Mixed Mental Arts

In the wake of The Depression and World War II, it's understandable that the focus of North America's agricultural system became producing as many calories as cheaply as possible. And so, competitions were held like the Chicken of Tomorrow contest which aimed to produce chickens that grew more quickly and were in every way better suited to industrial production. The one thing that wasn't a priority was flavor. The result was that even by the 1960s Julia Child was warning that American chickens for all their impressive size were beginning to taste like teddy bear stuffing. This it turns out isn't some trivial concern. In fact, it may be the driving force behind why Americans overeat. Given how much of the human genome is devoted to tasting (with flavor sensors not just in your nose and tongue but also in your gut), it would be incredibly strange if flavor was something trivial. In fact, more of your genome is devoted to flavor than is devoted to your genitals which gives you a sense of just how evolutionarily important it must be. As Mark Schatzker, the author of The Dorito Effect, explains in this episode explains, flavor is the signal our bodies detect as a proxy for nutrition. The Dorito is the perfect way to mess up that signaling. You take a corn chip that is full of carbs and pretty much nothing else and you wrap it in massive amounts of flavor. You eat and eat and eat but you never get the nutrition you need. Once you pop, you can't stop isn't just a campaign slogan; it's a warning label. Doritos, Pringles and other junk food are perfectly engineered to make you overeat. And this is where the mixed mental arts element of this all comes in. Culture is driving these choices. Doritos, Pringles and other junk food are an American invention. And while obesity is a problem everywhere, it is particularly a problem in America. And, however much Americans might try and rationalize this behavior based on cost or practicality, it actually doesn't make any sense. There are varieties of chicken (La Belle Rouge) and tomato (those belonging to Harry Klee) that produce commercially viable quantities while still being much more flavorful. The costs? Obesity costs the US $190 billion a year. That's 21% of US Healthcare costs. There are no good reasons why Americans shouldn't have chickens that are as delicious as French chickens and tomatoes that are as flavorful as Italian tomatoes. More flavor. Less overeating. Less obesity. Lower taxes from healthcare savings. What's not to love? Expect to see a forthcoming blogpost that expands on this at mixedmentalarts.club. Featured Links The Geography of Thought Guest Information GUEST NAME: Mark Schatzker GUEST BIO: Mark Schatzker is an award-winning writer based in Toronto. He is a radio columnist for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation and a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail, Condé Nast Traveler, and Bloomberg Pursuits. He is the author of The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor and Steak: One Man's Search for the World's Tastiest Piece of Beef. Guest Links WEBSITE: http://www.markschatzker.com/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/markschatzker Guest Promotions The Dorito Effect

Thanks to a suggestion by @ElliotBlair_ on Twitter, Mixed Mental Arts is introducing something new and very exciting. We will now be awarding belts. First up, the white belt which is already live at mixedmentalarts.club. Except, that's not how The Kid rolls. The Kid gets excited and wants to talk about the difference between being a rationalist and an intuitionist…which is definitely green belt-level material. Fortunately, any Mixed Mental Artists knows how to be like water. As Master Bruce Lee said, "You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend." And so, Hunter flows like water into whatever direction the Kid takes the conversation and then channels that energy into breaking down what it means to be an intuitionist. It means accepting your elephant. After hundreds of years of science, we have a pretty good model of how the brain works and that model suggests the brain is like a rider and an elephant. As a child, your elephant is trained by the culture around you to behave in certain ways. As an adult, it is your job to become aware of your elephant, to recognize what it is doing and to retrain it to act in more constructive ways. That is what Mixed Martial Arts or tennis or education is about. It's using your reflective system (your rider) to slow things down enough that you can get your intuitive system (your elephant) behaving in the most productive way possible. And that is not something that any of us have truly mastered in all areas of life which is why we're going to go ahead and say that there are no black belts in Mixed Mental Arts. Maybe though…you will be the first. Featured Links WEBSITE: mixedmentalarts.club TWITTER: twitter.com/mixedmentalarts FACEBOOK: facebook.com/mixedmentalarts INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mixedmentalarts/?hl=en

In the last few years, ISIS has attracted people who don't feel like they belong in their own society to Syria with the promise that together they're going to rebuild The Caliphate. From the outside, it's pretty understandable. Being part of a revolution is exciting. You're changing the world. You're part of a great cause. And you get to destroy the old society which you feel treated you like crap. Revolutions are like start ups. The problem is that ISIS' startup is trying to make a place filled with rape, slavery, beheading and the sort of anti-scientific attitude that will lead really bad internet speeds. It's terrible really. Fortunately, there's an alternative. If you're feeling dissatisfied with the existing system in anyway, then you can help us in building The Callenphate. All ideas and suggestions are welcome. It's time to take Mixed Mental Arts out on the road and use it to beat up some of the world's toughest problems. There are some similarities but also some important differences between The Callenphate and The Caliphate. Both offer really good Arabic food but, in the Callenphate, you can drink it with excellent red wine if you choose. Both like sex but the Callenphate likes it to be consensual for both/all parties. Both believe that beheading looks really good on film but since ours is in Hollywood, we understand that you can do that with special effects, guys. You don't actually need to chop a real person's head off. The Callenphate also has a very different relationship to the past. We don't have any desire to repeat it. While the original Caliphates achieved some remarkable things, they still existed in centuries like the 7th and 12th. It doesn't matter where you went in the world life in the 7th and 12th centuries just wasn't that good. The reality is that the prosperity of the modern world makes it better to be a court jester like Bryan Callen or a court tutor like Hunter than a legendary King like Henry VIII. We have inherited the accumulated cultural progress of billions of humans from all around the world. The key to improving our lives is get better at setting the mood for idea sex than any group of humans ever have before. So, what is the idea sex equivalent of putting on some Barry White? Well, it's a lot of things we already know but that aren't consistently done. It's embracing and analyzing your mistakes to improve your performance. It's creating a society that both takes care of its members and in which its members are constantly striving to be responsible for themselves. And it's about creating a society, in which we all have the kind of purpose which makes humans happiest and most productive. And doing that is also the key to having the most successful life for you. These three ideas are beautifully summed up in Daniel Pink's book, Drive, as autonomy, mastery and purpose. As Pink reports, research shows that people who tap into these forms of motivation are much more successful in the long run than people who are just trying to make as much money as possible. Pursue autonomy, mastery and purpose and money will follow. Pursue money first and it will be hard for you to compete and stay relevant in the Information Age. The Callenphate is built on living and spreading that kind of ethos. We don't need to drop bombs. We've got knowledge bombs. And all we have to do is go around and take all the ideas that are already out there and put them together into one dynamite cultural package which we call Mixed Mental Arts. Of course, any movement needs to be able to spread its ideas and that means not only understanding them but retaining them. And so, the episode ends with how Hunter remembers the names of these books and organizes these ideas. The secret it turns out is The London Cabbies. As Hunter and his co-author Katie O'Brien explain in The Straight-A Conspiracy, the map of London is way harder to memorize than the map of New York. It's full of strange, twisty streets with odd names. To master this information–which cabbies call "The Knowledge"–requires far better memory techniques than just flashcards. And so, cabbies begin by memorizing the routes. What are the major routes through London? With those in place, they can build off that and add side streets. Like building a puzzle where you start with the edges, they then fill them in. At the Bryan Callen Show, we've been trying to figure out how to get you the most powerful version of "The Knowledge" possible. It took Hunter years to learn the routes that serve as the backbone of Mixed Mental Arts. By learning them first, you can acquire the knowledge without having to spend the money and time that the majority of highly boring and massively repetitive nonfiction books require. Once you have those routes, then filling in the side streets will be easy and you'll be able to dazzle people with your insight into them and the world. Together, we're evolving an understanding of the world better than any the world has ever seen so that, one

