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The explicit tag is there for a reason. Bring

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1:30

This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every

1:33

episode we blast anyone who gets in our way, we

1:35

bring critical thinking, skepticism, and

1:38

irreverence to any topic that makes the

1:40

news, makes it big, or

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makes us mad. It's

1:45

skeptical, it's political,

1:47

and there is no welcome mat.

1:50

Today is Thursday,

1:52

July 11th. But

2:00

it's not. Thursday, July

2:02

11th should be sentencing. Should be sentencing day, but

2:04

it doesn't look like that's going to be sentencing

2:07

day. So if you're listening to this, we're sorry.

2:09

Sorry. It's not sentencing day. If it was up

2:11

to us, it would be. I

2:14

think if it was up to us, if we had the

2:16

power, Yeah, if it was up to us, we would screw

2:18

that case up bad. That's

2:22

for sure. Worse than it's already been? Worse. Worse

2:25

than the Supreme Court did it? Worse.

2:27

Yeah, probably. But

2:29

what we want to talk about today is a few

2:32

long-form articles that two-dollar patrons have

2:34

the ability to hear me read.

2:37

And for everybody else, this is a story

2:39

from the New York Times. They spent their

2:41

life savings on life coaching. And

2:43

there were a couple others. BBC,

2:46

the CD Underbelly of the life

2:48

coaching industry and a third article

2:50

from ProPublica, when therapists lose their

2:52

licenses, some turn to the unregulated

2:54

life coaching industry instead. So

2:57

I was peripherally sort of

2:59

aware of life coaching as a thing.

3:01

I had no idea into these articles

3:03

that this is a four and a

3:05

half billion dollar industry. Not

3:08

only is it a big industry, but

3:10

it's also got a lot

3:13

of very similar traits to

3:15

multilevel marketing, which I didn't

3:17

realize either. You

3:20

know, with everything that is an

3:24

entrepreneurial activity, there's always somebody out there who's

3:26

willing to give you a class or willing

3:28

to tell you some things, willing

3:30

to charge you some money to do some sort

3:32

of workshop to help you through it. There's

3:36

podcast coaches out there. There's

3:39

video coaches and

3:42

people who can help you improve your video

3:44

products, people who can help you write better.

3:47

There's plenty of those people out there in

3:49

the world if you want to create content.

3:51

So I mean, there's plenty of content creator

3:53

coaches out there. And then

3:55

there's also it seems that there's

3:57

also a plenty of people here who do this sort

3:59

of. life coaching and the life

4:01

coaching is weird because it's got, there's

4:04

no regulation. It feels

4:06

a lot like therapy that's not therapy. And

4:09

it's also got its ties in

4:11

this multi-level marketing to make it

4:13

feel like, I'm sure that there

4:16

were probably very legit coaches out

4:18

there that can help people. But

4:20

at the same time, it's also got a group

4:22

of people who are preying on others because

4:25

they realize that that's a big industry and there's a lot

4:27

of people who you can pray on. I

4:31

wanna start with the idea of the tie

4:33

to therapy because this is an

4:35

important theme in all three of these articles. So,

4:38

life coaching is not a

4:41

phrase which necessarily means anything

4:43

specific. Because it's an

4:45

unregulated industry, the life coaching business,

4:48

the word life coach, can be

4:50

taken to mean just about anything

4:52

and just about everything. It's one

4:54

of these sort of like broad,

4:56

intentionally kind of nebulous ideas. And

5:00

I was thinking about the way

5:03

that life coaching really veers dangerously

5:05

into the same kind of territory

5:07

that therapy

5:10

often is meant to address. But therapists,

5:12

of course, are licensed and trained and

5:14

educated and regulated. I

5:17

got to thinking a little bit about mentorship

5:20

and how life coaching at its

5:22

finest, I think, would be a way for

5:24

people to access a kind

5:27

of mentorship on demand.

5:30

There's a young man that for several years

5:32

I have acted in kind of a mentorship capacity

5:35

with. And I was thinking about that as I

5:37

was reading and thinking about these articles. And I

5:39

was thinking about what makes that relationship work between

5:41

he and I. And one of the

5:43

things that makes it work between he and I is that

5:46

we have a dynamic that

5:48

is close and personal and

5:51

I have a real understanding of who he

5:53

is as a young man, as a person.

