The Exchanges

Q What a crazy story. What got you interested in studying and learning about identity?

A Long story short, with the violin, I was very optimistic about potentially becoming a concert violinist, but then when I was 15, a sudden hand injury kind of ended my dreams overnight, and I was forced to reckon with the fact that I was no longer going to be able to do this thing that since the time I was six had essentially defined my life. And in that moment, what was so shocking to me in being told, you know, you can no longer play the violin is that I, I knew that there was going to be a grief associated with not being able to play the violin, but I did not expect to mourn the loss of myself at this more fundamental level, because I hadn't realized, I mean, I was 15 at the time, Shane, right, so I had not put all the pieces together, I had not realized consciously just how tethered my identity was to the violin, and so in losing it, kind of had this oh crap moment, like, oh my gosh, this is a much bigger deal than I even thought, and so That was the kind of lived part of my experience that led me to first think about identity. And then I ended up, um, becoming a cognitive scientist. So in losing the violin, I had to figure out, okay, what comes next? And I read a bunch of books and I became fascinated by the human mind and all it was capable of and all there was to marvel at. And in my role as a cognitive scientist, where I studied the human mind, identity just comes up ove…

AI assessment note: “That was the kind of lived part of my experience that led me to first think about identity.”

Q it's like, I don't know, three p.m. in the afternoon. And it strikes me that eventually everybody loses the battle with willpower. So where I'm going with this is, is it almost better to set rules? My rule is I only eat healthy food. And then all of a sudden you've changed it from a willpower question into, I just need to follow this rule that I've set for myself.

A I think both are going to tax willpower. I think even that subtle framing of, like, I don't eat unhealthy foods, like, if you're near the chocolate cake, you're still gonna feel the pull of the chocolate cake. No semantic shift is gonna be that powerful to eliminate the willpower issues. I know Angela Duckworth focuses a lot on this. So that we don't have to employ willpower, we should really focus on the way that we design our lives and the choice architecture of our lives. What this means in practice is To the extent that you can control your environment, you just make things unavailable to you and you make other things really readily accessible and available to you. So the, the canonical example of this is cafes where they try to encourage healthy eating. They put all the junk food at the bottom and they're in opaque containers. And then they put the healthy food, like the fruits and vegetables and, and healthy snacks on full display, um, at eye level. So it's the things you're more likely to grab. And those little nudges are actually quite effective and they don't require as much Willpower. Because you've just architected your environment accordingly. And so that's what I would recommend in situations like that. And then the other thing we know, Shane, about motivation is that we don't have stable amounts of motivation over the course of goal pursuit. This is some research …

AI assessment note: “No semantic shift is gonna be that powerful to eliminate the willpower issues.”

Q What is consistent across that period in your mind?

A Two of the big ones, we could come up with dozens of things that are consistent with someone like Buffett, but the two big ones are endurance, and maybe tied to that, capping a downside risk that allows him to stick around for longer than anyone else. There's also a psychological trait of wanting to keep going longer than anyone else. Um, I, I use a stat in, in my book that 99% of Buffett's net worth was accumulated after his sixtieth birthday. Like, the vast majority of people, including me and maybe you, If we became a billionaire at age 60 would be done. She'd move to Florida and buy a private island and like live happily ever after. For him to be that successful and to keep going full blast for what's now another 33 years and still going stronger than ever is a very unique characteristic that plays a massive role in his success. If Buffett had retired at age 60 or 50, like a normal person would have in that situation, you would have never heard of him. The whole reason he's so successful is just the endurance. And there's a, again, there's a psychological and a financial component to that. Never getting wiped out financially and the psychology that will allow him to keep going full blast for nearly a century on end now.

AI assessment note: “the two big ones are endurance, and maybe tied to that, capping a downside risk”

Q What's the difference between being rich and being wealthy?

A The definitions are, are my own, so I'm just making this up, but I think rich is when you have enough money to make your mortgage payment, make your car payment. You can pay off your credit card bill every month. Like, you can afford the things that you're buying, technically. Wealthy, I think, is when you have a degree of independence and autonomy. The weird thing here is that wealth is the money that you don't spend. That's what wealth is, like the homes you didn't buy and the car you didn't buy. It's money that you saved and invested. That is going to give you independence, and that's a hard thing for people, I think, to wrap their head around that wealth is what you don't see, because I can see your house, I can see your car, I can see your clothes, but I have no idea what your net worth is. I can't see your bank, your brokerage account, I can't see your bank account, so wealth is always hidden, and it throws a lot of people for a loop, because if, if I was looking for a role model of physical fitness, Well, I can see your fitness. I can see your weight and your muscle tone and whatnot. It's all visible. But when you're looking for a financial role model, who do you look up to? And a lot of people, particularly young people, will look up to the guy in the mansion with the Ferrari. But that guy, for all you know, is living paycheck to paycheck. A lot of, a lot of those peopl…

AI assessment note: “rich is when you have enough money... Wealthy, I think, is when you have... independence”

Q Get 30% off your order at ProTech.com slash knowledge. That's P-R-O-T-E-K-T dot com slash knowledge. Or use code knowledge at the checkout for 30% off. I was thinking about how to start this conversation, and I think we should actually start with the inverse. Instead of talking about how to raise strong, healthy, capable children who are independent, how would we raise them to be as mentally unstable as possible?

