a friend, work

22:52

as a spy. He has this whole thing about

22:55

like

22:55

crush your enemies completely. And

22:57

again, you're just like, Robert, I work at Quiznos. I

23:00

don't have like enemies. I'm trying to think of where this would

23:02

apply the most. And maybe it's like

23:04

if you're like a cabinet member or something.

23:07

He actually uses a ton of examples from Henry Kissinger.

23:10

Yeah. And like, yeah, if you're the Secretary of State

23:12

and you're dealing with like weird conniving

23:14

other heads of state and like you kind of are in

23:17

some way engaged in some of these like

23:19

power battles, then like, yeah,

23:21

some of this stuff is useful.

23:22

Conceal your intentions. Right. Like

23:24

you've sort of like literally dedicated

23:27

your life to the pursuit of power. You're

23:29

not coming into contact day to day with

23:32

people who you're just trying to like build

23:34

fulfilling relationships with. If you're

23:37

living Henry Kissinger's life,

23:39

you are a sociopath and you have chosen

23:41

the life of a sociopath, you

23:44

know? So before we get to the other

23:46

categories of information that this book contains, I just want

23:48

to talk a little bit about like the specific

23:50

kind of sociopathy that he's promoting

23:53

here. So in the intro,

23:55

he says, genuinely innocent

23:58

people may still be playing for power. and

24:00

are often horribly effective at the game,

24:02

since they are not hindered by reflection. Once

24:05

again,

24:05

those who make a show or display

24:07

of innocence are the least innocent

24:09

of all. You can recognize these supposed

24:11

non-players by the way they flaunt their

24:13

moral qualities, their piety, their exquisite

24:16

sense of justice. But since all of us hunger

24:18

for power, and almost all of our actions

24:20

are aimed at acquiring it, the non-players

24:23

are merely throwing dust in our eyes, distracting

24:26

us from their power plays with

24:28

their air of moral superiority. Oh,

24:31

this is

24:33

just what

24:35

Republicans believe. You see it all the

24:37

time in the language they use when they talk about

24:39

virtue signaling, for example,

24:42

which I think you can say is a real thing,

24:44

but they are obsessed with the idea

24:47

that progressives who talk

24:49

about morality and doing

24:52

the right thing, etc., are faking it. In

24:54

fact, they have these devious plans. And

24:57

that's because they accept this framing

24:59

of the world

25:00

where everyone is scheming

25:03

out for power, out for themselves.

25:06

You read a paragraph like this and the conclusion

25:08

might as well be like, and this is why we need more

25:10

police on the street. It's

25:13

like either play the Game of Thrones or get

25:15

little finger blasted. What are you

25:18

playing out? I like how you did your own spin

25:20

on an already perfectly sufficient line

25:22

from Game of Thrones. Can you play the

25:24

Game of Thrones you live or you die? You

25:26

could have just said that, but no. You

25:29

said finger blasted on this

25:30

guy the other day. I don't

25:33

know when I have heard that term other than like eighth

25:35

grade and like right now. This is

25:37

a disgusting term. This

25:40

is what I get for doing a podcast with a straight man.

25:43

It is because the last time I heard

25:45

it was like a month ago. Me

25:47

and the boys talking. I

25:52

did actually look this up because I was silly.

25:55

I was really struck by this too. I was like this is a

25:57

worldview that I do not recognize at all.

25:59

Everything is this

26:02

battle for power and even people who

26:04

are acting kind, that's evidence that they're

26:06

trying to manipulate me. I started looking around

26:08

and there is an actual concept

26:11

in psychology called zero-sum ideology.

26:14

And this is basically the idea that every

26:17

single interaction between two people has

26:19

to have a winner and a loser, which is actually

26:21

relatively widespread in the population. You

26:24

can read people these scenarios of like, Dave

26:27

put his car on Craigslist and then like

26:29

Jessica bought the car and then you ask

26:31

me like, okay,

26:32

who won the interaction? I'd be like, oh, Dave won

26:34

the interaction. There's no

26:36

reason to think of this as like

26:37

one person won and the other person got cucked

26:39

in that exchange. It's just like people engaging

26:42

in a mutually beneficial activity,

26:44

but

26:44

there's obviously a spectrum.

26:47

And so on the sort of extreme cuck

26:49

end where I am of this, there are people

26:51

who have what's called zero-sum aversion

26:54

where people will actively avoid situations

26:57

that are just objectively zero-sum, right? If

26:59

I win a tennis game, you lose a tennis

27:01

game. And so people like me who are super

27:03

conflict averse just like don't really like playing tennis

27:06

or like doing those kinds of competitive activities with friends.

27:08

But then on the other end of the spectrum, there's people

27:11

who have what's called social dominance

27:13

orientation that

27:15

physically like cannot

27:17

see situations as win-win. You

27:19

can explain to them like in very

27:21

clear terms, like both people

27:24

benefited from this interaction and they'll be

27:26

like, no, he won. So it's

27:28

like this idea that like you can't

27:30

look for win-win scenarios

27:33

because you don't think that they exist. Well,

27:35

you know, a little peek behind the curtain for listeners,

27:38

but you were recently at my wedding. And

27:41

I just want to ask you, who do you think

27:43

won? The

27:46

world because there's one fewer single straight man in

27:48

the world walking around. Everybody

27:51

won. No, I look I told

27:54

my wife right afterwards. I was like, I think I won this

27:56

one. This

27:58

entire episode is a sub tweet. of you here.

28:00

This is an intervention. This is why I do any of the books.

28:03

I think that

28:04

everyone knows people like this

28:05

to some degree or like they have some

28:08

version of this, right? I

28:10

don't mind competitive stuff with my friends,

28:12

but there are people who in the

28:14

workplace, in personal relationships,

28:17

etc., just cannot tolerate

28:19

the idea of someone else doing well. And

28:22

just to give an example of where this stuff might lead,

28:24

I

28:25

think that a lot of

28:27

these mindsets sort of feed

28:29

into things like in-sale culture.