5:55

I understand his context, his family history. All

5:58

of those things make that kind of. of mentor-mentee

6:01

relationship possible. And

6:04

I think, you know, in many

6:06

ways, and from what he's at least said, valuable to

6:08

him, you know? And then

6:10

I was thinking about like life coaching, which feels like

6:13

kind of all of the need of

6:17

needing a mentor and wanting to be,

6:19

you know, mentored without

6:21

the context and then without

6:23

the education and the training. It's kind of like

6:25

the worst of all worlds, I

6:28

think, in so many ways. Because if I reach out

6:30

to a life coach, they

6:32

don't fucking know me the way I know this kid

6:34

that I'm like kind of working with, or have been

6:36

like, I don't say working with, but

6:38

that I've been sort of helping to set a

6:40

guide or shuttle along a little bit. Like, I

6:43

know this guy, I know this case 23, I

6:46

know this guy, you know, I know his history. I've known him

6:48

for 10 years now. You call

6:50

up a life coach, you meet on Instagram, or

6:52

wherever, they don't fucking know you. They

6:55

don't have that like history, that

6:57

context, that relationship. And then

6:59

they also don't have the training,

7:01

the expertise, the licensing of

7:04

a therapist. It

7:06

seems like this middle space that feels

7:08

real fucking dangerous. Because unlike

7:11

content creator coach, which is really specific,

7:13

I'm gonna help you build your audience

7:15

for your YouTube channel. Okay, cool.

7:18

I'm gonna coach you on your life. It

7:20

doesn't even mean anything. It means everything and nothing.

7:23

It's like Trumpist, right? It means like everything and

7:25

nothing. What it reminds me of

7:27

is somebody who wants to do some

7:30

of the work of a therapist, but not

7:32

all of the work is a therapist. Like

7:34

in a lot of ways, what you were

7:36

describing is a person who you're helping that

7:38

you're not responsible for, right? So

7:41

you can help him and there's

7:43

nothing that, whether what happens to

7:45

him, it's not gonna affect you

7:47

in a big way, right? So in

7:50

a lot of ways, while helping

7:52

someone is amazing, right, helping him get, you

7:54

know, helping him is a great thing to

7:56

do, it's also very low

7:58

stakes for you, right? Very much

8:00

so. And so the same thing occurs

8:02

with these people is that it's a

8:04

low stakes thing that I'm offering you.

8:07

I'm offering you, I'm doing all the

8:09

fun stuff that a therapist might do,

8:11

which is like give you life advice,

8:14

but not without any of the really hard stuff

8:16

that I would have to do that would be

8:18

dealing and maybe

8:22

uncovering and untying some knots of problems

8:24

that are in your life where a therapist

8:27

might be gifted and

8:29

be able to do something like that.

8:31

I'm just giving you sort of cliched,

8:35

boring advice and making myself feel like I'm

8:37

really wise because I gave you a bunch

8:39

of advice. That's why it feels to

8:41

me when they talk about, one of the things we're gonna

8:43

get talking about is a bunch of people who get into

8:46

this. The reason why I think this appeals as

8:48

a perfection is that you

8:50

get a chance to be somebody who

8:52

gets to be a mentor, but also

8:54

in a low stakes capacity. Yeah, it's

8:56

like all the puffering of being

8:58

like, hey, I've got real, I've really

9:00

got something to say over here. I'm

9:02

really like, I'm a wise sage ass

9:05

motherfucker. I'm based, I'm a

9:07

fucking Instagram guru. I

9:10

agree with you that when you've got a

9:12

mentor-mentee relationship, the stakes are

9:14

low, but the stakes are

9:16

emotional. So if you have

9:19

a good mentor-mentee relationship, the stakes for me

9:21

is that I have an emotional connection with

9:23

somebody, so the reason it matters is it

9:25

matters to me emotionally, like it matters to

9:27

me as a person. If

9:29

I'm divorced from that emotional connection, then

9:32

this is platitudes on demand, right? This feels

9:34

to me like it's live, laugh, love

9:36

the musical, right, like I don't- You

9:38

could get the same advice from chat

9:40

GPT. Yeah, man, you get the same

9:42

advice walking through Hobby Lobby and snapping pictures

9:44

of the fucking little wooden signs, you

9:46

know? Oh, eat, pray, love, great idea.

9:48

Eat, pray, love, what did I do

9:50

today? Did I eat? Yeah, we could

9:52

pray. I'm gonna enjoy today. You're

9:55

absolutely right. Carpe diem, don't mind

9:58

if I do. This

10:01

feels like all that kind

10:03

of platitudinal shit just expounded upon in

10:05

more detail. And I'm talking about the

10:07

bad ones, because I imagine that there

10:09

are people out there that maybe take

10:11

the time to get to know you.

