Podcasting Secrets: From Pro Poker to Top Podcaster | Liv Boeree DSH #757
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Are you a big reader? I am now. One of the main incentives for me to do the podcast in the first place is because I want to read more. Like seven out of ten in knowledge across a lot of different facets and it's a really good way of doing that. I want to be able to like not just ask like dumb questions. If I can find like one spot where I can challenge the guests then that's satisfying. That's true.

All right, guys, we got Liv here, retired from professional poker now, and now a podcaster. Yes. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Yeah, is podcasting the main thing for you right now? Pretty much, although, like, I am not as set up as this. You're just saying how many episodes you've done. Like, I'm managing to maybe crank one out every two weeks. Yeah. You're doing, like, well, 800 in a year and a half. Yeah, 14 a week, 15 a week. I doff my hat. Yeah, but yours are more...

Longer and more in depth. Yes. Yeah, you go into it. Yeah, definitely. It's like, I don't know. I have to go and read it. Usually the person's just written a book, so I have to read their book and then try and find all the ways I can critique their book. Wow, that's intense. Yeah. Okay, I see why it takes you two weeks then. It's a lot. So are you a big reader? I am now. It's actually one of the main incentives for me to do the podcast in the first place is because I want to read more. I want to become like...

like seven out of 10 in knowledge across a lot of different facets. And it's a really good way of doing that because I want to be able to like,

not just ask like dumb questions and also at least if I can find like one spot where I can challenge the guests and that's satisfying but that's true Rogan does a good job with that he really does yeah you can talk to anyone Lex too yeah yeah your episode on Lex was great by the way thank you yeah I think that got a ton of views too yeah yeah well done him and uh Negrano was a good one as well he's coming on tomorrow oh he is yeah I'm seeing him tonight oh you are yeah oh small world yeah Thomas said hello do you still play yeah

I play like twice a year. I was here in the World Series. I played the main event for all of about four hours. That's usually how it goes. Yeah. I mean, short and sweet. I came in like day two, just swooped in. Classic. I mean, not even an interesting hand. But it's so interesting how...

quickly you get rusty. Like I've still got some sort of some kind of database in my head of how poker works but it's like the mental machinery is slow. I can't calculate things as quickly as I used to and but it's nice it's like now I feel like a cheerful amateur as opposed to someone who's actually trying to like be good and have their ego wrapped up in it. Right that's how I feel about chess because I play a lot of chess. Really? Yeah. What's your ELO? I'm 1450. Okay. What's yours?

I got a good day, 1300. Oh, you're good. I'm okay. So I went through like a kind of cracked out period where I could like, I would play an hour of Blitz games before bed every night. Right. And I don't know, but like, I find it's like a, you know, I try and start with the 10 minute games and then it's like, well, I want a bit more of a action and it's five minutes. Next thing you know, I'm playing one minute bullet. Oh, one minute? Yeah. So I had to stop. It was like, go cold turkey. I just uninstalled the app yesterday. Yeah.

It's too triggering. Right. If you lose like two, three in a row, you get so tilted and you start playing aggressive and then you lose another two and three, you're down 100 Elo. You know, chess is, I'm sure poker is similar where you lose a few hands in a row and you're like playing tilted. Or like, I mean, especially if you're playing lots of tournaments. Yeah.

There's so much luck in any given game of poker. We play for a day or for a few hours. It's like luck is a very big factor. If we play all week, then obviously the skill matter, the luck factor gets smaller. But with tournaments, you can sometimes, if you're only playing live tournaments, you might only play 100 a year.

it's very easy to have a losing year or even multiple years and be still technically a positive return on investment player. Wow. So it's very brutal. And so then you start playing...

you know, you can't, it's like, am I losing because I'm playing badly or am I just getting unlucky? But then sometimes that can just make you stop playing worse. So it's like, it's very, yeah, it's annoying. So is that why you retired in 2018? One of the reasons. I mean, definitely. I mean, I've been doing it for like 10 years or more and the game had really changed since when I first started playing. It was much more a game of like,

street smarts and reading people's body language and intuition because we didn't really know no one really knew what the real like mathematics of the game was but then

this sort of data revolution happened where it became all about analyzing. You could like use software to analyze the, what's called game theory, optimal solutions. And so it very much, it came, it became almost more like chess study. And it's like, whoever would be willing to sit and just study and memorize all these solutions and try and like men, you know, make their brain be like the computer would be the best players. And yeah,

It was fun for a while. Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of nerdy rabbit holes I like to go down, but it did not suit, A, my learning style, and I just didn't have the fire to keep doing that. And then I was just getting harder and harder to keep up with the best. So yeah, it was a combination of things. That, and I also wanted to try some new stuff. It seems like it took away the fun from the game.