The number one book Hunter is getting recommended right now is Tribe by Sebastian Junger. It's an amazing book. Mostly, it's about why US soldiers often have such a hard time reintegrating back into US society. It's pretty easy to understand. You go off to war and you have a group of people who will die for you, who look out for you and who are engaged in a great mission together. And then you come back and there's no sense of shared purpose. In war, people have tribe. In the modern world, most of us don't. And when people don't have tribe, they go looking for it; they try and create it and that's a big part of why you have ISIS. What is it that tribes provide? They help provide food and defense against violent death. Modern societies do that incredibly well. Way better than hunter-gatherer tribes ever did. But tribes also provide belonging, shared purpose, community and a magical thing called dignity. When you bring back food, the tribe (your family) recognizes what you have done and they're grateful for it. You feel appreciated and that is no small thing. In fact, William James, the Founder of American Psychology, said "The deepest principle of human nature is a craving to be appreciated." Do you feel appreciated in your life? A lot of people don't. A lot of people feel like they get no respect. And that can make them very angry and resentful. And that's when they start or join groups like ISIS. ISIS provides its followers with many things: sex slaves, treasure and the chance to get shot at. However, besides the real life video game aspects, it also provides its followers (if not the women unfortunate enough to live in the region) with dignity and purpose. ISIS succeeds as a movement because the societies its followers have come from have failed to satisfy that deepest principle in human nature: the desire to be appreciated. One of Bryan's favorite quotes is from Amos Oz. It's about how the key to beating a bad idea is to provide a better idea. However, the full quote is instructive: "But Hamas is not just a terrorist organization. Hamas is an idea, a desperate and fanatical idea that grew out of the desolation and frustration of many Palestinians. No idea has ever been defeated by force — not by siege, not by bombardment, not by being flattened with tank treads and not by marine commandos. To defeat an idea, you have to offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one." No idea has ever been defeated by force. It might be appealing to think that you can just make ISIS' ideas go away by bombing them out of existence but nothing makes ideas fascinating and intriguing like trying to kill the people who have them. Making martyrs doesn't destroy ideas; it gives them power. Boko Haram, for example, was a nothing movement until its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, died in police custody in 2009. At the time, Alhaji Boguma, a government official in the region, said that the "wave of fundamentalism" had been "crushed." In practice, Mohammed Yusuf was like Obi Wan Kenobi. He was struck down and became more powerful than Ahlaji Boguma could possibly imagine. An angry, ranting cleric with a crappy world view was transformed into a perfect symbol. And so, if we really want to defeat ISIS or Boko Haram, we need to "offer a better idea, a more attractive and acceptable one." The problem is no one is really doing that. Imagine being born in Libya. You now have a Libyan passport which pretty much means your only opportunities are in Libya…where there are pretty much no opportunities. In order to get married–which in the Muslim world is your only real path to sex–you have to provide a lot of stuff. Depending on what kind of Libyan you are that might mean a house, a car and a washing machine or it might mean a bunch of camels. Either way, it's not something you're likely to be able to afford because the wealth of the country is controlled by a tiny number of families who use their power to prevent others from outcompeting them. Basically, you're screwed and with no chance of getting laid. What you want is an awesome house, a beautiful wife and maybe most importantly dignity. You want to contribute to society and be recognized for that contribution. Except, the international community constantly tells you your country is a sh*thole and your people suck. No dignity there. The success of ISIS isn't that it is a good idea. It's that it's basically the only idea that is being targeted at people that our global society values so little that we don't even bother to think about them until they create problems for us all. This problem isn't just a Libyan or a Nigerian problem. It's not even just a problem among marginalized Muslim communities in the West. It is a problem for an increasing number of people all over the world. People whose culture is geared towards Industrial Age factory work are finding that they can't make a living in an Information Age economy. They can't get dignity. And so, they want to do the only thing that m

Albert Einstein famously said, "Everything should be as simple as possible but no simpler." Sadly, though he's famous for saying this, it's pretty clear that like most internet quotes he never actually said this. Still, it's a great principle and quotes are like tennis shoes, hamburgers or sodas. If you put them next to a celebrity, they seem way more legit. Regardless of who came up with it though, it's a great principle. Silicon Valley understands this trade off really well. Great software often becomes worse over time because it suffers from a disease known as featuritis or feature creep. It's an easy trap to fall into. The idea is that if the software is good then if you keep adding new widgets, doodads and other functionalities that it will be even better. Actually though, it gets worse because it becomes increasingly unusable. While writers of New York Times op-eds can wave their hands and say things are complicated, Mixed Mental Artists don't have that option. And while pandering politicians can offer super simplistic solutions to voters that make sense but don't work in the real world, Mixed Mental Artists don't have that option. We are entering the octagon and struggling with problems until we find real world solutions. In practice, Bryan is the perfect person to do this with because, as of today, he's intellectually bipolar. One moment he's simplistic. The next moment things are too complicated to be understood. One of Bryan's great Mixed Mental Arts abilities is the ability to escape any train of thought but Hunter pins him down and trains him out of some old habits into some new more effective ones. Why? It's almost like Hunter is grooming Bryan for something…and in this episode we find out what it is.

A century ago, the world faced a tremendous problem: horse shit. The world was full of it. And then an amazing invention pollution-saving device was invented: the car. As the world fills up with all kinds of horse shit (this time of the verbal and behavioral kind), it's worth revisiting this experience to see what lessons Mixed Mental Artists can learn to clean things up. When the horse-drawn carriage was updated, the only thing that was changed initially was the form of locomotion. The horse was swapped out for a gasoline-powered engine. It was a super-specific and fairly limited change. That is exactly what Mixed Mental Arts is going to do for your culture. We're going to swap out very specific parts to retrain your beliefs, values and intuitions for the Information Age. A great example of what that looks like for a culture comes from Japan's Meiji Restoration. After 200 years of isolating itself from the world, Japan got a massive shock when Commodore Perry sailed his big, black steamships into Tokyo Harbor. Japan realized it needed to adapt or it would be subjugated by much stronger foreign powers. It sent experts around the world and retooled the engine of its culture to shift its culture from a feudal age culture to an industrial age culture. The culture of Silicon valley is obsessed with analyzing mistakes and using them to improve and yet when it comes to helping students do better in school, tech giants like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg don't copy the cultural traits that are the basis of their success. Instead, they give them resources like iPads and computers. iPads and computers are awesome but, at the end of the day, it's analyzing your mistakes that allow you to improve. Analyzing mistakes and using them to improve is a simple behavior anyone can do. And Hunter believes it speaks for itself as a good thing to do. Then, Bryan accuses Hunter of sounding like a Philosopher King…and that's when things get real. Philosopher King = I think I know how everybody else should live their life…and that is not what Mixed Mental Arts is about at all. Oh, yes. Things get very, very real.