28:31

Yeah, totally. These guys create an adversarial

28:34

relationship with women in their minds,

28:36

right? They can't help but view

28:39

women as their enemies even though they are fundamentally

28:41

trying to connect with

28:43

them. This is actually kind of where I was

28:45

going with this because they've

28:47

measured this in various countries

28:49

and across time periods, etc. And typically

28:51

what you find in society is that zero-sum

28:53

thinking is more common among

28:56

majority groups. So like white people,

28:58

men, depending on the country, Christians

29:01

are more likely to engage in zero-sum thinking. Basically,

29:04

this is one of the major things

29:06

that prevents policies that

29:08

would increase equality because people

29:11

like physically cannot process

29:14

the idea of more equality

29:16

as not taking something away from them. So

29:18

there's actual studies on this where they give people like scenarios.

29:21

They're like, okay, Latinos are less likely to get home

29:23

loans than white people. So like the

29:25

mayor is going to pass a policy that promotes

29:28

home loans for Latinos. This will

29:30

not affect white people. And

29:32

then like the survey question is like, will this affect

29:35

white people? And survey respondents

29:37

are like, oh yeah. Big time.

29:39

Like even like in black and white, you're

29:41

like, this is a fake scenario

29:43

I have defined. Right. But this

29:45

will not affect the ingrown. They're like, oh

29:47

yeah, I'm getting fucked by this. So much kind of

29:49

political debate takes place on the sort of implementation

29:52

of policies or these specifics, but it's like when

29:54

your understanding of society

29:56

at this most basic level is just that no

29:59

one can. get anything without

30:01

me losing something. It's very

30:03

difficult to argue with somebody like that because it's such

30:06

a base belief and something that I think people

30:08

are relatively reluctant to articulate

30:10

or even kind of

30:11

know that that's their belief. Right. I

30:13

don't think that there are a lot of people that would

30:15

frame their

30:16

politics as being driven by

30:18

that. It's just something that is sort

30:21

of behind the scenes in their brain, which is why

30:23

I always sort of circle back to

30:25

a lot of conservative thinking

30:27

being like brain chemistry

30:30

as much as it is like a coherent

30:33

ideology. And this is part

30:35

of that. They won't let you

30:37

say it on TV, but what Republicans

30:40

have is a case of the

30:42

bad brain. Their

30:44

brains work no good. The

30:48

PC police won't let me say it on

30:51

the radio, but that's true. So your podcast co-hosts

30:53

will. This is the importance of independent media.

30:56

You can't hear this anywhere else. So we're now

30:58

going to go back into the book. So we've talked about how

31:01

most of it is sociopathic

31:03

advice and these weird irrelevant anecdotes. The

31:06

other main pattern, like we're now down to

31:08

like the remaining like 25%

31:10

of it is just sociopathy

31:14

and weird anecdotes. The rest

31:16

of it is just like straight

31:18

up bad advice. So

31:20

I'm going to send you the opening anecdote

31:22

of law six court attention

31:25

at all cost. Oh my God. Thank

31:27

you. It is a story of PT Barnum opening

31:30

like his first museum where

31:32

people could come and he was

31:34

he was basically trying to get them to attend his

31:36

new museum through

31:37

like marketing efforts. Got it. Here's

31:40

this. Barnum would put a band of musicians on a balcony

31:43

overlooking the street

31:44

beneath a huge banner proclaiming free

31:47

music for the millions.

31:49

But generosity New Yorkers thought and

31:51

they flocked to hear the free concerts. But

31:53

Barnum took pains to hire the worst

31:56

musicians he could find.

31:57

And soon after the band struck up, people

31:59

would.

31:59

to buy tickets to the museum

32:02

where they would be out of earshot of the band's

32:04

noise and of the booing

32:06

of the crowd. So

32:09

like, you should be obnoxious to

32:11

people so they go to your museum, I guess?

32:14

Why? Who would flee into a museum? By

32:17

the same guy who's providing the music?

32:19

Right, by the guy who just proved to you

32:21

that he cannot entertain you. That's why

32:23

our main feed episodes are just two hours of the sound

32:25

of a baby crying so that people seek refuge in our

32:27

bonus episodes. What

32:30

I often do is go to

32:32

the hip parts of Brooklyn and just

32:34

blast an air horn, thus driving

32:37

people to podcasts, and they will eventually

32:39

find if books could kill. So

32:42

then, after this deranged,

32:45

kind of funny but not clearly

32:47

relevant anecdote,

32:48

he then says, this is the advice that we're pulling from

32:50

this, he says, at the beginning

32:53

of your rise to the top, spend all

32:55

your energy on attracting attention.

32:57

Most importantly, the

32:59

quality of the attention is irrelevant. What? No,

33:02

I don't – I think if you're like an intern at a company

33:04

and you want to get a promotion, you do need

33:07

positive attention. Running into

33:09

like the board of directors meeting and like doing

33:11

a hee-ree-hee-ree. I don't

33:13

even understand what quality of attention means, actually,

33:16

but –

33:16

all right, never mind. This is stupid. I can't – it's

33:19

making me mad. We're already spinning our wheels. It's

33:22

making me mad. It's making me mad. So

33:24

that

33:24

was law six. In law 14,

33:26

Poe's as a friend, work as a spy,

33:28

he's talking about how like sort

33:30

of elder statesmen, he loves this political

33:33

advisor to Napoleon named Talley

33:35

Rand. He has 29 anecdotes featuring

33:37

this Talley Rand guy, and apparently in

33:39

these sort of cocktail party diplomatic

33:42

conversations, he would constantly be like spying

33:44

on people to try to get intel on them, which honestly

33:46

is like a thing that people do in like the diplomatic world.

33:49

So like, fine, whatever. But also not what

33:51

you should be doing at like work happy hours. He

33:54

says, a trick to try in spying

33:56

comes from La Roche Foucault who wrote, Sinceredi

33:59

is found in Vegas.

