56. ANGUS FLETCHER: Our Uniquely Human Contribution

Episode Transcript

Note: Transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the episode audio or video for exact quotes.

[00:00:00] Megan: Hey everybody, Megan Hyatt Miller here. Hey, The Double Win Show is taking the summer off. We’re gonna be back in early September with some great brand new interviews that you’re not gonna wanna miss. But listen, over the next few months, we’re gonna take some time to share our very best episodes from the last few years, and my guess is you probably haven’t listened to all these, and so you’ll wanna take some time to use the summer to catch up on them.

[00:00:23] In the meantime, enjoy this last brand new episode before we go on hiatus for the summer.

[00:00:29] Angus: Computers can take over any situation that can be optimized, which is pretty much any system involving machines, transparency, and a lot of data. Any situation that involves things that are special, distinct, unique, any situation that involves change or the need for innovation, humans are gonna win that every day forever.

[00:00:46] Michael: Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

[00:00:47] Megan: And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

[00:00:49] Michael: And you’re listening to the Double Win Show.

[00:00:50] Megan: And today, we are so excited to share our conversation with you with Angus Fletcher. Angus is the professor of story science, what a cool area of study, at Ohio State University, where he leads Project Narrative and directs the Fisher College of Business Leadership Initiative.

[00:01:07] Basically, translation, this is one smart cookie.

[00:01:10] Angus: Yes.

[00:01:10] Megan: He, he is so intelligent, but so engaging and so practical. You guys are gonna love this conversation. He has a degree in neuroscience from the University of Michigan, a PhD from Yale, and he completed his postdoc training at Stanford, and he has previously taught at Stanford, USC, and Yale.

[00:01:27] He’s the author of a new book, which we highly recommend that you get, called Primal Intelligence: You Are Smarter Than You Know. This is a very timely book, as you will see in our conversation. It helps to differentiate, I think, what humans can do differently than AI in terms of thinking, um, as well as many other books.

[00:01:46] He also, in 2023, the US Army awarded his lab a Public Service Commendation Medal for groundbreaking research with Army Special Ops in primal intelligence, and he goes on to talk about how he’s done marriage counseling with Special Ops. I mean, it’s just the craziest thing. Like, he’s, he’s been everywhere.

[00:02:05] I’m like, “You have lived five lives, my friend.” He’s also consulted with Disney, Sony, the BBC, Amazon, and PBS, and has designed next gen AI systems in Silicon Valley. He was born in England, but he grew up in America, and he now lives in Ohio, and he runs Operation Human, a weekly newsletter on growing human intelligence in the age of AI.

[00:02:25] Michael: Which you need to subscribe to as well. Okay, here’s the big idea, and we just started doing this, but I think this is, this is a really good way to sort of set the, the stage. We live in a world that has defined intelligence as logic, and then built an entire civilization around, uh, humans, training them to think like computers.

[00:02:46] But what if that training has suppressed the very powers that make us smarter than any machine? The question at the heart of this conversation: how do you reclaim an ancient narrative-driven intelligence that modern schools, workplaces, and screens have systematically shut down? And what happens to your leadership, your relationships, and your life when you do?

[00:03:12] Megan: It’s an important question.

[00:03:13] Michael: And it’s what we explore here.

[00:03:17] Megan: Angus, welcome to the show.

[00:03:19] Angus: It’s a huge pleasure to be here.

[00:03:20] Megan: We’re so glad that you’re here, and we have so many things to talk about. The real challenge- So many … is gonna be to get it done in any reasonable amount of time, ’cause this is starting to feel like we’re gonna need a Joe Rogan length podcast-

[00:03:31] Michael: I mean,

[00:03:31] Megan: this has-

[00:03:31] to get through it

[00:03:31] Michael: all … become increasingly apparent over the last few weeks.

[00:03:33] Megan: I know. It’s all we could do is podcast. We could just have a blast. And if

[00:03:36] Michael: we were so curious.

[00:03:37] Megan: We have such interesting guests. That’s our problem. Well, Angus, you open in Primal Intelligence with an Army colonel arriving at your lab to investigate a rumor about a lost brain part.

[00:03:48] I mean, it sounds like the opening to a sci-fi novel. Apparently, Special Operations has zero tolerance for what they call magic happy. So what convinced them to give your theory a classified field trial?

[00:04:02] Angus: That’s a great question. I’m still sometimes asking myself that myself. So the backstory is, is that I’m a neuroscientist who has a slightly different theory about how the brain works.

[00:04:11] I think our brains are smarter than computers. I think children are more creative than AI. And I think that one of the real powers of the human brain is that unlike a computer, it doesn’t need a lot of information. I think that it can handle volatility and uncertainty and all these kinds of things. And so this led me in my lab to develop this kinda maverick, rogue alternative to thinking about the brain.

[00:04:32] And for a long time, you know, I was basically just kinda locked away in my lab. That’s what they do with a lot of professors, they just kinda lock us away- … so we can’t do too much damage to the real world with our crazy ideas. And then I got this knock on my door from US Army Special Operations, and they said to me, “Hey, Professor Fletcher, we know that pretty much everyone else thinks that you’re nuts.”

[00:04:50] “And you might be nuts. You might be nuts.” “But some of the stuff you’re saying kinda fits with some of the stuff that we’re seeing. And kinda some of the stuff you talk about, about how the human brain is able to find purpose in chaos, and is able to arrive in these incredibly unstable, volatile environments, and then make a plan, and act, and improve things.

[00:05:09] That kinda fits with our experience, and so we’re wondering, you know, would you like to be released from your lab for- … a few weeks, and come on down behind the veil and test some of your zany theories on our operators?” And so that’s what happened. I got the extreme honor of working with US Army Special Operations, kinda test out my weird theories.

[00:05:25] And then in addition to that, I got to learn a ton from them. And then as a result of that, my lab has gotten a couple medals from the US Army for that research. And now I’ve been released back into the wild, where I can come onto podcasts like yours and spread the maverick.

[00:05:38] Megan: Angus, something you just said there that the human brain, something to paraphrase, the human brain is smarter than AI.

[00:05:45] And I think one of the central questions that people are beginning to ask is what are humans for? You know, if AI is so smart, what are humans for? You know, are we just gonna be working for the AI? What would your answer be to that? Like, why… What can humans do that AI can’t do? Maybe that’s a better way to ask that question.

[00:06:06] Angus: Well, the answer would be most things. I’ll give you a couple basic things. Um, so first of all, let’s just think about how the computer brain works. The computer’s brain, its job is to take huge amounts of data and find patterns in it. And from those patterns, it establishes probabilities, and then it uses those probabilities to optimize.

[00:06:25] So computers are great in any situation where there’s a ton of data. And what situations are there a ton of data? Well, when your environment is transparent and stable.

[00:06:37] Megan: Hmm. Where’s

[00:06:38] Angus: the environment transparent and stable? Well, inside a warehouse, inside a catalog of books. These are the areas that AI has sort of developed through Amazon, and now we’re seeing through these LLMs.

[00:06:49] This is where it’s developed. But when LLMs or other AI are released into the real world, there’s not that stability There’s not that transparency. And the human brain, what it evolved to do was it evolved to be smart in murky, unstable environments. Our neuron goes back over 500 million years. Those are the environments that our brain evolved in.

[00:07:13] And so that’s why when you see a child, they don’t need a lot of information to be creative. A child can be much more creative than an AI can and know- and a child knows very little. And that’s because the purpose of the human brain is to not optimize, but innovate. So anytime you need innovation, which is to say anytime you need a leader as opposed to a manager…

[00:07:35] AI can make great managers, and I know we have a lot of white-collar workers out there that are nervous that AI’s gonna take their jobs, and it might because AI can automate. AI can manage. But anytime you need something to innovate, also anytime you need something to deal with a human, ’cause what is a human?

