Ambition and Experiences in an AI World | Jordan Harbinger

This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average Host. This is the James altucher show.

You've had a podcast for a long time. Yeah. I have a lot of listeners. A lot of people know who you are. You're probably get really need. Oh nice compliments all the time about your podcast. When do you start to say, okay, I'm a little less ambitious. Now I don't need as I'm not going to go all out to have a you've done a really good job creating your your audience when do you say okay, I'm not going to put 20 hours a week in the building audience anymore. I'm gonna put maybe an hour or two a weekend where yeah 0 and

it's funny. I just started doing

In that, and it's been this very difficult internal conversation. Not always internal, but conversation because I see other podcasters or other social media people and I hate social media but I'm going to use them by way of comparison because I do use them by way of comparison. And I go man, look at this person as so much engagement. Maybe I should have done something like that or should do more like that and then I go, no, I've got kids, I don't like creating for Twitter or Instagram, or for tick-tock.

What's the point, even if I doubled my Audience by executing a brilliant strategy doing this, do I need to do that financially know. Okay. So then what's the reason I'm doing it ego? Is that a good reason to do it? Probably not, but it's not a terrible reason. I mean, it, look, if that's what you find filling. Cool. Oh wait. I have to take that time away from my two young kids, not worth it.

I mean, so you've reached some

Tipping Point in your ambition. Like, I remember when you switch podcast, like you were doing the art of charm, and then you left that and restart it from scratch, the Jordan Harbinger show, and you did an incredibly good job building up. Like you are, you were the definition of hustling like you were calling podcasters, like me and saying, hey, let's do a podcast Swap and you were, you were, you were very proactive like asking me like, hey, what can we do together to

And you explained the situation and you want to get your audience up, and I'm sure a lot of people helped you. You were very good at asking. Yeah, I had too much better than I would be at asking like, like it didn't feel like a drag like, oh no, I gotta figure out a return.

Crab are below and one this sucks. I'm dreading, yeah, I have those days too. Yeah, I had to be good at asking because I was like, I'm in trouble, man. This is it that was a dire situation, right? I was starting from scratch and I thought I spent 11

Years building my first show.

Is it possible to get back to where I am now and in that show, you know, this is before podcast ads. If you think about it, podcast advertising really did kick up in the last five years before that it was kind of small you're kind of in trouble if you were living off your podcast ads so I had to reboot the whole show pay my team and I was like, oh maybe I'll make like, a modest like a low six figures, that's cool, it'll that's totally fine.

And then advertising started to really take off in the show started to take off and I was like, okay, good. And I'm lucky I had that but I had to do that. So that wasn't like, I'm kind of shy feeling a little weird about that was like, I'm going to starve to death. I don't ask for help.

What were what were the like again asking is hard. Like a lot of people will pour their life into writing a book for instance and there probably will say, okay now you need to call up all your podcaster, friends and ask them to go on a cast for me this is impossible.

Isabel, I cannot do it. So what would you say were the most effective methods you used really for asking for help and which things help the most?

So I it's funny because I put this in, I actually put this into my free course as a module because people are like, I'm just not good at asking. So one of the things that I do is I tell people that you start by helping other people, you dig the well before you get thirsty, right? So that when you have to ask somebody for something, it doesn't.

You'll as bad because you're like well I've helped them before. It's not like this weird thing where I'm coming out of nowhere and I'm like, hey, James member me from high school fun times. Anyway, I'm selling multi-level marketing company protein. Shakes. You want to be a distributor, like you're not doing that, you know. So, help other people you build a little bit of referral currency so to speak. It's not as weird. You're not coming to people with tail between your legs. Like you haven't talked to him in five years. Now, you want something, the other thing you can do that, I didn't need.

need to do as much because I'd already built this sort of

infrastructure of like having helped a bunch of other people in the past at least, you know, kept in touch with people. Well, 11 cheat though. When I give this to people to try for themselves as I say,

what if you

ask for something for someone else to just sort of Kick the rust off of your asking muscles. So like if you really need help with something like you need your book distributed, okay, that's a tough ask. But if you if you know you're gonna have to do that in a year because you're writing the book start by going. Hey James. I know you've got an eye for art and you bought a bunch of Art