33:59

very few men and is often the cleverest

34:02

of

34:02

ruses. One is sincere in order

34:04

to draw out the confidence and secrets of

34:06

the other. By

34:07

pretending to bear your heart to another

34:09

person, you make them more likely to reveal

34:12

their own secrets. Give them a false

34:14

confession and they will give you a real

34:16

one." Another trick was identified

34:18

by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who

34:21

suggested vehemently contradicting

34:23

people here in conversation with, as a way of

34:25

irritating them, stirring them up

34:27

so they lose some of the control over

34:29

their words. In their emotional reaction, they

34:31

will reveal all kinds of truths about themselves,

34:34

truths you can later use against them.

34:36

What?

34:36

So make up shit to confess to people? Like, I'm

34:39

addicted to coke. Oh, you're also addicted to coke. Haha,

34:41

now I know you're addicted to coke. Yeah, well that

34:43

one at least makes, like, has like an internal

34:46

coherence. But the other one is just

34:48

like, get someone mad and they will

34:50

start confessing things somehow. She's

34:53

super fucking irritating to the point where

34:55

someone blows up at you and they're

34:57

like, haha, now I know what makes you blow up. In

34:59

the course of blowing up, they're like, you

35:01

piece of shit, I'm addicted to cocaine. Oh

35:04

no. Oh

35:08

god, I can't keep doing this Peter, but there's

35:10

one more. This is the perfect, like, triptych

35:13

of anecdotes. This is from Law 20,

35:15

do not commit to anyone. He has a bunch

35:18

of like weird sort of quasi dating advice. Just

35:20

after I got married.

35:21

He says, when Picasso, after

35:23

early years of poverty, had become the most successful

35:26

artist in the world, he did not commit himself

35:28

to

35:28

this dealer or that dealer. Instead,

35:30

he appeared to have no interest in their

35:32

services. This technique drove them

35:34

wild. And as they fought

35:36

over him, his prices only rose.

35:38

So Picasso, when

35:40

Henry Kissinger, a US Secretary

35:42

of State, wanted to reach detente

35:44

with the Soviet Union, he made no

35:46

concessions or conciliatory gestures

35:48

but courted China instead. So

35:51

use the rules on the Soviet

35:53

Union. He then refers to the author

35:56

of this Talley Rand biography

35:58

that he uses a million episodes from. He says,

36:00

this tactic has a parallel in seduction.

36:03

When you want to seduce a woman, Stenfeld

36:05

advises, court her sister first.

36:08

Rule number 46, bring a blacklight.

36:11

That's right.

36:12

This goes to your

36:14

one book theory, Peter. It's all one book, baby.

36:16

Because it's ultimately fucking dating advice. There's

36:18

no, you can't get like a straight guy

36:21

writing 500 pages

36:23

about the laws of power without him

36:25

being like, here's some tips

36:27

for getting pussy too, FYI. I

36:29

don't know if you can text back. I don't know. Fucking

36:32

someone's sister is not a great way to fuck them.

36:35

Even if you don't think it's morally

36:36

repugnant, it's just like, this is bad advice.

36:38

If it works, you have

36:41

successfully seduced a very

36:43

unwell person who needs therapy

36:46

so badly. Right? Like,

36:49

if someone is like that vulnerable to

36:51

insecurity, then they're

36:54

definitely the kind of person where you can just do the lint trick

36:56

too, right? You don't have to

36:58

go through the whole sister route. So this,

37:01

after all this shit, I'm sort of like halfway through

37:03

the book now. And I'm like,

37:05

okay, who is this fucking guy? Like, who's this

37:07

author, right? His name is Robert Greene.

37:09

He hasn't really done anything else. If you Google him,

37:11

it's like

37:12

he's one of these people that sort of rode this book

37:14

to like a bunch of other books. That's weird. I

37:16

thought he would have risen to the top of the global order

37:18

by now using these sick laws

37:21

of power.

37:22

I do want to say there are two

37:24

very interesting things about the

37:26

author of this book. The first, and this is

37:28

I think unique on this show, is

37:29

that he's an actual subject matter

37:31

expert. Okay.

37:32

He grows up in LA, he grows up in like a seemingly

37:35

middle class family. And then he goes to

37:37

the University of Wisconsin,

37:39

Madison and graduates with like a classics degree.

37:42

And he speaks five languages.

37:43

What the fuck?

37:44

He like actually knows all this like Greek mythology

37:46

and shit. And when he speaks about like the Roman

37:49

Empire and stuff, he does actually

37:51

seem to be drawing on some like legitimate expertise.

37:53

I'm sorry, but like what a waste of a life. You

37:56

learn five languages and you're like, I'm

37:59

going to write.

37:59

a book about power for the

38:02

boys. There's also something really funny about how

38:04

this book comes about. No one ever talks

38:06

about these books as

38:07

basically like, as artifacts

38:09

of marketing, right? You're coming up with a title

38:11

and a cover and that's why like 95% of people buy it. It's

38:14

not really the text of the book. So

38:16

he basically graduates with this classics

38:19

degree in 1980 and

38:20

then he like bounces around. He says he has 80

38:23

jobs

38:23

over the course of the next like 10

38:25

or 12 years. He eventually moves to

38:27

Hollywood and tries to make it as

38:29

a screenwriter and like he has zero

38:32

IMDB credits other than the Quibi series.

38:34

So it doesn't

38:35

seem that that like hit for

38:36

him. This is the Ben Shapiro arc.

38:38

He somehow gets a fellowship in Italy.

38:40

I think Italian

38:41

is one of the languages that he speaks and he basically

38:43

meets a book marketer. This

38:45

guy that like does coffee table books named

38:48

Juiced Elfers who was actually listed

38:50

in some printings as a co-author

38:51

of this book.

38:53

And then he says that like the genesis of

38:55

this book was that he's like telling this

38:56

book marketer guy. He's like, I've been trying

38:59

to write a biography of Julius Caesar

39:01

for the last like five years, but like I just

39:03

can't really I don't know if it's like a motivation thing

39:05

or he can't really get the framing or whatever. But like that

39:08

just isn't working this Julius Caesar

39:10

biography.