[00:07:52] A human is special. Every human is unique. Every human is different. Every human is distinct. And AI can only think in patterns. And so whenever an AI sees a human, it sees a collection of labels. It sees a collection of other humans that it’s sort of mashing together. And when a human sees another human, they can think that way if they’re being rude, but if they’re being curious, if they’re being a good human, if they’re being a good manager, then they’re listening to that person and saying, “What’s distinct about this person?

[00:08:23] What’s special about this person?” And I think we are put in contact that- with that every time we have children in our lives and we realize how different they are, and we treasure their difference. We don’t wish, “Oh, I wish my child was the same as every other child.” We say, “Huh, that’s pretty cool that my child is different in those ways.”

[00:08:39] Mm. Same thing with our friends. We say, “Huh, that’s pretty cool.” And same thing when we’re running a functioning company. We cherish and nurture what’s different and unique about every individual. So computers can take over any situation that can be optimized, which is pretty much any system involving machines, transparency, and a lot of data.

[00:08:55] Any situation that involves things that are special, distinct, unique, any situation that involves change or the need for innovation, humans are gonna win that every day forever.

[00:09:03] Megan: Love that.

[00:09:04] Michael: So I’ve studied AI quite a bit. I have another company that’s an AI education company. And- You know, I, I think just a couple comments.

[00:09:13] One, your comment about labels I think is exactly right, and I think that that’s culturally reinforced in that we’ve taught humans to think like computers. And so in the media, it’s very convenient to label people, and we… a- and especially if we wanna dismiss a group of people, we can slap a label on them and, you know, they, we don’t have to think about them anymore.

[00:09:36] Convenient. So that’s one issue. Do you, have you noticed that same thing, too?

[00:09:40] Angus: Completely. I mean, this is the tyranny of demographics. I mean, anytime you turn on the media, they’re always saying, “Well, this group of people thinks this way.” And you know, there’s, there’s whole sort of media apparatuses that are built on essentially stereotyping groups of Americans.

[00:09:55] And you know, the one thing I always like to say, I don’t wanna get too much on my soapbox here, but I gotta say- Please

[00:09:58] Michael: do …

[00:09:58] Angus: I’m an immigrant. I was not born in America. I became an American. So I chose to become an American, and so I thought a lot about what it means to be an American, and at the bottom of being an American is valuing people as individuals, is cherishing that and saying, “I wanna give other people the opportunity to be themselves.

[00:10:15] I wanna give them that freedom. I don’t wanna think about everybody as fitting in kind of a category or a group.” One of the things that’s been most meaningful in my life recently is I’ve had the chance to work a lot with the US military, and the thing that they say in the US military is that what it means to be an American is to be willing to sacrifice yourself for someone else’s freedom.

[00:10:34] Megan: Mm.

[00:10:34] Angus: In other words, I’m willing to sacrifice myself for what’s different about you, not the way that you fit into a category, not the way that you conform to my expectations. And yet, to your point, we’ve spent the last 100 years building a school system that’s based in standardized tests. Standardized tests teach you to think in labels, they teach you to think in categories, and it’s the same thing in business.

[00:10:53] Business goes back, Harvard Business School, someone called Taylor, who I’m sure everyone in your audience is familiar with, who started Taylorism and the, and the principles of scientific management. It’s all about efficiency, productivity, and making everybody into a label. So yeah, I think what we need to do as humans now is we need to say, “Hey, AI is great ’cause it can handle all the label stuff, it can handle all the efficiency.

[00:11:13] It’s time for us to get back to being human again, and realizing that being human again means cherishing the way that people are not like the labels I put on them.”

[00:11:21] Michael: You know, I don’t, I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s a hypothesis. But it seems to me anecdotally that a lot of entrepreneurs I know didn’t go to college And yet they’ve created and built unbelievably successful companies.

[00:11:38] All you have to do is think of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and the list goes on, especially as you get into smaller businesses. But I wonder if the school system failed them because it didn’t teach them innovation. It taught them basically schools were built to build factory workers. Yeah. And, you know, nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t build innovators.

[00:11:59] Angus: That’s right. What’s the one thing you learn in school? You learn that there’s an answer, and the system has it. And what we know is that the more that a child believes that there’s a right answer, the less likely she is to come up with a new answer. Ooh. And so school, by its very method, crushes entrepreneurs.

[00:12:18] And almost only any entrepreneur will tell you, “I didn’t learn any of this in school. I survived school. I dropped out of school. I somehow avoided school.” But we are not teaching innovation, and that’s one of the reasons why I did start to work with US Army Special Operations, is ’cause they do have these schools for teaching innovation.

[00:12:35] It is possible. There are schools out there that can teach innovation. But we in America have created a school system that is not interested in that at the moment.

[00:12:42] Michael: So another thing I’ve noticed too in the AI world is that AI’s great when you’re just working with you and your computer, and then all of a sudden, you know, now we’ve moved into robotics powered by AI, and now it’s a much more complex task because robots that are moving through the physical world, it’s much more complex, much less stable, to your kind of point, and it takes enormous training.

[00:13:06] I don’t know if robots will ever get there. It is amazing to see what’s coming out of some of the major labs right now. But do you have any thoughts on Robotics and the challenges of that?

[00:13:15] Angus: Robotics is hard, to your point, ’cause it involves the real world, whereas all AI is doing is spitting out ideas. We all know that the world is full of ideas, but actually what makes the world work is not ideas, it’s actions.

[00:13:26] Mm-hmm. And that’s where robots are functioning. And robots, there’s a lot of success in building robots, having humans tailor robots to specific environments. But it’s still very challenging to get robots to do simple things, even like make a shoe, because the sort of materials are so different, the getting a hand, a robot hand, to hold those materials, it’s much more challenging.

[00:13:46] So I think there’s gonna be a lot of innovation in robotics, but I think it’s gonna be driven by humans who engineer robots as opposed to us sort of plopping an AI on top of an existing cyborg and then having it sort of figure out everything for itself.

[00:13:59] Megan: Hmm.

[00:13:59] Michael: So the humans may be safe for a few more years.

[00:14:03] Is that what I hear you saying?

[00:14:03] Angus: I think unfortunately, not only are we safe for a few more le- years, but we’re gonna have to accept that the problems that exist on this planet are gonna have to be fixed by us. And there’s this kind of dream that somehow we’re gonna invent this machine that’s gonna solve all the problems, but we were given this planet, we’ve gotta figure out how to fix it.

[00:14:19] Michael: You are so countercultural. I know. Good for

[00:14:21] Megan: you. I love it. Okay, so if you’re talking to somebody who’s listening and they’re, you know, they’re an executive or they’re maybe a leader in a nonprofit, and they’re concerned, you know, that the value of their work in the marketplace is up for grabs maybe in the next five years.

[00:14:37] What would you say, how do, how do they need to think about the value that their person, that their brain brings to the table to position themselves optimally to still have value, maybe even be more valuable in the next five to 10 years than they were previously?

[00:14:53] Angus: So remember what AI does and remember what all machines do.

[00:14:57] They essentially automate. So you’ve gotta ask yourself is what am I doing that can’t be automated? Mm-hmm. And that’s where your edge is gonna lie. And the more that you start to focus on the things that can’t be automated, the more you’re gonna start thinking like an entrepreneur, and you’re gonna start thinking, “What are the new areas?