Some people love it, but for me personally, it did. No, for real. Like these kids are just nerds with, I don't want to stereotype people, but you know what I mean? Like it's the... I mean, there's still some space, like some of the really best players, like Negroni, for example, right? He, you know, I mean, he's not like best, best, but he's still very much up there. And he is one of the few sort of old school players who ultimately learned, you know, played...

as these like street smart hustlers, but then realized, well, shit, I've also got to learn all this, you know, dig into the analysis side, the mathematics. And so he also incorporated that. And then he, so now he's kind of got both sort of sets of,

playing styles to draw upon. And the best players are the ones who can do both. Do you still keep up with it at all or did you kind of walk out completely? Yeah, I'm not really following it that much. As I said, I come and play two tournaments a year and that's enough for me. Wow, just a scratcher itch, right? Damn, so you're really checked out then. There was a lot of interesting things this year at the World Series.

Kristen Fox and made a deep run. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I was following that because I mean, if I was a tournament I was in and I mean, the main event is always just really fun to follow. But yeah, no, Kristen's amazing. Did you see the final drama with the two guys? One of them was using GTO. Oh, no. So I actually didn't watch the final time, but I heard this. So yeah, he was like, he had a laptop on the side and there was going and like consulting it. Yeah. I mean,

At worst, it's very much outside the spirit of the game and kind of bordering on cheating. And at best, it's a really dumb thing to do because it just makes you like... I mean, I get it. It's your one shot. There's so much money on the line. But it's like... The main event is meant to be about... The main event is what it is because...

you get these amateurs from all over the world trying to have their shot. And if they see that, oh wait, there's like the math guy on, you know, the math guy has got his army of math guys on the side and they've got all the answers and it's like on TV.

it's not good for poker. But yeah, it's one of these classic dilemmas where short-term incentives for the individual don't match up with what's actually good for the whole game. Yeah. Yeah. So poker has turned into a very logical game, but I've seen you on other shows and it seems like you got a spiritual side to you. Somewhat. I've seen you talk about using energy healing on your body. Okay. Well, yeah. So I grew up

pure like science rationality. I studied physics. I'd never had any kind of weird unexplainable experiences until I get to Burning Man one year. I've been to Burning Man in many, many years. But one particular year I'd been having this like problem with my ear for a few months prior where I couldn't

Men's voices were being distorted and it would come and go but it was really like, I couldn't socialize. Men's voices? Only men's voices were just becoming really unpleasant to listen to. I assumed it was something to do with like the lower frequency or something but anyway it sucked. And went to various doctors and they told me, some of them didn't know what it was but they noticed I'd lost some of my hearing in that ear as well, as well as having all this distortion.

And in the end, I got diagnosed with a thing called Meniere's disease, which is...

it's from all accounts, basically, it's a progressive hearing loss thing. You eventually end up going deaf, but along the way you have these like bouts of vertigo and these attacks of dizziness and it sounds miserable. Anyway, so I've been having this on and off for a few months. Get to Burning Man, I have another really bad attack of it where I get the vertigo for the first time and I'm really sad. I'm on the last night and I get talking to this girl and she's like, well, have you tried doing any energy healing? I just kind of laughed at her like,

that's not my thing. No, I don't believe in that. And she's like, I mean, you sure you don't want to try? I was like, yeah, right. Screw it. What have I got to lose? Long story short, she ends up like sucking with her mouth over my ear. And she, she, it was quite an unpleasant sensation because it was like very loud. And I was like, please stop. There's something there. I was like, okay. And then she sort of,

at the end of it sort of drops to the ground and is quite like in discomfort, shall we say. She's like cold and shaking and she was like, that was a major thing I needed to clear. And I was pretty freaked out by this because it was like, well, that was, I've never seen anyone have that kind of reaction. And I can't say I really felt anything particularly other than like the unpleasantness of that. But her reaction was quite jarring to me because she seemed genuinely like she'd been through something.

And I was like, well, am I better? What does this mean? And she was like, yes, that was, it was, whatever it is, it's been cleared. It's gone. You'll probably have the physical symptoms for another few weeks and then you'll be fine. And that's exactly what happened. Whoa. So after that, I was like, well, that, I mean, talk about like having a worldview shaken up. Right. Now there's plenty of classical explanations, which is,

you know, maybe it was going to just go away anyway. Maybe I didn't have many errors and I had something else. I mean, that's possible. Maybe the, you know, a lot of people talk about the placebo effect, right? And it's how it's incredibly powerful. But I mean, I think that can be both true. And this was also a realm of healing that conventional science doesn't understand. Because like placebo effect is basically the rigorous science world word for healing.

this is something we don't understand. The body and brain is doing some form of healing and it is beyond our realm of current understanding. So, you know, there's many different lenses you can look through about what happened there. Like, did I have an energy blockage? Was it something, you know, darker? Was it just a like post-viral syndrome I didn't know about? Who knows? But what's been useful from that experience is that now like,

It's like I have another tool in my arsenal of how to deal with stuff, like whether it's in my own health or like someone, like another friend I'm seeing who's in some form of distress. It's like...

