April 9, 2026 • 60 mins
Bobby and Eddie look at some of the luckiest moments in entertainment history, from Elvis at Sun Studio to Justin Bieber being discovered on YouTube, and the chance breaks that helped launch stars like Harrison Ford, Charlize Theron, Chris Pratt, and Matthew McConaughey. It’s a conversation about timing, opportunity, and the decisions that can change everything. Plus, Bobby talks with Annie Duke to talk about luck, skill, decision-making, and why quitting is not always a bad thing. Annie explains how luck plays a bigger role in life than most people want to admit, why people judge decisions too much by the outcome, and how staying where you are is still a choice.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, guys, Bobby Bones here, we're at the table for
this Bobby Cast. We're going to talk about musicians even
actors that were discovered by as the Internet says, pure luck.
Now I'm not a big luck guy, but these are
what I think the Internet says are the luckiest discoveries
in music and acting. And then after this, we're going
(00:28):
to talk with a doctor, doctor Annie Duke, about luck
and about quitting. All right. Number one, Elvis Presley and
Sun Records nineteen fifty three. Have you heard of the
gift recording? No? So, Elvis, eighteen years old walks into
Sun Studio in Memphis to record a couple songs. He
paid four dollars to cut two songs, My Happiness and
(00:51):
That's when your Heartache Begins. He paid that money so
he could record what he said was a gift to
his mom. The session was ran by Marion Kisker, who
is Sam phillips assistant. She saw him, thought it was
super interesting, went and told Sam Phillips about Elvis. Sam
(01:11):
Phillips was looking for a white singer who could convincingly
sing with black musical phrasing and field a blues arm
and by style and Sam Phillips then knew of Elvis Presley.
Nothing happened months past, and then Sam Phillips called Elvis
back because he needed someone to come in and sing
(01:32):
all from that record. He was paying four dollars for
his mom so he could do a gift session.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
That is crazy. I didn't know that. That's how it started.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I always pictured, you know, Elvis going in the sun
and being like, Ohm, Elvis Presley, I'd like to sing
for you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Mister Phillips.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
He called him back to try sessions with guitarist Scottie
Moore and the bassist Bill Black. The early takes, they say,
were stiff, nothing clicked. During a break, Elvis started fooling
around with an Arthur Crudup blues tune, which is that's
all right, yeah, And so they sped it up, gave
it kind of a country bounce, and then in nineteen
(02:11):
fifty four, the first single, That's all Right with Blue
Moon Kentucky on the B side, God, It's amazing, a
local DJ played reportedly on Memphis radio listeners flood of
the station with calls, and there you go. All of
that because Elvis was in to record a birthday gift
for his mom.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, and you think that's luck.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I don't believe in luck.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You think that's fate.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
No, I think, and I think we'll talk about in
a minute when I have annion. I think anything lucky
happens because of decisions you made leading up to that.
It doesn't matter what it is. I think it's all
decision based. I think there are random occurrences, but I
don't believe in defining luck at all. But I think
if you're looking at how people define extreme luck and
(02:53):
people just being discovered, this is one of them that
makes a list.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, man, that's pretty lucky. It's so lucky that he
just went in there for a gift. And then the
fact that his assistant was like, I almost think that
that's amazing that somebody makes such an impression on someone
that they're going to tell someone else about it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
It's probably their job though, too, if they're working in there,
Like he says, hey, if somebody really good cousin, let
me know.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Okay, I didn't think about that, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And then also he waited months, so who knows how
many other people he called and it just didn't work out, right, Okay,
that's number one on the list at number two, October seventeenth,
nineteen sixty one. The Rolling Stones on a random train
station and there's a reunion. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards. They
randomly run into each other after years apart. Now what
(03:41):
happens is Keith notices Mick because he's holding a blues record.
It was an imported American blues record with Muddy Waters
Chuck Berry. Those records were extremely rare in England at
the time, and so they had known each other a
little bit. But because you're talking about childhood acquaintances, but
because they were holding the record, they started talking about music,
(04:02):
They started playing music. They then became a band. And
so one random trained platform interaction holding a record that
made them want to talk about that kind of music
ended up creating The Stones.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I mean five minutes earlier, five minutes later, different train.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Hey what if somebody else was holding the record of
Chuck Berry, no record at all, no record, than they
wouldn't stopped and talked they or.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
They wouldn't have talked about music for sure, and we
probably wouldn't have their only Stones. Yes, so if if
there was no record, they may have said, Hey, Keith,
good to see you. Again, remember when we used to
have crumpets. I remember that night and there would have
been no talking music. But because they both had a
love for American blues, you have the rolling Stones to
(04:47):
get in together.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yes, yes, absolutely, Justin Bieber.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Oh oh, what's this? It can't be the YouTube video.
It's absolutely YouTube video.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So it's the the accidental YouTube click that changed pop music.
I mean, if I were ranking modern luck stories with
finger quotes, I think this is probably one of my favorites.
Bieber's twelve to thirteen years old in Stratford, Ontario. He
enters a local singing competition, doesn't win, finish a second.
(05:20):
His mom uploads the performance video to YouTube so friends
and family can watch. It wasn't hey, everyone discover my kid.
YouTube really wasn't massive like it is now, and it
wasn't being used for artists discovery. Then there was no
strategy except hey, everybody that knows us, you can go
to this link and watch Justin sing Wow. Scooter Braun
(05:45):
was searching YouTube for a different artist. He clicked on
Bieber's video by mistake, so there was nothing there except
he typed in something. Bieber's video came up, he hit
it and then watched it. It wasn't a submission, it
wasn't a meeting referral. And Scooter Braun had been like
a promoter, you know. It wasn't like Scooter bron was
(06:06):
this massive talent manager at the time either, And so
he tracked him down through according to the story, which
again it is always weird to track down a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Kid, Yes, track his mom down, man.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So through school contacts, YouTube messages, eventually convincing the mom
to let Justin fly to Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Do you say school contexts like some I mean he'd
called the school and be.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Like, it's just what it says when I started researching it.
So they just went school contacts, Yeah, to cover it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I mean, now that it's Justin Bieber, it's like, oh,
cool story.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
But man, at the time, it's a little that's dicey.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah. I mean, imagine that you're a mom and someone
hits you up and goes, hey, send your thirteen year
old to me.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, that's a tough one. Uh, all good. And so
Scooter Braun introduces Bieber to Usher. Usher Season Performed, signs
him to a joint deal Island Records, and from there
one time baby, all of that, and so why it's lucky.
This wasn't years trying to make it in La or Nashville,
(07:10):
where we live. It wasn't him grinding the showcase circus circuits,
or wasn't his mom even trying to get him out there.
It was literally a suburban kid in Canada who his
mom wanted to show basically his cousins his performance that
he didn't even win. Secondary of the story. Yeah, and
that is how Justin Bieber was discovered.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You know what's crazy is sometimes I'm actually looking for
a YouTube video and I can't find it, Like I'm
using every keyword possible to find something. I can't find it.
The fact that this video made it to Scooter braun
like and I.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Think he was looking for another kid, like another performer.
But was he just searching kid performers? I don't know
what I mean. I've got a few other ones too,
So these aren't music. But if we're going if you
believe in luck, here's Harrison Ford's Do you know this one?
Speaker 4 (08:01):
No?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Mid nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Wait a minute, is he a carpenter?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
He's a carpenter. Harrison Ford is not a star. He
had done some very small roles, including very blink and
You'll Miss It parts in American Graffiti, and acting was
not paying the bill, so we had to stop acting.
So he became a carpenter in Hollywood. He built cabinets
and installed doors for directors and producers. One of those
(08:25):
directors was George Lucas, so he was working Harrison Ford
construction in Lucas's office during the casting for Star Wars. Wow.
He wasn't auditioning, he was there, and since he was there,
he was asked to read line's opposite of other actors
as a favor as basically a chemistry test. Wasn't even
(08:47):
really in the running, but Lucas kept using him since
he was there and kept noticing him. And then also
because he really wasn't trying out for it. Harrison Ford
wasn't nervous, he was just there to help. There was
nothing for him to lose, and so eventually Lucas said,
let's give him the part, and the part was Han Solo. Gosh,
that's amazing, and he is a superstar from that role.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, from Han Solo, oh, and then and then Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
But he would have never got those roles right, had
Hans Soulo not happened.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So he did American Graffiti before all that.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, kind of just a small little role, A tiny
role in American Grif Wow, so so small that he
didn't turn that into any other acting roles.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, but American Graffiti is George Lucas, so I guess
it was just like he's, oh, yeah, he's the guys
in my movie's awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Let's keep this guy around the Bill shells. Yeah. Charlie
stair On, she was discovered during a bank meltdown. What
early nineteen ninety. Charlie stair On is nineteen years old.
She had just moved to Los Angeles. She has basically
no money. She goes into a bank to cash a
check from her mom back in South Africa even at
(09:56):
the time. Now, if we got to check in South Africa,
that's where her a scam. The teller refuses, something about
out of state processing. I guess it's even harder if
it's out of country. She gets frustrated, not screaming, but
she's extremely loud, passionate, animated. She refuses to leave now
(10:17):
since it is California. Standing behind her as a talent
agent named John Crosby watching the meltdown, and he watches
the whole thing. According to the stories that I read,
this is what he saw, presidence, confidence, and command of
the room. I bet he also saw somebody that was attracted.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yes, of course he.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Approaches her and gives her his card, and then that
meeting led to her taking acting classes because he suggested, Hey,
why don't you start learning to act, which then led
to auditions, which led to two days in the Valley,
which led to the Devil's Advocate, then Monster than an Oscar. Wow.