Welcome to the dojo! By special request of Hunter's mom, we're going to take our skills on the road and see what Mixed Mental Arts can do about a current, real world social issue like Black Lives Matter. One of the many wonderful things about social media is that it has revealed just how bad at humans are at making sense of things are. We're the same species that for a long time believed that the best explanation for lightning was an angry man on a cloud. Well into the 1800s, scientists believed infectious diseases were caused by bad smells and that if you didn't smell your own droppings then you wouldn't get sick. (The "whoever smelt it dealt it" logic of kids wasn't that far from the medical state of the art just two hundred years ago.) And if you still doubt just how bad all humans are at explaining things, then take a wander around the internet and google 9/11, Obama birth certificate, GMOs, vaccines, global warming, Trump, Clinton or any other damn thing. The number of theories that surround any of these things and just how opposite these things are tells you that clearly our species isn't very good at figuring out why things happen in the world. So, that Hunter's mom wants a little help understanding Black Lives Matter is simply a recognition of a hole in every human's mental game. Fortunately, there's a group of people who stake their reputations and their lives on figuring out why things happen. They will do anything to be right. And careers are made and broken on taking down current World Champions of explaining the world. And after generations and generations of entering the intellectual octagon, they've gotten some pretty darn good explanations for why things happen. They're scientists. Like all other humans, they're individually crappy at figuring things out but collectively their explanations are pretty good. (PS This whole blurb up until now is partly here because this topic is so emotional that there's a good chance that some of the things said in this podcast will be massively misunderstood. There's always a disaster scenario for even the best intentioned well thought out response to a situation that is then posted on the internet and so we've got to plan for that.) So, we're going to introduce a couple of key concepts that are going to be vital not just to understanding Black Lives Matter but that are going to be real fundamentals we use again and again in Mixed Mental Arts: 1) The Dunbar Number: Humans can only have a limited number of relationships to other humans in their head. Hint: It's not 7 billion people. Stereotyping is necessary. The issue is that we often form our stereotypes around the worst-behaved people in another group. Terrorists explicitly use that psychological quirk to set people against each other. The problem is that we tend to massively underestimate the importance of bad behavior in our own group on others. So, some dude flushes a Koran down the toilet and posts it on social media. Americans don't see the big deal because it isn't their holy book. However, that one dude has a huge impact on how Muslims perceive Americans. Ted Cruz says he wants to bomb the middle east to see if sand glows to get elected in the US but, in practice, he's handing a huge propaganda tool to ISIS that actually makes the US less safe. Lena Dunham says dining hall sushi is cultural appropriation and liberals brush that off as dumb but it gets played on Fox News again and again and is exactly why conservatives think liberals are entitled, spoiled and out of touch with the real world. Lena Dunham gives all liberals a bad name. Just as companies have to protect their brand so do groups. It doesn't matter what the facts are. It is the perception. And when there's money on the line people take those perceptions very seriously. With black lives matter and terrorism, we're not talking about money; we're talking about lives. The lives of cops, African-American men, innocent Europeans and Americans and the majority of Arabs who are so wrapped up in their own lives that they don't spend much time worrying about how other groups perceive them. The UAE, however, takes this very seriously. They had a bunch of young guys with more money than sense going and driving fast sports cars recklessly around London and giving all Emiratis a bad name. And so, they passed a law that traffic offenses committed by their citizens anywhere would be prosecuted in the UAE. Just like in a marriage between two people, things are going to work best if both sides make an effort to improve relations but even if one side or individual makes more of an effort than things can get a lot better. 2) Shit we pick up from our parents without even realizing it. Racism is now hundreds of years old. Like anything we pick up from our parents and the people around us, it is transmitted blindly from generation to generation mostly by emotional cues on the face. The problem is how you then deal with fucked up shit in your own family. As they

Global warming, vaccines, evolution…it's pretty clear that scientific ideas aren't doing a very good job winning out. Neil DeGrasse Tyson has proposed building a country called Rationalia that would be entirely ruled by the evidence. But do scientists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson even know the evidence? Sadly, after over 200 episodes, it seems like they don't. The majority of them have become such narrow specialists that they don't even bother to read what other scientists have been up to and so many people with PhDs have heads filled with magical thinking. In this episode, we go through some of the different kinds of magical thinking that many scientists believe in from beliefs about their own brains, other people's brains and how ideas move. Hunter used to be the same way. Basically, he was like that dickhead in the Harvard bar in Good Will Hunting who thought that because he knew a bunch of facts that he had a realistic view of the world and the right to intellectually bully others to make himself feel big. Then, he hung out with a bunch of actors who talked endlessly about their feelings and he got so annoyed that he went off to see what science had to say about emotions. What he found left him profoundly humbled. The more he's read the more he's gotten a real education and come to realize that when Will talked to that Harvard dickhead he was talking to most people with fancy degrees: "See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!" The world believes in the magic of degrees. That's what you're paying for. But if you want a real education that allows you to achieve things in the real world you can study for free in the Mental Dojo of Master Kim (aka Bryan Callen). You can be Will and learn how to make Harvard dickheads submit and beg for mental mercy. While science's principles are perfect so is the Christian principle of loving thy neighbor as itself. Just because science has perfect principles that doesn't mean that the most powerful members of the institution built on those principles actually live them. When Jonathan Swift satirized science hundreds of years ago, he gave us a good idea of what Neal DeGrasse Tyson's country would look like. It would be a floating island filled with eggheads who were so interested in theories that they never bothered to question how they might be out of touch with reality. Featured Links The Reluctant Mr. Darwin The Double Helix The Autobiography of Ben Franklin Gulliver's Travels

In this next installment in our journey to mastery of Mixed Mental Arts, Bryan and Hunter take a look at the primary method by which culture is transmitted from generation to generation: blind copying. Although, in everyday speech we often talk about power is if it's one thing, scientists distinguish between two forms of power: dominance and prestige. Dominance encourages submission and prestige encourages people to copy people. It's the difference between a bully and a role model. However, as spiderman learned, with great power comes great responsibility and savvy dictators and social media personalities can highjack people's prestige systems to get us to either follow their leadership blindly or to buy whatever product they want. The latter is something that really bothers Bryan. So we talk it out. We really air out all of those feelings. Does Bryan cry? Or does he break something seemingly unbreakable? When you're an actor as versatile as Bryan "Brando" Callen you're never quite sure what choice will come out. You can be sure that it will be Oscar worthy.

Harrison Query is a screenwriter who at 25 years old has found success in the film industry that eludes most throughout their lifetime. With the guidance and mentoring by some of Hollywood's biggest writer's - Harrison left college and began writing full time at the age of 19. He has since worked for the industry's biggest studios, directors and producers -- his next project "Honor For Sale" is currently in development with John Hillcoat (Lawless, Triple 9) in the director's chair.

Bryan and Hunter enter the dojo of the mind with Joe Henrich, master of our first fundamental of the mind: cultural accumulation. As regular listeners will know, in his book The Secret of Our Success, Henrich lays out the case for why problem solving and critical thinking are not humanity's great superpower. Rather, our great superpower is social intelligence. It is our ability to pass on culture from generation to generation that makes us so successful and able to conquer everywhere from the tundra to the desert to being able to venture out into space. This idea is the fundamental that is going to allow all of us to make sense of the seemingly chaotic world and benefit from rather than being hurt by the clash of cultures.