10:13

Take the time to work with you.

10:15

Take the time to understand who you

10:17

are. I'm not saying that this is

10:20

like a 100% a bunk profession. I

10:23

don't know. I actually don't know

10:25

anything very deeply about

10:27

it in particular. The stories that

10:29

I read though, talk about all

10:32

the problems in this industry and

10:34

the problems are legion. I

10:36

wanna share a funny story. Hailey and

10:38

I were watching, for

10:40

I don't even remember the reason we were watching. We

10:42

were watching a show, it's terrible. It's called 90 day

10:44

fiance, I think is what it's called. It's

10:47

literally a terrible show. I

10:49

think we saw, what happened is we saw- It's

10:51

importing your husband, right? Or your- Well,

10:53

husband or wife or whatever. It's basically importing them

10:55

from another country, right? And there's insane relationships. Yeah,

10:57

they import them from other countries. They're essentially just,

11:00

you're a green card provider. Well, but they're trying

11:02

to pretend it's not. And it's like, it's

11:04

this insane, there's these insane relationships. And we watched

11:06

it because like we saw this little clip and

11:09

we're like, holy shit, we gotta find where that

11:11

clip is from. That was bonkers, we wanna watch

11:13

it. So he's got sucked in for like a

11:15

minute watching this show, 90 day fiance. And

11:17

I bring it up because there's this guy, there's a relationship

11:19

where this guy is in Australia

11:22

and he's online dating a woman

11:24

in America and

11:27

she flies over to Australia and they're gonna meet for the

11:29

first time. He's a life coach. And

11:31

so she goes to his sessions and

11:34

she sees him in person, like giving this

11:36

sort of dating advice and like relationship advice

11:38

to a room full of women. And

11:40

it is, Cecil, it is the

11:43

most cringe-worthy. You ever watched something where like,

11:45

it's so cringy or like pulling the covers

11:47

over your head and you're like hiding from

11:49

the TV? It's that bad. Like I put

11:51

my hands over my face and you gotta tell me when this is

11:53

done. It's that bad. And

11:56

he's like an Instagram influencer life

11:58

coachy guy. Sure. for

18:00

this. This feels also adjacent, and I wanted

18:02

to talk to you about this too, to

18:05

the role that clergy

18:07

often plays in

18:09

providing non-therapeutic therapy. It

18:11

does feel like that. Right.

18:14

And that's a connection I hadn't put

18:16

together, but very, very similar,

18:18

right? A guy who's a celibate

18:20

guy is going to tell you.

18:22

Right. Oh, your sex life. Your sex life.

18:24

Well, let me tell you, let me tell you what you need to

18:26

do is spit in your head. No,

18:31

but I, what I

18:34

really think too, you know,

18:36

you're talking about how it's dangerous. There's a, it

18:39

can be dangerous. And the reason why it's dangerous too,

18:42

is because of the people that you're

18:44

dealing with are vulnerable. Right? It's a

18:46

vulnerable population. They're coming to you vulnerable.

18:48

And I think the same thing's true

18:50

when you talk about these life coaches

18:52

and when you talk about the people

18:54

who want to join into that

18:57

industry to become part of

18:59

that industry. A lot

19:01

of these people are sold something

19:05

that they then invest a

19:07

lot of money in because they were

19:10

vulnerable when they took, took it on.

19:12

And then there's sunk cost fallacy because

19:14

now they're already 10 or

19:17

$15,000 into it. And the way these things

19:19

work, you know, this, this article goes into great

19:21

detail. The New York times one goes in

19:23

a great detail into telling you, you know,

19:25

how much money these things cost. They

19:27

will get you to go to one training.

19:31

And she interviews some people who think

19:33

that the training is literally terrible. The

19:35

training that they went to is awful.

19:37

Not worthwhile, not good. They, you know,

19:39

they're not allowed to question the guru.

19:42

They have to, you know, but even

19:44

still I paid five or

19:46

six grand for this thing. So now there's a sunk cost

19:48

in their mind to think, well, I got to get something

19:50

out of it now. And the

19:53

clients don't appear. So they talk to people in the industry

19:55

and they say, Oh, well you need to take this other

19:57

training or you need to talk to these other people. And.