Okay, it's not just mind and psychology. There's also this spiritual side of things, like this more esoteric realm that can also be a useful medium of healing. Interesting. So, yeah. So that's why when you said, oh, you're into energies, it's like, well, yes and no. I'm trying to navigate this world with...

some scientific skepticism, but also like a healthy balance because before I was too closed off to this idea. And now it's like, you know, I went through a period where I was like, well, so if that's true, then what else is true? And I was quite scared for a while because I was like, oh, are demons real? And so on and so forth. And like, you know, because it was just so, such a jarring experience. And now it's like, oh no, there's like,

How can there are ways to sort of navigate along the spectrum of like cynicism and rationality to all out woo. I think there's elements of value. Like there's valuable things along that spectrum and you can like pick and choose which things to use. Yeah. So that's interesting. So you acknowledge it's there now. You just don't know where you sit on what you believe in. I think I think.

I know I think there is something to it. I've since tried things like Reiki and I've had sometimes not noticed much and other times felt something quite notable and they weren't even touching me. I was like, ooh. And again, it's like, well, is that just like my brain tricking me? Is it actually something real? And I think it's kind of a bit of both. I think maybe you need to be in an open-minded state to feel anything in the first place.

So in many ways, you almost have to like trick your brain into a certain state of being. But then once it's there, then it starts actually becoming real. Interesting. Because, you know, we, I don't, I don't subscribe to the notion that, you know, object, like there is this like cold objective reality and we're just little blobs moving around in it. There is some kind of interplay going on where like our consciousness simultaneously is affected by the external world, but also internally.

sort of feeds me it can also affect it wow so so yeah it's i think both things can be simultaneously true but we need to you know so we don't want to be so cynical that we're closed off to these alternative ways of healing that are like pretty low risk high reward but

also not so open-minded that our brains fall out. Right. Yeah, there does seem to be that divide with the science world and the spirit world, spiritual world. But I'd be willing to try it. Like you said, the risk is pretty low on these things. Sometimes they're not even touching you at all. Yeah. So what's the worst that can happen? Right. I mean, like some people I'd say go to, but what I think would be concerning is if let's say, you know, you hear these stories of people who then,

you know they'll have a strong experience of healing like this and then they'll be like well all science is bullshit all science is nonsense right right i'm not going to listen to any of that anymore i don't people like that right and that that's i think the danger and it's like there's a way to have healthy balance of both that's in fact the best way i personally think and it doesn't have to be perfectly 50 50 you know i think various people have different like

are more inclined in different directions, but you need to have some kind of grounding and balance in both for the best results, in my experience. Yeah, it'd probably be useful to have in poker to be able to kind of feel people's energy, you know, see if they're bluffing or... Yeah, I mean, there's definitely... Like, I've had times where I've just had...

a really strong feeling that I'm like, I know my cards, this is a trash hand, but I just know I'm going to hit what I need to hit. Wow. Really? And then it came. Whoa. Yeah. You manifested the card. Did I manifest it? Am I, did, have I somehow subconsciously picked up on another piece, on a piece of information I didn't know? Is it something from like, is time not linear? Like there's, there's many different explanations from anything from like the very wooey again to like,

Well, maybe there's just like, I'm picking up on something. Well, I mean, feeling, sensing that you're going to hit when, when like a card still to come. That's a different thing because like technically no one has that information. Right. But yeah, at the same time, it's not perfect. There've been, I've had plenty of times where I've had some kind of feeling that,

And then it didn't, and then it didn't hit. So then it's a question of like, well, am I just remembering the times when it did? Interesting. That's possible. Um, but I've known a few other poker players and I've certainly had it myself where like I was quite, when I won this really big tournament in Europe in 2010, uh, I had a voice in my head that said, you're going to win this tournament right, right before the tournament started. And I've,

as far as I can remember, never had that in any other one. And it was the tournament that like, when I, you know,

I was kind of a nobody in poker prior to that. And then one week later, I was like the biggest star in poker for the next few months. Holy crap. Because that's how big this tournament was. And also just like, it was a perfect storm. I was like a 25 year old girl. It was the biggest tournament held in Europe at the time. And like the British newspapers somehow got wind of it. And I was like on the front page of like all the tabloids in the UK that week. So it was a really big deal. And it's fantastic.

fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life. Dang. Yeah. That was like a life-changing moment. Absolutely. One of the most notable moments in my life. And that message came on that moment. Yes. So there must be some sort of overlap or something there. Yeah, I don't know. It just was like, it was like, kind of like my own voice in my head. It wasn't like it sounded like someone else. You know how you sometimes just like have an idea and it's like you can kind of have some inner dialogue. Yeah.

And it just said, you're going to, well, I can't remember if it was I or you, which is interesting, but it was like, you're going to win this tournament. And I was like. Startled you. Yeah, no, like, I remember looking around the room being like, okay, that, I just heard that. Okay, maybe I'm going crazy. And then the tournament starts, I proceed to lose like half my chips. And I'm like, well, that was nonsense, I guess. But then I recovered.