Do you think this is a Banksy? Who would I even ask? And you're like, oh yeah, shoot me, this thing. So I'm asking you for this sort of low stakes thing, or you might go. I don't know. And I go. Oh, cool. I just thought I'd shoot you a photo. This thing. I thought I just saw looked like a Banksy whatever another cheat that you can do is you can ask for help for someone else. So let's say that you need to ask for help from somebody. And, you know, that somebody's really good at they work for Microsoft and they design. I

No touch screens. You're asking them for help with something else but you're like hey my mom just got this Microsoft Surface and it freezes a lot. Can you any idea what might be causing that and he goes oh let me you know sure I'll help your cause you're going to ask for help for your mom why wouldn't you let your mom? So it feels easier to ask your neighbor or whatever to help out your mom with something. Then it is to ask your neighbor like hey can you promote my thing? Can you do something for me? So as for help for somebody else and or ask for something,

Really low stakes where if the person says no it's not a big deal but also it's really easy for them to say yes. Like if I if I send you a photo of a street sign that's painted and I say is this a Banksy? You might go. Oh I've seen that before in a catalog that looks like a Banksy or no, no, this is nothing I've ever seen, but maybe you could ask this, maybe you didn't. Here's a guy who works at Sotheby's, he would know, you know, that kind of thing. By the way, what happened to all that art? Remember that re-bought that big estate sale

A bottle at Art.

Yeah. So so so the story is and it's interesting to have. So I was just thinking about this supposedly. It was some Cornell art Professor who collected art that like an Andy Warhol, for instance, or a dolly, or even a Picasso, but there was no Providence. Meaning, there was no proof that it was a Picasso, right? There's a lot of, you know, Picasso made something like 60,000 works of art, a lot of things don't, you know, Picasso Foundation or family office, or whatever doesn't?

Acknowledge that these are Picasso's. So he collected these things I guess in the hopes that maybe they would turn out to be real or whatever. But what I'm suspecting is that they're all fraudulent that's and fascinating well, and they're really good. Like I even I have a Banksy or quote, unquote, Banksy I had it, I have a Jackson, Pollock, I have nothing. I have a Jackson Pollock over there in my office, but it's not really a Jackson Pollock, right? We had friends agent, come and

An insurance value on all these things. The only thing that had the only paintings that had any value that weren't that we owned that they were not part of this collection. They were three paintings painted by North Korean artists and just because the North Korean aspect gave them some Financial value but nothing else had any value at all and now that doesn't mean she was an Art Expert. She's just said if without a history of where this art comes from. We have no idea if it's frozen. Okay, my guess is this thing on fraudulent and I'm curious.

Said one person do it, did many people do it? I'm sure there's like a story behind each painting like yeah. Oh, who are is, did the forgery and what's their backgrounds? I kind of just want to like, do a documentary, tracking it all down. I think that's like a fun idea. It

is a fun idea and I'll tell you, I'll tell you what, one, I have a lot of North Korean art because I went to North Korea, bunch. And I've always bought art there because it's better than the crappy souvenirs, you can get that are like ceramic, North Korea Flags

So, I wonder if that stuff's worth anything, because I'll everything you get there is hand-painted, right? Like, even if it's not fine art, it's a propaganda poster, but it's painted by a human because they don't print them. They have unlimited free, human labor. So they did make people paint them and I wonder what those are worth. And I have like, what is it called? When you Stitch something and it turns into a, giant flowered landscape, like cross stitch, but it's not on that plastic background. It's like somebody is painstakingly crafting this giant Floral.

About a different color thread. It's something like that. So I have that stuff that I get that, I've given it my mom and whatnot, but I think that would be really interesting and I wonder if this is an art Professor, was he is skilled artist himself because what a plot twist if he was the one who was forging all these? And the reason that he had them was, he couldn't sell them because they were forgeries and he was like, I'm just not gonna tell anybody, I'm just gonna keep all these art pieces of art up here. What if it's him?