A That's something I looked at. And, um, the, the answer seems to be, you know, I'm a journalist. I interviewed a lot of, uh, experts in terms of people who are familiar with the psychological research. So not, not the people who hold themselves out as mental health experts guiding everyone, but the people who are actually conducting and familiar with the psychological research. And if we wanted to make kids dysregulated, here's what we would do. We would obsess over their emotions. We would ask them constantly how they were feeling about things. We would ask them to pay attention to their feelings. So therefore broadcast that their feelings were an important and reliable guide to, um, whether how they were doing in life. Um, we would Treat them as in isolation. Treat them as very special and unique and isolated from everyone else. Unique in the world. Um, never give them a sense that their actions had an, had a effect on others, so therefore they had no responsibility to others to sort of be a good citizen, whether that's on, you know, an airplane or in a classroom, but constantly talk about them as unique. Uh, we would give them diagnosis. Uh, diagnoses for ordinary behaviors. We would pathologize ordinary behaviors and treat them to see themselves as disordered. Oh, that's just, you know, you have ADHD. Oh, that's your oppositional defiance disorder. That's why you acted out. …

AI assessment note: “if we wanted to make kids dysregulated, here's what we would do.”

Q You mentioned the term social emotional learning. What is that?

A So that is a project in schools that's been around for over 15 years now, and it's across the West. They have various forms of it, ah, across the West, but the idea was to teach kids emotional regulation, and it specifically is a therapeutic intervention. It doesn't use moral language. It's not about character. It's always puts it in terms of non-judgmental, ah, coping techniques, or wellness techniques, or anti-bullying techniques, or empathy education of various sorts. And the problem with it is that, however intended, in practice, it does everything we would do if we were going to dysregulate children, like constantly asking them to check on their emotions, constantly talking to them about their bad feelings, constantly having them think about a time when they were sad, lonely, left out, or disappointed. So it becomes very much like a sort of group therapy, and the other, and, and They've done these studies now, so we have some indication that, that, that it absolutely is leading to the results, because they were actually able to do, researchers in Australia and England actually tested this, separate groups of researchers, and they were able to show that the kids in the control group who didn't go through these practices ended up happier, better adjusted, better in, in terms of depression and anxiety, and, ah, lower depression, lower anxiety, and, and also, ah, less alienate…

AI assessment note: “the idea was to teach kids emotional regulation, and it specifically is a therapeutic intervention.”

Q What role do you think technology and social media play in the mental health challenges faced by today's kids, and how conversely do you think parents and even therapists who are listening to this can help address these issues?

A Sure. So I think that social media has absolutely played a big role. It's been an accelerant for all kinds of deteriorating mental health. It's encouraged people in the idea that they have a diagnosis. It's spread social contagions, um, mental health, you know, diagnoses. So, so things like gender dysphoria, I wrote my last book about, um, social media absolutely played a big role, but I don't think it's the whole story. And the reason I don't think it's the whole story is a few reasons, but, but for instance, just to give you one statistic, in 2016, the CDC came out with a report that one in six American children between the ages of two and eight had a mental health or behavioral diagnosis. One in six American kids in 2016, they were not on social media. They're not on social media today between the ages of two and eight, but they definitely weren't back in 2016. It's not just about the phones, and I think the phones are bad, but it's not just about the phones. It's about the lives we're giving them, and the constant, constant therapy in the culture, the constant sense that their feelings are all important. They are tyrannized by their own feelings, and they're tyrannizing each other. When they should be learning to put their feelings to one side and get on with life. And you know what? Turns out their feelings will get better. You know, they will be more manageable. If you ho…

AI assessment note: “social media has absolutely played a big role. It's been an accelerant”

Q When you say parental authority, what does that mean specifically?

A Sure, so I'm using the language that Diana Bomerand used as a child psychologist, or sorry, she's an academic researcher, psychologist of the 19 sixties, and she was the first one to invent what was now, what's now known as parenting styles, but she didn't really invent it. She actually was curious, how were Americans raising their kids, and what was the result? And she went in with an open mind, and what she found was there were roughly, you know, three Types, you know, authoritarian, cold, unloving, and obedience, uh, focused. This basically doesn't exist in the West anymore. Uh, authoritative, which just means parents are in charge. They set down rules. Yes, they will punish if kids, you know, deliberately defy those rules, but they're loving and, you know, they're, you know, there to, you know, listen and care about their kids and even, you know, sympathize with them, but, but the parents are ultimately in charge. And those kids always did the best. And this study has been replicated hundreds of times. Authoritative parenting produces the best kids in terms of success, emotional, uh, well-being, and even close, eventual closeness with mom and dad, and, or parents, whoever the parents may be. And then the, then the other type, which also doesn't exist anymore, is permissive parenting. This was the parenting where it was sort of like anything goes, very laissez-faire parentin…

AI assessment note: “authoritative, which just means parents are in charge. They set down rules.”