After literally hundreds of episodes, you would hope that Bryan and Hunter had learned something. In fact, they think they might have. Now, it's time for a new direction in the show where rather than endlessly collecting more interesting tidbits they try and synthesize it into a unified worldview. There are lots of academics who know a lot about one thing but are clueless in other areas. We're going to try and round out our mental game and yours so we can handle anything that's thrown at us. We'll certainly be wrong along the way but maybe just maybe with the help of a lot of other people we might become slightly less idiotic over time. The fundamentals of your mental game are getting your assumptions right. We start here with the most basic assumption of all. What makes humans succeed? After hundreds of interviews and a lot of reading, we believe Harvard Professor Jo Henrich has found the answer. Humans are the only animal that can acquire culture. You can follow Professor Henrich on twitter @JoHenrich

Adam Grant is the youngest tenured and most highly rated Professor at the Wharton School of Business BUT he passed up the opportunity to invest in the massively successful eyewear company Warby Parker. Why did he do this? Why did Steve Jobs think the Segway was going to change the world? Why do some people do things so original that they change the world and why do people who are brilliant in one area often misread brilliance in other areas. We loved Adam's first book Give and Take. Then, as he says in the interview, he got fed up with talking about that book so he wrote another all about how non-conformists succeed and fail in changing the world for the better. Full of fascinating stories and the latest research, the Originals lets us know that Give and Take wasn't a fluke. Adam Grant has now written two brilliant books. And though it's probably premature to say this from a statistical standpoint, it's pretty clear that based on his first two books that Adam Grant really knows how to write great books. Thank goodness for us he's so young so he can keep pumping great books out for years to come.

Best selling author, John J. Ratey, MD, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized expert in Neuropsychiatry. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles, and 8 books published in 14 languages, including the groundbreaking ADD-ADHD "Driven to Distraction" series with Ned Hallowell, MD. With the publication of "Spark-The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," Dr. Ratey has established himself as one of the world's foremost authorities on the brain-fitness connection. His latest book, "Go Wild" explores how we can achieve optimal physical and mental health by getting in touch with our caveman roots, and how we can "re-wild" our lives. Recognized by his peers as one of the Best Doctors in America since 1997, Dr. Ratey and his work are frequently profiled in the media, where he's been featured on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and NPR, as well as in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, US News and World Report, Men's Health, and other national publications.

Twice in a row, ladies and gentlemen. Hunter debriefs Bryan on what he missed and they catch up on the books they've been reading.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. It's Michael Malice and a mystery guest host. Could it be Bryan Callen is back on The Bryan Callen Show? Guest Info Guest Name: Michael Malice Guest Promo Dear Reader Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up: How the Audacity of Dopes Is Ruining America

In the age of the internet, the world seems to be full of conspiracy theories. 9/11 was an inside job. Obama is a secret Muslim. And Donald Trump is actually running for President as a favor to the Clintons. As Rule 1969 of the internet goes, if it happened then someone on the internet believes it was actually done by the government. Of course, while we think of the conspiracy theory as a modern phenomenon arising out of the internet, they've been around for a long time. Kennedy's assassination and the moon landings inspired a host of them. And medieval Europeans were incredibly adept at believing that Jews were responsible for the most outlandish things possible. However, as today's guest explains, even though conspiracy theories fascinate us very little work has been done to bring together the academic research on them and try and see the broad patterns that make them up. And as we'll discover in this conversation, there are good evolutionary reasons why we are conspiracy theorists. And, yes, we are all conspiracy theorists but, of course, no conspiracy theorist thinks they are a conspiracy theorist. Instead, they believe that their view of the world is the real one. Joe Uscinski is the author of American Conspiracy Theories. Guest Info Guest Name: Joe Uscinski Guest Promo American Conspiracy Theories

A lot of people have tried to kill political correctness. Mostly, they do this by just saying racist, sexist, offensive generalizations. That's not really killing it. That's just ignoring it. To actually kill it, you have to find political correctnesses vulnerabilities and attack those. That's what this episode of The Bryan Callen show does with the help of probably two of the only men on the planet who could do it, Richard Nisbett and Joe Henrich. Though, by the end of this episode, you'll be able to do it too. To be fair though, kill is such an aggressive, violent word and Richard and Joe are both intelligent, sophisticated individuals. So, while Hunter tries to kill it, Professors Nisbett and Henrich gently euthanize it. Political correctness was a well-intentioned idea but it's well past its prime. And that gets to the heart of the true nature of culture. Culture is simply a tool that people develop to survive and thrive in different environments but it is not who we are. Humans are infinitely adaptable and when we move from place to place we change clothing, diet, building styles and as we have moved into the modern world cultures have been quick to embrace technologies like cellphones and cars that give people greater control over their lives. However, when it comes to belief, we have all been guilty of confusing tools with innate qualities of both ourselves and others. The result has been that humanity has gone back and forth between trying to destroy people who have certain ideas and being so appalled by that that we've decided to simply not have an opinion on cultures. In the wake of the Holocaust, it's understandable that political correctness developed. If noticing cultural differences and thinking that they matter a lot leads to genocide, then let's just pretend that culture doesn't matter. Of course, culture does matter. And it turns out it matters a heck of a lot. Actually, the ability to acquire culture is what allows us to adapt to literally any environment on the planet. And when we only talk about technology and institutions we're leaving out a huge piece of the puzzle. Beliefs matter. And in a world where we can't agree on global warming, gun control, abortion or where prosperity comes from that has become increasingly obvious. Islamic terrorism has made that blindingly obvious. While we could have had a nuanced conversation about the effect of cultural differences, intellectual elites have instead poured scorn on anyone who dared to say that culture matters and that some of those cultures might need to change. With the rise of far right parties like Golden Dawn in Greece, the National Front in France and Trump's version of the Republican Party, we are seeing the consequences of that. Ironically, political correctness was designed to prevent fascism and yet it has pretty much brought us back to a significant part of the population getting behind the same xenophobic attitudes. Whether you fear the rise of the far right or you are someone who is fed up with political correctness, we need a new way of talking about culture that talks about specific beliefs, understands why they evolved and recognizes that you don't need to throw out or kill the person to get rid of unhelpful beliefs. In essence, the message of Henrich and Nisbett's work comes down to a very simple idea. Cultures aren't better or worse but they are adaptive. They help individuals thrive in different environments. Of course, the environment of the modern world is radically different from the world that most cultures evolved in with the result that many traits no longer make sense in the modern world. As Professor Nisbett has shown honor cultures are and were adaptive in herding environments with unstable property rights but lead to higher murder rates in the US South (and this interviewer would argue jihadism). On the other hand, the holistic thinking that predominates in Eastern cultures and the analytic thinking that predominates in Western cultures both have benefits and costs. Western thinking gave rise to science but unfettered individualism is unrealistic and impractical when, in reality, besides being individuals we are part of a larger society and share a planet and that in thinking purely selfishly we can end up destroying the system that helps individuals generate wealth. We would do well as individuals and as a society to learn to use both modes of thought. And, finally, as listeners of this podcast know, one of the best examples of a specific cultural trait that needs to be changed is what people believe about intelligence. The belief that intelligence is fixed (as Carol Dweck has shown) is incredibly harmful (and not supported by the latest neuroscience). Furthermore, the whole world would benefit from embracing mistakes more as cultures like Silicon Valley and organizations like the FAA do. We did the whole fascism thing once. It didn't work out well. But the antidote to that is not political correctness. It's ho

Richard Nisbett grew up in Texas. So when he was looking for a culture he could say potentially uncharitable things about as a white man, he turned his attention squarely to Southern culture. In his book, Culture of Honor, Professor Nisbett takes a look at why certain very specific parts of the South (and West) of the US have higher homicide rates than the rest of the country. The answer it turns out is that the South and West have the same culture of honor that you find among herding peoples the world over. That culture is why the Mongols raided the Chinese, why the West and the Arab world clash and why America today can't seem to figure out gun control. Since then, Professor Nisbett has researched the cultural differences between East Asians and Westerners, how culture affects education and, most recently in his book Mindware, how slight changes in our thinking can massively improve our own lives. Whether you're sick of political correctness, you just want to understand why we so often clash or your looking for a way to actually solve our problems, Richard Nisbett's books are the books for you. Guest Links Professor Nisbett's Website Guest Promo Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking I'd like to add a fourth book. Intelligence and How to Get it: Why Schools and Cultures Count.