It could be, or I'm not even totally sure he exists. It could be the auction house was doing something fraudulent.

So because I was buying a bit of fraudulent through an auction house and there was all these supposed bugs in their website and that's how I got them. Like super cheap. Like they didn't send, nobody knew the auction was happening, right then. And we just happen to be holding were lucky, and we didn't spend that much money because again, we don't know if there's any value, but here, like here's an example that we got in this auction, there's a menu from Studio 54, which is his famous New York City Club in the 80s and

Everybody famous would go there all the time and basically, like Andy Warhol did a sketch on the back of this menu of, from Studio 54. It's like an odd. That was a forgery. It's like an odd can conception even of a forgery. So like maybe it, maybe that might be like, real, but it's not really worth anything because it's just a sketch on the back of the menu, but I don't know, but I really want to get to the bottom of this story and just have.

Don't just haven't done it and but it reminds me one time I was, I was single and I was in a bookstore at Barnes & Noble, New York City, it was at the Starbucks in the bookstore and the girls sitting next to him was drawing something and it was really amazing and I said, oh that's amazing what you're drying and but, you know, I was trying to talk to her. Sure. And she we end up talking and she tells me this incredible story where she said she worked for and she named a famous artist. I did I hadn't heard of him but when I searched he was like, super famous.

Things will go for like, let's say a hundred thousand dollars or painting. Wow. And she said what he would do was he would take photographs of basically these naked women in like very exotic, you know, places like in nature or whatever and then her job was to paint. He would blow up the photograph to be like, you know, 5 feet by 5 feet and her job was to paint over the photograph exactly what the photograph was. So it

So the men he would sell them pretending. It was a super realistic painting of these nudes. Like he wouldn't admit he wouldn't say to anybody. This is there really a photograph underneath it. And another artist painted over it to duplicate the photograph. Wow. And her Point her what she said is he after you, he sold over 100,000, it's not like anyone's going to chip away at the paint. True, he didn't. There's a photograph underneath and so he would get away with it as far for all. I know he's still getting away with it and I

I wrote about this without naming her. I wrote about this in a column, I had in the financial times and I started getting death threats from her friends because I like, how could you out her like this? And I said I didn't name her name but they said, she everybody suspicious of her now and she's denying it. And well, and then she said, you need to meet me. Like, I need to know why you did this. And I did ask her out when we met, but she said there is no way. So, mission accomplished. You guys ended up going out. Well,

I mean, it was, it was not a friendly little friendly foreign know what would that was like 20 years ago. So it was it was, I'm sure she's on to bigger and better and more productive things than helping some, you know, criminal artist. But it's just a lot of weird things going on out there are, you know, this because you can podcast about it,

it's funny. You should mention this. So this morning I got an email from a former show guest, who is a really, really, really good Art Forger formerly. I should say like a really, really good.

Forger. So what he did, I'm trying to remember the story because I did a podcast with him years and years ago his name is Ken / any. And what he did was he turned out to be a really good painter and he just wanted to paint and he end up getting involved with like the mafia back in the 90s or whatever it was and he's painting these Old Masters which is like, I don't know you paint a ship on a stormy water or something and he was doing it so well that all of these art,

S or whatever Auction House people were going. This is a lost, I don't know, Rembrandt or whatever. I don't know who the Old Masters, are, whatever that Rembrandt, whatever, and they be blown away, and then they would get auctioned off. And I know a lot of people are thinking, wait a minute, there's all these ways to tell, if a painting is fake, come on. He had all these really cool ways to fake, genuine elements of a painting, so he would go to thrift stores or flea markets.