So if she goes to a different bank, if she
doesn't argue, if she's not in the line that day,
(11:00):
if he's not in the line that day, we probably
don't know. Charlie starroon.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Do you think if she went to the bank and
they did process the check, no problem, no argument.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
But that was still hot?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I don't man, eighteen nineteen year old girl probably not
a reson maybe, but I think that probably was part
of it, the scene that was being caused, the attention
drawn to her. Because in La Hot Dudes and Girls
or a Diamond Doze, you're right there everywhere. If you're hot,
you just move out there. It's kind of like here's
(11:33):
your train ticket, you know, right and a half. Here's
a free train ticket to go to Los Angeles. So
there you go. I'll give you one other one. Chris
Pratt before well, what do you think his most famous
movie is Guardians of the Galaxy? Yeah, me too, Jurassic World,
will Shake a Friend? But yeah, yeah. Chris Pratt was
living in a van in Maui. He worked at Bubba
(11:56):
Gump Shrimp Company. Way one day, act director ray Dn
Chong went in. He waited on her. He was funny.
He was not trying to be discovered because he didn't
know who she was. She asks if he's ever acted?
Now again, he was funny with the table, probably hustling
for tips. No, he's never acted. She casts him in
(12:17):
a short film that she's directing. The product. The project
gets some footage, the footage gets some representation. The representation
gets him on the WB Show, Everwood, then Parks and
rec then Marvel. Wow. If he had a different section
that day, if he calls in sick, if he's not
assigned that table, if he's not funny, he's having a
bad day. If he's sick leading up to it, None
(12:38):
of that happens. No, star lord. No, I don't know
who he is in Jurassic World. No Dinosaur Jones.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Maybe where's the hat?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah does a tour. So that's random,
that's so cool, lucky.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Some would say, do you know the Matthemcaughey one I
did not, where his buddy was a bart tender at
a hotel restaurant.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Is this one of those stories? M matter gone. He's
just saying crap because, like his book is, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That's all true. It's in the book. It's in the book.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
And he goes to see his buddy at the bar
and he's sitting there and then there's a director next
to him and say he's like, hey, so what are
you in town for. He's like, oh, I'm doing a
movie called Day's Confused. We're shooting here Richard Linkletter or whatever.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I'm a producer.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And he goes, you should stop by the set, you know,
like you have a good look to you. I don't
know there are no rolls or anything that are open,
but you should stop buying and see see what's up.
So he's like, cool, I'll do that, and he goes
and that's the Watersoon roll. They and Richard Linkletter, the
director of Days and Confused, was like, you know what,
I have this character, like we never we weren't really
(13:44):
going to put him in the movie. We just drive
a car and like, just be cool, man, it's a
muscle car, and just be yourself. And then he said
that all right, all right, all right. Wasn't even a line.
He said that, it was just something that he said
while they were pulling up. He's like, all right, all right,
all right, but that was his staple. But that same
producer was like, cool, thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
That was awesome. Man, If you're ever in La, hit
me up. That was it.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And he says, like, I didn't know, but he said,
if I'm ever in La, hit me up. He packed
his van, he drove to La and went straight to
that guy's house, knocked on the door and the guy's like,
who are you What are you doing here? He's like,
he told me, man, if I was ever in La, like,
hit you up, I'm here, and he's like, oh great,
all right. He took me up on it. So then
he showed him around and yeah, like he then he
(14:30):
got a couple of roles and the rest is history.
But the fact that Matthew McConaughey had just rolled with everything.
Come to the set, maybe there's a role for you.
Show up cool, come to LA. If you're ever in LA,
hit me up.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
So he just goes.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
He just went with it and it.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Worked a lot of this too, though, is matthe McCaughey
was a really good looking guy.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
He was, Yes, yes, charming.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I don't think if it's me there they offered me
a role in a movie. But yes, a lot of
this stuff is situational. Hang tight.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
The Bobby Cast will be right back, and we're back
on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And now we're gonna go over and talk to Annie Duke.
She is really one of the smartest voices when it
comes to decision making. And we're going to start with luck,
just like we were talking about here a second ago,
and how to define luck again. I have a big
problem with luck. But you may know Annie from her
books Thinking in Bets. She has a new book called Quit,
which is all about knowing when to walk away from things, jobs, relationships, habits.
(15:38):
She has a fascinating background, from studying cognitive psychology to
being a really successful poker player, even winning a massive
paper rock says as tournament, which she did, and so
if she's helping people and kids make better decisions every day.
Here's my conversation with Annie Duke. Do they call you
doctor Duke?
Speaker 4 (16:00):
I mean, I have a PhD. But like people usually
just call me Annie, I don't. Sometimes I get introduced
as doctor Duke. It's actually like I'm a little legoo.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Well, I didn't want to be disrespectful, and doctor Duke
sounds like a really cool Marvel hero.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
But I'm that's just true, that's true. Maybe I should
go for it. I can be in the movie.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I'm super excited to talk to you for a lot
of reasons, and I do want to talk about quitting
in a second. But as I was doing vast research
for this, and I had already seen your ted talk
on risk, which I thought was fantastic, and I want
to get to that too. Think I did not know
that you played in a paper rock scissors tournament and
one that's my dan I want dancing with the stars,
(16:41):
that's my version of that. That's the coolest thing.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
That I could possibly talk to you about.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
What was that about, I, Well, there was a tournament.
It was it was like at the World series of
poker they did like a world championship Rock paper scissors
and yeah, I want it. I don't know, that's great,
good fun.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Did you have a plan or were you just up
there winging it.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
There's some people where there's very clear patterns about what
they're going to throw. So if you can notice those,
then you can play against that because there's different probabilities
of different throws, like, for example, in the first throw,
there's different probabilities, so you can kind of play against that.
To tell you the truth, there were a couple of
(17:27):
people where I took out a dollar bill and I
would look at the first number in the serial number,
and if it was like zero, one or two, I
would throw rock, three, four or five, I would throw scissors,
so and so forth. So I basically used the dollar
bill as a random number generator because I felt like
if the other person was better at rock paper scissors
(17:50):
than me, and when I'm playing against people, I'm noticing
some patterns that I could take advantage of. If they
weren't as good, then if I felt like the person
was better than me, it was better for me to
use a random number generator, because then they can't do
what I was doing to other people.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Were you using the skills that you use now to
write your books and speak and just generally do science
in that tournament.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Well, I think that, yeah, I mean I think that
the type of skills that I teach in my classes
and my books, in my research, they really kind of
apply across the board. So, for example, you heard me
say so. In rock paper scissors, there's three things they
can do. There's you know, they can throw rock paper
(18:33):
or scissors. If someone's using a random number generator, each
of those is thirty three and a third. But if
they have a pattern, you're trying to figure out what
the probability of those different of those different throws might
be for that player, sometimes given what they just threw,
for example, sometimes given like they're their own tendencies that
(18:53):
you might notice, and then you're playing accordingly. And that's
like that idea of like, what are the different outcomes
that are available, what's the probability of those things occurring?
Is just like a super core decision skill, it's one
of the most important ones that you can have. Is
kind of approaching the world that way.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
My final question about this, because again I just stumbled
across this is that are you allowed to scout people?
And do you watch every single person play every single round?
Speaker 4 (19:19):
So the way they did it was everybody got paired
and you were all in a line. So I couldn't
scout anybody.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Oh got it because I was.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Playing at the same time as they were. But theoretically,
if it were a different if the way they were
running the tournament was different, I could.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Have Yeah, that's the coolest thing, Okay, But.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Honestly, like rock paper scissors is pretty random, like your
edge is be relatively small. So I also got very lucky,
which is another core decision skill is to recognize the
influence of luck and the things that occur.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
But do you believe in luck generally? Because I'm not
a big luck guy.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Okay, I'm going to try to sway you.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Please. Can I tell you why first and you can
then you can poke holes in everything that I say.
I'm I'm not a big luck guy because I think
situations happen because of situations that we put ourselves in.
Meaning if I walk into a gas station and I
buy a scratch off, which I do and I've never hit,
but I walk in and I picked the random one
(20:18):
and I win, I won. Well, look how lucky I am. However,
I made the decision to go to that gas station
and put myself in a situation that allowed that quote
unquote luck to happen, So it would never be pure luck.
I mean that is often how I would defend me
saying I don't believe in pure luck? Can you poke
holes in that?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
So I think that I can't the short answers I got,
So let's start with how we can do that. What
you actually described is actually a perfect description of what
I think about and what I write about in decision
making is the intersection of luck and skill. So when
(20:58):
we think about why anything occurs, it's going to occur
because of two things. Only thing number one. What you're
pointing out is the quality of the decision that you make. Right,
so you could make a poor decision, you could make
a good decision. I would argue playing the lotteries on
average of poor decisions because depending on why you're doing it,
(21:19):
But if you're trying to make money, it would be
a poor decision. But it depends on what your goals are.
But so you have the quality of the decision that
you make, which, as you just very succinctly put like
you put it very well, determines what the outcomes are
that are available to you. So if I never go
(21:39):
and play the lottery, winning the lottery isn't an available outcome.