Alvaro Bedoya is the founding Executive Director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown. In this episode, Alvaro lays out for us the current state of privacy (or lack thereof) and the state of a Congress that either can't or won't keep up with the state of the art in privacy violating technology. Alvaro doesn't have a book yet but he should. So tweet at him with your questions and suggested titles. Guest Links Website: https://www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/bedoya-alvaro.cfm Twitter: @alvarombedoya

Humans have always been pretty sure that they were special but we've never quite been sure why. Was it because we were made in God's image? Was it our opposable thumbs? Was it that we had bigger brains? Far be it for us to tell you what God does or does not look like but what Professor Joe Henrich can tell you is that it's not because we have bigger brains. In fact, when you compare the baseline intelligence of human toddlers, chimpanzees and orangutans you find out that we're really not smarter at all. Actually, in many areas we may even be dumber. The one area in which we are definitively smarter even as toddlers is social intelligence. That, it turns out, may be the secret of our success. Individually, we just aren't that smart. But, collectively, we have the capacity for genius. In his book, The Secret of Success, Professor Henrich examines how faith, imitation and trial and error have allowed peoples all over the world to evolve cultural practices so brilliant that the people who practice them very often don't understand why they're important but do them with the unwavering faith of believers. Of course, Professor Henrich's book exists within a culture of its own and although the book itself is a sensible and soundly-reasoned argument for humans' success as being heavily driven by culture it serves to challenge a whole series of cherished ideas within academia and the western world more generally. In The Secret of Our Success, religion is not the bug in the human brain that the New Atheists depict it as but a cornerstone of our ability to adopt useful cultural practices evolved through the cumulative work of people who died long before us. Henrich's book does not buy into the cultural relativism so prevalent in Western media and college campuses that argues that culture doesn't matter but instead makes the case that we ignore culture at our peril such as when Europeans transported crops like corn and manioc without also transporting the cultural practices indigenous peoples had developed to avoid potential longterm health problems from eating these foods. And while the pendulum of academic thought swung away from the blank slate towards an almost purely genetic view of human progress, Henrich reveals the next stage in intellectual thought that reveals how genetic and cultural processes can work together to allow humans to succeed. This is really an astounding book. Put it on the list, folks. Guest Links Website: http://heb.fas.harvard.edu/people/joseph-henrich Twitter: @JoHenrich Guest Promo The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

When Hunter went to Peru this summer, he naturally went looking for books to read in preparation. Universally, the consensus was that THE book on the Inca Empire was Kim MacQuarrie's Last Days of the Inca. It was amazing. And apparently, Hunter wasn't the only one who thought so. In his latest book, Life and Death in the Andes, Kim MacQuarrie draws together a lifetime of researching and writing about the South of American continent. During his trip all the way down the mountain range that serves as the continent's spine, he draws together the greatest stories the continent has to offer from the cop who risked death to hunt down Pablo Escobar to how Darwin nearly didn't discover the theory of evolution and Thor Heyerdahl's epic journey on the Kon Tiki. Along the way, MacQuarrie discovers the impact of his own work. Contacted by a member of the infamous Maoist group The Shining Path, MacQuarrie finds out that Last Days of the Inca has become must reading among Peru's political dissidents. Life and Death in the Andes isn't just a great read; it's an overview of a fascinating continent still reeling for the upheaval of Columbus' "discovery" of the New World. Kim MacQuarrie has won four Emmy's and The Last Days of the Inca is currently being turned into a live action series by FX. It should be awesome. Guest Links Website: http://www.kimmacquarrie.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/kimmacq Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Andes-Bandits-Revolutionaries/dp/143916889X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448080750&sr=8-1&keywords=kim+macquarrie Product 2: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Incas-Kim-MacQuarrie/dp/0743260503/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1448080764&sr=8-2&keywords=kim+macquarrie Product 3: http://www.amazon.com/Where-ANDES-meet-AMAZON-Bolivias/dp/8489119147/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389052672&sr=1-4&keywords=kim+macquarrie

Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Hari Seldon figures out how to create a mathematical model that can predict the future. Well, Wired magazine has described today's guest as a 'real-life Hari Seldon." Peter Turchin began his career as a biologist but is currently at the forefront of a field called cliodynamics which uses the past as a data set to develop mathematical models that can predict how societies behave. In his latest book Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, Turchin examines how the forces of history have driven humans to forge the cultural tools that make the truly massive societies we see today possible. Besides providing a bold new view of history, Ultrasociety provides an excellent lens through which to understand human history informed by everything from evolutionary science to economics and anthropology. Guest Links Website: http://peterturchin.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Peter_Turchin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peter.turchin Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Ultrasociety-Years-Humans-Greatest-Cooperators-ebook/dp/B0185P69LU/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 Product 2: http://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Rise-Fall-Empires/dp/0452288193/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448079035&sr=8-1&keywords=war+and+peace+and+war Product 3: http://www.amazon.com/Secular-Cycles-Peter-Turchin/dp/0691136963/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448079049&sr=8-1&keywords=secular+cycles

Growing up in Italy, Luigi Zingales got to experience firsthand something that looked a lot like capitalism but definitely wasn't. Government subsidies, regulations tailored to serve the interests of existing corporations and a system in which connections were more important than merit combined to ensure a capitalism that was anything but inclusive or competitive. Wanting to live in the most competitive and inclusive system on the planet, Zingales moved to the United States. However, during his time here, Professor Zingales has seen the United States start to look worryingly like Italy. In his latest book, A Capitalism for the People, Professor Zingales draws a distinction between being pro-market and pro-business. Being pro-business means using government power to support the already rich. Being pro-market means designing the system to maximize competition. Berlusconi is pro-business…and so are a lot of American politicians. In fact, American politicians who are truly pro-market are incredibly rare. In this interview, Hunter (Bryan is too successful as an actor to be able to do his own podcast) gets Professor Zingales to explain this essential distinction and some of the other important aspects of his superb book. Guest Links Website: http://research.chicagobooth.edu/stigler Twitter: https://twitter.com/zingalesFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/luigi.zingales/ Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-People-Recapturing-American-Prosperity/dp/0465085954 Product 2: http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Capitalism-Capitalists-Unleashing-Opportunity/dp/0691121281/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Geoffrey Miller studies the evolutionary psychology of sex and since sex is the cornerstone of evolution his work ends up having implications that affect pretty much everything. If you've wondered why women's evolutionary programming makes them spend more time shopping and makes men want to get the heck out of the store as quickly as possible, then, in this podcast, Geoffrey Miller will tell you why. If you've wondered why people buy cars like Hummers when they are so wasteful, it's precisely because being wasteful is the key to attracting a mate…and in this podcast Geoffrey Miller will tell you why. Besides writing an excellent book called Spent about how consumerism taps into evolutionary psychology, Geoffrey Miller co-hosts a podcast with Tucker Max (yes, Tucker Max) called The Mating Grounds where they use the latest evolutionary psychology to help listeners become the men women want. From that podcast, they have now written a book called Mate. Whether you're looking to understand consumerism, mating or some other aspect of why we do what we do then Geoffrey Miller is one of the best resources on the planet. Featured Link #1: http://thematinggrounds.com/ Featured Link #2: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mating-grounds-podcast/id894712811?mt=2 Guest Links Website: http://thematinggrounds.com/ Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Spent-Sex-Evolution-Consumer-Behavior/dp/0143117238 Product 2: http://www.amazon.com/Mate-Become-Man-Women-Want/dp/0316375365/