He would go and buy any framed painting because the wood is old. The canvas is old, the Staples are old. If there's even Staples in their nails, whatever it is, and he would either paint over the old one on that canvas in the same style. So that he didn't have to, like, bake the way. You know, he's not making fake frames fake nails, fake and he just finds old stuff and then recreates it or he would get the old paint off somehow. And there was, what was this one thing? That was so cool that he did. So, apparently old paintings, if you put them under a black light, the

Garnish shows up really kind of weird and creepy and green because it's, I don't know, it's old varnish. It's got some chemical in it, whatever. So what he would do is he would take an old, he would take a solvent, put it over an old painting that he got at a flea market dissolve, the varnish that was over the top of the top of the painting, drip it into a container, and then he would paint that over one of his forgeries. So, the auction house people would be like, oh, we're going to put this under our special impossible to fake black light, that shows if the varnish is old, sure enough. The varnish was old.

Was just moved and put on a new fake painting and he did that with old frames old Nails, old canvas and so his paintings. He says to this day he'll look at an arc catalog and it'll be like we're auctioning off this beautiful, you know, 1845 19. Whatever it is painting and he's like, nope, I freaking made that is mine. I made a.

So why did he call you today?

I emailed him a long time ago to see what was going on, because speaking of small world,

In big podcast or whatever. I get this tweet from a woman who is like who has the same last name as him but is very dark black African like American looking gal, okay. Like very and he's a very white looking pasty dude. And she says, by the way, I just heard the episode, I love your show. I've been listening for years, I just heard the episode with my dad.

Who adopted me when I was a baby. I had no idea that this was what how all this went down. She's like, I knew he was an artist that he did something Shady but I had no idea that he was like into it at this level and she found out from my podcast that she already Listen to. It's not like he sent it to her, somebody else sent it to her, she was already a fan of the show. Her dad pops into the feed and she's like, what listens to it and finds out that her dad is like this super deep with the, you know, Mafia art for

Her back in the day before she was born. Crazy. And so he

never told her, he never liked. What does he what did he do after that? What did she think? He did.

That's a really good question. I'm not sure what he did after that. I know he paints commissions, but he's very sort of hush-hush about what the commission's are. And I'm not going to accuse the guy of anything because I don't know if he's doing anything, but man, would it be tempting to continue doing what you're doing? Because he was living the high life. He was hanging out with

The Warhol, he was hanging out with a lot of these famous artists and they were like, wow, you're really talented in your underrated and so one of the reasons he started doing the forgeries is because he just needed the money and that was it.

How much would you get paid like that? How much would the mafia Pam?

So that's a really good question. I don't remember the exact this is I did this interview probably like four plus years ago. So it's a little bit fuzzy but I remember one of the things that the the mafia was kind of a trap because it wasn't like, yes, he was painting these things and he was getting them listed in auction houses. The

Mafia wanted more of like an Industrial Pipeline. It was like, finish this now, do this other one, you know, and they're not like, we're going to be really generous with you because we can they're more like, you work for us now. And if you don't want like that, we're going to, you know, beat you

up or whatever or

worse and so the feds are chasing them. The mafia is chasing them because eventually just disappears. He goes to Europe and he's like I'll be you know, he just slips out. He knows they're watching him. You just slips out. Goes to Europe and stays there. I think in Amsterdam for like a year or two.

He just didn't want any part of it. How's that for things to just die

down? Yeah, I think they just went, we're on to the next scam, you know, but he had to watch his back for a while. He was making tens of thousands of dollars. I would imagine / painting because these one they take a long time. I don't, I don't do any art myself but I apparently these things take weeks to months to really do it, right? And you know, it's got to dry and it's got to be done perfectly. Well, I don't think you just settle down in an afternoon and paint in.

Old Master forgery and then bake it in an oven, the next day and you're good. I think there's more more to

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This whole year has been so crazy for all these asset classes and this is why Goldman Sachs Bank of America Morgan Stanley, the biggest money managers in the world, they're talking about moving money into tangible assets. You know, stocks are just pieces of paper. You could use in the bathroom, but you know, the average 60/40 stock Bond portfolio is down in average, 34 percent this year, it's painful. But here's the thing according to Goldman.