39:10

And then my

39:12

theory is like between the lines,

39:14

this guy who's like a book

39:16

marketer is like, why don't you

39:18

just put together all your Greek and Roman shit

39:20

into like a fake self-help book. Your

39:23

Julius Caesar biography isn't coming together. What

39:25

if I propose to you doing something

39:28

much dumber? Would

39:30

you like that? So the

39:32

second interesting thing about Robert Greene,

39:35

I cannot

39:35

fucking believe this,

39:37

is that he actually has good

39:39

politics.

39:39

So I'm going to send you an excerpt

39:42

from an interview that he gave to the Guardian

39:44

in 2012. He is now working with

39:46

labor organizers in Latin America and

39:48

his liberal politics disappoint some of his fans

39:50

in the business world who expect him to be

39:52

a champion of the ruthless go-getter. I'm

39:55

a huge Obama supporter. He says, Romney

39:58

is Satan to me. The great. The great thing

40:00

about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances

40:02

and become something remarkable. It's Jay-Z

40:05

and 50 Cent and Obama and my Jewish

40:07

ancestors. That's the America we

40:10

want to celebrate. Not the vulture capitalist.

40:13

These morons like Mitt Romney, they produce

40:15

nothing.

40:16

Republicans are feeding off fairy

40:18

tales, and that's what did them in this year.

40:20

And hopefully we'll keep doing them in forever because

40:22

they're a lot of scoundrels. I forgive him! You

40:25

know what? It's basically impossible

40:27

to square this with the book. It's

40:29

fascinating. Is it the same guy? I would like

40:32

to— Like I googled, like I forgot to put in his birth date

40:34

and is the wrong Robert Green. No, but you know it's the right

40:36

one because he's talking about Jay-Z and 50 Cent,

40:38

who presumably he knows of their existence

40:41

because they talked about his book, right? No, he wrote—he

40:43

co-wrote a book with 50 Cent called The 50th

40:46

Law. You're really making me

40:48

wonder what the 49th Law is. But then

40:50

what is interesting to me is he also has

40:52

the same blind spot that we see in so many of the authors, where

40:56

he doesn't seem to think that he's doing anything

40:58

to promote this worldview. So in The Guardian

41:00

interview, it says Green states

41:02

that he doesn't try to follow all of his advice.

41:05

Anybody who did, he says, would be a horrible,

41:08

ugly person to be

41:09

around. Why do these authors keep doing

41:11

this shit? I do genuinely

41:12

find this fascinating. I listen

41:14

to a bunch of podcast interviews

41:16

with him where he talks about,

41:18

like, he believes in climate change. His

41:21

partner is a well-regarded feminist

41:24

filmmaker who honestly seems cool. After 2016,

41:28

he started going on TV to talk about

41:30

Trump and be like, this guy is not applying

41:32

my rules. He's going to be kind

41:35

of, ehh. I'm sorry, but is there anyone who's doing this better?

41:38

Seriously! Is there anyone who's

41:40

more tightly adhering

41:42

to the 48 Laws of Power than Donald Trump?

41:45

Come on. But then to me,

41:47

the core of his blind spot

41:48

is this thing where he

41:50

says, oh, I'm not telling you to do anything.

41:52

I'm just telling you how the world works,

41:54

right? If you look back at

41:57

what he said in

41:57

the intro of, like, oh, the lessons from 3,000 years ago…

42:00

of history, it's

42:01

like he mentions like great statesmen

42:03

and also

42:04

seducers and con

42:07

artists. What he means by

42:09

power

42:10

is manipulation,

42:11

right? He doesn't think that there's

42:13

any power in being honest or

42:16

in being right, right? And he never uses

42:18

anecdotes from, I mean these are cliched

42:20

example, but like Martin Luther King,

42:22

Gandhi, I don't know, Florence Nightingale,

42:25

he does have a couple of anecdotes about

42:26

FDR, but only

42:29

the anecdotes where FDR had to like lie

42:31

and scheme to get his way.

42:34

Like he's not interested in the

42:36

kind

42:36

of power that comes from just like

42:39

honesty and charisma. I

42:42

don't get this. I assume that the reason we see

42:44

this from these authors is basically

42:47

their inability to admit

42:49

to themselves that like

42:50

their sort of primary output into

42:53

this world, the thing that they're known the most for

42:55

is sort of evil. So instead

42:58

they have to imagine that it wasn't

43:00

quite as bad as people are saying that

43:02

it was. I also think another very

43:05

important element of his blind spot

43:07

is he's never actually had

43:10

power. Okay. One

43:12

of the interesting things that he says in various interviews

43:14

is that one of the inspirations

43:16

for the book was trying to be a Hollywood

43:18

screenwriter. And some

43:21

of the laws that he's coming

43:22

up with are like the way that he

43:24

was treated by Hollywood executives,

43:26

right? This thing of like blaming people

43:29

when something goes wrong, never

43:30

letting people know your intentions. What

43:33

he's doing is he's looking at

43:35

the ways that he was

43:37

treated when he didn't have any power

43:39

and he is projecting

43:40

this necessity onto

43:43

them. You must

43:44

behave like this. Right.

43:46

But that's not actually true. What he's basically doing

43:48

is playing out

43:49

his bitterness and resentment and hurt

43:52

at the way that he was treated

43:53

when he was at the bottom of

43:55

the ladder. I really like how

43:57

his sort of arc is just like a... great

44:00

himbo-ification. He's like

44:02

this brilliant

44:05

historian, knows multiple languages,

44:07

and then he's like, no,

44:10

I'm going to write a self-help book

44:13

and get rich and dumb. He

44:15

wanted to be on a beach trying

44:18

to get laid or something, and he had

44:20

never done that. He was too much of

44:23

a nerd. I'm proud of him. His

44:25

next book is called The Art of Seduction. Oh, fuck

44:28

yes. Dude, okay, why does this keep

44:30

happening? Because remember, the Tim Ferriss book, his

44:32

next book also had long

44:35

digressions about seduction.