In 1872, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Charles Darwin hypothesized that emotions were hard-wired into our biology. However, it wasn't until near a century later that Dr. Paul Ekman and his longtime collaborator Wallace Friesen proved that Darwin was right.At the time, the prevailing wisdom was that pretty much everything including the facial expressions were culturally learned and so when Dr. Ekman headed into the Highlands of Papua New Guinea he was searching for one thing: a tribe that had had no contact with the Western world. In this interview, he tells us just how that experiment and subsequent work demonstrated that human facial expressions are universal.From there, Dr. Ekman went on to turn the study of facial expressions from art into science categorizing all the muscles in the human face and codifying 10,000 different facial expressions the human face is capable of. In the process, he discovered that when people try and mask their own emotions tiny little flashes of what they're genuinely feeling flash across their faces. These microexpressions became a useful technique for telling when people are lying and for revealing their true psychological state. So impressive was this work that Hollywood created a TV show (Lie to Me) based on Dr. Ekman.Dr. Ekman has consulted on documentaries galore and most recently consulted on the amazing Pixar movie Inside Out. He also works extensively with His Holiness The Dalai Lama to bridge the findings of Buddhism (often referred to as the science of the mind) with modern neuroscience and psychology.You can read anything by Dr. Ekman and love it but Bryan and Hunter would both highly recommend starting with Emotions Revealed. It's got lots of pictures (which really helps) because when it comes to describing a facial expression for a particular emotion a picture is really worth a thousand words. It's a real treat to have Dr. Paul Ekman on The Bryan Callen Show.

If you listen to a random episode of The Bryan Callen Show, you can bet that Bryan and I will be talking about how amazing Republic, Lost and its author Lawrence Lessig are. Well, we got him!!! Ladies and gentlemen, it is our extreme pleasure to present to you Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law Professor, advocate for internet freedom, campaign finance reformer and our choice for the next President of the United States. If you want to support fixing democracy first, then tweet at @joerogan to get him on the show or anywhere else you believe his message should be heard. Also tweet at major media outlets (@cnn, @abc...) to demand that they include Larry Lessig in the Presidential polls. Featured Link #1: https://lessig2016.us/ GUEST LINKS Website: https://lessig2016.us/ GUEST PROMOS Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Corruption-Equality-Steps-ebook/dp/B00XUPPQOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1442859615&sr=8-1&keywords=republic+lost+lessig

Both Daron Acemoglu (MIT economist and co-author of Why Nations Fail) and Dacher Keltner (Berkeley psychologist and author of many books including Born to Be Good) have appeared on The Bryan Callen Show before. They both were amazing and that is reason enough to bring them back and put them on together to see what happens. But, wait. There's more. Because these two together have the power to do something unprecedented in human history. At least since Plato's Republic, humans have debated the best form of government. (Plato thought it was a "Philosopher King" aka give someone like Plato or Bryan absolute power but recognized that democracy was the least bad system.) However, this has long been an endless debate in which people make the case for the system of government they're biased towards and then dismiss every other opinion as biased. In fact, this highly predictable criticism was leveled at Daron Acemoglu and his co-author James Robinson in the wake of Why Nations Fail. Acemoglu and Robinson build a fantastic case for why politically and economically inclusive societies outperform societies that aren't in their book. However, as American academics at MIT and Harvard respectively, it is easy (if you're so inclined) to dismiss them as being biased towards democracy and capitalism. Acemoglu and Robinson have given the argument for politically and economically inclusive institutions new force but there is a way to make their argument irrefutable. And that ladies and gents is where Dacher Keltner comes in. Professor Keltner studies (among other things) the psychology of power. For a long time, humans have recognized as Lord Acton put it, "That absolute power corrupts absolutely." What was mere observation has now (thanks to Keltner and others) become established scientific fact. We can now no longer deny that power changes the way people think. They become less empathetic and more impulsive. This problem was naturally solved in hunter-gatherer societies by mechanisms like teasing, gossip and nicknaming. These hardwired human desires exist to help bring ballooning egos back into check. However, as societies expanded, and leaders became more remote, it became easier for leaders to wall themselves off, proclaim themselves as Gods and to have people who had never seen them poop believe it. As communications technology has improved, the opportunity to check that power has improved. Martin Luther succeeded where other religious reformers failed, in part, because he was able to take advantage of the printing press. With the internet, we now have more of a mechanism to keep our leaders in check. In a village of 150 hunter-gatherers, it's pretty much impossible to keep a secret for long. In the global village, the same is coming to be true. While the downsides of that are personally obvious, it may be the key to keeping our leaders from suffering the negative psychological effects of power. Of course, as Acemoglu makes clear in this interview, it is important that we never conclude that any of this is inevitable. Institutions are fragile and humans have a dual nature in them. We are capable of great kindness and terrible despotism. We must remain ever vigilant and that is why it is so essential that everyone on the planet read everything these guys have ever written right now. Also, I'm starting a campaign to have them write a book together. James Robinson should come along too. Tweet them with #RealHolyTrinity if you want them to do it. Guest Links Website: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/drdaronacemoglu Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8 Product 2: http://www.amazon.com/Born-Be-Good-Science-Meaningful-ebook/dp/B001NLKTVU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1439040927&sr=1-1&keywords=dacher+keltner Product 3: http://www.amazon.com/Compassionate-Instinct-Science-Human-Goodness-ebook/dp/B00333NCUQ/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1439040927&sr=1-3&keywords=dacher+keltner

Recently, Michael Eisner, former head of Disney and ABC, lamented that he couldn't find women who were funny and hot. Eisner predicted he'd get flack for saying this and, of course, he did. While many people focused on citing women they believed were funny and hot, this week's guests have a very different perspective: the idea that it's a studio heads job to find talent is largely outdated. In the last few decades, cameras have moved from film to digital and from being so prohibitively priced that only the biggest studios could afford them to being so affordable that…well…our guests were able to make and sell a show for under $10,000. Starting with two Masshole characters they loved, Claire Gerety-Mott and Katie O'Brien set out to create a comedy series based on their characters' lives called The Hub. When they couldn't get their pilot to the gatekeepers of Hollywood, they got scrappy and produced the show themselves, so Hollywood could see what it was missing. Before Claire and Katie could release it, the show was optioned by one production company, and then bought by IFC, where they developed it for television. The Hub didn't make it to series, but that deal has ultimately led to Katie and Claire inking a deal with the very same network Michael Eisner used to head, ABC. The old days of studios acting as gatekeepers are disappearing. Now, women who are funny and hot can make the content they think is needed for relatively cheap and put it out into the world to let the people decide what is worth watching. In the 21st Century, the biggest barrier to making a TV show, writing a book (which both Katie and Claire have done) or generally fulfilling your artistic vision is your willingness to put in the work and create it. In this interview, Claire, Katie, Hunter and Bryan discuss their biggest artistic inspirations, the comedy they love and why the real barrier to creativity nowadays is awe. Featured Link #1: www.watchthehub.com Guest Links Website: www.watchthehub.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/thisiskatieo https://twitter.com/C_Gerety_Mott Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HuboftheHub?fref=ts YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIdEZYyQL0UzmbVUnYF6HLQ Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Straight–Conspiracy-Secret-Ending-Totally/dp/0985898836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1431010307&sr=8-1&keywords=straight-a+conspiracy Product 2: http://www.amazon.com/Nathaniel-T-Culpepper-Missing-Sock/dp/0615967078/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1440812463&sr=8-1&keywords=nathaniel+t+culpepper&pebp=1440812465061&perid=071Z4JJ1T7XJZFP6BF73