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Okay, I'm going to match story for story because, so, this is the case of a woman who didn't know what her father did. So I had a friend. She was like, my personal assistant for a while and she, you know, when I met her she told me. Oh, I don't have. Which was just talking about her family. I don't have the best relationship with my dad, but you may have heard of him. He's like this famous poker player, / backgammon player, whatever. And I'm like, oh yeah. I've heard of him, and completely separately about a year later.

I'm meeting with a bunch of business guys who are somewhat in the Collectibles business but like high-end Ryan Collectibles. And they tell me that about this guy who's secretly like very quietly and this is like, maybe almost 10 years. Are they talking about this guy, who's actually the richest guy in the world because what he did in the 80s and the early 80s, when every country in South America was one at a time going bankrupt, he would go down in the country and say,

Okay, you need cash, you need American dollars, a town, your dad's. I will give you cash, but you have to sell me. All of your gold at ten cents on the dollar. We bought like like him go down, let's just say Argentina. I don't know which countries he went to. If we go to Argentina and he would say, you know, gold is worth, let's say $500, I'll pay you $50 per ton or whatever, whatever it is. Yeah ounce and and, you know, by all of your gold and and apparently, then he

But all I don't know how he shipped things around, but he brought all the goal to Las Vegas. He rented out an entire Hotel in Las Vegas, and filled up the entire hotel with gold bars whole these countries can. I reason I know this and the reason I know that it's not BS is that I was talking the person who told me the story was the guy who counted the gold for him. He's like a collector who he's like an expert collector. One of the most experts on collectibles on the planet and so he was hired to

Count the gold and make sure it was all legit. Why? And so he's while the gold and he said look this guy then you know did this this this and became the richest guy in the world. I don't know if he still is you know compared to like the Elon Musk and so on richest guy in the world and I asked as I went back to my friend, let's call it. Let's say her name was Janet. I went back to Janet and I said do you what? What did you say? Your dad does it again? And she's like, well, he plays poker

He plays games. He's like a gambling guy in Las Vegas and I'm like, did you know that he's actually the richest guy on the planet and she's like, what are you talking about? And she had no idea about any of this and she didn't even have like, such a great relationship with her dad. Sure. It's like, I never heard any of this, but it is weird like that, you know, every now and then she gets a sense. He has some money. Like, for instance, when she visits him, he has an entire apartment building with like hundreds of apartments, and it's just him and his

He's like his friends visit and they just pick up keys for any of the apartments and just stay for as long as they want. Like, that's just as a weird life

and it sounds like a money laundering because it's a bad investment. So I'm like okay why are you keeping an empty apartment building? That's like money laundering stuff right there.

Yeah. Or or he just had so much extra money and just wanted his friends to visit him whenever they wanted. Yeah, he just left the building open, you know, pick up keys for whatever rooms are available and so on. So, but then after that, guess what? She rebuilt. Her

You can shop with her dad and basically stays with him most of the time now. But that's also an extreme story of someone who didn't know what her father did. There's a lot like know what I do but they don't care so

that. Yeah, that's different. It's different if they could know and they simply don't care if that's different. That's a different story, right? My three-year-old. Somebody asked him what your daddy does and he says my daddy talks into the microphone so he kind of knows he

kind of right? He's figured it out that that talking to the microphone makes make some money. Yeah. But

But in you know this is an interesting thing because this comes up a lot with a I now a I could of course compose music that is indistinguishable from Mozart could probably paint paintings indistinguishable from a van Gogh or whatever so I could probably write stories that are decent. And so all of these skills are becoming Commodities that which is unfortunate. But what's not going to become a commodity, is exactly the stuff we're talking about right now, like,

Living an interesting life and having interesting experiences that can't be commoditize. Like Sheree, I could make up stuff but the things they I makes up are still based on what it's been trained on. So it would be hard and, you know, every year there's new sets of unique and interesting experiences on the frontier of interesting experience. And so to live a life, let's say, worth living. We still have the edge. And we always will have the edge over AI because where the humans actually living and

Having interesting experiences and AI is not going to have an interesting experience.