If I do go to the store and I purchase
the ticket and I fill it out properly, and let's
hope that I don't lose it, right, those are all
decisions that are being made, and that then creates a
future which where one of the outcomes that could occur
(22:00):
or is winning the lottery.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Can I meet that?
Speaker 4 (22:03):
If I don't do that, it can't happen right now.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And I completely understand and I agree with you in
that point. I would again, let's just say we were
having this little debate and we were getting points as
we went along. I would meet that with I don't
believe in pure luck because then you're assigning luck being
positive to that outcome. But who knows if I then
win that money, and what I do, I'm so excited.
(22:27):
I get in my car, I'm like, wow, I can't
want boom, and I get hit because I'm not paying
attention because my excitement has been driven me.
Speaker 6 (22:34):
So so yeah, So let me get to the second piece,
So you have the quality of your decisions right, that
determines the outcomes that are available to So any decision
that you make is going to have a set of
outcomes that are available to.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
Different things that could happen. You could if you're not
paying attention, for example, you could get in an accident.
But you could also not get in an accident. Both
of those things are true. You could get in an
accident that's varying degree of bad. Right, Someone could just
like nick your car. Someone could t bone you. You
could end up with whiplash, you could end up in
(23:09):
the hospital, you could end up dead, right Like, there's
a whole variety of things that are associated with you're
not paying attention in the car. Each of those things
is going to occur some of the time, but not
all of the time. What outcome you actually observe is
determined by luck. So let me sort of take it back, right,
(23:30):
If I flip a coin. When the coin leaves my hand,
there are two outcomes that could occur, heads or tails.
I have flipped the coin, right, So the fact that
I flipped a two sided fair coin has sort of
set those two outcomes in place. Heads or tails. We
happen to know that if it's a fair coin, heads
(23:52):
is going to land fifty percent of the time, Tails
is going to land fifty percent of the time. Which
thing lands is determined by luck. When you leave having
won the lottery and you're so excited and you're distracted,
there's a whole bunch of different things that could occur.
Right in the same way, if you run a red light,
there's a bunch of things that could occur. The most
(24:13):
common thing that happens when you run a red light
is nothing right, like mostly not You're fine, right, But
we know that if you run a red light as
opposed to a green light, that you're increasing the chances
that something very bad happens to you. But it's not
going to occur one hundred percent of the time. It's
going to occur some percent of the time, let's say
(24:34):
fifteen percent of the time. Something bad's going to happen
to you. When that fifteen percent happens, you don't control.
But what you did do was by running a red light,
you made there be a fifteen percent chance something bad happens,
where if you go through a green light, it's less
than one percent of the time. Something bad's going to
happen to you. So I think that the quibble that
(24:55):
we're having is about this idea of pure luck. Is
there anything that is to determined by pure luck? There
are few things that are determined by pure luck, but
not a ton that are going to occur in your life.
Mostly it's you make decisions. There are different futures that
could occur because of the decisions that you've made, and
(25:18):
which future you actually observe is determined by luck.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
What if you're like me and you think that until
your life is over, you truly can't define what was lucky,
you're unlucky because of the different outcomes that can come
from the luck or unluck.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So I think that that's so luck is used in
different ways, right, And so I actually agree with you
about that if we're using luck as something good or bad, right,
so we can think about what I'm talking about, is
luck is a neutral thing?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Right?
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Like, twenty percent of the time I'm going to get
you know, I'm going to be distracted and nothing bad
is going to happen to me. Fifteen percent of the time,
maybe someone nicks me, like just nix my car, you know,
you know, ten percent of the time I hit the
person in front of me and get whiplash. Right, Like,
(26:14):
we can think about what those are, and luck is
determining which of those things. You see, that's neither good
nor bad. That's just a force that acts upon us. Right.
What you're talking about is can we make a judgment
when we actually observe the outcome about whether it's a
good outcome or a bad outcome? That's a wholly different
(26:35):
I mean sorry, let me say that again. Can we
make a judgment at the time that the thing occurs
about whether it's good luck or bad luck?
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Right?
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Can we do that? And I think you're right. The
answer is I think we're pretty bad judges of that.
We have the instinct to do that. Right as soon
as something happens, we're like, ah, that was such good
luck or oh that was such bad luck. But I
think that we don't actually know until long after the fact.
Simple example, Right, we know about people who win the
lottery all the time, they're like dreaming of this. You know,
(27:06):
it's a rare thing that's going to happen. So it's
a rare thing and people think of it as a
good thing. And when you have a combination of something
that's rare and something that people sort of consider as
like universal good. Right, then when they win the lottery,
they think, oh, I got so lucky in a good sense, right,
I got good luck. But we know that a lot
(27:26):
of people's lives get ruined when they win the lottery,
but they don't find that out until a lot later, right,
And then they maybe they look back and they go, oh,
I wish I'd never won the lottery because they realize
that that judgment they made about whether the luck was
good or bad, that they couldn't actually make that until
their life unfolded. So that's something that I think about
(27:47):
a lot in my own life. So when I was
just out of college, I went to graduate school and
I was getting my PhD, and I was there for
five years. I'd done all my PhD work. I was
going out on the job mark it, and I've been
really struggling with a stomach issue that was like autoimmune related.
(28:08):
It didn't know that at the time, but I got
actually really sick and I ended up in the hospital
for two weeks. And when I got really sick was
right when I was supposed to be going out and
like doing my job interviews and getting my you know,
starting on my academic path to become a tenured professor.
Like that was what I thought my life was going
to be. So now I land in the hospital for
(28:29):
a couple of weeks. I have a very long recuperation,
lost you know, twenty five pounds because I couldn't keep
any food down, Like it was bad. And I thought
at the time, like, this is such bad luck, Like
this has really derailed my life. I'm experiencing very bad luck,
and I was very sad about it. Then you know,
(28:52):
now I have to take time off from graduate school
and I have to delay going out on the job market.
And during that time was when I started playing poker,
and poker was pretty good to me. And I would
actually argue that had I not done what I did
in poker, I wouldn't have the platform to talk about
this thing that I'm so passionate about, which is like,
(29:13):
how do we become better decision makers?
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Right?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
And this amazing conversation I'm having with you about luck,
which is so fun, And I wouldn't be able to
do that had I not gotten sick in the first place.
So I now look back at that and say, WHOA.
That was kind of a rush to judgment at the time, right,
I really thought that I was experiencing bad luck. But
it turns out that was actually kind of good luck
because where my life ended up, I think, you know,
(29:37):
on average, it ended up in a better place because
that thing happened to me. And so I think that
what you said is actually like incredibly insightful. Is that
we ought to be pretty neutral about luck like luck
is occurring. But that rush to judgment about is that
good luck or bad luck, I think is misguided. And
(29:58):
not only is it misguid and you know ought and
we wait to actually sort of take a look back
and make the judgment about whether it was good or bad,
as you said, But when we judge it so quickly,
I think that it can distort decisions that we're making
going forward, particularly on the bad luck side, right, because
(30:19):
when we experience that bad luck, we get emotional. It's
very difficult for it actually reduces the quality of our
decisions going forward if we really live in the idea
that the world has happened to us in a bad way. Right,
And I think being able to just take a step
back and say luck is luck like this it just is,
and that's okay. And my job is to kind of
(30:42):
lean into that and focus on the thing that you
rightly said, I do have control over, which is the
decisions I'm making, you know, and understand that luck is
just kind of part of the equation.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah, I think my marriage to the definition is different
than what you were describing. So I actually think mine
comes from very similar to what you said, is that
I grew up poverty kid, mom of a drug addict
who died. I didn't know my dad. I felt I
had a very unlucky life. I really felt like that
(31:16):
way for a long time, resented it even that I
had such an unlucky run. However, had I not had that,
I would not have built the skill set that I
have now to one have the life that I have
to be able to affect so many people in so
many different ways. Like without that, we'll say bad luck,
I wouldn't have had all the good fortune or good
(31:38):
luck that I've had now. So I think my relationship
with the definition is until it runs its course, it
really can't be defined. But that was not at all
what you were saying at the very beginning. We're just
talking about two different things.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
We're talking about that you can divide it into two things, right,
luck as a force and then our view of whether
that luck is good or those are two really different things. Right.
So it's kind of like gravity, right, That's how I
think about luck. Gravity just is it exists, right, Like
(32:12):
you drop something off a building, it falls because of gravity.
It's why we don't go flying off the earth, right,
Like it holds us down. So it's just kind of
this force that exists that's sort of definitionally, how luck
sort of enters into the equation. How we cognitively put
(32:33):
this good or bad label on luck is a totally
different thing. And I think that just as you're saying,
like that's something that we really can't do until you
have the passage of time. You know, one thing I
think about and it's kind of like in what you said,
which I think can get people to understand the influence
(32:53):
of luck is at the moment of our birth. There's
just it's just luck, right, Like who are we born to?
What country are we born to? What year are we
born in? Are we tall? Are we short? Are we fast?
Are we slow? Like? All of these things that literally
(33:15):
you have no control over, right, that just is you
were born into the family work. Did you have any
control over that? No, of course not right. I was
born into the family I was. Did I have any
control over that?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
No?
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Right, And very similarly to you, like tough childhood, very
deeply alcoholic mom, very rough household to grow up in.
But you know, I think I developed a lot of
resilience from that that served me well at the time.