[00:15:14] What are the places for discovery? What are the places for growth?” Not what are the places for optimization. But what are the places to experiment and try something new? What are the opportunities to listen and learn and do genuine research, find opportunities, as opposed to maximize existing protocols?

[00:15:36] So those things are all natural and normal to humans. Every child does them as part of her normal growth process. But what we know is that the more you succeed as an executive, the more you optimize those processes out, ’cause you’re focused on efficiency. You’re focused on the same thing that a machine can do, and as a result, you’re actually making yourself more redundant in an AI world.

[00:15:58] So really-

[00:15:59] Michael: Hmm …

[00:16:00] Angus: the key is go backwards in your development and embrace more of your inner child.

[00:16:04] Megan: Okay, you said something a few minutes ago that caused me to do a double-take, and I forced myself to wait a second to ask you about it, ’cause I didn’t wanna take us off course. Probably ‘

[00:16:11] Michael: cause I wouldn’t shut up.

[00:16:13] Megan: Okay, and it was you were talking about your work with the US military, the Army in particular, and you were talking about how they teach innovation. Now, I do not come from a military family. I don’t have people in my life that are close to me who are in the military, so this is obviously my ignorance coming to light.

[00:16:30] When I think about the military, I think about systems and processes and regimented activities- SOPs. Yeah, you know, like, like we don’t want you innovating. We want you doing the thing that, you know, do it just like this. Hospital corners and battle plans and whatever else. And so I was like, wait, what? The military is like a source of innovation?

[00:16:51] Like, that is blowing my mind. So what did you mean by that? And tell us about how that can be true.

[00:16:56] Angus: So there are a lot of standard operating procedures in the military. I’m not gonna pretend otherwise. Sure. That’s ’cause the military scores pretty high on common sense, and the way that common sense works is if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

[00:17:06] So if something’s worked in the past, keep doing it. But the military’s also at the leading edge of change. So the way this is often explained to me is if the American problem has a people that they don’t know how to solve, they give it to the government. And if the government doesn’t know how to solve the problem, they give it to the military.

[00:17:23] And so all of a sudden the military is charged with solving all of these problems for the first time, and they’ve gotta figure ’em out. And so the military has developed this ability to use the existing answer off the shelf when it’s still working, but then very rapidly shift into an innovation mindset.

[00:17:39] That’s why the US military is highly decentralized. So it’s a myth that there’s all these orders coming from the top. The way the US military works is it actually pushes authority very aggressively down the chain. You get a lot of autonomy very early on in your career. By the time you’re a young corporal or a sergeant or a lieutenant or a captain, you’re being handed problems for the first time to solve.

[00:18:01] And if you don’t believe me about that, ’cause I know a lot of people are always very skeptical about this, and I was skeptical too, because I’m not from military background myself. I had to be convinced that the Army is very innovative. But simple example, we were just talking about AI. Who basically invented the computer?

[00:18:15] The United States Army, 1943. Yeah. ENIAC. They funded it. Hmm. And they also essentially invented what has become generative AI. They funded someone, his name is JP Guilford. They hired him into the Army in the 1940s during World War II to crack the secret of creativity. He came up with two protocols, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, which are the basis of ideation.

[00:18:37] He said you could program these into computers, and you would have generative AI. And it took 50 years for computers to catch up, but when they did, they’re essentially running these things that were invented by the US Army in the middle of the 20th century. So the Army is always on the leading edge of the future.

[00:18:50] Megan: I had no idea.

[00:18:51] Michael: When, when an AI is looking creative, what is that really, and why is that different than human creativity?

[00:18:59] Angus: That is an incredible question. And that’s great because AI creativity is essentially random. So they use this process that’s called divergent thinking, and that’s basically just a mathematical process of mix and matching between different sets.

[00:19:11] And so for example, like a simple example of this, if you have like a set of colors and a set of animals, the computer will go back and forth between them and it’ll be like, you know, blue penguin and, you know, orange dolphin. It’ll just keep going like this. And it’ll randomly come up with all these things.

[00:19:24] This is, by the way, called brainstorming. And after this process of random association, it’ll then take a series of what it considers to be high probabilities out of that. So if you’ve ever done a brainstorming session where you come up with all these interesting ideas and then you cross off the most interesting ideas because they’re too hard, and then you’re left with the ones that are kind of more boring and more probable, that’s what AI does.

[00:19:44] So it randomly thinks, and then it constrains that randomness with a probability grid, convergent thinking. So how do humans create? Not randomly. We don’t think randomly. That’s why if, if you created randomly, then musicians would go into the studio and they would just produce thousands of different kinds of music.

[00:20:04] When you love a musician, you know, Willie Nelson is always producing Willie Nelson. Lady Gaga is always producing Lady Gaga. They have their own style, and they’re able to develop and refine that. There’s a precision there. It’s not random. The way that it works, if you go back, look at kids, what do kids do?

[00:20:20] They think in story. They role play.

[00:20:22] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:23] Angus: They role play. They imagine themselves. How does story work? Well, what’s the basic structure for a story? You start out with an outlier, an exception. That exception is called the hero. They’re different from everyone else in their world. What does the exception do?

[00:20:36] Do they give up or back down or compromise? No, they double down. They do more of what they were doing. And so that process of finding an exception and then doubling down on it, that’s what computers can’t do because they can’t think in terms of exceptions. They can only think in terms of patterns.

[00:20:53] Whereas we can find the outlier and then tell a story about it into the future, which is again something that computers can’t do because they can only think in language, not in stories.

[00:21:09] Michael: You talk about in the book, quoting Kahneman, “Intuition is pattern recognition.” You say it’s the opposite. It detects breaks in patterns. Could you elaborate on that?

[00:21:20] Megan: Yeah, my, my head exploded when I read this. I was like, “Wait a second.”

[00:21:24] Michael: Yeah.

[00:21:25] Megan: I have so many questions.

[00:21:26] Angus: So Daniel Kahneman, very famous, famous for Thinking, Fast and Slow, and the basis of that book is his theory of intuition, which is actually a theory of intuition he took from computer science.

[00:21:37] And the theory of intuition is that intuition is a pattern match, and the idea is that whenever you go, “Aha,” or you have an intuition, it’s because you’re matching a pattern. Well, we know that this is wrong How do we know that this is wrong? Well, first of all, we know this is wrong because computers have terrible intuition.

[00:21:52] They have terrible intuition and they’re much better at pattern matching than humans. You would think that if pattern matching was intuition, AI would’ve already intuited all the possibilities for the future, but it can’t. It’s actually trapped in the past.

[00:22:03] Michael: Ah.

[00:22:04] Angus: Children have very high intuition. That’s why, you know, when you’re a young person, you’re able to see styles that emerge before your parents.

[00:22:10] So, you know, if you have younger kids, you know, they’re always seeing what’s gonna happen in the future much faster than you. They have these intuitions. It’s not a pattern match. It’s actually the opposite. It’s the human brain’s power to see something that does not fit a pattern. And so where computers are obsessed with finding correlations, humans are obsessed with finding anomalies, singularities, and that’s how every great entrepreneur works, is they’re like, “Whoa,” and then they see something and it’s so obvious to them, they’re like, “Oh my goodness, everybody else must have seen this already.”

[00:22:40] Nobody else has seen it because you’re not seeing a pattern. If you were seeing a pattern, everyone would be there already with you. And so that, again, is why so much of the power of the human brain is basically the opposite of the way that computers work, and at the same time that computers are trying to predict the future, I mean, that’s essentially Kahneman’s whole model of, of cognition, is you’re taking all this data and you’re using it to predict, predict, predict the future.