Q Where did your drive come from? Like, what were you like as a kid? It seems very abnormal that a 16 year old at Foot Locker would be so driven and motivated.

A I loved it. I loved working from a very, very young age. I was a bit, my wife says this about my son, and I think I was the same way. I was a man of action with no plan. I remember I really wanted a skating rink in our backyard. We had like this tiny little backyard and my parents are like, no. So I was really stubborn. I'd go and I'd start taking little, you know, like the, the sour cream container, uh, uh, I'd wash it out and put water in it and start dumping it on the lawn and dumping it on the lawn. And my parents are watching me do this and they're thinking, what is he doing? But I kept doing it and I kept doing it. And for hours on end, I'm dumping one little sour cream container worth of water on the back lawn. And my, finally, my father's like, this is crazy. The kid's never going to build a rink this way. And, you know, but then they started helping me, and then my brother started helping, and then here we are as this family, uh, with our hoses out there spraying the, the, the back lungs. Sure enough, we have a skating rink, you know, and, and I was a bit like that as a kid. I mean, I, I wanted to work before I was allowed to work. Uh, I had a paper route at a very young age. I went on, and I worked at Wendy's. I was the fry guy. I think the breaking point for me was I had to take out the garbage, and I was a small little fourteen-year-old, so, you You had to throw it …

AI assessment note: “I loved working from a very, very young age.”

Q Talk to me about David's Tea. Where did, so, so I'm guessing like after university, you followed Emily to Boston?

A No. So Emily didn't get into Boston until much later. Um, we had a lot of ups and downs together. Emily, uh, didn't get into her, her PhD program at first and was going to go do something else and then decided to wait and reapply to McGill PhD and, and then got in. So we were in Montreal. After we both graduated McGill, we, we were living together in a tiny basement apartment in Montreal, and I started a concept called Fitting Room Central. While most of my friends went off to, uh, Goldman Sachs or Procter Gamble, um, I, I developed, so because I had worked, I worked in the buying department in Le Chateau for a few summers, and I, I sold, as I was telling you, running shoes and clothing a little bit as well. So I understood that business, uh, certainly at a, a base level, uh, And I developed a concept called fitting room central because when buyers would buy clothing, remember when you, when you're in clothing or anything with inventory, your biggest risk is your inventory buy, right? You, you, you're deciding what to buy in a season. You're hoping it sells, but you're deciding in advance, you know, what you think people are going to like. So often what large clothing companies will do is they'll test. So they'll, if you have a hundred store company, let's say you'll buy for five or 10 stores and see how it goes there before you take the inventory risk of, of buying for the, th…

AI assessment note: “No. So Emily didn't get into Boston until much later.”

Q other leading commerce platforms. Go to shopify.com slash Shane now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. When I was thinking about where to start, I think the best place to start is to give people practical frameworks for approaching topics that we come across every day. So why don't we start with a practical framework for approaching nutrition and decisions about the food that we consume?

A I, you know, I kind of have my own framework for approaching nutrition in, in that it has a lot to do with, you know, I, I did my postdoc training in nutrition. And, um, and specifically looking at micronutrients. So these are about 40 or so essential vitamins and minerals that fatty acids also and amino acids that we have to get from our diet. Those are in a variety of foods, and different foods have different levels and quantities of them. And these micronutrients are running our metabolism, they're running everything, our neurotransmitters that we're producing, so our cognition, just absolutely everything That is going on in our bodies. So it's important to get them because if we don't get them, we can have deficiencies or insufficiencies, which is quite worse because insufficiencies are kind of something that you don't notice every day, but there's like insidious types of damage just happening each and every day. And it accumulates over time and plays a role in age-related diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative disease. So These, um, micronutrients are things like, you know, calcium, magnesium, vitamin K, vitamin D, which I'm sure we'll talk about is actually something you can mostly get from the sun, uh, omega-three, and so when you think about the micronutrients that you need in your diet, it makes it a little bit easier to think about what you should be eating. Well,…

AI assessment note: “when you think about the micronutrients that you need in your diet, it makes it a little bit easier”

Q barrier, the membrane between pesticides and you. How do you wash your produce? And, and like, and I say this having seen, I think last night on Instagram, you know, some, uh, guy putting baking soda and vinegar and like soaking it for 20 minutes and like, is that how we wash produce? Like, how do you wash produce to like get stuff off of it? What do you do?