I was sad, right, But I think that there were
a lot of things that again created like resilience, resilience
(33:54):
for me, like this sort of bounciness, this ability to
sort of be like it's okay, like I'm going to
move forward, that came from that. But think about if
I had been born in sixteen hundred, right, So when
we think about like I'm born in the late twentieth century,
I'm a woman, I'm born in the late twentieth century,
what are the outcomes that were available to me? Versus
(34:17):
if I were born as a woman in the sixteen hundreds, right,
where I would have been property, I in fact just
missed the generation where it was mostly like secretary wife
that was available, you know, that was mainly available to
you as outcomes, Right, So that moment that you're born
(34:38):
actually sets into place what the distributions of outcomes are
that are available to And then here's the thing, you
get to make decisions that can affect where you land
in that distribution, because you can think about somebody else
who's born into the circumstances you were, you know, doesn't
end up in the situation you are today. Some of
(35:01):
that has to do with luck that happens along the way,
like right place, right time, Like who knows if you
have been born before podcasts right, like you know, who knows?
Right Like, we don't know, But like you, you found opportunities,
you made something of them. But there's other people that
are born into those circumstances that don't get themselves out
of it. Some of them make pretty good decisions, some
(35:23):
of them don't. But the fact is that because of
the circumstances that you were born into where you ended up,
it is actually a much lower probability outcome that someone
who's born into upper middle class, upper class, stable family
goes to the best high school, goes to the best college,
(35:47):
you know, so on so forth, Right, Like, the outcomes
that are available to that person compared to you are
very different. Particularly in the probability that they're going to occur.
And that's because of this thing that literally at the
beginning of your life, have you had no control over that?
Speaker 5 (36:05):
Hank Ty, the Bobby Cast will be right back. Welcome
back to the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
So no inherent value good or bad in luck?
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Right, Yeah, so it just is right.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
And I think where I would take that as if
what if you were born fifty years from now and
women were the rulers of civilization, what was good luck
is now bad luck? So it's neither because they can
always be good or bad in comparison. So luck has
no value. It just exists.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
It's like gravity. It's gravity good, it is gravity bad.
I don't like it just is. It's just it's just
part of the equation, right, And I think that we
do better when we don't judge it as good or bad.
I think we just do a lot better as decision
makers when we say it's there. I should take that
into account, Like, as I'm thinking about the decisions, I
(37:10):
don't want to, you know, one of the things that
happens to us and one of the you know that
really degrades our decision quality, Like it makes us make
worse decisions. Is that we actually discount how much luck
is in the equation. In other words, we think we
have a lot more control over outcomes than we actually do.
(37:32):
It's called the illusion of control as a matter of fact.
So I think that the more that we can basically
approach life in this way, the decisions that I make,
the quality of the decisions that I make, are going
to change my possibilities. They're going to change the things
that are possible for me in a couple of ways.
(37:55):
One is, it might create outcomes that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Right,
So that would be like winning the lottery versus not.
If I don't play, that's not even a possible world,
right So okay, So it changes the possibilities. But then
it can also change the chances of those possibilities happening,
(38:19):
the chances that I'm going to actually have that thing happen.
And I think that when you approach life that way,
it actually gives you a much greater sense of agency,
right that. Okay, Yeah, Like the world happens, and there's
a whole bunch of stuff that I can't control, but
there's this thing that I really can control, which is
(38:40):
if I make better decisions than on average, I'm going
to have better possibilities that are available to me, and
those possibilities are going to be more likely than they
otherwise would have. And over time, that's just going to
increase the chances that I live a better life than
I otherwise would have. And I think that's actually like
a really hopeful message.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yeah, I think so too. And I think you know,
when we look at these two words luck and quit luck,
most people go good positive good positive, because that's you know,
maybe they're they're micro association with it. Quit negative negative negative. However,
you've challenged that as well, and so why did you
start researching quitting?
Speaker 4 (39:23):
So I only write books where something has made me
very mad, And the reason is that writing a book
is torture. It's just like it's a lot, you know,
writing a book is like, first of all, it's hard,
you know, it's just it's a lot of work. And
for me, at least, you know, it's a lot of
(39:45):
anxiety about like whether I'm being clear, whether people are
going to get what I'm trying to say, whether the
message that I'm writing about that it's so incredibly important
to me is something that other people are going to
care about that's hard. And then when the book, you know,
when the book actually goes out into the world, it's
(40:06):
like you have just literally opened yourself up to criticism, right,
and you know that being a public figure, right, Like,
you know, that's where it's like, Okay, now everybody sees
my work. Right. So there's a lot of things that
are just like really hard about writing a book. So
I won't write a book unless there's something that's just
digging at me. And what was digging at me in
(40:30):
the case of quitting is that Angela Duckworth has written
this wonderful book, wonderful book called Grit, and everybody loves it.
And as I was watching the discourse around Grit, what
I realized is that people were kind of, like, what
I felt like, missing the point of what she was saying.
(40:56):
What she says in that book Grit is even if
things are hard, if they're worthwhile, it's a good quality
to stick to them. Simple message, right, just because it's
hard doesn't mean that you should stop. Being Gritty means
sticking to hard things when those things are worthwhile. How
(41:17):
would we define worthwhile? Well? Worthwhile might be different for
you than me because we have different goals. But let's
broadly say worthwhile means that I am doing something that
is going to help me to advance toward my goals.
It's going to help me achieve my goals in alignment
with my values. That let's define worthwhile that way. Okay,
(41:39):
So I think that's an amazing message, because I think
that's great and it's true. The problem is that as
I saw the discourse around grit, it was just sticking
to things is good, full stop, period. That's a good
quality to have, sticking to things. And I just looked
at that and I said, well, that's completely absurd. And
(42:02):
the reason why it's completely absurd is because if something
isn't worthwhile, it's not a good thing to stick to it. Now,
that wouldn't be a problem if our bias was to
stop doing things. If our bias was as soon as
something got hard, we were going to stop doing it. Then, Okay,
maybe it's not a big deal because we're actually quitting
(42:24):
too much, right, But it's not true for adults. For
a little kid, like for a six year old, it's true, right,
like you got to encourage a six year old to
stick to things, even when they have a bad day
on the soccer bitch, right, but someone twenty five years
or older. The science is really really clear that we
stick to things too much, actually, that we're naturally way
(42:45):
too gritty, and that we don't quit enough. And you
can see that in the way that people talk about quitting, right,
just as you just said, it's just negative, right, It's
like quitting, quitting is for losers, man, Like, if you
quit something, you failed. You know, quitters never win. Winners
(43:05):
never quit, right like. And I you know, I just
looked at that, and I was like, everybody thinks that
quitting is failing, that it's such a bad thing. But
first of all, it's not failing if the thing you're
doing isn't worthwhile, because then you get to stop doing
something that's not worthwhile and you get to go and
(43:27):
do something else that is worthwhile, right Like, So that's
a double win. Right, So that's clearly true. So how
could it possibly be a failure to quit something that's
not worthwhile? Right Like? That has to be a good thing,
But everybody thinks that's a bad thing. And I just
(43:49):
I just was like, I just got to rehabilitate this
world word because It's such an incredibly important skill when
you're living in a world where there's luck, because sometimes
you make a great decision, the world doesn't go your way.
Should just stick to it, no, So like when you're
(44:13):
making decisions where their luck can influence the outcome, and
you know, like you're not omniscient, right, you know so
little in comparison to all there is to be known
in the whole universe. That what that means is that
when we start things kind of definitionally speaking, like after
(44:33):
we start them, we're going to learn new things, and
sometimes those new things are going to make us say, ah,
I wish I had known that when I made the
decision in the first place. I wish I knew then
what I know now, because I would have done something else.
And under those circumstances, then you should do something else.
(44:54):
You should quit, right, But we over index on grit
and we don't quit because we think that we failed
if we do. So that's why I was just like
so passionate about this idea that people like, mostly you
should be quitting, you should actually be sticking to very
few things, And I wanted people to start quitting more
and feeling better about it. And feeling like it was
a success to do that.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I feel like talking with you and I think a
couple of things that you've said have led me to
this that you feel like as long as you're playing
the odds, regardless of what happens, continue to play the odds.
Would that be an accurate assessment?
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Yeah, I mean, I mean you have to take you
don't have to take some risk into account there. But
let's set risk aside for a second. Life is let's
you know, I'm a poker player. Life is a game.
Let's act like we're playing poker, where you're trying to
(45:52):
make decisions that, on average open up better possibilities for
you and make those better possibility is more likely to happen.
And if you keep doing that over and over again,
what that means is that you're making decisions that have
a higher chance, this is where the odds come in,
(46:13):
have a higher chance of getting you to achieve the
things that you want to achieve, getting you to achieve
your goals, whatever those goals might be, right, it's going
to help you do that. And the better decisions you make,
the more likely that you'll achieve the things that you
want to achieve. Compared to another version of you who
(46:35):
made worse decisions. So that's all we're trying to do, right,
So it is a game of odds, right, We're trying
to increase the likelihood that good things happen to us.