19:59

And you know what, you're a coach,

20:02

but no one will listen to you if

20:04

you're not being coached yourself. So you need

20:06

to go get coached while you're trying to

20:08

lay out a coach. And there's

20:10

so many stories of these people who they're

20:13

in a vulnerable position. They need to, they

20:15

need to find work. They don't have work.

20:17

They're thinking, well, maybe I can be entrepreneurial

20:20

and start this new career. They learn a

20:22

bunch of nothing from a bunch of people

20:24

that keep charging them over and over and

20:27

then at certain points, give them as a,

20:29

as a, what do they call it? A

20:31

downstream, a down line or whatever a down

20:34

line where they're now, uh, gonna

20:36

maybe hook you up with somebody, but they get

20:38

part of your money if you do it. So

20:40

it's becoming a multilevel marketing thing. It's

20:42

a lot of really

20:45

skeezy, shady ways

20:47

in which to train people and you're doing

20:49

it. The thing that breaks my heart is

20:52

like, I could see myself in this position.

20:54

Sure. I could easily see myself

20:56

in this position in the last year. I

20:58

lost my job. I was

21:00

in a very desperate, weird place

21:02

for a while afterwards thinking about

21:04

because my whole life has been

21:06

structured around this time that I

21:08

go to work. This is

21:11

what I do. I get this money every

21:13

week. I work on these particular things and

21:15

they sort of, you know, they, they, they

21:17

occupy 40 hours of my

21:19

week. So I'm constantly thinking about them. And

21:22

that rug gets pulled off from underneath you. Tastemakers

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mvmt.com. I

22:00

got to put some other things together. I

22:03

could see how being a life coach could be

22:05

so enticing, right? I get

22:07

to choose my own schedule, something I

22:09

never got a chance to do before.

22:11

I get to work from the places

22:13

I want. I get to meet people.

22:15

I get to distill wisdom down to

22:17

them. And like you said earlier, puff

22:20

myself up and feel good about myself

22:22

because I helped someone out with their

22:24

life today. I could see

22:26

how this could easily be something I could

22:28

easily fall into as a person. And

22:31

I feel so bad for all these people

22:33

who just pour all their money into this

22:35

and their heart into this and then wind

22:38

up with nothing except for a gigantic credit

22:40

card bill. Yeah, well, and to your point,

22:42

like these people end up

22:44

with like these huge giant credit card bills. And one

22:47

of the things that they're being sold is, well, you

22:49

got to coach more coaches. You got to create more

22:51

coaches. That's classic pyramid scheme

22:53

shit. This is like selling fucking essential

22:55

oils, but you're selling people on creating

22:58

more coaches who create more coaches, who

23:00

create more coaches and everybody kicks up

23:02

the line. And that's, but

23:04

like when you poke at

23:07

some of this stuff, one

23:09

of the things that I wonder about is what

23:12

is the sort of intellectual

23:14

or traditional or

23:16

scientific basis that

23:18

their advice is drawn from? And

23:21

there's no answer to that question. If

23:24

I'm a therapist, for example, here's a

23:26

key difference. If I'm a therapist, a

23:29

good therapist will say, and you can ask

23:31

them, you know, hey, are you, do you

23:33

practice, let's say, cognitive behavioral

23:36

therapy? Yes, I'm very conversant

23:38

in cognitive behavioral therapy. Great,

23:40

well, that's a specific intellectual

23:43

and scientific tradition instead of tools

23:46

that you may be interested in learning that

23:48

has a lot of scientific backing. And so

23:50

like, if you're trying to get through something

23:52

and you think that cognitive behavioral therapy might

23:54

be a tool for you to use, you

23:56

can search for a therapist that

23:59

is educated and knows. those tools and

24:01

those things are scientifically and medically vetted.

24:04

If you're going to see a life coach, where

24:07

does their advice originate from?

24:09

What is the intellectual, scientific,

24:11

or traditional basis that forms

24:13

this sort of philosophical underpinning

24:15

that their advice rests

24:17

upon? And the answer is

24:20

less shrug, man. Nobody

24:22

knows. It's fang shui. Yeah.

24:25

Everybody's got their own. That's exactly right, man. They

24:27

got their own decision, like how they're choosing it.

24:29

No, you're absolutely right. I think that's

24:31

one of those things that you can look at and say,

24:34

is this a science? Is it not? I'm sure there are,

24:36

again, maybe there are people

24:38

out there who are scientifically based that

24:40

look at how to give

24:42

advice and how to do all this. I don't know, right?