I think that's true. I mean there's a reason that true crime is a popular genre and I'm sure fake crime and fictional crime is popular, But True Crime is really taken the World by storm. Why? Because it's for

the most popular podcasts category for instance, by

far. So if that's the most popular podcast category, let's see because it's true, people are going to Value things that are not created by a machine.

That are real in a certain way. It doesn't mean that most things won't be able to be created by a machine. You know. Look machine can probably eventually do my voice, it'll be able to tell humorous stories but it won't those stories won't be based on my real life experience, most likely they'll be based on the AI generated. This is a thing that Jordan Harbinger would have done back in the day. Maybe we'll see. So there's that but it's a less interesting for a lot of folks because it's not real and yeah see you write the lived experience is going to be something that people.

People then value, possibly even more once. There's unlimited amounts of a, i generated stuff. There's a reason that elephant painting, you know you ever seen where it's like an elephant painted. This, that's worth something because an elephant did it. If a human did it, you'd be like, this is not really a good talented person who painted this. This is a, right? It's pretty basic. But since an elephant took the brush and its trunk and then painted it, it's worth a frickin Fortune, it's going to be something along those lines. There might be our jobs will change.

But they won't necessarily go away. At least not in the short term, I think. Derek Thompson at the Atlantic was writing about this. He's like, you know, my job is not going to go away. I'm just gonna have to turn B, minus a, i generated articles that are written in my voice into a - General AI prompted articles that are edited by me. And then I add my actual flare to it, and make up to certain X Factor. That is what he writes about that. A, I can't do.

Well, and also he can go out and experience things like, if he's writing about the war in Ukraine, he could go to Ukraine and experience it right about that experience. A, I will never be able to do that. And, you know, this is always a, you know, we were talking earlier about ambition and, and so on to some sent in some sense when we're a podcaster, we're busy podcasting. So we're not living as interesting a life, as maybe we did before.

For ya before my podcast. I would, you know, try building other companies or I would you know, go broke or I would, you know, go on this trip and weird things, whatever you would get kidnapped, and talk your relp' out of being a hostage. Like, you don't do that now. Because now you're going a bunch of podcast

and I got kids. I'm trying not to get kidnapped. I got kids,

right? Right, so so things change as you get older and I wonder if you ever wonder like, hey, okay, I'm interviewing. All these people who

Interesting life experiences. Do I need to like sometimes I wonder do I need to kind of try again? Having you know, I feel like I've taken a little step back from having, you know interesting

experiences. Yeah, I tried as it is hard. I don't go to North Korea anymore. It's too dangerous. Can't go to China. Especially for me is too dangerous, but I

especially for you do because you do podcasts about shine,

right? And like, I'm not going to be

Definitely, I'm definitely on their shit list at this point, talking about the Communist party, and the shortcomings and news from China. That's not supposed to make it out of China. You know. There's a lot of stuff like that on the Jordan Harbinger show feed that they don't like, I've had Weger activists on their human rights lawyers, you know, they're not gonna, they did, they do, they're not gonna like that at all. And I don't want to risk hostage diplomacy with me at the front of that. I don't, I don't need that. So but I just got back from Morocco. I went to the Amazon but I'm going to

Go. Lea. You know, I've got a lot of things that are on the the sort of like off the beaten path. But yeah, it's not the same as when I was back in the day showing up and you go, former Yugoslavia with a backpack and a little bit of cash and being like, I'm just going to sleep in this park tonight. Yeah, that was, that was stuff for my 20s that I can't / won't do

Yeah, sometimes I feel like you know, like I had, you know, a lot of interesting experiences in my 40s or whatever like particular when I threw out all my belongings and when just stay in airbnb's, yeah, I remember that. But

the duffel bag days you lived in the with a

duffel bag. Yeah. And so so I wonder about all of these things but I've just been I've just been more tired lately, not tired physically not as ambitious in

My brain. Yeah, but I like podcasting. Like how many pockets do you do a week right now?