And then I made it to day two. Wow. And then day three and then day four. And next thing I knew, I'm like final table down to final six. It was 5,000 euro buy in tournament. And even ninth was like 80,000. Damn. And then I ended up winning it for 1.25 million. Holy crap. Can't even do the math on that multiple. That's crazy. It's a lot. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a lot of the little like data point to me of like,

Sometimes there must be some other realm of information out there that we can access. I don't have a reliable way of doing it. I wish I could say this is how you do it. I have not figured that out. And I know a few other poker players who've had similar kind of experiences. Maybe not as strong. You should ask Daniel. You think he's had one? I don't know. I haven't asked him. But I'd be really curious to...

whether he has had any kind of like, this is going to be a good one for me. Now, again, like, you know, was it a premonition that I was going to win? Was like I knowing something from the future or was it just like I had this weird like mental blip and it gave me so much confidence that I was just able to play this like weird a game. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah, it's super interesting. Did you know a large percentage of people don't have an inner dialogue?

I'd heard that recently, actually. Just like nothing. Nothing. So they don't talk to each other. How do they think? That's what I'm wondering. Because I talk to myself all the time. Yeah. Literally as soon as I get up.

Talking to myself. Because it's like there's this thing called aphantasia as well, right? Where some people can't visualize. Think of an apple in your head. Close your eyes and visualize an apple. Red apple. Yeah. Most people can see at least the shape of one and the color and maybe a little bit of shine. Especially if you add layers of words onto it, you can usually make that image stronger. Some people just don't see anything at all. What? Yes. Okay.

That's weird. And it's not, as far as I can tell, correlated to intelligence or anything. I know a guy, another poker player, one of the smartest people I've ever met, and he says he has it completely. He doesn't see anything when he closes his eyes. So I don't know whether he's like... But he probably has a strong dialogue in his head. Or monologue, should I say. Because he says he visualizes things by sort of speaking them out or something. Yeah, some people see words, right? Right. Right.

So it must be like synesthesia adjacent or something. Yeah, I see objects when people start saying words, you know. Have you noticed the top poker players have any correlation with IQ levels? I mean, there's definitely... Yeah, like if I was to wager whether the top players are above average IQ, I would strongly wager that. I can't say there's been any rigorous studies done on it. You know, again, certainly in the modern game, it's about...

It would probably favor those with the classical, you know, people who would do well on an IQ test because it's a certain kind of very linear thinking that you have to be good at to excel on an IQ test. Like, okay, that shape corresponds to that and there's this pattern and so on. So it's very logical and there's a lot of that in the modern game. Whereas in the old school game, it was a little bit more intuitive, which, again, probably correlates to being good at an IQ test, but it's less...

You often hear of people who have really strong street smarts, but aren't actually that good at logic puzzles. Does it make them less intelligent? Well, it depends on like, intelligence is such a nebulous concept.

You know, we have these ideas of like emotional intelligence or rationality quotient. You know, how good are people at understanding their own biases? That's another form of intelligence. I haven't heard of that one. Yeah, it's a good one. I need to take that test. Yeah, but the nice one about that is that it's trainable. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Okay, because IQ can't really change too much, right? I think you can probably study...

to a degree like because again it's like learning how to do a certain type of puzzle right um so i wouldn't be surprised if there's something you could do to probably like increase it by a few points um but i'd say some of the other ones like emotional intelligence like again it's i mean i think all of these things are somewhat learnable but some it comes different types come easier to others um but that i mean again that's a cool thing about poker and other games especially poker it it's

it forces you to learn to understand your own biases because like wishful thinking and like biased thinking is the death knell to any poker player. Right, they'll go broke. Right, like you know we're playing against each other and you make a huge bet and I have kind of medium strong cards but a lot of my chips already invested.

My motivation is to find all the reasons why you might be bluffing. And, you know, because that's probably my only way of beating you at this point. So I'm motivated to look for the evidence that confirms that hypothesis and motivated to ignore all the other evidence that sort of goes against it. But that's not actually rational, right? Really, I want to just evaluate everything as objectively as possible. So...

I can't remember how this related to my point. We got all intended there. We've been all over the place. I only remember we were talking about IQ. We've covered a lot of ground. Yeah, IQ, EQ. We were talking about tests. I don't know how we got there. But yeah, I recently saw you had your partner on your podcast. I've been thinking about doing that. So what ended up happening with that episode?

Oh, with Igor. So yeah, Igor is my, he's another professional poker player. We met playing poker. He doesn't do it anymore either. And we recently had our 10 year anniversary of being together. So thought, so my podcast is called the win-win podcast, shameless plug. And it's about like looking for things in life that are win-wins where, you know, that positive some endeavors happen.

where the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

relationships are arguably one of the best examples of a win-win thing right if they go well right but they can be very win-losey you know some of very sort of uh exactly and but a lot more often than not more often than not but if anything they're either lose-lose or win-win usually and if you have a good relationship you can get pretty well calibrated at spotting ones that like seems like this relationship is a net negative on both of you um

So, yeah, we decided for our 10 year anniversary to sort of interview one another about what we've learned over the course of the relationship. Wow. That's been, you know, that we think is helpful for other people. Really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because 10 years is a long time these days. You know, there's people breaking up every month. My friends are going through tens of relationships. Pretty common. How old are you? 27. 27.