That's a thing that we're trying to do, and we
do that through great decision making. So you just have
to keep saying, I just I just have to focus
(46:58):
on my decisions. I've got to make sure or that
my decisions are really good, because that's the thing that's
going to make you have a better life.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
So focus more on your decisions than the outcome, generally.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Speaking, well, for sure, for sure, for sure. So there's
a problem called resulting, which is we get very very
outcome focused. And not only do we get really outcome focused,
but just sort of like the luck thing, we put
a judgment on whether an outcome is good or bad,
and then we decide whether a decision is good or
(47:31):
bad based on that, And that's actually really bad to do.
In a situation where we actually already know that a
decision is good or bad, we can see this mistake
pretty easily. So, Bobby, if you go through a green
light and you get in an accident. Are you like, damn,
that decision to go through a green light was terrible.
I'm never going to do that again. I'm not right.
(47:52):
And if you go through a red light and you
happen to get through safely or you like, great decision,
I'm a great red light driver, I'm going to do that. No.
And the reason that you're not doing that in that
situation is because it's kind of settled, right, It's like,
we know green light good, red light bad, So we're
not going to make this air. But like, in the
(48:13):
simplest sense, I know a lot of people and I'm
sure you do, where they're like obsessing over a menu
at a restaurant and they're trying to decide what to order. Remember, like,
they haven't been at the restaurant before last time I
checked their non omniscient and they don't have a DA machine,
so they can't travel forward in time and see what
that dish is like before they order it. So this
(48:37):
is a good example where you're just trying to think,
like what are the things I like and increase the
probability that you have a yummy meal. Right. So what
happens though, when you order the chicken and it's dry,
and it's not very good, and maybe you don't even
finish it. Right, what's the first thing that everybody thinks, Ah,
(49:00):
I should have short ordered something else and made a mistake.
That's a very good example of what we call resulting. Right, Well,
how you should have ordered something else, Like, you've never
been in that restaurant, you haven't tasted that food before it,
and you don't have a dime machine, so you were
making your best gass. It's not a mistake that you
ordered the chicken. That was your best decision given the
information that you had at the time. Right, it's kind
(49:21):
of hard for people to wrap their heads around it.
Speaker 5 (49:24):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby cast.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
The last thing that I want to touch on, and
I really appreciate the time I wrote in one of
my books the whole thing about it's better to make
a decision and get it wrong than to make no
decision at all, because a lot of my friends get
paralyzed by decision making because they don't want that. They
don't want to make the wrong decision because that will
set them back, to which I would argue it's better
to be set back quick and learn why you're being
(50:01):
set back so you can set forward, then to always
sit there and be paralyzed in the fear of making
the wrong decision. So make the wrong decision better than
make no decision at all. Do you subscribe to that?
Speaker 4 (50:13):
Okay? Like so completely all right, So this is a
super fun topic. It actually relates to quitting. So let
me start at the basics, right, what's happening is that? Okay,
So let's imagine that this friend of yours is in
a job that they hate and they have to make
(50:33):
a decision like should they quit their job and go
to a new job? I bet this is probably a
conversation that you have a lot and they say, oh, like,
I don't want to do that because what if I
take this new job and I hate that and what
if I make a mistake and what if it turns
out really badly? Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 2 (50:47):
It does?
Speaker 4 (50:48):
Yeah, Okay, here's the deal. Staying in the job you're
in is a decision. That's the thing that people miss.
So you described it as they'd rather make no decision
at all, right, than a decision that might work out badly.
But making no decision at all doesn't exist, Like it's
(51:09):
grammatical as a sentence of English, but it doesn't make
any sense because making quote unquote no decision at all
is allowing the status quote to continue whatever you're doing. Right, Like,
I'm in a relationship, I don't want to make a
decision about whether to leave it. Well, that's a decision.
I'm choosing to stay in it. I'm in a job
I hate it, but I don't want to quit because
(51:30):
what if I take a new job and I don't
like that either? Okay, then I'm making a decision to
stay in the job that I'm in. So let's just
start there. It's a decision either way, right, So like
if you can reframe it that way and say which
is better, right, like a choice to stay where you
are or a choice, because they're both choices. That's number one. Now.
(51:55):
Part of the problem is that there's this phenomenon which
is really interesting. It's called loss of version and it
was identified by Daniel Kaneman and Amos Tversky and Daniel
Kahneman is a Nobel laureate. He wrote a very very
famous book called Thinking Fast and Slow, very very very popular,
(52:15):
Super super Smart Guy Nobel Laureate in economics identified this
thing called loss of vision and loss of version is
basically the phenomenon that when we experience what we would
what we would think of in the moment as a
bad outcome. But I'm going to say in the moment,
because we've had this discussion, right, when we experience what
(52:36):
we think is a bad outcome, it feels a lot
worse to us than a sort of symmetrically good outcome. So,
like we think about this way, like if you lose
fifty dollars in blackjack, it feels about as bad to
you as winning one hundred dollars feels good. So there's
this like asymmetry. Losses feel really bad to us. So
(52:57):
when we're making decisions, we actually sort of over index
on the chances of a bad outcome, right, So we're
not thinking the same way about good outcomes versus bad
outcomes in the way that I'm talking about, right, Like, well,
on average, is it going to be good or bad?
And so maybe when you're thinking about the past, you're like, ah, wait,
(53:17):
but what if it gets intercepted and that instead of
thinking about overall, does this help me win? Right? Okay,
So that's loss of version. It turns out that this
like cognitive phenomenon that you just identified, it's actually really
really like deep. It's a it's like such a deep
concept once you actually think about it. This idea of
(53:39):
I don't want to make a decision because what if
the decision I make is turns out badly. That when
we stick with the status quo, we don't think about
it as a decision. So what that means is that
we're not loss of verse in the same way, we're
not as worried about bad things happening from the status quo.
(54:01):
We don't feel like it's our fault. So when I
stay in that job that stinks, or I stay in
that relationship that stinks, it doesn't feel as bad to me.
Then if I switched to something new and that stinks,
because I only worry about the bad outcome, the outcome
(54:21):
I'm not going to like, I worry about it so
much more on the switch. So what that does is
it gets us to stick to things that are bad
for us. And I remember, I had a conversation with
someone that I thought was so interesting. There's a woman
who was like stuck in a job that she really
hated and I really hate it. I mean for years,
really hated it. And I was having a conversation with her.
(54:44):
She actually reached out to me because she had heard
me on a podcast talking about quitting and she wanted
to talk about it with me. And she said she
had a new job offer and she just was like
she didn't know whether she should take it or not.
And so I said, well, well, you tell me about
the job that you're in. And it was like, it's horrible.
I hate it. It's ruining my relationship with my children.
(55:06):
I have to work twenty four to seven. My phone's
always going off, like they're always like Mommy, why aren't
you paying attention to me? I'm totally miserable. Now you
can imagine. At that point, I was like, hold on
a second, like what's going on? Why aren't you quitting?
And she said to me the thing that your friends say,
what if I take the new job? And I hate that. Ah. Oh,
(55:27):
it's this loss of version problem, right, So I said
to her, okay, again, thinking about playing the odds, I said,
all right, I want you to imagine that you stay
in the job that you're in. It's a year from now.
What are the chances you're happy, and very quickly she
(55:48):
said zero percent. I said why. She goes, well, I've
been happy for unhappy for a really long time. I
don't think at this point anything's going to change. I said, oh, okay,
zero percent. So let's imagine you take the new job.
I understand it might not work out, but it's a
year from now. What do you think the chances are
that you're happy in that role? She said, well, I
(56:10):
don't know, like I'm not in it yet, but I
would say fifty to fifty. And I literally just said
it's fifty percent greater than zero. And it was like
this moment, right, it was like she got it, released
her from the clutches of this I don't want to
make a decision what if that new thing doesn't work out?
(56:31):
Because she it was just like this total it was
like a revelation and she quit. The next day she
was like, oh, oh, I get it right. So I
think that this is like really important conceptually to understand,
like there is no such thing as not making a decision,
(56:52):
because you're making a decision to stick with the thing
that's already happening. So once you recognize that, I think
you can start thinking about it differently separately, And I
would recommend this for your friends. A lot of times
when we go to make a decision, we kind of
make it the biggest version of the decision. And we
(57:12):
do that in two ways. One is we're like, we
just we're moved to a new city, and we just
thought we're going to buy a house instead of rent. Right, Like,
buying a house is a lot more consequential than renting.
So that makes like the bad outcome kind of bigger,
like the possible bad outcome kind of bigger, because we
(57:33):
sort of committed to something much bigger. Right That's one thing.
The other thing is we imagine when we go into
the decision that we can't stop it, right, Like we
think about that is I'm going to choose this thing,
and I'm good, I have to just do this for
the rest of my life, which also really increases the stakes.
So what I always recommend, and this was your point,
like do something small and find out fast, is do
(57:57):
things that lower the impact of getting a bad outcome
and that you can stop doing really easily. So if
I rent, it's a lot easier for me to get
out of a rental than if I buy a house.
Dating is way easier for me to get out of
than marrying. Right, So you can think about, like, let
me do some small things that can help me to
(58:18):
get information and increase my confidence about the bigger thing
that I might end up doing. So instead of thinking
about the big thing, do small things really fast and
figure out like do they work? Do they not work?
Like does it feel good to me? Does it feel
like this is making me happy? Am I getting good
outcomes or bad outcomes from it? And like rep that, Like,
(58:41):
do try to be more of a dater in your
life because that releases you from that fear of making decisions.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
The book we reference was Quit the Power of Knowing
when to walk away. And you have a substack that
I want to send everybody to. You can go to
Annie's website Antie Duke dot com and subscribe to a substack.