A I just use water. I just use water and wash it because I do buy organic as well. So you're thinking about pesticides. You're like, oh, well, I don't want to get Parkinson's disease or cancer, right? It's causing damage. But so my mentor, Bruce Ames, um, he's, you know, now 96 years old. I don't know how many years ago it was. It must have been back in the eighties. He had done some experiments with a hematologist from his lab, and they were looking at what happens if you don't get enough folate. So that's another one of those essential micronutrients that you have to get from your diet. Guess what? Leafy greens are one of the best words of folate. So leafy greens are just, they're, they're packed with certain micronutrients, but they don't have a lot of protein, right? So folate, again, we have to get from our diet, and if we don't get enough folate, it actually causes damage to our DNA much more than eating a pesticide would, because folate is required to make new DNA. You know, we're constantly making new cells in our body, and if you don't have that folate, the precursor To make one of the nucleotides of DNA isn't going to be there, and so your body substitutes something else in there that's from RNA, that's not supposed to be there, and it causes DNA damage. And he had done these studies where it was like, he took animals, put them on a low folate diet, similar to what some…

AI assessment note: “I just use water. I just use water and wash it because I do buy organic”

Q thing to put in my body at the start of the day after having slept, which means I've been fasting? What is, like, the most incredible smoothie you can think of that would just be full of health benefits for the day? So it would have, like, omega-three, it would have protein powder, it would have, like, leafy, like, walk me through this. What do you, do you do this?

A I do smoothie. It does, It doesn't have omega-three, but I'll walk you through my, my, my smoothie that I do. I, I probably about four to five days a week have, have this smoothie. Typically, this smoothie is about, I don't know, four or so kale leaves, and that's usually my green source that I use, and so I'm getting the magnesium, I'm getting the vitamin K, I'm getting the folate, but I'm also getting something in there called lutein, And zeaxanthin, which is, these are carotenoids, much like beta carotene or astaxanthin, like we were talking about. It's another one that accumulates in the eye, rods and cones of the eye, so it helps prevent macular degeneration, but it accumulates in the brain as well, and it's so interesting because there's been studies that have shown that giving older adults, like supplementing with something like 20 mgs, which is what like three kale leaves has of lutein, um, it improves neural efficiency. So, so basically like your brain Works better with less energy. There's been other studies in older adults where giving them lutein and zeaxanthin will improve crystallized intelligence. So that's basically, as you get older, it's the ability to still kind of use all the information that you've learned throughout your life and like still use it. Um, so, so that's the kale. It also has fiber, right? Fiber is great for your gut. I also add an avocado and …

AI assessment note: “I'll walk you through my, my, my smoothie that I do.”

Q So is there a difference? Like if I go out and buy a vitamin D three supplement, uh, is there a difference between that and the sun? And then do I want To take that with anything, I notice, I think Athletic Greens includes vitamin K with that. Is that for the bioavailability?

A No, it's not for the bioavailability, but let's, let's, let's address your questions because they're really great questions. Um, differences between sun exposure and supplemental form. Again, um, vitamin D three supplemental form, which is, which is key. So the differences between vitamin D three from the sun versus supplemental, yes, there's differences. So like Let's, let's say you're, um, you're like in like Sub-Saharan Africa where you're like so close to the equator and you're just, you know, you can make vitamin D, you know, three from the sun and you're out in the sun. Let's say you're like a Bushman or something out there all the time. There's been studies that have measured the levels of people that are like Aboriginal to these equatorial regions like Bushman in Sub-Saharan Africa, and their natural vitamin D levels are something like anywhere between 80 to a hundred nanograms per mil, but they don't really go above that. And the reason is because your body senses like the vitamin D levels. And when you're still being exposed to the sun, instead of converting it into like vitamin D three, it like converted into this other metabolite. So it's like, it's like, okay, we're, we're putting the brakes on this. We're not going to do anymore. If you're taking a supplement and you don't measure anything, like you can, let's say you're taking like an insane number, like There's,…

AI assessment note: “No, it's not for the bioavailability... the differences between vitamin D three from the sun versus supplemental, yes”

Q 70 page website on the benefits of a sauna. And I remember, like, skimming the first, like, three pages of it going, I really need a sauna. And so, you're the reason I have a sauna. But when we say doing the sauna, like, what does that mean in terms of temperature, in terms of duration? Is a hot tub the same as the sauna? Talk to me about that.