I mean, that's a common age for people to like go through breakups. I didn't meet Igor. Well, I didn't get together with Igor until I was 29. Oh, okay. Yeah. Pretty late. Yeah. Nice. And I just turned 40. Yeah? Congrats. Big 4-0. You go to the club or? I did a party. It's interesting. It's the first birthday where I was like,

Yeah, okay, I'm over this now. I'm done with this number going up thing. I feel that. I'm already feeling like that, to be honest. Oh, just wait. Yeah? Oh, man. 30s are great, actually. 30s are really, really awesome. I mean, 40s, I can't say. Everyone's like, oh, it gets better. I'm like, okay, but... What was good about 30, you think? I just stopped caring about stupid stuff as much. Yeah.

And I mean, in general, you get that is something that just as you get older, it seems to be the case. You're just like, OK, I've been there, done that. That actually doesn't matter. OK, this thing does. So I think you're just a little bit more efficient with your emotions. OK. So you used to care a lot about what people think about you. And or just like, oh, I need to be the best at this. And sort of arbitrary metrics that didn't actually matter. Yeah.

Yeah, it's easy to go down that route, right? Trying to prove people wrong, trying to be the best. So you had that attitude with poker? Yes, which incidentally, though, you need some of. That was actually another reason why I kind of ended up transitioning out of the game was I just lost... To be a great poker player, you need...

a real fire in your belly. You need to be competitive and like be wanting to look your opponent in the eyes and like essentially rip out their heart to take their money. And I just lost, I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm still very competitive, but I just, I don't know, didn't have that same fire. Is it because you befriended certain players? You don't want to take their money away? No, no, it was,

I don't know. In my early 20s, I felt like that was how I could prove to the world and to myself that I was cool or something. And it just became less of a thing that mattered. I still care about proving to the world. I still care what people think about me. I do want to be successful. It's just, I guess, my

my priorities have shifted about what like I care about being successful. Yeah. Well, now I think you could have more impact with the podcast. For sure. Yeah. Poker is just one thing of life. Right. And also by definition, poker is a zero sum game. My win is someone else's loss and vice versa. Player versus player. But like a podcast, especially like one that like,

educates people or makes them happy like gives it provides inspiration is such a win-win thing you know you're putting you're gaining something out of it you get to have cool conversations and grow your platform and hopefully monetize and then your audience get a bunch of information for free right it's really cool it's like the pure act of creation i agreed so yeah that was um

Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do my show. What were some of the biggest win-wins you've found on the podcast so far? Oh, good question. You've got on some big people, so I'm sure there's some big wins on there. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that I'm trying to like nail down through the show is what are the ways, how can we harness the power of competition?

such that it is aligned with what humanity needs in the long run. Because really competition is what makes the world go round and collaboration, obviously. But like, you know, our economic system is built upon competition. And some industries are very clearly win-win, like...

discovering new drug discovery or something like that. Like it's you discover some amazing new cancer curing drug. You'll probably get very rich from doing that and you'll help a bunch of people. Or you'll end up dead. Clear win-win. Yeah. Why would you end up dead? Well, Big Pharma might not want

Want that out. Well, all that. Okay, sure. Well, okay. So that, so let's, let's, you know, just assuming the like good health industry, which I agree there's, there's plenty of whacked incentives in, in pharmaceutical industry as well. But, um,

Okay, let's find another example. Sorry, sorry. No, it's fine. I have on a lot of holistic people on this show, so. No, and I mean, there's definitely some truth to that. Again, like there's so many things that are being missed because it's not easily, you know, like, okay, maybe this is oversharing. There's a certain like, uh,

for anyone who gets regular UTIs. I went through a period where I had like, just kept having UTIs and doctors couldn't figure out why. And I went on all these antibiotics and saw a specialist and they were like, we don't know. It's just one of those things. And it wasn't until a friend who was into very holistic stuff said, oh, have you tried this D-mannose? It's like a simple sugar. You can just buy it in any health food store. I was like, what?

why would I do that? She's like, oh, the molecular shape of it is more adhesive to the bacteria that usually cause a UTI than the blinding of the bladder. So they all stick to that and you just pee it out and it doesn't cause any antibiotic resistance or anything. You should try it. It was like a magic wand. But my UTIs just completely went away and I basically never had them again. Wow. And not a single doctor had told me about it. So I went on like a rabbit hole of like, why is this not widely known?

There'd been a few little studies done on it, all of which were positive, but ultimately it's because it's not something that can be patented. It's just a sugar. Wow. And it's like, so it's one of these, if you sort of dig around and read it on like a women's health forum, you might find it, but it's somehow not in the scientific establishment's mind, which is crazy. So there is, yeah, real, real truth to this, you know, that, that,

incentives don't always align um and so yeah that's really like coming back to your question like one of the main things that win-win has sort of shown up through all these different interviews is that like what we need to do to fix so many of our problems whether it's like misinformation you know media like leaning more and more into clickbait or uh

all these like addiction methods that are being used on social media to get teenagers addicted to whatever the latest platform is and so on. They're all a result of short-term, you know, because all of these companies are in a rat race against each other. So they're trying to do whatever they can in the short term to get a competitive edge. So these short-term incentives are misaligned with what is actually good for, I mean, the health of the entire industry itself in the long run, but also for all the consumers, all the customers, right?