[00:23:02] Humans don’t predict the future, we make the future. Right. And the way that we make the future is we see a possibility that no one else has seen before, and we move faster to make that possibility happen, and that is unpredictable because it relies on the ability to spot exceptions faster.

[00:23:16] Michael: Tell me if this relates or not, but one of the things I’ve noticed, and I’m 70 years old, so I’ve, I’ve been around for a few decades, and one of the patterns I’ve seen is we’ve had a series of prognosticators prophesy doom.

[00:23:34] You know, it was like, you know, there’s giant population explosion, there’s a food crisis, there’s the AIDS ema- epidemic, and the list goes on and on. I myself wrote a book on Y2K and how, you know, sh- what a showstopper that was gonna be. And none of that comes to pass, and it seems like the problem is the people that are making those prognostications are thinking like computers.

[00:23:57] All they have is the past, they see a trend, and they don’t allow for the X factor, which is human innovation, that saves the day.

[00:24:06] Angus: I mean, can we just stop this podcast now? That’s like literally… If everyone could just think that one thought, we would be so much happier. And what you’ve just uncovered there is actually the secret to optimism.

[00:24:17] Michael: Wow.

[00:24:17] Angus: Which is what we’ve lost in the modern world. So the modern world is afflicted with basically what we would call psychologically catastrophizing.

[00:24:22] Michael: Yes.

[00:24:23] Angus: And catastrophizing is when you see something bad, and then you think to yourself, “Bad things come from bad things, therefore things are bad now, they’re gonna make more bad things, and then everything’s gonna be bad.”

[00:24:33] And this is a well-known kind of pattern thing that computers get into. That’s why they get into these death spirals. Whereas what is optimism? Optimism is often misunderstood as, like, thinking, “Oh, the future’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be amazing.” No, no, no, no, no. Optimism is realizing that in the past you were able to achieve something that startled you, that surprised you, that amazed you.

[00:24:55] And it’s realizing that if you did it once, you could do it again.

[00:24:58] Megan: Hmm.

[00:24:58] Angus: Are you definitely gonna do it again? I don’t know, ’cause we’re gonna have to work. We’re gonna have to access our human ingenuity. We’re gonna have to try. It’s not gonna be a machine process. You know, unlike a computer, we can’t just plug it in and trust that it’s gonna work, but it could happen.

[00:25:10] And that’s really the kernel of optimism is, is, is realizing that we’ve done it once, we can do it again, but we’ve all gotta pull together, and we’ve gotta activate our imagination, our trust, our curiosity, all these human powers, and make it work.

[00:25:26] Michael: Wow. That’s why I don’t get so ruffled when I hear about all these things, whether it’s climate change or whatever.

[00:25:31] I mean, I’m not… It’s not that I’m not taking those things seriously or think that they’re not serious problems that need to be solved, but I’m just saying we’re gonna figure it out. And I can’t remember who talked about Sort of this phenomenon of a slow-moving catastrophe, like climate change, w- there’s a lot of time to figure it out, is, I guess is what I’m saying.

[00:25:49] And so is it gonna happen without human effort? Probably not. But at the same time, there’s no reason for despair.

[00:25:56] Megan: Yeah.

[00:25:57] Angus: When you despair, it’s over. When you despair, you’ve already told yourself the end of the story, and so you’ve given up.

[00:26:01] Michael: Yeah.

[00:26:02] Angus: Whereas what you’ve always gotta realize is that you’re still in control, and you can still write the last chapter.

[00:26:07] Michael: Have you ever heard this saying: It all works out in the end, and if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end.

[00:26:12] Angus: I love that. That’s a great… That’s great. Maybe my new favorite saying. I love that.

[00:26:16] Megan: That’s… It is great. Okay, I have a question for you about intuition. I have considered myself to be a person with high intuition since I was a kid.

[00:26:25] You know, I can think back to being a young kid, and I would have a sense about something, and it would turn out to be right oftentimes. You know, I, my dad kinda kids me sometimes, and he just says, like, “You, you get to clarity very fast.” You know, like, it, it’s easy for me to get to clarity usually. Sometimes I really don’t like the clarity that I get to because especially as a CEO, oftentimes that means a hard decision.

[00:26:50] You know, sometimes it’s a personnel decision. Sometimes it’s a financial decision. Sometimes it’s a vision, you know, decision, something like that. Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes it’s really hard. I would describe what I experience as just a knowing. Like, there’s a situation that comes up, and I just quickly know, like, what I need to do, and I…

[00:27:11] It takes me a while to talk out why that is. Usually there’s somebody I have to justify it to, you know, get aligned or whatever. And usually if it’s a d- if it’s a hard decision, there’s some kind of price tag attached to it that, that I then wanna talk myself out of it, right? You know, because I’d, I’d really like to not know what I know because the, the, the check, literal or figurative, that I have to write is gonna be high.

[00:27:32] What’s happening in that process? Like, is that intuition? Why, why do I know things quickly? Like, should I trust it? Like, what should I do with that?

[00:27:41] Angus: Well, if it’s worked for you in the past, you should trust it now.

[00:27:43] Megan: Yeah.

[00:27:44] Angus: And so I can tell you what’s happening there, is that the way that a computer makes decisions and the way that people are taught to make decisions now is to gather all the data and then make a list, and then you put a pro column and then a, and then a, and then, then an against column, and then you kind of weigh all the stuff, and then you end up just totally

[00:28:02] Michael: confused.

[00:28:02] Mm-hmm.

[00:28:03] Angus: The way that humans evolve to make a decision is we identify the most significant piece of information, one piece of information. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for the most significant piece of information. Hmm. And then the moment we identify that, the decision is made for us ’cause we’ve spotted

[00:28:18] Michael: it.

[00:28:19] Hmm.

[00:28:19] Angus: People who have high intuition like you’re talking about have a double kind of intuition You have clearly some intuition about the world and the way the world is working, but you also clearly have very high intuition about yourself. Hmm. And what I mean by that is you have clarity about what it is that you want, and you have clarity about the direction that you’re going in.

[00:28:40] And when you put together those two types of intuition, it makes for very fast and effective decision-making. And we find that people who are bad decision-makers are, are usually behind in one or the other. So they know themselves pretty quickly, but they can’t read the world, or they’re pretty good at reading the world, but they actually don’t know themselves.

[00:28:53] And so as a result- Hmm … they’re not able to kind of connect those two dots. When you connect two dots, you have a line. That’s what an action is.

[00:28:59] Megan: Yeah.

[00:28:59] Angus: And so it sounds to me like you’re very good at both.

[00:29:01] Megan: So can people develop this? Like, if people say, “Intuition, I don’t think I’m that intuitive,” is this, like, an innate talent or ability, or is it a skill, or both?

[00:29:11] Angus: So first of all, we’ve already… I think your dad has tipped us off to the fact you didn’t spend a lot of time in school. So that is one- … of the key things is to get yourself out of school. If you’ve got, if you’ve got low intuition, school’s probably beating it out of you. And if you wanna increase your intuition about the world, what you wanna do is you wanna go back to your child self, ’cause your child intuition is, is the highest, ’cause that’s when you’re noticing what’s special about everything.

[00:29:32] A child can be fascinated by everything ’cause a child can always see what’s special about the world. And what a child has to develop is their sense of what’s special about themselves. That’s why children kind of drift through life, ’cause they don’t know what’s special about themselves yet, but they can see everything that’s special about the world.

[00:29:45] So how do you reawake that in yourself? Well, the simplest thing to do is to travel. Because when you travel, you’re immediately immersed in a new world, and everything comes back to you, and that’s why when you come back from a trip that’s been a good trip, you see everything in your, in your home life with fresh eyes, because your intuition has been revived.