A So a lot of the studies that have been done on sauna have come out of Finland, where they're using Finnish saunas, which are generally speaking, it would, it would be what I would call like, it's, it's a regular sauna where you have like an electric heater with some rocks that are hot. Um, in, in Finland, they often use water and they pour it on the hot rocks. And so there's a humidity aspect there. Any between, Anywhere between 10 to 20% humidity. So a lot of the observational studies and intervention studies showing, like I just mentioned one about VO two max improvements, blood pressure improvements, they're, they're done in Finland, and a lot of those parameters used, generally speaking, are, you know, regular saunas of about 175 degrees Fahrenheit and 10 to 20% humidity. The average time spent in this sauna Is about 20 minutes for the, for the benefits to really be, I would say that robust. And, and then that there's frequency, right? So like how often do you do it? And so there've been a variety of studies that have looked at all cause mortality. So, so, so, you know, dying early from all causes that are non-accidental, and then looking at cardiovascular related mortality, mortality, like dying from a heart attack, for example. And People that are more, more frequently using the sauna, that's a dose dependent effect. So people that use the sauna, for example, two to three…

AI assessment note: “regular saunas of about 175 degrees Fahrenheit... average time spent in this sauna Is about 20 minutes”

Q out of the hospital and there isn't a lot of pain. And so he's like, people, people change a lot less than they used to. And I thought that, that, that sort of related to what you were talking about. I'm wondering if you can walk me through at a high level, sort of the overarching day of blueprint and w what does it mean to live like Brian Johnson?

A The premise on this is I. I was posing the question, in the early 21st century, is it the case that we have achieved longevity escape velocity, which means that for every one year of chronological time that passes, can I stay the same age biologically? And if not, where are we at? And so that's the backdrop on what my daily routine is. And so what we did to establish this routine is we looked at every single scientific publication that's ever been done on health span and lifespan. We then graded the evidence of these papers and we then stack rank them according to effect size. And then we've systematically been implementing each one of these, these protocols. So becoming the most measured person in history and then using all the scientific evidence, I wake up. So my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM. I just changed my bedtime from 8:30, but it's eight, it's nine 30 on the dot. So it's, it's not, uh, I don't have a two hour window of time. And I, I recently logged eight months of perfect sleep using my wearable, which no human in history had ever done. So I wanted to demonstrate that you can get reliable high quality sleep for this extended period of time. And then I wake up naturally. I never wake up with an alarm, uh, roughly four 35 30 in the morning, and I will, I'll weigh myself, the body composition, like weight, hydration, fat, et cetera.…

AI assessment note: “my day begins really the night before I go to bed currently at 9:30 PM”

Q If I inherited or, you know, suddenly came into five hundred million dollars tomorrow and I came to you and said, Brian, I just got this big chunk of money. Give me the lessons that you've learned over the last 12 years that I should put in place today. What would they be?

A One is I would suggest you not change anything in your life for six to 12 months. Keep on with your same habits and have the money so you can distinguish between your preferred lifestyle and what money would otherwise alter Your perception of what you want, because once you start acquiring things, you start losing your perspective on where your baseline is. So, and the shock of going from zero to five or a million is so S it's so sudden that it scrambles your reality. And then number two is it is, um, reasonable that a, a large majority of people Are going to want something from you at all times. And it's, it will be small things like, you know, a, a niece or a nephew, when you're invited to their wedding, most people will give a gift, you know, a hundred dollars or 200 dollars or 20 dollars, whatever the number is in that cultural norm for the family. They're going to expect you to give something for 500 dollars or a thousand dollars because you have so much money. And so people just assume, uh, that because you have so much money that you have more obligation, uh, to them. So there's like this, this, uh, a typical relationship. And then three is I'd say identify what you want the money to achieve. And that really needs to come from you on what your objectives are, because if you don't determine your objectives in life, money will run you. And so it creates this really, uh, in…

AI assessment note: “One is I would suggest you not change anything in your life for six to 12 months.”

Q just how much of what we talk about applies to kids, partners, co-workers, and ourselves. Stick around at the end for my reflections. It's time to listen and learn. Let's start with a common term that we use as adults, uh, and as adults we use with our kids, but I don't know if I, I have a, a really good understanding of it, which is what is a boundary?

A So here's how I define a boundary, and I define it this way because then it's something I can actually assess, and I can know if I'm setting one or not. So to me, a boundary is something we tell someone else we will do, and it requires the other person to do nothing. And so the reason I really, really like that definition is because we can then afterwards say, okay, well, the thing I did, did I tell someone what I will do? And does it require the other person to do nothing? And almost always we say, no, like I actually kind of was asking my kid to clean up, you know, the clothes on their floor, which is something we all have to do. I would say that's a request. We make requests of our kids all the time, but learning to really differentiate a request from a boundary is Is critical, and it saves us from the frustration and the cycle of, my kid doesn't respect my boundary, or this person doesn't respect my boundary, and to me, the way I think about boundaries is, someone kind of, quote, might not respect my boundary, but if I am setting a boundary that is dependent on what I'm doing, and it is not at all dependent on what someone else does, then I really retain a lot of power, and I really like that perspective.

AI assessment note: “a boundary is something we tell someone else we will do”

Q Well, let's go back. So the internet bubble, uh, sort of burst. I think it was March, 2001. Is that right?