And so the like common theme that is emerging from every interview is that like we have to, as a species, critically examine the design of the incentive structures that we are using to drive progress.

So it's not like a clear answer of like, oh, that's a clear win-win. No, I like that though. That's what we got to do. I agree. And it's a very hard problem. Very. So that's why I've like, just like, that's now my mission. I'm like trying to like get everyone thinking about how can we think better about incentives? Very hard because of capitalism. I call it conscious capitalism. So I like to make money, but if the other side is losing or if someone's getting injured, I don't want to make money that way because of karma or whatever. You know, I want to be conscious about how I'm making the money.

That's actually an interesting point. Karma is maybe an underutilized concept because it's like a metric of whether or not you're doing good, but it's a self-enforced one. There's no one from top down saying, oh, you're going to have bad karma. It's something that within yourself, you're like, I believe that the universe has a form of wisdom that knows whether I'm doing something that's good or bad and it will punish me.

if I do a thing that hurts, harms others. Yeah, maybe we need to like spread that meme more. Agreed. Yeah, karma is kind of seen as like a woo-woo, like spiritual thing. So some people don't even believe in it. A lot of people don't. Well, yeah. I mean, if you're a like career criminal, clearly you don't because otherwise you or like, I don't know, you assume unless you want the pain, I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, it's, I don't know whether I believe in it because there's so many examples of like

Bad people getting away with terrible things. Yeah. Then it gets into that debate. But I think the world would be a clearly better place if everyone did believe in it. Agreed.

agree right because then why would you do bad things exactly if if in an ideal world people would just not do bad stuff because they empathize with their fellow human or like have i mean the other thing as well though is like a lot of bad things that happen on earth are done not because people intend to be bad but just because they don't realize that they're being you know like they're doing a bad thing like

you know, we're now seeing all these studies about like there's microplastics everywhere, right? And they're all in our brains and everywhere and people's testicles. And it's not like those, the companies that made all this cheap plastic packaging, you know, thought, knew that they were doing an evil thing necessarily. It's not in the beginning, but the incentives, again, comes back to incentives. The incentives are,

the intense competition they were in to like package their products as cheaply as possible because you know to protect their bottom line because otherwise their investors get mad and leave them or they can't attract more investment so they've got to they're under all this pressure to cut corners um and use whatever cheap plastic packaging they can so it's it's but maybe if they had the like true foresight they had the information that like in 10 years time this is going to be everywhere including in your own children's brains right

do you really want to do this? Then they might not have done it. So like they would have done the conscious capitalism thing basically. But if we don't have sufficient information, then it's very hard to be a conscious capitalist. Good point. Yeah, you see it with asbestos, right? When they use that in the old buildings, they didn't know it was bad for you at the time. Yeah. But then at the same time,

There are also plenty of examples of companies literally just being psychopaths because also with the asbestos thing, there was a period of time. So there was a period of time they didn't know it was bad, but then they did find out it was bad and then funded a bunch of research that was basically just false, false, you know, bullshit research that said it's safe. Jeez. Yes. And that's what I feel like they're doing now.

Still. Yeah, I mean, so like 3M, the big, I mean, they make all sorts of stuff. But they've recently got, I think, a $10 billion fine for obfuscating the fact that PFAS, which is like forever chemicals, don't break down and are just now everywhere. And they kind of like tried to cover that up and get away with it. So...

It's a combination. I think conscious capitalism helps for sure. But at the same time, there are always going to be a fraction of people with a lot of power in companies who are psychopaths. Because they just see it as a fine. It's business. You know what I mean? It's a percentage of their revenue. Right. And the thing is, if you think about an actual corporate structure, it has one goal or a couple of goals. Yeah. It's like satisfy investors. They are fiscally bound to do it. They legally have to.

But that means that they are directly incentivized to cut whatever corners they can as long as they can get away with it. Right. It's pretty psychopathic if you think about it. People's health are being ruined. I mean, look at birth control. Look at all these medications kids are being put on. It's terrible. Yeah. But then at the same time, that same process does also drive a lot of great stuff. Like capitalism has driven, you know, solar panels, more efficient energy production that's cleaner, etc. So it's

It's both cases are true. So again, it's like, how do we design, how do we improve information so that like people can be more aware of the potential harms of what they're building, but then also design the incentives so that those who cut corners get actually really punished for it as quickly as possible and disincentivized. What do you think the punishment should be? Oh, that's been on my pay grade. I think it varies. It depends. The baby powder one is nuts. Yeah.