24:45

I have no idea. And just like

24:47

supplements, it's like, yeah, maybe some supplements

24:49

contain 100% what they say on

24:51

the bottle, but there's no one checking to make sure. It's

24:53

not a person out there making sure. Another

24:56

piece of this too is

24:59

when you go to somebody to help

25:02

change your life, you're

25:04

giving that person a lot of

25:06

power over you. There is a

25:08

huge power dynamic shift and

25:12

your relationship with

25:14

them turns into a power

25:17

relationship. And

25:20

the people who are in some

25:22

of these stories and the abuses that some

25:24

of these people do are

25:27

very cult-like and they mirror what a

25:29

cult would do to somebody because

25:32

the amount of power that some

25:35

of these people, I'm not saying everybody, but clearly some

25:37

of the people who they talked about in these stories,

25:40

they are very much giving

25:42

a level of power to these people

25:44

that is cult leader level of power

25:47

over them. Making them, like

25:49

one person was a relationship coach, told

25:52

this person to move out of the house.

25:56

You can't talk to your wife. You

25:58

need to isolate yourself. in this one

26:00

little small room. I mean,

26:02

all these little very cult-like behaviors that

26:04

they're making them do, and then they

26:07

abuse their power with them because they

26:09

have a tremendous amount of power over

26:11

these people. Yeah, and if you're a

26:13

grifter, you basically have

26:15

people knocking on your door and

26:17

saying, I'm ripe for the picking.

26:19

Yeah. That's a crazy

26:21

thing for us to allow to exist

26:24

without any larger regulatory

26:27

oversight. I was

26:29

thinking though, as somebody

26:31

who has kids, who

26:34

has written a blog of advice, a

26:37

fairly substantive one for my kids, who's

26:39

worked with other people in

26:41

a little bit of a mentorship role, I think

26:43

that there's a really well-intentioned,

26:46

if perhaps potentially misguided,

26:49

but a pretty well-intentioned idea that

26:52

when you've gone through something

26:54

yourself and you've spent time introspecting

26:57

and reflecting on it, you

26:59

may decide, hey, I've

27:01

gone through this thing and I might be able to help other

27:04

people get through it. And that can be

27:06

a really good place that some

27:08

of this coaching might sort of

27:10

arise from. Sure, sure. But the

27:12

problem is, it

27:14

also has the universalization problem,

27:17

right? Where you believe, and

27:19

because this is a common cognitive defect in

27:21

people, where you believe that because you've been

27:24

through something, it is

27:26

universally an experience now that you can

27:28

use to help other people. And that

27:30

the advice and the experiences that have

27:32

helped you gain insight and get through

27:34

something will be a sort of universal

27:36

value to others. That

27:39

is a really hubristic

27:41

way to look at your own life. It's

27:44

a trap that I know that I have fallen

27:46

into. It's a trap that I know that is

27:48

very easy for a lot of other people to

27:50

fall into. I think we have to guard against

27:52

that in ourselves to say like, yeah, just because

27:55

you've gone through something and come out the other

27:57

side and you feel like you've introspected and reflected,

28:00

maybe you've learned that that

28:02

learning may just be applicable to you. And

28:04

you really have to be able to be honest with

28:06

yourself and say, is this learning

28:09

that I've had genuinely

28:11

universalizable in a way that

28:13

is useful to others? Or

28:16

is this just an experience you had, which

28:18

was meaningful and deep and personal for you?

28:21

Both answers might be correct, right? But

28:23

the problem with life coaching is that

28:25

I think oftentimes there's a bunch of

28:27

folks, even the well-meaning folks, who

28:30

are drawing from a tradition of

28:32

personal self-reflection rather than from a

28:34

body of literature and studies

28:38

and science and proven methodologies.

28:41

So even I think when it

28:43

comes from really well-meaning, good-hearted places,

28:45

that doesn't make it credible. It

28:48

just makes it potentially not abusive.

28:50

Not abusive, right? Yeah. Some

28:54

of the things that they said in this article, they

28:57

said that the one

29:00

woman was convinced by a life coach to

29:02

sign over her home. She eventually got it

29:05

back, but she had to sign her home

29:07

over to them. Another

29:09

coach was stealing from

29:11

someone with a traumatic brain injury.