A That is exactly right, and here's another case where sort of, um, luck, serendipity process all combined to create, as Munger would say, a Lollapalooza outcome. So we were involved in a transaction where, again, we, we bought a company that was larger than what we were, and that was Terra Nova, uh, and caused us to move from being a U.S.-based national insurer to an international company, and we were negotiating a deal right in the midst of all, all of that, um, in early, um, I believe the deal closed on March one. Now March ninth, I think was the day that the NASDAQ topped. I remember that because among other things, March ninth is my wife's birthday. So it's a, it's a meaningful date to me. Um, and within 20 minutes of me getting my hands on that portfolio, I had sold 99% of the equity positions because in my, my sense, they had drunk the Kool-Aid and had a NASDAQ Laden portfolio at a time when those, those prices just made no sense to me whatsoever. So on the, on the day of closing, we.

AI assessment note: “That is exactly right, and here's another case where sort of, um, luck”

Q I want to come back to Markel and just continue on this path to the present day. Let's fast forward to, uh, six months before what is known as the great financial crisis. What are the, what are your memories of sort of the conversations you're having inside of Markel? What you're thinking? Did you anticipate this happening? Um, yeah, walk me through that.

A Well, I mentioned my partner, Mike Eaton. Mike has a great saying. He says, you know what it feels like when you're making a mistake? Feels great. If it didn't feel good, you wouldn't be doing it. So when I think about oh six or seven or times that led up to the great financial crisis, I was making mistakes. I was, I was absolutely doing that. And I can remember, for instance, we were not large shareholders of Citicorp, but we did own some and maybe our cost in it was 50 bucks and it was seven times earnings and yielding five percent or something like that. The, the number seemed rather compelling and there's always a A turnaround story at Citi that if you, if you believe this time is the time it's really gonna all, all work, uh, it's, it's always selling at a compelling valuation. So we owned some Citi. And as the crisis began to develop, I think at 26, I sold the entire position. And, and I can just remember feeling horrible about that. But I also remember the feeling of We're in this storm and I just don't know the dimensions of this storm and this storm can get worse. So as painful as it is to me to take this loss, which was manageable and inside the context of a, of a portfolio, but just, I hate losing. And that was clearly a loss. I decided to sell it. Now that proved to be a pretty darn good decision because it went a lot lower, uh, before, before it stopped going down. …

AI assessment note: “So when I think about oh six or seven... I was making mistakes.”

Q Let's talk about debt, because I think that's an interesting area to go on a little rabbit hole here, and I want to talk about your thoughts on debt, how to unwind it. You learned a lesson from, I think it was Shelby Davis around debt. Would you share that with us?

A Well, it was in the early days of Markel Ventures. So Markel obviously started out as an insurance company. It had always been willing to invest in equity securities and be long-term. But the next logical step when you're investing in equity securities and you're doing it from the perspective of what is the underlying businesses involved, instead of just buying a partial interest in that business through the purchase of publicly traded shares, how about we buy a majority of it or all of it? And There were people who were rightly concerned about what it is we knew and what skills we had when we were buying controlling interest in companies that weren't in the insurance business. So Shelby Davis was a wonderful and is a wonderful teacher and mentor and helped me in many ways along the way. And I can remember in the early days having a conversation with about, uh, about the Markel Ventures business with him and he, he, Very quickly and succinctly put his finger right on it. He says, you know, if you want to make sure you're not buying a business run by a crook, buy one that doesn't use leverage. And so I said, tell me about this. He says, well, think about it. If you're, if you're a hundred percent equity financed, you are not going to steal money from that business because it's your own money. Crooks don't want to steal their own money. They want to steal somebody else's money. S…

AI assessment note: “if you want to make sure you're not buying a business run by a crook”

Q Why don't we take that approach? I mean, comedians effectively take that approach without recording the audience because it's based on, oh, that joke got a laugh. I'm going to use that next time. That joke fell flat. I'm not going to use that next time.

A It's the feedback loop is Instant. So that's how that was, what was such the value. Like when I was teaching psychology at CUNY, I was speaking like 80 to a hundred hours a week, both at my office and both instant feedback loop of what story worked, what story didn't work. Like, did that land? Did that offend somebody? And you just start to develop this quicker repertoire of things that actually work, but that comes from that audience interaction. But most people, when giving a presentation, they're not even present enough to do that because they're so in their head about the presentation. So it's sort of a skill set that comes after you've been more comfortable being on stage to be able to process and sort of predict the behavior of an audience.

AI assessment note: “most people, when giving a presentation, they're not even present enough to do that”

Q Well, let's switch gears to AI. You're a master researcher. Uh, I'm curious about your process around using chat GPT to get up to speed on something or Or how do you leverage AI to go about learning a new subject?