[00:30:04] And if you’re not getting that from travel, you’re probably on a packaged trip, and you need to really travel. You need to go somewhere that puts you a little bit out of your comfort zone, eat a little bit of different food. And if you can’t afford to travel, have a conversation with someone who’s different than you, who thinks differently than you, because that’ll have the effect of travel.

[00:30:20] That’ll have the effect of moving your culture. So that’s how you develop intuition About the world. How do you develop intuition about yourself? You’ve gotta start leaning into what is special and unique about yourself.

[00:30:34] Megan: Hmm. You

[00:30:35] Angus: gotta have confidence in that. And what we find is that when people go through their teenage years, they become increasingly self-conscious, and they start to feel shame and anxiety about the things that make them different.

[00:30:45] But we find that people who have high levels, like you do, of intuition, they have something that we often call dumb pride. And dumb pride is when you do things that everyone else is like, “That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.” And you’re like, “I’m pretty proud of myself for doing it.” “Well, what are you talking about?”

[00:31:00] And you’re like, “Yeah, I’m pretty proud.” And you’re like, “And in fact, I’d do it again. I’d do it again. I’m gonna double down on that.” And dumb pride is your brain’s way of saying that everyone else thinks it’s stupid, but you don’t, because that’s what’s different about you. And so if you have low intuition about yourself, really starting to embrace and emphasize what’s unique, special, different about yourself.

[00:31:19] If you can’t see it in yourself, your friends probably can. They probably know that- Hmm … and they probably love that about you, and they probably wish you did more of that, but you’re silencing it because you’re embarrassed.

[00:31:28] Megan: Well, and this kinda goes back to the whole what can humans do that AI can’t. I mean, I think the future is so much about clarity on what makes you you, you know?

[00:31:38] Like, what you uniquely bring to the world, your unique contribution is your currency in the future. It’s not gonna be the th- the thing that’s replicatable, you know? Well,

[00:31:48] Michael: what gets- ‘

[00:31:48] Megan: Cause that’s a commodity …

[00:31:49] Michael: what gets me excited is the thought that maybe our educational system’s gonna change-

[00:31:54] Megan: Yeah …

[00:31:54] Michael: because the people that think like machines are not gonna survive.

[00:31:57] They’re gonna be replaced by machines.

[00:31:58] Megan: Right.

[00:31:59] Michael: People that can think uniquely, in uniquely human ways- Mm-hmm … are the ones that will survive that.

[00:32:04] Angus: That is the transformation that we’re trying to make. I mean, I’ve bizarrely been asked to run my university’s leadership initiative at the business school. We have 9,500 undergraduates, and we’re trying to help them rediscover their intuition and their imagination and their common sense and their emotions and all these kinds of things.

[00:32:19] That’s definitely where education is trying to pivot, but it’s really challenging because we don’t have a great track record of encouraging people to be individuals. We have got a great track record of forcing them all to take the same tests and then ranking them based on how they do on these tests.

[00:32:33] And so that’s one of the reasons why we’re trying to learn a little bit from the US Army and from special operations and some of these other communities that have developed these other ways of training, but I appreciate your confidence in us, and I hope that we can, we can live up to that here in the university sector.

[00:32:47] Michael: I’m confident you can. Okay, I wanna talk about, um, a related issue. So you took a group of failing salespeople into a museum for a 10-minute exercise, and two months later, 60% had dramatically improved. Is that related to what we’ve just been talking about?

[00:33:05] Angus: That’s exactly related to what we’ve just been talking about.

[00:33:07] What we helped those salespeople do is find their intuition, and we did that in a couple ways. The first way we did that is by putting them in art. So what art does is art is made… By innovators, by original seers. Every artist sees something in the world that no one else has seen before. So you and I look at the sky, we just see the sky.

[00:33:27] A painter sees a new way to paint that sky.

[00:33:30] Michael: Hmm.

[00:33:30] Angus: You and I think the word love, you know, we think, “Oh, the word love.” A poet figures out a new way to make us feel that love again. And so the whole purpose of art is to rediscover what is special, what is exceptional in things that seem familiar. And so if you have an artist you like, it could be a visual artist, it could be a painter, it could be a musician, but art, music, all these activities start to reawaken your brain’s sense of what is special, and that’s why your brain usually feels both so alive when it’s experiencing art or going to a concert, but also it feels so exhausted afterwards because it’s been using all of this brain power.

[00:34:06] And so that’s what we did with those sales folk, is we dragged them into a museum, and we didn’t say to them, “Hey, you need to understand this art.” We instead said, “Hey, what’s something that surprises you about this art? You don’t have to explain it. There’s no test here. You know, we’re not gonna do what they do in school, which is tell you that there’s, like, a right interpretation of this painting.

[00:34:23] We’re just saying we want you to walk through the gallery until you see something that blows your mind, it makes you go ‘wow,’ like, what’s happening there? And then we just want you to dwell in that sense of curiosity and surprise and discovery, and then feel that reactivating in your brain. And then when you reactivate that in your brain, take that same power and apply it to every person you meet.

[00:34:41] Because by-” Okay. “… seeing every person you meet like you saw that painting, you’re gonna treat that person like they’re unique, like they’re exceptional, like they’re special, and then you’re gonna be able to make a special connection with them, and hey, that’s how sales works.”

[00:34:51] Michael: So instead of… I, I think the, the prior path for them and for a lot of salespeople, and I spent a lot of years in sales, is you basically go in, quickly assess, slap some labels on the person, and then pivot into any number of pitches that you’re gonna make.

[00:35:07] But it feels like it’s very formulaic, very deterministic, and it just sort of happens based on the range of options. You don’t go in open-minded with curiosity and just kind of into a mutual exploration of what may be, what may be possible in terms of their problem and your potential solution.

[00:35:28] Angus: That’s right.

[00:35:28] Look, sales is based on trust and listening, and that’s very hard in the modern world because everyone is so busy.

[00:35:36] Michael: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:37] Angus: And so as a salesperson, you feel like, “I’ve gotta get in there and I’ve gotta ma- you know, gotta work really quickly.” Your job as a salesperson is actually to make that person you’re talking to feel like time has stopped, not to be really respectful of your time and move as quickly as possible, right?

[00:35:49] That’s just reactivating all of our kind of productivity anxieties. Instead, you wanna make them feel like, I wanna stay, spend a little more time in this conversation because I’m learning about myself. What really is effective sales? Effective sales is helping that person discover something about themselves and their company, not selling them.

[00:36:06] And in order to help them discover, you’ve got to be able to get inside a little bit the way that they’re thinking, and then detect what they haven’t thought yet, and then help them see that other thing. And then you don’t need to make a sale in that exact moment because you’ve already built that person’s trust that you can think like they think.

[00:36:22] They start to trust you. They come back to you. You build that relationship, and that’s how you make the sale. And so all of these things are developed through relationships, and relationships are developed by treating the other person as unique.

[00:36:33] Megan: Angus, how much of this is kind of our over-reliance on the left side of our brain and the underdeveloped right side of the brain?

[00:36:42] Does that factor into this at all?

[00:36:44] Angus: Because I’m a neuroscientist, I have to be honest, and the left/right brain thing is total bunk. Okay. However, totally been debunked. However, it is true that there are ways that our brain thinks analytically and the ways that it thinks creatively, so that’s totally true.