29:13

Jesus Christ. There was another

29:15

who was abusing their clients. One

29:18

other one who was sexually had one

29:21

of those inappropriate sexual relationships with

29:23

a client. Another

29:25

person who was ordering contact

29:28

cut off with family. And

29:32

these are very dangerous things

29:37

that people are doing to other people. And it's

29:39

hard not to see a group

29:41

of people who's preying on a very

29:43

vulnerable group of people and not feel

29:45

like, wow, is all of

29:48

that garbage? Yeah, well, yeah. And

29:50

the last thing, isolation

29:53

is a classic abuse behavior.

29:57

These behaviors are

29:59

like... textbook abusive behaviors. One

30:01

of the things, one of the other

30:04

articles, I think the

30:06

ProPublica one, is really details how

30:08

a lot of folks who

30:10

were therapists, who get booted out of

30:12

being therapists because their behavior as therapists

30:15

was out of line with

30:17

the accreditation and regulatory standards of

30:19

that industry, they just pivot.

30:22

They just pivot into life coaching because

30:24

they know that what you've done instead is you've just like

30:28

licked your thumb and wiped the initials off

30:30

after your name and hung your shingle out

30:32

and did the same exact grift. Like

30:35

if your grift as a therapist was, I

30:38

am credible and here's the initials after my name

30:40

that make me credible and I'm gonna wait for

30:42

vulnerable people to come into my zone

30:44

of influence and then I'm going to

30:47

hurt them for my own personal

30:49

gain, I can just erase

30:51

the letters after my name, do the

30:53

same thing under the term life coaching.

30:55

Honestly, clergy can do that already too.

30:58

And we've seen how many examples of

31:00

clergy who are sought after as people

31:02

who give advice using

31:05

their position of power as leverage for

31:07

personal, sexual or financial gain. It's the

31:09

same story. You see it all the

31:11

time in the clergy for sure. I

31:15

was really intrigued too by the

31:18

sunk cost fallacy of the

31:20

people who were trying to become life coaches because

31:22

one of these articles is very specifically about people

31:24

trying to become life coaches and then

31:26

the other ones are about people who

31:29

have maybe been abused by life coaches.

31:32

But this one

31:34

article that's talking about the people who are trying

31:36

to become and how much money they have to

31:38

spend in order to do it and all the

31:40

scamminess that happens there, one of

31:42

the ladies said something too, she had

31:45

said, I just didn't

31:47

wanna be a quitter. I just didn't wanna quit.

31:50

And one of

31:52

the most vulnerable things you can do is try

31:54

to create something, right? I

31:57

find that on the show when somebody shits

31:59

on me, on something I did or

32:01

somebody says something bad about like the cooking stuff

32:03

I do, I take it really

32:06

personally, right? I take it personally. I don't, I

32:08

would never try to be, have like

32:10

misinformation on this show or something like that or try

32:12

to, you know, I wouldn't try to do that, but

32:14

sometimes people accuse me of it, right? Or,

32:17

you know, when I'm cooking, you know, somebody might

32:19

say something really shitty about what I did or

32:21

how I presented it, or I'm trying to lie

32:23

to people or something like that. And

32:26

that always, it really does hit hard,

32:28

right? It hits hard because you're creating something,

32:30

you're vulnerable when you create something. And

32:33

I think when you're

32:35

creating a business, right? There's

32:38

a very vulnerable part of you that

32:41

let everybody know you were creating it, right? You

32:43

told all your friends, you told all your family,

32:45

I started my own business, I'm my own boss

32:47

now, I'm doing this thing now. And

32:50

then you got to go back to them later after

32:53

it's failed and be like, oh no, yeah, it failed. And

32:56

then you've got to think about that all

32:58

the time. And you've got to constantly remind

33:00

yourself that you said you were

33:02

gonna do something and you didn't follow through

33:04

because you weren't, it wasn't in

33:06

the cards for you, right? But it

33:10

might be because it's not a great industry, it might

33:12

be because it's an oversaturated industry, it might be because

33:14

you're not good at it, it might be there's a

33:16

million reasons why it didn't work, but

33:18

it didn't work and you've got to own that.

33:20

And owning that is hard. It is. You

33:23

need a life coach for that. No,

33:27

but genuinely it's hard. It's really difficult.

33:29

It's difficult. You know, like I

33:32

think about, I think about simple stuff like Eli's

33:34

blog, right? Like it's a joke amongst all

33:36

the people on Citation Needed that sort of

33:38

needle him about how he used to have

33:40

a blog. But he used to

33:43

have a thing that he would put his thoughts

33:45

and his feelings out there. And to

33:47

needle him about not doing that anymore is

33:49

kind of a dick thing to do. It's a huge dick move.