This is so fun for me. I hope this wasn't
a waste of your time.
Speaker 2 (59:03):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (59:03):
You no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
Yeah, I really appreciate the time. And yeah, I love
to see you when you're speaking. I'm really uh, you know,
I subscribe to a lot of the things that you
say and you're write about, So thank you for the time. Annie.
Speaker 4 (59:16):
Well, I appreciate that you're you're a very good intuitive psychologist,
That's what I would say, because like you you you
actually you actually think a lot of the things that
that I already write about, and I think that that's
it's amazing. Like the way that you were putting those
in this kind of intuitive way. It was so helpful
and so fun for me in terms of the conversation.
(59:38):
So I just really want to say I appreciated that
so much about you and the conversation was super fun
for me. Thanks, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (59:46):
Or thanks doctor Duke. I should say thank you doctor Duke,
and hopefully I'll see you sometime soon. Thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (59:51):
This has been a Bobby Cast production.
Hey, guys, Bobby Bones here, we're at the table for
this Bobby Cast. We're going to talk about musicians even
actors that were discovered by as the Internet says, pure luck.
Now I'm not a big luck guy, but these are
what I think the Internet says are the luckiest discoveries
in music and acting. And then after this, we're going
(00:28):
to talk with a doctor, doctor Annie Duke, about luck
and about quitting. All right. Number one, Elvis Presley and
Sun Records nineteen fifty three. Have you heard of the
gift recording? No? So, Elvis, eighteen years old walks into
Sun Studio in Memphis to record a couple songs. He
paid four dollars to cut two songs, My Happiness and
(00:51):
That's when your Heartache Begins. He paid that money so
he could record what he said was a gift to
his mom. The session was ran by Marion Kisker, who
is Sam phillips assistant. She saw him, thought it was
super interesting, went and told Sam Phillips about Elvis. Sam
(01:11):
Phillips was looking for a white singer who could convincingly
sing with black musical phrasing and field a blues arm
and by style and Sam Phillips then knew of Elvis Presley.
Nothing happened months past, and then Sam Phillips called Elvis
back because he needed someone to come in and sing
(01:32):
all from that record. He was paying four dollars for
his mom so he could do a gift session.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
That is crazy. I didn't know that. That's how it started.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I always pictured, you know, Elvis going in the sun
and being like, Ohm, Elvis Presley, I'd like to sing
for you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Mister Phillips.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
He called him back to try sessions with guitarist Scottie
Moore and the bassist Bill Black. The early takes, they say,
were stiff, nothing clicked. During a break, Elvis started fooling
around with an Arthur Crudup blues tune, which is that's
all right, yeah, And so they sped it up, gave
it kind of a country bounce, and then in nineteen
(02:11):
fifty four, the first single, That's all Right with Blue
Moon Kentucky on the B side, God, It's amazing, a
local DJ played reportedly on Memphis radio listeners flood of
the station with calls, and there you go. All of
that because Elvis was in to record a birthday gift
for his mom.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Okay, and you think that's luck.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I don't believe in luck.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
You think that's fate.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
No, I think, and I think we'll talk about in
a minute when I have annion. I think anything lucky
happens because of decisions you made leading up to that.
It doesn't matter what it is. I think it's all
decision based. I think there are random occurrences, but I
don't believe in defining luck at all. But I think
if you're looking at how people define extreme luck and
(02:53):
people just being discovered, this is one of them that
makes a list.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, man, that's pretty lucky. It's so lucky that he
just went in there for a gift. And then the
fact that his assistant was like, I almost think that
that's amazing that somebody makes such an impression on someone
that they're going to tell someone else about it.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
It's probably their job though, too, if they're working in there,
Like he says, hey, if somebody really good cousin, let
me know.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Okay, I didn't think about that, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
And then also he waited months, so who knows how
many other people he called and it just didn't work out, right, Okay,
that's number one on the list at number two, October seventeenth,
nineteen sixty one. The Rolling Stones on a random train
station and there's a reunion. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards. They
randomly run into each other after years apart. Now what
(03:41):
happens is Keith notices Mick because he's holding a blues record.
It was an imported American blues record with Muddy Waters
Chuck Berry. Those records were extremely rare in England at
the time, and so they had known each other a
little bit. But because you're talking about childhood acquaintances, but
because they were holding the record, they started talking about music,
(04:02):
They started playing music. They then became a band. And
so one random trained platform interaction holding a record that
made them want to talk about that kind of music
ended up creating The Stones.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I love that.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
I mean five minutes earlier, five minutes later, different train.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Hey what if somebody else was holding the record of
Chuck Berry, no record at all, no record, than they
wouldn't stopped and talked they or.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
They wouldn't have talked about music for sure, and we
probably wouldn't have their only Stones. Yes, so if if
there was no record, they may have said, Hey, Keith,
good to see you. Again, remember when we used to
have crumpets. I remember that night and there would have
been no talking music. But because they both had a
love for American blues, you have the rolling Stones to
(04:47):
get in together.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yes, yes, absolutely, Justin Bieber.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Oh oh, what's this? It can't be the YouTube video.
It's absolutely YouTube video.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So it's the the accidental YouTube click that changed pop music.
I mean, if I were ranking modern luck stories with
finger quotes, I think this is probably one of my favorites.
Bieber's twelve to thirteen years old in Stratford, Ontario. He
enters a local singing competition, doesn't win, finish a second.
(05:20):
His mom uploads the performance video to YouTube so friends
and family can watch. It wasn't hey, everyone discover my kid.
YouTube really wasn't massive like it is now, and it
wasn't being used for artists discovery. Then there was no
strategy except hey, everybody that knows us, you can go
to this link and watch Justin sing Wow. Scooter Braun
(05:45):
was searching YouTube for a different artist. He clicked on
Bieber's video by mistake, so there was nothing there except
he typed in something. Bieber's video came up, he hit
it and then watched it. It wasn't a submission, it
wasn't a meeting referral. And Scooter Braun had been like
a promoter, you know. It wasn't like Scooter bron was
(06:06):
this massive talent manager at the time either, And so
he tracked him down through according to the story, which
again it is always weird to track down a kid.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Kid, Yes, track his mom down, man.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
So through school contacts, YouTube messages, eventually convincing the mom
to let Justin fly to Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Do you say school contexts like some I mean he'd
called the school and be.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Like, it's just what it says when I started researching it.
So they just went school contacts, Yeah, to cover it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I mean, now that it's Justin Bieber, it's like, oh,
cool story.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
But man, at the time, it's a little that's dicey.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah. I mean, imagine that you're a mom and someone
hits you up and goes, hey, send your thirteen year
old to me.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yeah, that's a tough one. Uh, all good. And so
Scooter Braun introduces Bieber to Usher. Usher Season Performed, signs
him to a joint deal Island Records, and from there
one time baby, all of that, and so why it's lucky.
This wasn't years trying to make it in La or Nashville,
(07:10):
where we live. It wasn't him grinding the showcase circus circuits,
or wasn't his mom even trying to get him out there.
It was literally a suburban kid in Canada who his
mom wanted to show basically his cousins his performance that
he didn't even win. Secondary of the story. Yeah, and
that is how Justin Bieber was discovered.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
You know what's crazy is sometimes I'm actually looking for
a YouTube video and I can't find it, Like I'm
using every keyword possible to find something. I can't find it.
The fact that this video made it to Scooter braun
like and I.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Think he was looking for another kid, like another performer.
But was he just searching kid performers? I don't know
what I mean. I've got a few other ones too,
So these aren't music. But if we're going if you
believe in luck, here's Harrison Ford's Do you know this one?
Speaker 4 (08:01):
No?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Mid nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Wait a minute, is he a carpenter?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
He's a carpenter. Harrison Ford is not a star. He
had done some very small roles, including very blink and
You'll Miss It parts in American Graffiti, and acting was
not paying the bill, so we had to stop acting.
So he became a carpenter in Hollywood. He built cabinets
and installed doors for directors and producers. One of those
(08:25):
directors was George Lucas, so he was working Harrison Ford
construction in Lucas's office during the casting for Star Wars. Wow.
He wasn't auditioning, he was there, and since he was there,
he was asked to read line's opposite of other actors
as a favor as basically a chemistry test. Wasn't even
(08:47):
really in the running, but Lucas kept using him since
he was there and kept noticing him. And then also
because he really wasn't trying out for it. Harrison Ford
wasn't nervous, he was just there to help. There was
nothing for him to lose, and so eventually Lucas said,
let's give him the part, and the part was Han Solo. Gosh,
that's amazing, and he is a superstar from that role.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, from Han Solo, oh, and then and then Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
But he would have never got those roles right, had
Hans Soulo not happened.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
So he did American Graffiti before all that.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, kind of just a small little role, A tiny
role in American Grif Wow, so so small that he
didn't turn that into any other acting roles.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, but American Graffiti is George Lucas, so I guess
it was just like he's, oh, yeah, he's the guys
in my movie's awesome.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Let's keep this guy around the Bill shells. Yeah. Charlie
stair On, she was discovered during a bank meltdown. What
early nineteen ninety. Charlie stair On is nineteen years old.