[00:36:56] So it’s just a kind of a way of, of, of kind of explaining how the brain works, and yeah, absolutely. We’ve leaned far too much into optimization, efficiency, all these computer ways of thinking, and we’ve now developed these machines that can do it for us, so it’s time to let that go. And the reality is is that the more you think in terms of optimization and productivity, the more you get caught in something known as the hedonic treadmill.

[00:37:17] I don’t know if you guys have talked about this- Hmm … a lot, but basically, you’re always optimizing. You’re getting better and better and better, and you’re getting less pleasure out of it.

[00:37:24] Michael: Yes. Yep.

[00:37:25] Angus: And so you’re not actually getting anywhere. So productivity is a trap, and the reason that the hedonic treadmill exists is because once your brain has automated something, it wants you to move on from it.

[00:37:34] Your brain actually doesn’t want you to take pleasure in automated activities because your brain wants you to automate something and then grow. Growth is what your brain takes perpetual pleasure from. Anytime you’re engaged in a growth activity- 100% … which is why anytime you meet a new person, right, you’re growing.

[00:37:48] And so the whole point of automation from your brain’s perspective is to get rid of it and not provide any pleasure. So there’s a real opportunity, I think, ahead of us to get rid of some of these productivity hacks, optimization hacks or at least stop making them the focus of so much of our lives and instead get back into growth.

[00:38:05] Michael: You know, for years, the two of us and other of our family members wore an Oura Ring because we were able to discover different metrics about how our biology worked and, and to optimize it, and I think all of us got to the place where we said, “We actually hate this.” There… Initially, it was, it was fascinating, but the more we did it, the more it felt like-

[00:38:30] Megan: It was making us neurotic

[00:38:31] Michael: it was making us neurotic. You know, over-metricizing everything.

[00:38:35] Megan: Right.

[00:38:35] Michael: And so we just did w- away with it, and I find that I’m

[00:38:38] Megan: happier. I’ve never slept better. And

[00:38:39] Michael: I’ve never slept better.

[00:38:41] Angus: Yeah. Well, you know, one of the few things that modern psychology has discovered is that neuroticism makes you unhappy.

[00:38:48] Mm-hmm. And so, and in general, so much of these tech things we put in our life just add to our level of anxiety. Yeah. Everybody gets so anxious the moment they have to interact with technology, you know, especially if it-

[00:38:57] Megan: Right …

[00:38:58] Angus: if it involves any kind of function that, that, that involves your work. And we’re just so much happier when we’re dealing with people ’cause we trust other people to fix it.

[00:39:04] You know, we’re so relieved when the tech guy shows up to fix the, the tech. Like, oh, thank goodness, you know? And so all of that, those Oura Rings and all the rest of it, they’re kind of fun at first ’cause you feel like you’re learning something, you feel like you’re growing- Yes … you feel like you’re discovering.

[00:39:14] But then once you’ve got there, you’re like, “Okay, like I don’t wanna then allow this to tell me what to do.” Like, I don’t wanna all of a sudden be programmed by this thing on my finger to optimize my day, because then why am I alive? Right.

[00:39:28] Megan: Exactly. And it makes you feel less alive. You know, it’s like you wake up and you think, “I had a pretty good night’s sleep,” and then you look at your sleep score and it’s, you know, it’s a 75-

[00:39:35] and you’re like, “Oh, I guess I had a terrible night.” They’re miserable. You know, your day, your day spirals from there. It’s, it’s, it’s awful. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, forget that.

[00:39:42] Angus: That’s also the way that we develop dependence on technology- Yeah … even when it’s nuts. So one of the things that I’m always talking about with employers about is how kids today have no common sense.

[00:39:51] This is the number one thing I hear all the time from employers. Hmm. They’re like, “Kids today have no common sense whatsoever.” And why? Because they rely so much on technology to tell them what to do, and they lose their own sense of, “Wait, this is totally nuts.” And you know this as a leader is your job is to be the person in the room to be like, “This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

[00:40:08] And everyone around you is like, “Oh yeah, but the numbers say that it’s the thing to do and everybody else is doing it and all the metrics.” And you’re like, “Well, that may be the case, but it’s nuts.” And to the point about, you know, you and your sleep score, obviously the technology was wrong. You did have a great night’s sleep.

[00:40:20] Right. What’s going on? But then you start to question yourself. Yeah. You’re like, “Oh my goodness,” you know, “I must be wrong,” you know? And that’s how these machines destroy our common sense and our just ability- Yeah … to function without them, when we’re really a lot smarter off on our own.

[00:40:32] Michael: Funny story. So I had a Oura Ring and, um, it was good.

[00:40:36] You know, well, it was good. And then I bought, because I listened to a podcast where a guy talked about it, I won’t name the name, but about the Eight Sleep, which is basically this, this thing you put on your bed, and it regulates your temperature, and it can accommodate sort of your personal variations and all that.

[00:40:52] And it texts you in the morning your sleep score. So now all of a sudden I’m getting one s- uh, sleep score from Oura- Oh my God … and one from Eight Sleep, and they do not match. They’re not even close. One’s telling me I had a great night’s sleep, and I said, “You know what?”

[00:41:08] Megan: Get rid of all this stuff.

[00:41:09] Michael: Get rid of all this stuff.

[00:41:10] Just- Because the, it doesn’t even know what it doesn’t know.

[00:41:12] Megan: I mean, if you wanna make yourself instantly happier tomorrow, just take all that stuff and put it in a bag and go stick it in your garage somewhere. You’ll wake up tomorrow like- We’ll do an email on this. I know … a new person. I can’t wait. Great.

[00:41:22] Send us the email. Yeah.

[00:41:23] Angus: Declutter your life. Less is more. Yeah. But I mean, really.

[00:41:26] Megan: Really.

[00:41:26] Angus: Really.

[00:41:27] Megan: Yeah.

[00:41:27] Angus: Yeah. Become self-reliant. Nothing will make you happier in life than self-reliance. Yeah. And that is true, and you can bank on that. And all these technologies are just taking you away from that and making you think that you need them, which is another reason why it’s great.

[00:41:39] I mean, go camping for once, you know? Yes. And the first couple nights you’re like, “Oh, this is awful. I hate it,” you know? And then you’ll get back in tune with nature and you’ll love it

[00:41:52] Megan: You said something a minute ago about relationships, and before we started recording- I was literally

[00:41:56] Michael: about to go there.

[00:41:57] Megan: Okay, great. The, the mind meld is complete. The, the half of the genetics that we share is clearly evident. You told us something very surprising, which is that you work with military couples and do marriage counseling, and I was like, “I’m sorry, what?”

[00:42:13] Special Forces. Special Forces, people in Special Forces. And I said, “Well, that makes sense because I’m sure, you know, they’re under so much stress.” And you told us the statistic of the divorce rate, and I want you to tell us that again for our listeners to hear, and then what have you learned about marriage from people that are, are so likely to fail?

[00:42:33] And what do you do to help them?

[00:42:35] Angus: Yeah, this is a great

[00:42:36] Megan: question. So, um- That was like five questions.

[00:42:38] Angus: Yeah. The statistic is that in the units that I work with, the divorce rate is over 90%.

[00:42:44] Megan: Gosh.

[00:42:45] Angus: And many of these couples have been through multiple divorces. Sure. So they might have been divorced two, three, four times.

[00:42:51] Megan: Wow.

[00:42:51] Angus: And, um, it’s very kind of you to say that it makes sense for me to work on them as a marriage counselor, because my own wife was stunned when this happened. She was like, “You don’t know anything about our marriage. Like, why are other people-” “… asking you for marriage advice? Like, what’s going on?” And I, myself, I mean, you know, I never wanted to be a m- I’m not a marriage counselor, by the way.