44:37

It's so fucking weird. These guys are just

44:40

getting book tour pussy after their

44:42

first book.

44:44

Then they're like, you know what? You

44:46

know what? I'm going to write a whole book about this. Yeah,

44:48

it's like they go on these book tours and every journalist's

44:51

like, but have you had sex? And they're like, actually.

44:53

Actually, yes. So to get back to the book,

44:56

the third pattern in the 48 Laws

44:58

that I want to talk about is these

45:01

weird flashes of

45:03

insight that are immediately

45:06

used for evil. So

45:08

law 27 is play on

45:11

people's need to believe to create

45:13

a cult-like following. Okay. And

45:16

it gives all these steps of how to create

45:18

a cult. So here's the opening.

45:21

To create a cult, you must first attract attention.

45:24

This you should do not through actions,

45:26

which are too clear and readable, but through words,

45:29

which are hazy and deceptive. Your

45:31

initial speeches, conversations, and interviews

45:33

must include two elements. On the

45:36

one hand, the promise of something great and transformative,

45:39

and on the other, a total vagueness.

45:41

To make your vagueness attractive, use

45:44

words of great resonance, but cloudy

45:46

meaning, words full of heat and enthusiasm.

45:49

Fancy titles for simple things are helpful,

45:52

as are the use of numbers and the creation

45:54

of new words for vague concepts.

45:57

All of these create the impression of specialized

45:59

novels.

46:00

giving you a veneer of profundity.

46:03

He's telling you how to write an airport book. Yeah.

46:06

This is like the new trend in

46:08

our latest books, where they just

46:10

explain how to do the

46:12

scam that they're doing to you right now. Fancy

46:15

titles for simple things. Right. The

46:18

use of numbers. It's

46:19

like he's doing 10,000 hours. He's doing

46:21

victimology. He's doing our

46:23

show.

46:23

I do feel like reading him and

46:25

Tim Ferriss has made me realize that

46:27

a lot of these guys, are

46:30

in fact doing this hyper-consciously.

46:33

And I think that they don't

46:35

perceive it like that entirely. I think that

46:38

when he's giving this advice, he's like, yeah,

46:40

here's cool tips on building a cult-like following.

46:45

He doesn't really realize

46:48

that what he's doing is confessing. I

46:50

also want to talk about the way that

46:53

this book is specifically pitched to men. I

46:56

did some interesting reading on the self-help

46:59

marketplace and how most

47:01

self-help advice for women is

47:03

about interpersonal relationships and

47:06

a lot of it is about health and wellness type stuff.

47:09

Whereas self-help advice to men is

47:11

almost exclusively along these lines. It's

47:14

like how to amass power or how to make money, basically.

47:17

They're both kind of doing the thing of like, here's

47:19

how to attain status in the society that we have,

47:22

but men and women are judged differently on what status is. There's

47:25

a super fascinating law in

47:27

this book that if law 33,

47:31

discover each man's sunscrew,

47:34

the basic idea is that you should always be looking

47:36

around yourself at like the weaknesses

47:38

people have. Like what are their deepest desires?

47:40

What are their impulses they can't control?

47:43

So they have little titles. He says,

47:46

find the helpless child. Most weaknesses

47:48

begin

47:48

in childhood. Before the self builds

47:50

up compensatory defenses.

47:52

Perhaps the child was pampered or indulged

47:54

in a particular area or perhaps a certain

47:57

emotional need went unfulfilled. As he or

47:59

she grows older. the indulgence or the deficiency

48:01

may be buried but never disappears." He

48:04

then says, fill the void.

48:06

The two main emotional voids to fill are

48:09

insecurity and unhappiness. The

48:11

insecure are suckers for

48:12

any kind of social validation.

48:14

As for the chronically unhappy, look for the

48:16

roots of their unhappiness. So, like, Jeff,

48:19

the, you know, head of sales

48:21

in the Northeast returns home for Thanksgiving,

48:23

but there I am, having coffee with his mother,

48:26

asking about his childhood.

48:28

Or his weakness as a child. There is

48:30

a point in, like, all of these books where, like,

48:32

I start to become sad. And I think this

48:35

was the point for me because a lot

48:37

of what he's describing

48:38

are, like, the skills of friendship.

48:40

Yeah. Right?

48:42

You ask somebody about their childhood. You

48:44

know, what challenges they face throughout their life.

48:46

What are the relationships that are important to them? What

48:49

are their impulses and their habits? Like, what are the things

48:51

that make them laugh and make them sad? Like,

48:53

you know, which kinds of

48:54

desires do they struggle to control? I

48:57

keep thinking of, like, how straight men,

49:00

like, need advice like this. Really

49:02

bad. Of just, like, the importance

49:04

of intimate relationships. Right? And

49:06

a lot of it is this kind of stuff. Ask people about their values.

49:09

Spend time with people. Right. And

49:11

he's giving you all these skills, but he's giving

49:13

them to you in this, like, sociopathic

49:15

fucking way of you should, like, form,

49:18

like, a little file

49:19

folder on everybody. Learn about your

49:21

friend's childhood so that you can

49:23

leverage it against him. Exactly.

49:25

You're just, like, be interested in people.

49:29

One of the only other, like, laws in this book

49:32

that is, like, actually useful is, like, number law

49:34

five, I think. It's like, your reputation matters.

49:36

Guard it with your life.

49:38

And it's, like, the easiest way to have a good reputation

49:40

is just to be, like, nice to people and

49:42

work hard. Yeah, what does that even mean? What does that even

49:45

mean? Like, sue people who say mean shit?

49:47

The anecdote that he uses there is about how P.T. Barnum,

49:49

like, destroyed somebody else's reputation.

49:52

He didn't have one. He didn't have one.

49:55

So he's like, if you don't have a good reputation,

49:57

like, destroy somebody else's because they'll have

49:59

to...