She had just moved to Los Angeles. She has basically
no money. She goes into a bank to cash a
check from her mom back in South Africa even at
(09:56):
the time. Now, if we got to check in South Africa,
that's where her a scam. The teller refuses, something about
out of state processing. I guess it's even harder if
it's out of country. She gets frustrated, not screaming, but
she's extremely loud, passionate, animated. She refuses to leave now
(10:17):
since it is California. Standing behind her as a talent
agent named John Crosby watching the meltdown, and he watches
the whole thing. According to the stories that I read,
this is what he saw, presidence, confidence, and command of
the room. I bet he also saw somebody that was attracted.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yes, of course he.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Approaches her and gives her his card, and then that
meeting led to her taking acting classes because he suggested, Hey,
why don't you start learning to act, which then led
to auditions, which led to two days in the Valley,
which led to the Devil's Advocate, then Monster than an Oscar. Wow.
So if she goes to a different bank, if she
doesn't argue, if she's not in the line that day,
(11:00):
if he's not in the line that day, we probably
don't know. Charlie starroon.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Do you think if she went to the bank and
they did process the check, no problem, no argument.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
But that was still hot?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I don't man, eighteen nineteen year old girl probably not
a reson maybe, but I think that probably was part
of it, the scene that was being caused, the attention
drawn to her. Because in La Hot Dudes and Girls
or a Diamond Doze, you're right there everywhere. If you're hot,
you just move out there. It's kind of like here's
(11:33):
your train ticket, you know, right and a half. Here's
a free train ticket to go to Los Angeles. So
there you go. I'll give you one other one. Chris
Pratt before well, what do you think his most famous
movie is Guardians of the Galaxy? Yeah, me too, Jurassic World,
will Shake a Friend? But yeah, yeah. Chris Pratt was
living in a van in Maui. He worked at Bubba
(11:56):
Gump Shrimp Company. Way one day, act director ray Dn
Chong went in. He waited on her. He was funny.
He was not trying to be discovered because he didn't
know who she was. She asks if he's ever acted?
Now again, he was funny with the table, probably hustling
for tips. No, he's never acted. She casts him in
(12:17):
a short film that she's directing. The product. The project
gets some footage, the footage gets some representation. The representation
gets him on the WB Show, Everwood, then Parks and
rec then Marvel. Wow. If he had a different section
that day, if he calls in sick, if he's not
assigned that table, if he's not funny, he's having a
bad day. If he's sick leading up to it, None
(12:38):
of that happens. No, star lord. No, I don't know
who he is in Jurassic World. No Dinosaur Jones.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Maybe where's the hat?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah does a tour. So that's random,
that's so cool, lucky.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Some would say, do you know the Matthemcaughey one I
did not, where his buddy was a bart tender at
a hotel restaurant.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Is this one of those stories? M matter gone. He's
just saying crap because, like his book is, I don't think.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That's all true. It's in the book. It's in the book.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
And he goes to see his buddy at the bar
and he's sitting there and then there's a director next
to him and say he's like, hey, so what are
you in town for. He's like, oh, I'm doing a
movie called Day's Confused. We're shooting here Richard Linkletter or whatever.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I'm a producer.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And he goes, you should stop by the set, you know,
like you have a good look to you. I don't
know there are no rolls or anything that are open,
but you should stop buying and see see what's up.
So he's like, cool, I'll do that, and he goes
and that's the Watersoon roll. They and Richard Linkletter, the
director of Days and Confused, was like, you know what,
I have this character, like we never we weren't really
(13:44):
going to put him in the movie. We just drive
a car and like, just be cool, man, it's a
muscle car, and just be yourself. And then he said
that all right, all right, all right. Wasn't even a line.
He said that, it was just something that he said
while they were pulling up. He's like, all right, all right,
all right, but that was his staple. But that same
producer was like, cool, thank you for doing that.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
That was awesome. Man, If you're ever in La, hit
me up. That was it.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
And he says, like, I didn't know, but he said,
if I'm ever in La, hit me up. He packed
his van, he drove to La and went straight to
that guy's house, knocked on the door and the guy's like,
who are you What are you doing here? He's like,
he told me, man, if I was ever in La, like,
hit you up, I'm here, and he's like, oh great,
all right. He took me up on it. So then
he showed him around and yeah, like he then he
(14:30):
got a couple of roles and the rest is history.
But the fact that Matthew McConaughey had just rolled with everything.
Come to the set, maybe there's a role for you.
Show up cool, come to LA. If you're ever in LA,
hit me up.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
So he just goes.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
He just went with it and it.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Worked a lot of this too, though, is matthe McCaughey
was a really good looking guy.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
He was, Yes, yes, charming.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I don't think if it's me there they offered me
a role in a movie. But yes, a lot of
this stuff is situational. Hang tight.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
The Bobby Cast will be right back, and we're back
on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
And now we're gonna go over and talk to Annie Duke.
She is really one of the smartest voices when it
comes to decision making. And we're going to start with luck,
just like we were talking about here a second ago,
and how to define luck again. I have a big
problem with luck. But you may know Annie from her
books Thinking in Bets. She has a new book called Quit,
which is all about knowing when to walk away from things, jobs, relationships, habits.
(15:38):
She has a fascinating background, from studying cognitive psychology to
being a really successful poker player, even winning a massive
paper rock says as tournament, which she did, and so
if she's helping people and kids make better decisions every day.
Here's my conversation with Annie Duke. Do they call you
doctor Duke?
Speaker 4 (16:00):
I mean, I have a PhD. But like people usually
just call me Annie, I don't. Sometimes I get introduced
as doctor Duke. It's actually like I'm a little legoo.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Well, I didn't want to be disrespectful, and doctor Duke
sounds like a really cool Marvel hero.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
But I'm that's just true, that's true. Maybe I should
go for it. I can be in the movie.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
I'm super excited to talk to you for a lot
of reasons, and I do want to talk about quitting
in a second. But as I was doing vast research
for this, and I had already seen your ted talk
on risk, which I thought was fantastic, and I want
to get to that too. Think I did not know
that you played in a paper rock scissors tournament and
one that's my dan I want dancing with the stars,
(16:41):
that's my version of that. That's the coolest thing.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
That I could possibly talk to you about.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
What was that about, I, Well, there was a tournament.
It was it was like at the World series of
poker they did like a world championship Rock paper scissors
and yeah, I want it. I don't know, that's great,
good fun.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Did you have a plan or were you just up
there winging it.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
There's some people where there's very clear patterns about what
they're going to throw. So if you can notice those,
then you can play against that because there's different probabilities
of different throws, like, for example, in the first throw,
there's different probabilities, so you can kind of play against that.
To tell you the truth, there were a couple of
(17:27):
people where I took out a dollar bill and I
would look at the first number in the serial number,
and if it was like zero, one or two, I
would throw rock, three, four or five, I would throw scissors,
so and so forth. So I basically used the dollar
bill as a random number generator because I felt like
if the other person was better at rock paper scissors
(17:50):
than me, and when I'm playing against people, I'm noticing
some patterns that I could take advantage of. If they
weren't as good, then if I felt like the person
was better than me, it was better for me to
use a random number generator, because then they can't do
what I was doing to other people.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Were you using the skills that you use now to
write your books and speak and just generally do science
in that tournament.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Well, I think that, yeah, I mean I think that
the type of skills that I teach in my classes
and my books, in my research, they really kind of
apply across the board. So, for example, you heard me
say so. In rock paper scissors, there's three things they
can do. There's you know, they can throw rock paper
(18:33):
or scissors. If someone's using a random number generator, each
of those is thirty three and a third. But if
they have a pattern, you're trying to figure out what
the probability of those different of those different throws might
be for that player, sometimes given what they just threw,
for example, sometimes given like they're their own tendencies that
(18:53):
you might notice, and then you're playing accordingly. And that's
like that idea of like, what are the different outcomes
that are available, what's the probability of those things occurring?
Is just like a super core decision skill, it's one
of the most important ones that you can have. Is
kind of approaching the world that way.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
My final question about this, because again I just stumbled
across this is that are you allowed to scout people?
And do you watch every single person play every single round?
Speaker 4 (19:19):
So the way they did it was everybody got paired
and you were all in a line. So I couldn't
scout anybody.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Oh got it because I was.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Playing at the same time as they were. But theoretically,
if it were a different if the way they were
running the tournament was different, I could.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Have Yeah, that's the coolest thing, Okay, But.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Honestly, like rock paper scissors is pretty random, like your
edge is be relatively small. So I also got very lucky,
which is another core decision skill is to recognize the
influence of luck and the things that occur.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
But do you believe in luck generally? Because I'm not
a big luck guy.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Okay, I'm going to try to sway you.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Please. Can I tell you why first and you can
then you can poke holes in everything that I say.
I'm I'm not a big luck guy because I think
situations happen because of situations that we put ourselves in.
Meaning if I walk into a gas station and I
buy a scratch off, which I do and I've never hit,
but I walk in and I picked the random one
(20:18):
and I win, I won. Well, look how lucky I am. However,
I made the decision to go to that gas station
and put myself in a situation that allowed that quote
unquote luck to happen, So it would never be pure luck.
I mean that is often how I would defend me
saying I don't believe in pure luck? Can you poke
holes in that?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
So I think that I can't the short answers I got,
So let's start with how we can do that. What
you actually described is actually a perfect description of what
I think about and what I write about in decision
making is the intersection of luck and skill. So when
(20:58):
we think about why anything occurs, it's going to occur
because of two things. Only thing number one. What you're
pointing out is the quality of the decision that you make. Right,
so you could make a poor decision, you could make
a good decision. I would argue playing the lotteries on
average of poor decisions because depending on why you're doing it,
(21:19):
But if you're trying to make money, it would be
a poor decision. But it depends on what your goals are.