I do three. I mean, I've released three right? But sometimes I'm happy for you. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't do anything else. I played my kids and I do the show, you know, I record two interviews or Y depends, I released two interviews. I do my Friday advice stuff, where people write in, and, and then in 2023, I'm going to do more of these. I do call him skeptical, Sunday's, where we talked about, like, something that most people either don't know about or hold.

You're like the Olympics and were like, this is why the Olympics are frickin sham or energy, drinks, these things are terrible for you. Here's the science behind it or here's a bunch of band Foods, the United States, and why their band, or what's the ingredient. That's bad stuff like that. And it's sort of like it kind of like Adam ruins everything. If you remember that show, only that was the show with comedian Adam Conover and he would sort of talk about why certain things were bad or bad for the environment or bad for you.

Or destructive or didn't do the thing you thought they did? So it's kind of like that only I've got a fact Checker in a comedian. Who does a show with me and he'll go deep into like, well, we'll talk about how psychic readings work or how did what tarot cards really are which is you know, exactly what you think it is nothing or an excuse to give somebody a cold read that you are using your using the cards as a breaking off point and a distraction for them. But really you're just looking at their body.

Language and nonverbal communication and trying to read between the lines and saying General.

Truisms, that apply to pretty much anybody and they're like, wow, you know, so we expose that kind of stuff so I'm doing more of that in 2023 people love

this. How do people get away with psychic readings? Where like I had a friend who went to a psychic reading were supposedly her she went with her sister and the psychic knew the sister was coming but didn't know my friend was coming and the psychic did a reading on my friend and she says he was saying all these things that were like incredibly accurate in that shit.

I'd never told anyone. Yeah, how do they like? Is it just that? He's saying a lot and she's only filtering the stuff that's true or what's going on there. There's a

few things going on in any sort of psychic reading. So, one is cold reading, which is where you either use things you see on a person or you state, general truisms. And I'll give you an example in a second. The other thing that they do is they will throw out a ton of stuff and then rely on what is essentially confirmation bias. So they'll say so

So, if you look at a psychic on TV, they'll say I'm getting somebody's name starts with a tease, it a Tom, is it a Tim? And someone in the corner goes Tom, my husband, he just died recently. And then the guy focuses on her, what? They won't show you with a psychic that's doing is a lot like if you go to a live show, where there's a mentalist who's telling you it's a trick. It's not a real psychic. What he's doing, is he goes t-tom, Tim, nobody.

There's also a jet maybe it's more of a Jo I see is it's actually it's actually an eye not a tea. Okay. I didn't see the plot and then someone goes oh that's me. So they're shifting their throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and a mentalist who's actually doing tricks. We'll just do that in what you think during the show is. Wow, I can't believe he got that. But then what you realize is what wait a minute. If you play the tape and you're looking for it, he said like five things before one of them caught on. It also is talking to a room full of

40 people. So you're so the national next question is, what if there's only one person in front of you? Well, sometimes they have, I mean aside from blatant tricks like they have an earpiece where somebody's Googling people's names and feeding them that psychics have been caught doing that or there's a screen that they can see where somebody's feeding them information, based on the person's name or whatever is available in Google aside from tricks. Like that. I remember one one guy who was a buddy of mine actually, I shouldn't even say A buddy of mine. A guy that knows a buddy of mine. This

I'd be had very little contact with this guy. He goes, man, I didn't believe in psychics until this weekend, and I went to a college career, not a career fair, but some sort of fair and they had a psychic and the psychic did a reading. And it was incredibly accurate and I said, really, that's amazing, but it's not psychic. And he's like, I don't know, man, she got a lot of stuff right about me and this is an Indian, dude is a graphic designer. That's all I know. Okay, so I said, well, I'll do is cold reading what this person did to you, I'll do the same thing to you.

You? And it's a trick. And he goes, okay, go ahead and I go. All right, so you're Indian, dude, your graphic designer your parents. I, you know, they come from in a place where they really wanted you to be a different kind of professional. Maybe they wanted you to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer, and your siblings, and your, your cousin's in your family. They all have strive towards those professions and maybe your parents don't voice it as much as they feel it, but they're a little bit. Disappointed /, confused at the direction you went because