33:51

It's a huge dick move. Cause it's creation

33:53

and he's creating something. He's being vulnerable. And

33:56

you know, when that doesn't pan out,

33:58

it hurts. Yeah,

34:00

because it's a very public kind

34:03

of moment of, maybe

34:05

failure is not the right word, but it

34:07

is a public moment to create and to

34:09

present something to an audience. And

34:12

we've had situations where we've been very much

34:14

in the public eye and we've done something

34:16

publicly that a show or whatever, and it's

34:18

not gone exactly the way that we hoped

34:20

it would go. And that

34:22

is not a good feeling. That's a bad

34:25

feeling. What I think we

34:27

can all help each other with on

34:29

that piece so that the folks in

34:31

our lives that maybe fall for grifters

34:33

is giving grace when people make

34:35

mistakes to make mistakes. And to

34:38

not, I told you so even if you did,

34:41

and to just be like, yeah, I could also have

34:43

made a mistake just to relate directly. You know what?

34:46

I can see myself having done that too. I've watched,

34:48

I don't know, a handful,

34:50

a small handful, but a handful

34:53

of shows about cults,

34:55

right? And thought, God,

34:58

there was a time in my life where I can see how

35:01

if the stars had aligned just right,

35:04

that would have appealed to me. There was

35:06

a period of time in my life where I

35:08

wanted my life to be about something bigger than

35:11

just waking up and going to school

35:13

or going to work. I wanted my

35:15

life to be about service to something,

35:17

service to ideas that would matter to me,

35:19

a sense of like, I wanted my life

35:22

to be about something greater than

35:24

just waking up and punching a

35:26

clock. And getting a paycheck and building a

35:29

fulfilling life outside of that, which is

35:31

what you eventually oftentimes come to as

35:33

an adult, right? Like I thought

35:35

there would be something bigger. And

35:37

so there was a time in my life where I

35:39

think, man, if things had lined up

35:42

just so, I could have been vulnerable to the right

35:44

message from the right person. Me too, buddy. And

35:47

when I look back at that and I'm

35:49

like, yeah, well, like here's somebody who was

35:51

vulnerable to that message that I was not

35:53

immune to, that so many other people are

35:55

clearly, not

35:57

immune to. I

36:00

would give space for people

36:02

to meet them

36:04

in the middle and say, yeah, man, I

36:06

didn't fall for that one. I'm

36:08

sorry. That hurts. Love

36:11

you anyway. Instead, I think

36:13

people feel really embarrassed to be public

36:15

about the times that they were wrong.

36:18

And that makes them double down. That

36:20

makes them buy in harder. Because if they don't

36:23

win, if they don't keep feeding the next quarter

36:25

into the slot machine, they have to concede that

36:27

they've wasted all those other quarters. Maybe

36:31

the next poll is where it shits out all the money.

36:33

And then I get to, I told you so all the

36:35

people who told me so. We

36:37

gotta build space for the people in our lives

36:40

that we love so that if they make mistakes,

36:42

they can come back to us without having to

36:44

crawl. They can come back to us

36:46

with their dignity still intact. I think

36:48

about all the times in my life when I didn't

36:50

have a lot. And I think

36:52

about how easily vulnerable I could be to

36:55

any of these multi-level marketing things that are

36:57

out there. Whether this is or not, right?

37:00

This feels like a lot. It does

37:02

from these articles genuinely feels like it

37:05

is a multi-level, at

37:07

least some of it is multi-level marketing.