49:59

defend themselves so vociferously

50:02

that

50:02

people will be like, why is he defending himself so much?

50:05

This book is so sociopathic, it

50:07

feels that like, I don't think it

50:09

could turn anyone into a sociopath

50:12

so much as only a sociopath could benefit

50:14

from it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And those people

50:16

aren't reading it anyway. So it's this weird, like it exists

50:19

in this weird like nether place. Those are the CEOs

50:21

that like were upset that he's a Democrat.

50:24

I feel like you can tell that I've been reading this book by how I've

50:26

manipulated you into saying exactly what I need you

50:28

to transition into my next little sections,

50:31

Peter. To be fair, it's

50:33

not the hardest thing to do. Feeding

50:37

you little crumbs or Peter gonna get political

50:39

and then I can talk about political stuff. The

50:42

final thing that I want to talk about in this book,

50:44

because

50:44

the whole time I was reading it, I

50:46

was just like, look,

50:48

this advice is so deranged

50:50

that like, I don't think anybody can do this. Maybe

50:52

this is my own inherent optimism about

50:54

the world. But like, I don't think people

50:56

have the wherewithal to run their

50:59

lives like this, never showing their emotions,

51:01

constantly like scheming, gathering

51:03

Intel on the people around them. I think people

51:06

like to think that they're doing this, especially

51:08

men like to be told that they're playing

51:10

this like complicated chess game all the time.

51:13

But underneath it all, people want to be loved. People

51:16

want to love other people. People want to form community.

51:18

I don't actually think that the advice here is

51:21

all that corrosive because like people aren't capable

51:23

of doing it. I do

51:25

think what is corrosive about this is the

51:28

worldview underneath it. The

51:30

example that I want to talk

51:32

about, this is one of the most interesting

51:34

examples in the book. Have you

51:36

ever heard Peter of Joe Orton

51:38

and Kenneth Halliwell? No. This

51:41

is a story that he tells

51:43

in law 46, never appear

51:46

too perfect. These

51:48

are two men who meet

51:50

in a London acting school in

51:52

the early 1950s. They

51:54

eventually start dating, they become lovers, they

51:57

move in with each other.

51:58

They're both in acting school.

51:59

but they decide relatively early that

52:02

like, we're not that good at acting. So they start

52:04

writing plays together and they get a

52:06

couple things in like London West End things but they're

52:08

sort of like the equivalent of like off off off off

52:10

Broadway like nothing is really happening and for

52:13

a while they're living on Kenneth's

52:16

trust fund, but eventually that dries up.

52:18

They start doing this weird thing

52:21

where they start defacing library

52:23

books as a kind of like performance

52:25

art thing Eventually, they get

52:27

caught and they're sent away

52:29

to prison for six months as they're

52:31

imprisoned apart Joe starts

52:34

writing plays by himself and

52:36

once they get out of jail, they move back in

52:38

together Joe's plays

52:40

start becoming really popular

52:43

as this is happening Kenneth starts

52:45

to feel envious and sad

52:48

like he feels like

52:48

most people at parties are kind of going up to Joe

52:51

and wanting to hear what Joe

52:52

thinks about things. He just sort of feels like an also

52:55

ran and Joe also starts cheating

52:57

on him He's like going to like parks

53:00

sort of cottaging Kevin Spacey type

53:02

stuff And so this is the final paragraph

53:04

of this anecdote in Robert Greene's book

53:07

He says Kenneth outwardly seemed as

53:09

happy as Joe inwardly though He was

53:11

seizing two months later in the early

53:13

morning of August 10th 1967 Kenneth

53:16

Halliwell bludgeoned Joe Orton to death

53:18

with repeated

53:19

blows of a hammer to the head He

53:21

then took 21 sleeping pills and died himself

53:23

leaving behind a note that said if you

53:25

read Orton's diary all will be explained

53:28

This is a really fucking sad

53:30

story. Yeah, there's

53:31

so many lessons that

53:33

you could take out of this Robert

53:35

Greene's lesson is only a minority

53:38

can succeed at the game of life and

53:40

that minority Inevitably arouses

53:42

the envy of those around them once success

53:45

happens your way However, the people to

53:47

fear the most are those in your own circle

53:49

the friends and acquaintances you have left behind Feelings

53:52

of inferiority not at them the thought of your

53:54

success only heightens their feelings of

53:56

stagnation

53:57

Envy which the philosopher Kierkegaard called?

53:59

happy admiration takes

54:01

hold. Miserable. I wanted

54:03

to fucking cry reading this.

54:05

It's like a really sad story that

54:08

is true. I mean, he lays out the facts

54:10

accurately and then he pulls the most

54:13

fucking psychopathic lesson

54:15

from it. Don't be successful. Or

54:17

like don't, you can be successful but don't

54:19

be in love with someone at the same time. One

54:22

of the obvious truths of being a human being

54:24

is that like you end up being hurt the most by

54:27

the people closest to you. What

54:30

people think of the lesson of that

54:32

is not to trust the people closest

54:35

to you. As opposed to like,

54:37

you know, when you bring someone

54:40

into your life, those are sort of the wages,

54:42

right? You get the highs

54:45

and the lows. And

54:47

it's very weird to look at a situation like

54:50

that, which is basically like an extreme

54:52

version of that lesson. And

54:55

to think that the real

54:57

problem there is that like they were

54:59

too close. Like

55:02

he let him get too close. Yeah.

55:05

He specifically said like people will give you words

55:07

of affirmation

55:08

as like a way of twisting the knife,

55:10

like as a way of declaring their envy

55:12

for you. It's just so stupid.

55:14

I do. I mean, pardon an

55:17

episode of like some earnestness

55:19

on our like shitposting little podcast,

55:22

but like we've spoken on most

55:23

of the episodes about like the experience

55:26

of reading these books. Reading this book

55:28

sucked. I

55:29

did suck. I've had a rough couple months.