[00:43:08] Please don’t anyone listening to this podcast call me up for marriage advice. But the reason that this happened is because I was working for sl- so long with special operations, we built this real trust, this real bond between the two of us, and I then get this phone call one day from an operator who will remain nameless, and the, the phone call basically goes something like, “Angus.”

[00:43:27] And then I’m like, “Tom.” And he’s like, “Angus, we’re having a problem. A problem with our wives.” “Or maybe our wives are having a problem with us. It’s unclear, but there’s a problem here.” And that was when he told me that there was this divorce rate. And I was like, “Oh.” He’s like, “Angus, we need your help.” And so I was like, “All right.

[00:43:46] Totally. I’m, I’ll look up all the best marriage counselors for you. I’ll get on this.” And he’s like, “No, Angus. We don’t want you to bring in a marriage counselor. We trust you. We want you to help us.” And this goes back to this whole thing when you start working with these teams, ’cause they’re very secretive, they’re very classified.

[00:44:01] Once you build that trust in with them, they trust you for everything. So I’m pretty sure that a couple years from now I’m gonna get a phone call from one of them being like, “Angus, I need open heart surgery.” “I’ve got a can opener in the roof combo of my house. I know you can fix it.” So next thing I know, I get taken to an undisclosed location, this large field.

[00:44:21] In the field are about 300 operators and their spouses. Tom comes up to me and he’s like, “Angus, all these people are about to get divorced unless you say something to them. Go say something to them.”

[00:44:31] Michael: No pressure. And

[00:44:32] Megan: I’m

[00:44:33] Angus: like, “What do I do?” And so the only thing I could think to do was basically stall for time.

[00:44:39] And the way that I stalled for time is I thought about the way that operators themselves develop relationships. And so I started basically giving these couples in the field all these basic tips that operators themselves use when they go out on missions to build trust and, and build bonds. And what I discovered is as I was feeding these tips out to these couples, they started talking.

[00:44:59] And then they kept talking. And then eventually I didn’t need to do anything, and they were just talking and talking and talking and hanging out in this field talking. And Tom came up to me afterwards, he said, “These are people who haven’t had a conversation more than 30 seconds in years.”

[00:45:11] Michael: Wow. “

[00:45:12] Angus: And now they’re all talking.”

[00:45:13] And then he was like, “What did you do?” And I was like, “I just told them to do what you told me to do when we weren’t talking about marriage, we were talking about operations.” And so I can give your audience if they want, like, the three main tips that I- Yeah. Yeah, please … give in special operations counseling.

[00:45:28] So the first is I tell them to shift your relationship to gratitude.

[00:45:33] Megan: Hmm.

[00:45:33] Michael: Hmm.

[00:45:33] Angus: What I mean by that is people now think that gratitude is about being thankful for good things, and that’s totally fine. You can be thankful for good things. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you’ll discover that when you’re thankful for good things, it doesn’t really last that long, and that’s because the purpose of gratitude in the human brain is actually to give thanks for hard things.

[00:45:50] Hmm. That’s actually why it evolved in the brain, and that’s because your brain grows the most from hard things. All the wisdom-

[00:45:57] Michael: Mm-hmm …

[00:45:58] Angus: all the emotional strength you have, those come from moments in your life when you struggled, when you failed, when you experienced setbacks and maybe even tragedies. And so really what you wanna do is you wanna start being thankful for those hard times because you realize those were a source of growth.

[00:46:11] And the more you get inside that mentality, the more you start to realize that when things are going wrong in the moment in your marriage, that’s a source of growth, too. And you can start- Mm-hmm … to activate gratitude for that, and that starts to shift your psychology. So that’s the first thing. Shift your relationship to gratitude.

[00:46:26] The second thing is start having real conversations. And what I mean by real conversations is that most couples, they’re basically trying to tell their partner to do something. Like, “Go do this thing,” you know? “I’m trying to give you some information.” And most couples also feel like they know their partner totally, so there’s nothing there for them to discover, so they’re not interested in having a real conversation where we share things and we learn about each other.

[00:46:49] They’re just interested in passing on their information as quickly as possible. And so what we teach the operators is to use a trick that we use to help with conversations, which is to ask the other person who, what, when, where, how, but never why. Because the moment you ask why, you service a judgment, and the conversation is over.

[00:47:10] And what you notice is you start asking those other questions like, you know, “Who were you out with? What were you doing? What were you buying?” And then your wife might say what she was buying, and you might w- wanna be like, “Why did you do that?” But instead you’re like, “What were you planning on using it for?

[00:47:22] What other things did you buy?” What happens is, is you start servicing more information, and then that information starts to surprise you ’cause it’s not what you expected, and then you start to reengage your curiosity. And the truth is, is that the moment you’ve made a judgment, your relationship is over.

[00:47:36] Megan: Hmm.

[00:47:37] Angus: You’ve fallen out of love. Love is about mystery. It’s about not being able to- Yes … discover. It’s about always feeling there’s something else to discover. So we encourage them to have real conversations. And the simple trick there, if you don’t wanna do that whole thing, is ask more what questions and less why questions.

[00:47:51] And the more you do that, the more you’ll find yourself having real conversations. Then the final thing is we tell them, “You gotta have a plan. Your marriage has gotta have a plan.” And they say, “Oh, okay.” Because in special operations, everything’s gotta have a plan. If something goes sideways, it because of, it, it’s because there wasn’t a plan.

[00:48:07] And then we say, “Well, to have a plan, what do you gotta do? You gotta have your priorities. Gotta figure out what your priorities are, right?” And they say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, we gotta figure out our priorities.” And so I say to them, “Okay, I want you and your wife to each sit down apart from each other, and I want each of you to write down your three top priorities in terms of what you want the other person to give you.

[00:48:23] What are the cr- three critical things you need from that other person? What are the three things you absolutely need to get from this marriage, or it’s not gonna work?” And they say, “Oh, okay.” And they go off and they write down their three priorities. Then I say to them, “You know why I asked you to do that?”

[00:48:36] And they kinda look at me. And I say, “Because it’s a trap.” Can you have three top priorities? Can you have two top priorities?

[00:48:43] Megan: Hmm.

[00:48:44] Angus: You can only have one top priority, and the reason that your relationship is failing is ’cause you’re expecting your partner to do multiple things for you, and those things all conflict.

[00:48:52] Your partner’s spending her time doing this, right? You know, she’s taking care of the kids or whatever, and then you’re angry at her because dinner isn’t ready, or you’re angry at her because she’s not romantic enough. You know? Or she’s focusing all this time on being romantic and being thoughtful, and you’re angry at her ’cause she’s not earning enough money.

[00:49:04] Do you know what I mean? And it’s like each of you gets to pick one thing-

[00:49:08] Michael: Huh …

[00:49:09] Angus: one thing that the other person gives you, and then you can hold the other person accountable for that. But as long as they give you that thing, right, you keep investing in the relationship. And the more that the two of you are, are good at giving each other one thing, the more you can start to give each other two things and three things and four things, right?

[00:49:24] You don’t have to be limited to one thing all the time. But if something isn’t working, you’ve gotta go back to basics, and basics is establishing your top priority and being clear with your partner about what is the one thing I need from you and what is the one thing I can give to you.

[00:49:37] Michael: This-

[00:49:38] Angus: That cycle will kickstart every relationship.

[00:49:40] Megan: Wow.

[00:49:40] Michael: This really resonates with my own experience. So in three months I will have been married 48 years.

[00:49:47] Angus: Congratulations.