37:09

I think back in my life to the vulnerable

37:12

times in my life when I didn't have two

37:14

pennies to rub together. And those times in my

37:16

life, I look back, they're pretty legion. There's a lot of

37:18

different times in my life where, you

37:21

start to make an upward climb and then it all

37:23

collapses. And then you start to make an upward climb

37:25

and then it all collapses. And that happened multiple times

37:27

in my life. And I think about all those times

37:29

that I could have been easily vulnerable to something that

37:32

could induce me to think that this is

37:34

how you're gonna do it. This is how you're gonna make

37:36

it. This is how you're gonna make a climb that's

37:40

never gonna go down. And

37:43

this feels to me like a

37:45

dream job, right? It

37:47

genuinely feels like a dream job. And like

37:50

most things that are too good to be

37:52

true, it's probably

37:54

not real, right? And it

37:56

feels like genuinely you get the accolades

37:59

and not a lot of. of responsibility of giving somebody

38:01

advice, right? Right. All the time. You

38:04

get to look like somebody who knows a

38:06

lot about the world. You get to look

38:08

like somebody who feels like they're a worldly,

38:10

smart person. You get to interact

38:13

and meet with all kinds of interesting

38:15

people who are coming to you for

38:17

help. That you get to

38:20

make your own hours. You

38:22

get to work from home. You get to communicate with people when you

38:24

want to communicate with them. There's

38:27

a lot of things about this that sound like

38:29

it'd be amazing. You get to have what you

38:31

want, for a lot of people, just have a

38:33

positive impact on other people's lives. Such a great

38:35

point, right? There's so many people. I just think

38:37

about, I have always

38:39

wanted to be somebody that mattered to other

38:42

people. And you could do that with this,

38:44

right? Yeah, with this, very sympathetic. I feel

38:46

very sympathetic. Even as I read this, I

38:48

was like, life coaching sounds

38:50

pretty good. Yeah, it hurts my heart

38:52

so bad that somebody felt

38:55

the same way I do about it. And

38:57

then they go out and they gave somebody six

38:59

or $7,000. And

39:02

then they didn't feel like there was a lot into it,

39:04

but they felt at this point they're on the hook. And

39:07

so now they take another class.

39:09

And then that person convinces them

39:11

to become coached by someone

39:13

else. So now they're paying to be

39:15

coached on how to be a better

39:17

coach. And they're falling

39:19

deeper and deeper into this web of

39:22

more money, more money, less

39:26

results. And then

39:28

they finally have to just give up and there's

39:30

nothing for them. They walk away with nothing,

39:33

without even their dignity. Yeah, right. Yeah,

39:36

these three articles I thought

39:39

were really interesting. This is an industry I

39:42

never gave a moment's worth of

39:44

consideration or thought to. And it

39:48

does feel like a space, an umbrella,

39:51

that we should all be very

39:53

careful of in a world that's

39:55

increasingly owned by influencers. We

39:58

live in an era right now where natural

46:00

human proclivity. And I think there's a

46:02

lot of good in that. But like, I also

46:04

am sure nobody's got that shit figured out. Yeah,

46:07

man. Like, there's nobody where I'm

46:09

like, they just nailed it all. Wow, look at

46:11

that. Every answer, all

46:13

of life. Ha ha ha ha ha. ["The

46:18

Star-Spangled Banner"] All

46:22

right, let's get a wrap it up for this show. We're

46:24

gonna catch you guys on Monday. Like

46:27

we said, today is the day that I

46:29

would have gone live for Trump sentencing,

46:31

but that has been moved off to

46:33

September. So we'll let you know as

46:36

that gets closer. There's not gonna be

46:38

a live stream this month. We

46:40

were planning on doing a live stream, but Tom's

46:42

taking a week off of a podcasting. So we're

46:44

recording a little early and we're gonna shift everything.

46:46

And the week that we would have done the

46:48

live stream, Tom's gonna be off. So we're just

46:50

gonna skip it this month, but we

46:52

will, hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll do it next month.

46:55

All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this week. We're gonna leave it

46:57

like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity

47:00

is not a virtue. It's

47:03

fortune cookie cutter mommy

47:05

issue, hypnobabylon bullshit. Couch

47:08

and scientistian double bubble

47:10

toil and trouble, pseudo

47:12

quasi alternative, acupunctuating pressurized,

47:14

stereogram pyramidal free energy

47:16

healing, water downward spiral

47:18

brain dead pan sales

47:20

pitch, late night info

47:22

document. Leo Pisces

47:25

cancer cures, detox reflex foot

47:27

massage, death in towers, tarot

47:30

cars, psychic healing, crystal balls,

47:32

big foot yeti, aliens, churches,

47:34

mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons,

47:37

giant worms, Atlantis dolphins, truthers,

47:39

birthers, witches, wizards. You'll love

47:42

it. And then the red

47:44

snapper with violets and pine nuts. Shaman

47:47

healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double

47:49

speak stigmata nonsense. Expose

47:54

your signs, thrust

47:56

your hands, bloody, evidential,

47:59

concordance. inclusive. Doubt

48:02

even this. The

48:15

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48:17

podcast are intended for entertainment purposes

48:19

only. All opinions are solely that

48:21

of Glory Hole Studios LLC. Cognitive

48:24

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48:27

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48:43

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