Have you seen that one with Johnson & Johnson? No. Baby powder causing all these diseases. Yeah, I'm looking at that one. That one's scary because a lot of parents use that on their babies. That's awful. It's terrible. I didn't know about the microplastic in the kid's brain. That's a new one to me. Well, so I mean it's just a new study that was going around on Twitter yesterday. I mean I think it's a preprint, so it's like – I'm sure it's not as bad as the headlines are making out to be, but it found that of the brains that were studied –

half a percent of them by weight was microplastic was plastic crap so one two hundredths what of the brain's mass it was plastic that's nuts i mean that seems so crazy to me i wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of error but the point is the real number should be zero or as close to zero as possible because like the brain is such a delicate organ like it's

And once something's in there, it's almost impossible to get out. And so if microplastics are able to cross the blood-brain barrier, that's a huge problem. That's scary. Yeah. I mean, look at the rates of all these, you know, autism rates in young babies now. There must be a link. I mean, yeah, it's so complex. It's hard to like pin it down. All we know is that we're

We are drastically changing our environment through all these different chemicals and new technologies faster than we can figure out whether it matters that we're changing the environment. And that's what matters. I think a lot of these things aren't actually probably going to be as bad as we think they are. Some of them are going to be much worse for us than we think we are. But the point is, it's like we shouldn't be just blindly running these experiments to

That's essentially what you're doing. Like we're running, you know, I know there's still like a ton of debate about whether how much, you know, how much CO2 changes the atmosphere. And we do know that we have been increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But it's like, why run such a huge experiment where we just don't know? Like, why take, you know...

You're just making a huge gamble with very unclear long-term impact. Let me start that again. You're just making a very high-stakes gamble on behalf of everybody. Right.

This is what concerns me about AI development as well. Now, there's a lot of very great people working in the big AI companies who are very responsible. But at the same time, these companies are all in a big race with each other to get there first. Who can be the first to build AGI? And again, so they're under maximum pressure to cut whatever corners they can.

And that's a very dangerous situation, generally speaking. But at the same time, AI also, it's not like it's pure downside. Like there's so many amazing things that can come from it. So it's like, how do we design the incentives such that they race really fast on the stuff that we know is low risk, but very high reward,

but not the potentially dangerous things. So it's like we want to accelerate defensive type of stuff and be very careful on the possibly offensive things that can be weaponized. Yeah, that makes sense. I've seen Elon talk about AI and how it could be used in the wrong way. He was really scared about how open AI was going, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's been someone who's been talking about it for a decade or more, concerned about the various risks. You know, I think another thing that people don't... You hear a lot about, like, oh, the risk of extinction, you know, like the classic sort of Terminator, AI gone rogue. And I think that's definitely a non-zero chance of that. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a possibility. We just don't know, right? We're building just... If you look through history, whenever, like, a more powerful...

species comes up against a weaker species, typically that weaker species doesn't do so well. Or, you know, a more powerful or smarter or technologically capable tribe. You know, when the Europeans landed in North America, it didn't work out so well for the natives, right? So generally speaking, the more capable species has an advantage over the weaker one. And so that may apply with AI. There's reasons why it might not. But there's also then this, like...

It basically raises the risk of everything from the risk of tyranny, because a powerful, power-hungry, tyrannical government who wants to just do mass surveillance on everybody and prevent them from doing anything, preventing people's freedom, they could be empowered by AI. Or a terrorist cell who wants to cause max chaos and just kill everyone, they could also be empowered by AI. Yeah.

So there's so many different clusters of risks with it. That's why it just needs to be done extremely carefully. But at the same time, I think there are many parts of life that we definitely need AI's help with. There's so many, like, it can help us find new means of clean energy production. It can help us cure cancer. It can help us do so many of these things. So the question is, like, how do we minimize those risks while also...

because it is a risk by not allowing those things to happen too. Yeah. So it's just, we're just in the most high stakes stage of history ever, basically. Yeah, we are.

It's an exciting time to be alive. - It is, it is. - So that's kind of why I gave up poker. 'Cause I wanted to think about this stuff more. - Going full circle now. Wow, that was a long answer to the first question. Yeah, AI, man. My dentist uses AI. Isn't that crazy? - Cool, how? - He took photos of my teeth, put it into the AI, showed me all my cavities. I had a couple of gum infections. - Amazing. - All with AI. - Yeah, see, that's the thing. I'm so excited about the idea of AI-empowered doctors.

Especially things I saw a study about, they trained an AI on looking at cancerous versus non-cancerous moles. And its accuracy rate was significantly higher than a well-trained human eye. So again, it's amazing what... The world in 10 years, I think, is going to be...

I don't know, a simultaneously amazing but also precarious place. Yeah. Unless we can figure out how to like, you know, as I say, like temper these risks of the scary stuff. So we just have the upsides. You building a bunker on the side? No. You're not one of those doomsday. No, I mean, a little scared part of me finds that appealing for sure. But I don't think it would work.