Sometimes Bryan and Hunter like to get naked together...emotionally. It's time to bare all their thoughts and feelings!!! In this episode, they review everything they've learned and what the big take home lesson is. There's really only one! Tune in to find out what it is. Tweet Hunter, if there are any books or topics you'd like to see covered. Featured Link #1: https://twitter.com/bryancallen Featured Link #2: https://twitter.com/huntermaats

There's no doubt in any modern person's mind that the justice of the Medieval era was unjust. The court considered spiritual evidence, pigs were considered legally competent and tried as adult humans and guilt was often determined by seeing whether the defendant would float or sink in holy water. We think of our modern legal system as far more rational and just but, according to Adam Benforado, we will soon look back at our own present-day legal system with same horror with which we look at the legal system of the Medieval era. In this episode, we examine the neurological and psychological research and the actual legal cases in Adam's book Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice. It's a truly stupendous book. In it, Adam examines the ways in which subtle, arbitrary differences in interrogation methods, police cameras and whether or not judges have had lunch yet can make the difference between a person being set free or sent to prison. A fairer criminal justice system which reduces crime while also saving money is possible but it requires us to be honest about how human nature works. Fortunately, Benforado's book makes that science very accessible and enjoyable to read. It's a real treat to have him on the show. Guest Links Twitter: https://twitter.com/benforado Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Unfair-The-Science-Criminal-Injustice/dp/0770437761

It's probably no surprise that Californians have no shame. In fact, as Jennifer Jacquet writes in her latest book, shame has been found to be a central part of the emotional lives of Indonesians but to play virtually no role in the lives of Californians. The question that Jacquet asks is whether the West should in very specific instances bring shame back, in particular when dealing with corporations. Jennifer Jacquet is an assistant professor at NYU. Her website is jenniferjacquet.com. You can follow her on twitter @jenniferjacquet. And, most importantly, you can find her book Is Shame Necessary?: New Uses for an Old Tool on Amazon. Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Is-Shame-Necessary-Uses-Tool/dp/0307907570

In 1759, while working as a tutor, Adam Smith wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments that begins as follows: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it." In 1776, that same Adam Smith would write The Wealth of Nations, the book that would establish capitalism. To a modern audience, for whom the idea of selfishness is synonymous with capitalism, this seems incredibly strange. However, it wasn't strange at all. Smith was primarily interested in improving the well-being of humanity. To him, it was clear that market forces were one of the great tools for doing this. However, this does not mean that Smith believed that humanity was entirely selfish. In fact, as the opening of The Theory of Moral Sentiments makes clear, he rejected a view of humanity as purely selfish as absurd. We help others for no benefit other than the joy of seeing it. Some might argue that this is, in and of itself, selfish. After all, we give as a way of increasing our own happiness but that we are wired to derive joy from that shows that that sort of altruistic behavior confers an evolutionary advantage. And whether or not altruism exists has been a matter of some controversy for some time in evolutionary circles. In his book, Does Altruism Exist? David Sloan Wilson examines why this controversy existed and provides a clear and simple way to understand why altruism does exist. Selfishness will allow you to win within the group but when groups compete an altruistic group will always beat a selfish one. This argument is of more than academic issue because it strikes right at the core of how we structure the economy. Unbridled selfishness might allow you to win in your own society but a society dominated by selfish behavior won't be able to beat societies whose members are more altruistic. Sometimes there are benefits to sacrificing for the common good. We all recognize that in times of war celebrating the soldiers willing to lay down their lives without hope of reward for the benefit of their country. If the willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice is good for your country, then might not lesser sacrifices also be good for your country? Selfishness is a part of who we are but it is not all of who we are and David Sloan Wilson's Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes and The Welfare of Others does a great job of challenging the idea that man is purely selfish. Capitalism has wandered far from the vision of its founder. David Sloan Wilson helps use the latest science to bring our view of human nature back into line with reality. Best of all, that view of humanity is far more hopeful than the purely selfish vision that so many economists articulate. Guest Links Website: http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/david_s_wilson Guest Promo Product 1: http://www.amazon.com/Does-Altruism-Exist-Foundational-Questions/dp/0300189494

Today, on The Bryan Callen Show, Bryan and Hunter Maats speak with Jean-Pierre Hocke. Jean-Pierre joined in 1968 the Interntional Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC. After several field assignments he became ICRC's Director of Operations for 12 years. From 1985 to 1989 he headed UNHCR which at the time was protecting and assisting 17M refugees worldwide. Between 1996 and 2003 he chaired in Bosnia-Herzegovina the Independent Commission for Real Property Claims (CRPC) set up by the Dayton Peace Agreement. Under his chairmanship CRPC restore property rights of over a million Bosnian refugees and displaced people who had been deprived of them during the war.

Kabir Sehgal is kind of a triple threat. When he's not working at JP Morgan, he often spends his weekends with the US Navy Reserves but when we spoke to him he was using his weekend to go to the Grammy's...where's nominated to win one in the category of Latin Jazz. Actually though, that's not even why we had him on...because he also has a book coming out. A book that has rave reviews from Richard Branson, Bill Clinton...and one of our favorite Nobel Prize winners, Muhammad Yunus. In Coined: The Rich Life of Money and How Its History Has Shaped Us, Kabir examines money from perspectives as diverse as history, economics and psychology. Kabir Sehgal is the author of four books Coined, Jazzocracy, Walk in My Shoes and A Bucket of Blessings. WEBSITE: coinedbook.com

Bryan sits down with good friends and authors, Kathrine O'Brien and Hunter Maats, who share what they've learned along the way and a moment they wanted to be nowhere else. Plus a lot of inanity.

Today, Bryan and Leo Flowers sits down with Bryan's long time friend, Actor, Writer, Producer and former Scientologist, Allen Barton. They discuss the topic of religion, specifically with regards to Scientology and how they and other organized groups deal with disconnecting with people. Website: http://allenbarton.com/

This week, Bryan sits down alone with Hall of Fame stand-up comedian, Dom Irrera. Dom reminisced about Robin Williams, Rodney Dangerfield, Sam Kinison and performing in the great comedy 80's.

As part of our continuing look at counter-insurgency and nation building, we speak with Ganesh Sitaraman, Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University, and author of The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars. In the wake of 9/11, the argument was often made that because terrorists did not adhere to the rules of war that meant that we did not need to either. (Here I'm assuming that terrorists don't listen to The Bryan Callen Show.) While there are many moral arguments for adhering to the rules of law, Sitaraman makes the point that holding to law even when your enemies don't is excellent strategy. In an insurgency, the competition is for legitimacy in the eyes of the population and the side that adheres to the rules and abide by the highest principles will win the hearts and minds of the population. The Counterinsurgent's Constitution: Law in the Age of Small Wars is available on Amazon. You can follow him on twitter at @GaneshSitaraman.