A Yeah, it's, it's ridiculous because six months ago I was like, I don't know, like it would just make things up and now it's great. So one of my big things is I say I have a prompt that if I'm looking at an academic discipline that I don't know a lot about, I say I want you to imagine this academic discipline as the branch and I want you to imagine the subcategories as the, uh, I'm sorry, as the, not the branch, I want you to imagine the base of the tree As the discipline, the branch as a sub-discipline, and the leaves as the academics that correspond to that, and it does it for you. So like it goes into neurobiology, like I've been really interested in predictive processing, which is this sort of universal theory for how consciousness really is, like how we process our world, and it's a, it's a rabbit hole to say the least, right? So it has all these different philosophical approach, all of that, In order to understand that world, I need to understand the bigger macro principles behind it, and, like, who the key players are in it. And, I mean, you used to have to do that research, or have a research team, and have somebody, like, do this, and now I literally do it in a couple of prompts. It's, it's absurd. It's, like, absurd for workflows.

AI assessment note: “I have a prompt that if I'm looking at an academic discipline”

Q we are afraid of. We have to run toward the roar. And that's what this episode is about. Learning to love the journey, running towards your fears and reaching your full potential. It's time to listen and learn. I want to start with running to the roar, which is one of the concepts that you have that I absolutely love. What, what does it mean to run to the roar?

A Yeah, so that's an interesting question to kick off with. When I was really getting into the, um, self-exploration, you know, I was meeting with my shrink. I'm a, I'm a neurotic mess, and he, he said to me one day, you know, you're really an interesting dude, because I've never met anybody who is so conflict avoidant. You, you run from your shadow, and yet, On weekends, you lead players into highly emotional, competitive environments. So I'm going to tell you a little story, and it's a true story. And the story is that in Africa, lions hunt in packs. And when, when they go out to hunt, they take with them the oldest female of the pride. By this point, she's old and infirmed and toothless, can no longer catch her own prey, a little bit like me. Um, but she has the deepest roar, and what the lionesses do, and it's the lionesses who do the hunting, the lionesses position this old lion in the middle of a field facing the bush. The bush could be a mile away, and the prey are between the old lion and the bush, and all the lionesses hide in the bush, and when this old lady roars, the prey run away from the roar, To their death. And so the, the concept is go at the problem. Go at what you perceive to be the problem. And what you'll invariably find is it's a toothless old lady. When players come into my office and they do all the time with thorny issues or whatever they're wrestling wit…

AI assessment note: “And so the, the concept is go at the problem.”

Q sort of like, I want to talk about this generation and our relationship to failure, but before we get there, I want to explore what does it mean to manage our emotions and how do we as, as parents or coaches teach our children and ourselves to manage our emotions better? And you have a great analogy, sort of like with an Oreo cookie and I'd love to explore that.

A Yeah, yeah. Life lessons through Oreo cookies. We live in a very angry society. We live in a society now where people are If you're not on my team, then you're the enemy. There's no middle. The middle has sort of gone away, and so when I'm talking to young people, I talk to them about life lessons through Oreo cookies, and I stand up, and they see my big belly, and I say, well, obviously, I love Oreo cookies, so let's talk about Oreo cookies, and as a metaphor for life, and I say, how many of you have ever been in a car when somebody is in road rage? That's not a safe place to be, is it? No, it's, it's scary. Get away from that person. So I want, I'm going to give you two Oreo cookies. Put one down. I want you to take that Oreo cookie and stand it on its edge. All right, now you're looking at that Oreo cookie. This wafer represents thoughts. In the course of the day, we have thousands and thousands of thoughts. Many of them are not very good. And then the other wafer is Is action. So you have thought and action. So here we've got these thoughts going on, and then we act. What is the cream in the middle? The cream in the middle is time. There is a period of time measurable between thought and action. Ok. Now I want you to take the wafer off of one cookie and the wafer off of the other cookie, and I want you to put the two Oreos together with the cream What have we just done? We'…

AI assessment note: “We've just doubled the amount of time between thought and action.”

Q I love the idea of having that. Do most people tell other people about it? Like Kobe has sort of like made this famous, but I would imagine that most people just sort of like keep it to themselves.

A They do. Even Kobe, we created it in 2004. He didn't tell the world about it until 2009 when he won the world championship, when they, or when they won the NBA championship, even Beyonce with Sasha fierce, Sasha fierce, wasn't revealed to the world really until 2008 when she was retiring her. No one is going to go to the press conference after the game and say, oh, my alter ego. So, and so crushed it today. It, these are all creative mechanisms that we do to help us pursue the things that are difficult or challenging. It's not just one concept and one idea of we're only doing it to help us get past, you know, some sort of traumas, or it's also an extremely playful thing. There's many different reasons why someone might be employing the, the, the alter ego, but at the end of the day, it comes back to the quote that I share all the time from Cary Grant, the Hollywood golden era actor who was, uh, grew up in Bristol, England. Um, Was challenged throughout his life with say some mental health and some depression and stuff, but he wanted to make it to Hollywood. And he had this vision in his mind of being debonair and charismatic. And so he built Cary Grant. That's not his original name. And at the end of his career, he was getting interviewed. And he said, I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until I finally became that person or he became me. But at some point we met. And tha…

AI assessment note: “They do. Even Kobe, we created it in 2004. He didn't tell the world”

Q Are there some activities that are better than other for encouraging that diffuse mode kind of reconciliation, like going to the gym, or are they all very similar as long as they take your mind off?