[00:49:48] Michael: Thank you. And, uh, I think if there’s one thing that has been true in our relationship is your second point. We’ve just sort of been super curious about the other person, and both of us came to the conclusion that, you know what, we will never plummet the depths of who this person is.

[00:50:05] There will always be an element of mystery, which is kind of the foundation for attraction. You know, it’s just like, what, what can I learn and explore? Well,

[00:50:14] Megan: especially if you’re always growing and changing.

[00:50:16] Michael: Yes.

[00:50:16] Megan: It’s not like a static thing, you know? It, it’s like the- 100% … you’re al- you’re always becoming somebody, which means- Yeah

[00:50:23] you’re never gonna run out of things to discover.

[00:50:25] Michael: That’s true.

[00:50:26] Angus: That is beautiful because that’s exactly right. The more that you grow, the more there is for your partner to discover, and the more you can encourage your partner to grow, the more you can discover in them, and that’s what keeps a relationship going is that sense that both of you are growing and both of you are discovering.

[00:50:39] And I think the tragedy of a lot of marriages is that people end up getting stuck, and then they end up getting stuck, they get caught in judgment.

[00:50:46] Michael: Yes.

[00:50:47] Megan: Hmm.

[00:50:48] Michael: Well, listen, we’ve only scratched the surface.

[00:50:50] Megan: It’s really true.

[00:50:51] Michael: This is probably the fastest hour we’ve had in some time.

[00:50:55] Megan: It is.

[00:50:55] Michael: But thank you, Angus.

[00:50:56] It’s been great. If people wanna engage with your work, if our listeners wanna kind of explore more with you, where would you direct them? I

[00:51:03] Angus: mean, honestly, probably the best thing is just my book, Primal Intelligence. It became a national bestseller, so it’s all over the place. And if you wanna get closer to me, you can Google me.

[00:51:11] I’m just about the only Angus in Ohio- … and my email is publicly listed. So I get a lot of emails every day from people looking me up.

[00:51:19] Megan: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for being here. We’ve learned a ton and can’t wait to learn more from your work.

[00:51:25] Angus: Thank you. It’s been an honor.

[00:51:35] Michael: Well, that conversation was different than I expected.

[00:51:37] Megan: Me too. I felt like it lasted five minutes long. I mean, I’m like, “Gosh, can we just spend the whole day with you?”

[00:51:42] Michael: Well, I get nervous when we have professors.

[00:51:44] Megan: You do?

[00:51:45] Michael: I do because, you know, sometimes they can’t quite relate, or they’re a little too cerebral.

[00:51:51] I mean, most of the time w- we kind of filter those out.

[00:51:54] Megan: Right.

[00:51:54] Michael: But I’m always a little bit nervous.

[00:51:56] Megan: You’re, like, a little intimidated maybe.

[00:51:57] Michael: But he was, like, the best of both possible worlds. I

[00:52:00] Megan: know. ‘

[00:52:00] Michael: Cause he’s- He’s

[00:52:01] Megan: so enthusiastic …

[00:52:02] Michael: so enthusiastic and really crisp in his thinking.

[00:52:05] Megan: I love how contrarian he was in his thinking.

[00:52:09] You know, the question that is on my mind right now more than anything else is really what can humans do that machines can’t? Mm. ‘Cause I don’t think we have a good answer to that question. You know, I think that’s a… We know what machines are really good at, but I think a lot of people are asking, “Well, what is it that humans are gonna be good at?”

[00:52:26] If machines can do all this stuff better than us, then what, what, what’s it gonna be that, that we’re good at, you know?

[00:52:31] Michael: This may be an age differential, but I don’t worry about it. Like, I know I like- Yeah … like, okay, we could end up in the Terminator scenario. I, I

[00:52:38] Megan: don’t worry about that. I just

[00:52:39] Michael: think- Or we could end up being, you know, just, like, massive unemployment and all that.

[00:52:45] But I keep thinking, that’s gonna be only because we laid down the mantle of humanity-

[00:52:49] Megan: Right …

[00:52:50] Michael: individually-

[00:52:51] Megan: Right …

[00:52:51] Michael: and decide that we’re gonna give in to the machines.

[00:52:54] Megan: Yeah. I don’t think I worry about it, like, in some-

[00:52:57] Michael: Apocalyptic way …

[00:52:58] Megan: in some apocalyptic way. I just think of it more as, like, an existential question that is very timely.

[00:53:05] You know, that people need to have a sense of meaning and purpose, and all of a sudden that’s potentially threatened. You know, like there’s, there’s like another player on the field, so to speak, that I think if you listen to some people it could sound like you’ve heard the terrible, uh, phrase of, you know, we’re just gonna be like a meat sack, basically, which I just, I hate that language.

[00:53:23] You know, like we’re basically, we’re just kinda useless and, you know, the- the machines will just sort of pander to us, and I don’t think that’s true. I mean, our- our, you know, basis of faith, our kind of philosophical foundations, I- I don’t believe that’s true. But I- but it matters to me to have a really clean answer to that question- Mm-hmm

[00:53:40] ultimately, and to be able to help our community of, uh, listeners and so forth, to answer that question for themselves. ‘Cause I think it’s an important question always, but it’s especially important now, and I think he did a good job of helping to bring some clarity to that.

[00:53:54] Michael: Well, and I just wanna commend you.

[00:53:55] You know, we had our all-team meeting last week, and you presented some work that you and Joel and Marissa had put together on sort of thinking through our brand.

[00:54:05] Megan: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:06] Michael: And sort of tweaking our mission- Mm-hmm … for this time that we’re in.

[00:54:10] Megan: Yep.

[00:54:11] Michael: And I mean, I was so blown away by that. ‘Cause I do think it takes into account all these questions about-

[00:54:18] Megan: Mm-hmm

[00:54:18] Michael: the role of humanity.

[00:54:19] Megan: Right. What’s uniquely mine to do?

[00:54:21] Michael: Oh, it’s just- Yeah … so rich, and we’re not prepared to reveal it yet.

[00:54:25] Megan: It will be

[00:54:25] Michael: coming. But it’s coming. Yeah. And I found that it’s already leaking out-

[00:54:29] Megan: Yeah …

[00:54:30] Michael: in different things that I’m doing.

[00:54:31] Megan: Yeah. I think so too. So I appreciated that perspective that he had, you know, that on the one hand, there’s so many great things that AI can do for us, and I think you and I are both enthusiastic about a lot of those things and are using them on the daily.

[00:54:44] And there are also things that AI is really stupid at, and really not equipped to do. And I love this idea of intuition being one of the things that AI is not good at and, and frankly, decision-making that doesn’t follow patterns and doesn’t have the benefit of data to draw on, you know? Because I think about my own life, and I think about kind of what I bring to the table, and I really think that that, that’s one of the things that I bring, is h- being able to get to clarity about something where, you know, you don’t have the benefit of pattern recognition and, you know, big data sets and all that.

[00:55:20] You’ve just, you’ve gotta make a call. Yeah. And you can’t always explain why, but you need to and it needs to be a good call. Perfect. And I think that’s where intuition comes in.

[00:55:29] Michael: Well, we hope you guys enjoy this episode, and we’d encourage you to share it with a friend. That’s the best thing you could do for us.

[00:55:36] Yeah, absolutely. We appreciate the reviews and the ratings-

[00:55:38] Megan: Yeah …

[00:55:38] Michael: but if you could share the episode, we’re just about helping people, and you can help people and be part of the mission, so you could do

[00:55:45] Megan: that. Hey, just a reminder that we’re taking the summer off, but come back next week to listen to one of our favorite episodes from the archives.

[00:55:52] See you soon.