In the early 1980s, James Tooley went to Zimbabwe to help support and build socialism by teaching under the then hopeful leadership of Robert Mugabe. Returning to England in the midst of the Thatcher Revolution, he aimed to discredit all ideas of market reforms in education. Instead, as he researched his PhD, he became convinced that private education was the way forward and that the government should be kept out of it. However, even as his newfound faith in private education deepened, he saw no way to align it with his desire to help the poor. That all changed on January 26th, 2000 (which as we discover is Bryan's birthday) when while walking through a slum in Hyderabad, India, he came across a private school for the poor…and then another…and then another. When he mentioned these schools to other development experts and local government officials, they denied the existence of these schools.In the fourteen years since then Professor Tooley has found these schools in India, China and throughout Africa and a distinct pattern has emerged. Although these people are only living on a dollar a day, these schools are providing poor parents and students with a far higher quality education than what they'd get in the public sector. As detailed in his book The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves, teaching positions in the developing world are often used as a form of political patronage, a way to buy off political supporters and allies. (Many of these government teachers then never, ever show up to their schools and even if they do they come from the middle classes and so treat the students who live in the slums with utter contempt.) In this interview with Professor Tooley, Hunter, Bryan and Leo Flowers discuss the book and what his research means for developed countries like the US. The Beautiful Tree is available on Amazon.

In 2006, Warren Buffett told his son that he was leaving the bulk of his fortune to making a difference in the world. That's when he gave his son Howard G. Buffett a billion dollars and told him to go fix the hard problems. As a professional farmer, Howard G. decided to go out and fix hunger. Over time, he has realized that you can't fix hunger without dealing with conflict, with property rights and just about every other aspect of society. In his book 40 Chances (co-written with his own son Howard W. Buffett) he tells the story of how the average farmer only gets 40 Chances to plant a crop between the first time he climbs on a tractor and the last time he climbs off it. A farmer has to make the most of those 40 Chances. Rather than ploughing cash into the same projects that have always gotten cash, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation has chosen to adopt an experimental approach to development that looks above all for self-sustaining solutions that keep themselves going long after all the aid workers have left. 40 Chances is available on Amazon. You can follow the book on twitter @40Chances.

If there's one thing we'd like to figure out at The Bryan Callen Show, it's how to get good ideas to spread. Fortunately, Jonah Berger has those answers. While it often seems like things catch on randomly, Professor Berger's research shows there are definite factors that help explain what makes things go viral. Whether you're trying to spread good ideas, market a product or figure out the world's next great cat meme, Contagious: Why Things Catch On is the book for you. Contagious is available on Amazon. You can follow him on twitter @j1berger.

When Professor Stephen Kotkin set out to write a biography of Stalin, he faced a series of challenges. Perhaps first and foremost, people already thought they knew who Stalin was. The world's view of Stalin has been shaped by opponents like Trotsky and the West. The result is that we interpret the atrocities of Stalin's rule as the actions of a monster. The far more disturbing possibility laid out by Professor Kotkin is that far from being a cardboard cutout Hollywood valid, Stalin was a fully fleshed out human being…who truly believed in the cause of Communism.Professor Stephen Kotkin is the John P. Birkelund Professor in History and International Affairs. His biography of Stalin will appear in three parts. The first part Stalin: Paradoxes of Power is available on Amazon now.

Throughout the 2000s, Finland emerged as the country with the best performing educational system in the world. It did so by defying much of the educational conventional wisdom. While the Global Educational Reform Movement (referred to by Professor Sahlberg as GERM) has swept the world, spreading a message of centralization, standardization and accountability, Finland has focused on decentralization and local autonomy. In Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland?, Pasi Sahlberg explores how Finnish students get better results by doing less work than other students and with far less stress.In this episode, Bryan and Hunter discuss with Professor Sahlberg the success of Finland's educational system and how it fits with everything else they've learned through the show.Finnish Lessons is available on Amazon. Finnish Lessons 2.0 (the updated version as opposed to the sequel) will be available on Amazon December 19th, 2014

During a cheese tasting class at Murray's, Hunter heard the teacher say that "Cheese and Culture" was the best book on cheese in the world. Instantly, we knew we had to get its author for The Bryan Callen Show. Professor Paul Kindstedt may well be the world's foremost expert on cheese. Currently at the University of Vermont, he is particularly known for his work on mozzarella. (True statement.)Cheese and Culture is available on Amazon.

In the wake of World War II, as the world discovered the full extent of the atrocities committed by the NAZIs, the German people struggled to make sense of their place in the world. Ruined, occupied and reviled, they had every reason to give up all hope. In his most recent book, The Temptation of Despair, Professor Werner Sollors examines contemporary records from the time to understand how they coped. In the process, he shows a side of World War II that is not often discussed.Today, we regard World War II as a morally clear war but well into 1941 the American people continued to oppose direct involvement. Even after the war, General Eisenhower said "We are told that the American soldier does not know what he was fighting for." It was only with the discovery of the concentration camps that the American soldier would, as Eisenhower went on to explain, know "what he is fighting against." World War II stands out in the American psyche as the good war. A war in which good guys fought against pure evil and everyone knew it from minute one and then we destroyed the Axis powers with overwhelmingly military might. Rather than viewing each conflict as unique, America has sought to transform every conflict from Vietnam to the War on Terror into another World War II: a conflict between pure evil and pure good that will be decide by who has superior firepower. As Professor Sollors puts it, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who try and repeat history are doomed to fail." Not only can we not repeat World War II, World War II is not as morally unambiguous as we think it is. History is written by the victors and the Allies have highlighted the atrocities of the NAZIs without drawing attention to their own misdeeds. As Soviet soldiers occupied Germany they subjected German women to repeated rape on a truly unimaginable scale. British historian Anthony Beevor has described it as "the greatest phenomenon of mass rape in history." Likewise, even as Americans scolded Germans for their racism, they occupied Germany with a racially-segregated Army.However, there is one bright spot in this untold history. The German people while deeply anti-semitic had never been programmed to have any special dislike towards African-Americans. The result was that for the first time African-American servicemen had the experience of interacting with white people with a sliver of the prejudice they had faced back in the States. More than that, denied command positions, servicemen ended up in supply and transport jobs making them the most popular soldiers among the German people. Historians have suggested that this experience was vital in contributing to the Civil Rights movement when the servicemen went home. More personally, it determined the course of Professor Sollors. His fond memories of the kindness of African-American servicemen to him as a child in post-war Germany caused Professor Sollors to become a Professor of African-American literature.The Temptation of Despair is available on Amazon.

Vanessa Tyson is a Professor of Government at the Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. In this fifth episode of our series of conversations with Vanessa, Bryan is missing again. So, Hunter and Vanessa take their seditiousness one step further and mutiny…briefly. In this episode, Vanessa and Hunter discuss the narratives the political parties build and how buying into them can do us a disservice. You can follow Vanessa on twitter at @vanessactyson. Her book Twists of Fate: Multiracial Coalitions and Minority Representation in the US House will be coming out in 2015. We'll be buying it and when it does come out, we'll be bringing her back on to discuss that. In the meantime, stay tuned for round of Tyson.

In this interview, Bryan and Hunter draw together the lessons they've learned over their most recent podcasts. For more on Robert McNamara, you might enjoy this article: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514591/the-dictatorship-of-data/