55:32

I have like my hand stuff. I've had some like personal

55:34

stuff going on and like reading

55:36

this

55:37

worldview, like this just cancerous

55:40

way of looking at the world just like made

55:42

me feel bad. Like

55:44

spending time with this guy

55:46

felt bad.

55:47

It was very weird to be reading this at the

55:49

same time that I was reading this really lovely collection

55:51

of Kelly Link short stories, which are these sort

55:54

of modern day fables. And they're all about like

55:56

kind of like love transcending time. They're

55:58

all very like childlike and.

55:59

lovely. And she has this really beautiful

56:02

story in there about like a guy going

56:05

to hell to rescue his lover from like the queen

56:07

of the damned. It's really good. And one

56:09

of the phrases that he keeps

56:11

coming back to is our

56:13

love will build a paradise. It's

56:16

just such a lovely way to think about

56:19

the world. The way that emotional

56:21

states can create societies

56:24

and can create communities. Yeah. Love

56:26

can build a paradise. And like

56:28

this stuff can just build a fucking

56:30

trash can. And this is why the sort

56:32

of like

56:33

criticism of more like

56:35

hippy dippy progressive types as naive

56:38

always rings hollow to me. Yeah.

56:40

Because like what kind of life are you

56:42

trying to live? Are you trying to live one

56:45

that is built around love and

56:48

trust? And sometimes you

56:50

don't quite succeed? Are

56:53

you trying to build one that is

56:57

based around mistrust,

56:59

hatred, an adversarial

57:01

stance towards everyone and everything

57:04

in your life? If you try to do that, you will succeed.

57:06

But what are you going to find at the end of it? Exactly.

57:09

And

57:09

I it's very important

57:11

to me in all of the books that we cover, but especially in this

57:13

one,

57:13

that even like as a philosophical

57:16

matter, I don't like to think

57:18

like this. But also as an empirical

57:20

matter, it's not fucking

57:22

true that the world is like this.

57:24

Right. So for this, I read a really

57:27

good book by Rebecca Solnit

57:28

called a paradise built in hell, which

57:31

is all about disaster

57:32

sociology. So people study

57:35

large scale disasters and like the kinds of

57:37

human networks that form when basically all

57:39

of the structures of society fall away,

57:41

right? There's no power, there's no water. What happens?

57:44

The vision of the world that this

57:46

book lays out is that we live in this like Hobbesian

57:48

world where without all of

57:50

the structures of society, we're all just immediately

57:53

going to start like clawing at each other and

57:55

like trampling and murdering each other. And it's like

57:57

there's this this wave of cruelty.

57:59

I don't like the word Hobbesian because that's my dad.

58:02

So thinking about like a hungry hungry hippos

58:05

world Right where there's just like a finite

58:07

number of little marbles and we're all banging at our little

58:09

hippo

58:09

I mean Lord of the Flies is right there, but hungry

58:11

hungry hippos. Okay, mine is better What

58:14

you find in actual disasters

58:16

in in the world when something terrible happens,

58:19

it's like a lot of kindness Yeah, right.

58:21

We've all seen this in blackouts Yeah Even in like

58:23

the dreaded like New York City where crime runs

58:26

rampant or whatever as soon as there's a blackout

58:28

people are checking on their Neighbors, they're going

58:30

to older folks. They're checking on their disabled neighbors.

58:32

People are checking in on each other We just

58:35

saw this in kovat. I mean, it's

58:36

all been totally wiped away now,

58:39

but the early days of

58:41

kovat It's like we knew that the

58:43

fatality rate of kovat is not super duper

58:46

high But it attacks the

58:48

old and the vulnerable and our entire

58:50

society was totally willing to like shut

58:52

down To save those people

58:55

and you know, you remember after 9-11 like the whole fucking

58:57

country was donating blood Not the not the

58:59

best example to use with an Iranian American,

59:01

but I hear you In

59:04

the disaster sociology work

59:06

there is this kind of trajectory where

59:09

early in Disasters

59:11

when you let humans form networks, they

59:13

mostly create

59:14

networks of kindness Yeah, like they're bringing things. Yeah

59:16

people they're checking in on each other

59:17

But then what happens after a couple days a

59:19

couple weeks is something that

59:22

the sociologist called elite panic Where

59:24

basically the fear among elites

59:27

and people in power that there is going

59:29

to be unrest ends up causing

59:31

unrest The most obvious example of this

59:33

is Katrina where you know in the early days

59:35

after Katrina everybody was watching on the news You know hundreds

59:37

of people drove down to like try to get

59:39

water and supplies to people people brought their

59:42

boats right There's a huge display of solidarity

59:45

and then after a couple days go by you

59:47

start getting these reports of like the Superdome

59:49

Shit of like yeah, there

59:51

was this rumor that like babies were being raped

59:54

in the Superdome obvious bullshit

59:57

and you know the all this footage of like looters

59:59

and

1:00:00

And then when you have elites like losing

1:00:02

their fucking minds and after a couple

1:00:05

days, the National Guard was pulled off of

1:00:07

search and rescue and

1:00:08

on to

1:00:09

like looting prevention. Like they were protecting stores

1:00:13

when people were

1:00:13

still like stranded in their houses.