Like nothing is written. There is so much we can all do to help make the world better. And I don't know, I don't like these people who are like, oh, we're definitely doomed or we're definitely going to be okay. Like there's just so much uncertainty and things are getting more and more uncertain. So all we can do is like embrace that uncertainty and like look it in the face and be like, okay,

I don't know. But that doesn't mean that you then should just give up and be like, well, nothing matters. Things still matter. So you just like have to really do a lot. I don't know. It's getting more and more into like soul searching. Like what matters to us personally, you know, me personally, to you personally. How can I make more of that? How can I enrich the people around me and so on? So I don't know. Going back to community, it sounds like, right? Like local communities. Yeah.

And it's interesting. I think there was a lot of people are certainly like the people I know around after COVID. So many people are like, I just want to build like a build a village. You know, I don't want to live in a big city anymore. I want to go somewhere with all my friends and build a community. Perhaps because almost it's like our communities have been replaced by digital community. Yeah.

Which in some ways is great because you get connected to anyone around the world who thinks in a similar way to you. It's awesome. But I do wonder at what cost that comes where we don't spend as much time. You know, like it used to be that you'd walk out your house and you'd walk down the road to buy...

some milk or some bread or something and now you can literally just click and it will arrive to your house and you don't even have to like look the person in the eye who brings it to you. It's not clear to me that that's a good thing overall. It definitely makes the world more efficient, but does it make it happier? Interesting. Yeah, they should do some studies on that. Yeah. I think, you know, there's like efficiency can be good up to a point and then after a certain point it actually starts being negative. When things are too easy. Yeah.

Just, yeah, or at least, like, it's just, it becomes too alien. Like, ultimately, we evolved to be happiest when we were in a community of people somewhere around underneath the Dunbar number, you know, like, underneath the number of which we know everyone's name. And that's, we evolved in little tribes where we sort of were all interconnected and depended on each other and, like, laughed together and had, you know, it was multi-generational and so on. And if we sway too far away from that, I wonder...

I worry that it will make us...

sad and detached and kind of forget what we really are. I could see that because if you look at all the blue zones, the five blue zones, all five of them have community incorporated into their lifestyle. What are the blue zones? It's centenarians. So average age is like 100 years old. Oh, okay. There's five around the world. But a big part of their lifestyle is community. Right. So I could definitely see that. Loneliness is a killer. It's awful. Awful. I used to be pretty lonely and I saw it kill a lot of people, I know. Really? Just being lonely. What did you do to get out of it? Um...

It was in college. I just locked myself in my room for like almost a year and just slowly started going to events and stuff. It was hard. Forgot how to talk to people. I think that happened to a lot of people during COVID. Oh, yeah. And some just never got back out of it. Yeah, that was a rough time. Were you here during that or in the UK? I was kind of in both, actually. Yeah, no, I was there like for the first half of the 2020 and then managed to come out and then was here and...

It was interesting. I went through actually a winter in the UK where it was like full lockdown. You weren't allowed to go see your family for Christmas. That was rough. That was really, really rough. Because that's just like the one time of the year my family all get together and

and we kind of like waving at each other through zoom it was it was dark especially it was like i also was like dark outside for like most of the day because it's the uk in winter which is miserable um yeah it was really tough just it shows um and what again like there's so many young people now who are like growing up in that lifestyle because it's easier to again like it's

You can talk to your friends, technically. You have some kind of proxy of socialization through texting with each other or FaceTime or whatever. But there's something that happens when you're like sitting down with someone, like face-to-face, and you can touch them and you can look them in the eyes. There's some kind of information, going back to like energies. Maybe we're exchanging some form of energy we don't understand, some form of information, just by being in each other's presence. Like I notice when I do some podcasts remote and some in person,

And the ones in person are just always so much better. There's something else, there's something tangible that gets made that you can like, your body is picking up on or something. Yeah. So it's like, how do we help young people who maybe never known the difference? Like my generation is probably one of the last that really, like the world didn't go fully digital for me until I was like,

22. So I had like most of my formative years like in meat space. Yeah. And then I became a digital, digital inhabitant. But yeah, like for kids who are just growing up purely in this,

It's tough. Yeah. It's real tough. And then they're going to have kids. Like they don't even have parents who know. Yeah. By then they'll be in the metaverse. They won't even care about their physical bodies. Yeah. But I mean, who knows? Maybe, maybe we may, if we can evolve fast enough such that it doesn't matter, then okay, fine. I'm, I'm open to that being a possibly okay thing, but let's see what happens. We'll look back at the show 25 years from now and see if we were right or wrong. Yeah. Let's do it. It's been fun. Where can people find you in your podcast? Uh,

Yeah, so mainly on my YouTube, which is if you just search win-win with Liv Bury, win-win. Yeah, that's the main place. Cool. I'm prolific on Twitter, X, whatever it's called, Instagram. I still call it Twitter. I can't undo it. Yeah, I can't get over it. Also, you can't search. If you Google X, you're not going to necessarily find it. It's just bad SEO. Yeah.

Love it. We'll link your ex below and your other socials. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for watching, guys. See you next time.