A Well, I, I always think that something active is, is better than anything else in that, um, what you want to do, let's say you've been writing a report, and then when you're taking your break, you don't want to go onto Twitter or Facebook and continue writing, because you're using sort of the same areas of the brain, and it's not giving that area a little bit of a rest. So the, uh, the best all-purpose break thing is to Uh, move around to some extent. Do something that's physical. And we, of course, as far as exercise itself goes, oh my gosh, that's one of the best things you can do for learning. Um, what exercise does is it helps produce Brain derived neurotropic factor in your, you know, in your brain. And this is kind of like a fertilizer that helps dendritic spines grow. In other words, it helps make new connections. So, and you can see it. I mean, there's some great neuroscience papers, like a nature neuroscience that, that show that That little dendritic spines just popping right out when they've got BDNF, um, you know, uh, they're exposed to that, and so exercise is what kind of brings this all out for you, and it's, it's, um, it is a fantastic learning, um, you know, it's like a medication to help you learn better. Um, my, my co-instructor, Terry Sanowski, um, I'm convinced that he did some of the earliest studies, uh, that showed that exercise is a really helpful tool,…

AI assessment note: “I always think that something active is, is better than anything else”

Q Talk to me about the power of things that don't make sense or surprise us. What does that mean? It means our, our expectation of the world is different or off?

A Yes. Well, it, you know, Sherlock Holmes once said, it's a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the facts. And I think it's, That's silly advice, with respect, uh, Sherlock. Um, we, we can't help but theorize beforehand, before we have all the facts. It's not clear what all the facts, I'm using air quotes, constitutes, but it's more important to have expectations about the world, and then look for anomalies. Surprise is always, what surprise is telling you, Shane, is this, your model of the world is incorrect. Which is fantastic. It's a learning opportunity. That's what surprise is. And so I know when people talk about surprise, that's, surprise is an investing algorithm for me. When things don't make sense, when people say things don't make sense, all that tells me is they're not thinking about the world correctly. So when someone says, for example, it makes no sense why tenure yields, U.S. tenure yields remain below three percent. After all, the Fed's talking about how Well, the economy is doing. And by historical standards, three percent is pretty darn low. So I don't understand. It makes no sense why ten-year yields aren't going higher. And when someone says that, I know that ten-year yields are going to stay below three percent for quite a while, because that person's model of the world is, is in conflict with what that person is seeing. That person is in denial…

AI assessment note: “what surprise is telling you, Shane, is this, your model of the world is incorrect.”

Q advanced copies, preview copies, review copies, and chuck them in the lending library right by my house, which probably has, you know, it has more books coming out before they're actually out. People must love being around there. Um, one thing that you said a while ago was that you read fairly quickly and you said to read quickly, you should read a lot. What did you mean by that?

A I read nonfiction very quickly. I don't read fiction very quickly. Maybe I read it a little quicker than most people. Uh, the more you've read, the more you know what's coming in the books you're reading, so the easier and quicker it is to read them. So, like, if I read a book now, you know, I'm 56 years old, I started reading when I was three. If someone asks me, well, how long did it take you to read that book? The correct answer is 53 years. It doesn't matter what the book is. You're bringing to bear your last 53 years of reading on the book, and most of your reading Your understanding results from your prior investment. So that's the way to read well is, uh, you know, stick around on this earth and keep on reading. That's by far the best advice, I think. Keep at it. Stay alive.

AI assessment note: “the more you've read, the more you know what's coming in the books”

Q I love that. What sort of things do you see with people at the top of their game in their environment that wouldn't necessarily appear with people who are not at that level? What's different about their environment?

A So there's a great book called the talent code, uh, by a friend of mine named Daniel Coyle. And what Daniel did is he did a deep dive into what he calls talent hotbeds. So he went to the places that seemed to produce disproportionate talent. So he went to the areas in Russia that were turning out champion tennis players. And he went to South Korea where all these great female golfers were coming from. And he went to the Dominican Republic where they're turning out these incredible young baseball players in a place in Texas that was turning out incredible musicians. And he was looking for the, he was looking for the commonalities, like these talent hotbeds. You know, if you think of, of Van Gogh and his group of artists, like what was it about that time and space that was able to create so many great impressionists? And what he uncovered was really interesting and unforeseen. One of the, the, the common factors that produces disproportionate talent is what he identified with her too. One of them is called primal cues. Primal cues is that these places tend not to be identified by wealth and comfort. They tend to be the opposite. They tend to be places where the signaling of the community is like, you better find a way to make it work. In other words, if this doesn't work out for you, like, There's no plan B. Like, your next best option isn't that good. You know, it's like growing…

AI assessment note: “these places tend not to be identified by wealth and comfort. They tend to be the opposite.”