1:00:15

And I'm going to send you

1:00:17

a

1:00:18

little excerpt from the book about Katrina

1:00:20

specifically. On September

1:00:23

3rd, New York Times columnist Maureen

1:00:25

Dowd summed up the popular viewpoint

1:00:27

that New Orleans was, quote, a snake

1:00:30

pit of anarchy, death, looting,

1:00:32

raping, marauding thugs, suffering

1:00:34

innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a

1:00:37

gutted police force, insufficient

1:00:39

troop levels, and criminally negligent

1:00:41

government planning. By that time, there were supposed

1:00:43

to be hundreds of murder victims corpses in

1:00:45

the Superdome, stories of child

1:00:47

rape or rampant, and armed gangs

1:00:50

were allegedly marauding through the streets

1:00:52

of the city. There were even rumors of

1:00:54

cannibalism. The rumors

1:00:56

were right about one thing. There were gangs in the

1:00:58

Superdome, if gang is the right word for

1:01:01

inner city men who grew up together and hang out together. Denise

1:01:04

Moore, whose home literally collapsed around

1:01:06

her and ended up at the Superdome, said

1:01:08

that the gang members, quote, got together, figured

1:01:11

out who had guns, and decided that they were going to

1:01:13

make sure that no women were getting raped and

1:01:15

that nobody was hurting babies. They started

1:01:17

looting on St. Charles and Napoleon. There

1:01:19

was a Rite Aid there, and you would think they

1:01:22

would be stealing stuff, fun stuff, or whatever,

1:01:24

because it's a free city according to them, right? But

1:01:27

they were taking juice for the babies, water and

1:01:29

beer for the older people, food, raincoats

1:01:32

so they could all be seen by each other. She

1:01:34

compared them to Robin Hood. We were trapped

1:01:36

like animals, but I saw the greatest humanity

1:01:38

I'd ever seen from the most unlikely places. And

1:01:41

like, you don't want to be naïve, right?

1:01:42

People take advantage of chaos,

1:01:44

like humans are humans, right? But

1:01:47

empirically, those kinds

1:01:49

of actions are really isolated,

1:01:52

and we've seen this over and over again,

1:01:54

and yet these myths persist.

1:01:57

To this day, there's never been a confirmed

1:01:58

murder or rape in this country.

1:01:59

Superdome. So those rumors were just fully

1:02:02

rumors. What's amazing now looking back

1:02:04

is that those rumors were spread by

1:02:07

FEMA officials. FEMA officials were

1:02:09

the ones saying there's 200 bodies. Turns out

1:02:10

there were only six bodies and all of

1:02:12

them died of natural causes. We

1:02:15

also had, there were 11 police

1:02:17

shootings during the aftermath

1:02:19

of Katrina. There were cities outside

1:02:21

of New Orleans

1:02:22

where people essentially formed

1:02:24

militias and they were so afraid of this like

1:02:27

loose horde of rioters

1:02:29

coming that they murdered a bunch of people.

1:02:31

There's this town where 11 black people

1:02:34

were killed by like mostly white

1:02:36

residents like just carrying around their own guns.

1:02:40

The thing to sort of realize about like

1:02:42

this worldview and these myths is

1:02:44

that they're self-fulfilling

1:02:46

prophecies, right? If people in

1:02:48

power start to be worried about

1:02:50

these like animalistic hordes, they're

1:02:52

gonna treat people like animalistic hordes

1:02:55

and you're gonna get these kinds of clashes. The

1:02:58

kinds of myths that he is promoting

1:03:00

in this book also create a self-fulfilling

1:03:03

prophecy. If you think everybody is a fucking

1:03:05

schemer, you're gonna treat them all like schemers. It's

1:03:08

the opposite of our love will build a paradise,

1:03:11

right? You're creating this ugly world by

1:03:13

thinking it's already ugly. Yeah, I think that this

1:03:15

mindset

1:03:16

fosters this almost like

1:03:18

uniquely American phenomenon

1:03:21

which is that a lot of people view

1:03:23

the world so adversarially that

1:03:27

they are willing to forego

1:03:29

helping people as long as that

1:03:32

ensures that they can't be

1:03:34

taken advantage of in some way.

1:03:36

You see this with stuff as simple as like student

1:03:39

loan forgiveness, right? Like

1:03:41

sure, it'll help a lot of people

1:03:43

who have student loan

1:03:45

debt and need the help, but

1:03:47

what about the people who don't need the help? Do

1:03:50

I financially doing fine and

1:03:52

could pay it off, right? People talk about

1:03:55

it in the welfare context. Yes,

1:03:57

of course there are a lot of people who need

1:03:59

financial assistance, but

1:04:02

there are also a lot of people who might take

1:04:04

advantage of that system who don't need

1:04:06

it, right? Yeah. And so let's

1:04:08

hold off, lest we allow those people to take advantage

1:04:11

of us. If you imagine that those people

1:04:13

are a large chunk of the population,

1:04:16

that there are tons of people who are

1:04:18

out there with this sort of kill or be

1:04:20

killed mindset, then you might

1:04:22

think that that's a good argument against welfare

1:04:24

payments, right? It's just a bleak

1:04:26

way to view the world. And

1:04:28

the only upside that I can see

1:04:31

is that if Jay-Z never read this book,

1:04:34

we might not have ever gotten lemonade. The

1:04:39

domino meme with Robert Greene going to Italy in 1996

1:04:41

and then we get lemonade. And

1:04:48

was it worth it?

1:04:49

I do want to end with, these

1:04:51

aren't quite the last three paragraphs

1:04:53

of the

1:04:53

book, but like they're close. From Law 48, assume

1:04:57

formlessness, which by the end of the book,

1:04:59

he's just like saying stuff. This is something

1:05:01

about like never let people know what you think, whatever,

1:05:03

whatever. So he says,

1:05:06

learning to adapt to each new circumstance means

1:05:08

seeing events through your own

1:05:10

eyes and often ignoring the advice

1:05:12

that people constantly peddle your way.

1:05:15

It means that ultimately you must throw out

1:05:17

the laws that others preach and the books they

1:05:19

write to tell you what

1:05:20

to do. So I do watch on other people's ideas

1:05:22

and you end up taking a form not of your

1:05:24

own making. Be brutal with the past,

1:05:26

especially your own and have no respect

1:05:29

for the philosophies

1:05:29

that are foisted on you from

1:05:31

outside. This is within a book that's

1:05:34

giving me fucking 48 little tips for

1:05:36

how to be powerful at Quiznose. So

1:05:39

ultimately don't read

1:05:41

this fucking book and don't listen to me.

1:05:43

Yeah, I'm glad he ends on

1:05:45

a strong note. I can't disagree.

1:05:47

If you criticize the book, it's just proof you didn't read

1:05:49

the book.

1:06:00

you