But so you have the quality of the decision that
you make, which, as you just very succinctly put like
you put it very well, determines what the outcomes are
that are available to you. So if I never go
(21:39):
and play the lottery, winning the lottery isn't an available outcome.
If I do go to the store and I purchase
the ticket and I fill it out properly, and let's
hope that I don't lose it, right, those are all
decisions that are being made, and that then creates a
future which where one of the outcomes that could occur
(22:00):
or is winning the lottery.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Can I meet that?
Speaker 4 (22:03):
If I don't do that, it can't happen right now.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
And I completely understand and I agree with you in
that point. I would again, let's just say we were
having this little debate and we were getting points as
we went along. I would meet that with I don't
believe in pure luck because then you're assigning luck being
positive to that outcome. But who knows if I then
win that money, and what I do, I'm so excited.
(22:27):
I get in my car, I'm like, wow, I can't
want boom, and I get hit because I'm not paying
attention because my excitement has been driven me.
Speaker 6 (22:34):
So so yeah, So let me get to the second piece,
So you have the quality of your decisions right, that
determines the outcomes that are available to So any decision
that you make is going to have a set of
outcomes that are available to.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
Different things that could happen. You could if you're not
paying attention, for example, you could get in an accident.
But you could also not get in an accident. Both
of those things are true. You could get in an
accident that's varying degree of bad. Right, Someone could just
like nick your car. Someone could t bone you. You
could end up with whiplash, you could end up in
(23:09):
the hospital, you could end up dead, right Like, there's
a whole variety of things that are associated with you're
not paying attention in the car. Each of those things
is going to occur some of the time, but not
all of the time. What outcome you actually observe is
determined by luck. So let me sort of take it back, right,
(23:30):
If I flip a coin. When the coin leaves my hand,
there are two outcomes that could occur, heads or tails.
I have flipped the coin, right, So the fact that
I flipped a two sided fair coin has sort of
set those two outcomes in place. Heads or tails. We
happen to know that if it's a fair coin, heads
(23:52):
is going to land fifty percent of the time, Tails
is going to land fifty percent of the time. Which
thing lands is determined by luck. When you leave having
won the lottery and you're so excited and you're distracted,
there's a whole bunch of different things that could occur.
Right in the same way, if you run a red light,
there's a bunch of things that could occur. The most
(24:13):
common thing that happens when you run a red light
is nothing right, like mostly not You're fine, right, But
we know that if you run a red light as
opposed to a green light, that you're increasing the chances
that something very bad happens to you. But it's not
going to occur one hundred percent of the time. It's
going to occur some percent of the time, let's say
(24:34):
fifteen percent of the time. Something bad's going to happen
to you. When that fifteen percent happens, you don't control.
But what you did do was by running a red light,
you made there be a fifteen percent chance something bad happens,
where if you go through a green light, it's less
than one percent of the time. Something bad's going to
happen to you. So I think that the quibble that
(24:55):
we're having is about this idea of pure luck. Is
there anything that is to determined by pure luck? There
are few things that are determined by pure luck, but
not a ton that are going to occur in your life.
Mostly it's you make decisions. There are different futures that
could occur because of the decisions that you've made, and
(25:18):
which future you actually observe is determined by luck.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
What if you're like me and you think that until
your life is over, you truly can't define what was lucky,
you're unlucky because of the different outcomes that can come
from the luck or unluck.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So I think that that's so luck is used in
different ways, right, And so I actually agree with you
about that if we're using luck as something good or bad, right,
so we can think about what I'm talking about, is
luck is a neutral thing?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Right?
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Like, twenty percent of the time I'm going to get
you know, I'm going to be distracted and nothing bad
is going to happen to me. Fifteen percent of the time,
maybe someone nicks me, like just nix my car, you know,
you know, ten percent of the time I hit the
person in front of me and get whiplash. Right, Like,
(26:14):
we can think about what those are, and luck is
determining which of those things. You see, that's neither good
nor bad. That's just a force that acts upon us. Right.
What you're talking about is can we make a judgment
when we actually observe the outcome about whether it's a
good outcome or a bad outcome? That's a wholly different
(26:35):
I mean sorry, let me say that again. Can we
make a judgment at the time that the thing occurs
about whether it's good luck or bad luck?
Speaker 5 (26:43):
Right?
Speaker 4 (26:43):
Can we do that? And I think you're right. The
answer is I think we're pretty bad judges of that.
We have the instinct to do that. Right as soon
as something happens, we're like, ah, that was such good
luck or oh that was such bad luck. But I
think that we don't actually know until long after the fact.
Simple example, Right, we know about people who win the
lottery all the time, they're like dreaming of this. You know,
(27:06):
it's a rare thing that's going to happen. So it's
a rare thing and people think of it as a
good thing. And when you have a combination of something
that's rare and something that people sort of consider as
like universal good. Right, then when they win the lottery,
they think, oh, I got so lucky in a good sense, right,
I got good luck. But we know that a lot
(27:26):
of people's lives get ruined when they win the lottery,
but they don't find that out until a lot later, right,
And then they maybe they look back and they go, oh,
I wish I'd never won the lottery because they realize
that that judgment they made about whether the luck was
good or bad, that they couldn't actually make that until
their life unfolded. So that's something that I think about
(27:47):
a lot in my own life. So when I was
just out of college, I went to graduate school and
I was getting my PhD, and I was there for
five years. I'd done all my PhD work. I was
going out on the job mark it, and I've been
really struggling with a stomach issue that was like autoimmune related.
(28:08):
It didn't know that at the time, but I got
actually really sick and I ended up in the hospital
for two weeks. And when I got really sick was
right when I was supposed to be going out and
like doing my job interviews and getting my you know,
starting on my academic path to become a tenured professor.
Like that was what I thought my life was going
to be. So now I land in the hospital for
(28:29):
a couple of weeks. I have a very long recuperation,
lost you know, twenty five pounds because I couldn't keep
any food down, Like it was bad. And I thought
at the time, like, this is such bad luck, Like
this has really derailed my life. I'm experiencing very bad luck,
and I was very sad about it. Then you know,
(28:52):
now I have to take time off from graduate school
and I have to delay going out on the job market.
And during that time was when I started playing poker,
and poker was pretty good to me. And I would
actually argue that had I not done what I did
in poker, I wouldn't have the platform to talk about
this thing that I'm so passionate about, which is like,
(29:13):
how do we become better decision makers?
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Right?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
And this amazing conversation I'm having with you about luck,
which is so fun, And I wouldn't be able to
do that had I not gotten sick in the first place.
So I now look back at that and say, WHOA.
That was kind of a rush to judgment at the time, right,
I really thought that I was experiencing bad luck. But
it turns out that was actually kind of good luck
because where my life ended up, I think, you know,
(29:37):
on average, it ended up in a better place because
that thing happened to me. And so I think that
what you said is actually like incredibly insightful. Is that
we ought to be pretty neutral about luck like luck
is occurring. But that rush to judgment about is that
good luck or bad luck, I think is misguided. And
(29:58):
not only is it misguid and you know ought and
we wait to actually sort of take a look back
and make the judgment about whether it was good or bad,
as you said, But when we judge it so quickly,
I think that it can distort decisions that we're making
going forward, particularly on the bad luck side, right, because
(30:19):
when we experience that bad luck, we get emotional. It's
very difficult for it actually reduces the quality of our
decisions going forward if we really live in the idea
that the world has happened to us in a bad way. Right,
And I think being able to just take a step
back and say luck is luck like this it just is,
and that's okay. And my job is to kind of
(30:42):
lean into that and focus on the thing that you
rightly said, I do have control over, which is the
decisions I'm making, you know, and understand that luck is
just kind of part of the equation.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah, I think my marriage to the definition is different
than what you were describing. So I actually think mine
comes from very similar to what you said, is that
I grew up poverty kid, mom of a drug addict
who died. I didn't know my dad. I felt I
had a very unlucky life. I really felt like that
(31:16):
way for a long time, resented it even that I
had such an unlucky run. However, had I not had that,
I would not have built the skill set that I
have now to one have the life that I have
to be able to affect so many people in so
many different ways. Like without that, we'll say bad luck,
I wouldn't have had all the good fortune or good
(31:38):
luck that I've had now. So I think my relationship
with the definition is until it runs its course, it
really can't be defined. But that was not at all
what you were saying at the very beginning. We're just
talking about two different things.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
We're talking about that you can divide it into two things, right,
luck as a force and then our view of whether
that luck is good or those are two really different things. Right.
So it's kind of like gravity, right, That's how I
think about luck. Gravity just is it exists, right, Like
(32:12):
you drop something off a building, it falls because of gravity.
It's why we don't go flying off the earth, right,
Like it holds us down. So it's just kind of
this force that exists that's sort of definitionally, how luck
sort of enters into the equation. How we cognitively put
(32:33):
this good or bad label on luck is a totally
different thing. And I think that just as you're saying,
like that's something that we really can't do until you
have the passage of time. You know, one thing I
think about and it's kind of like in what you said,
which I think can get people to understand the influence
(32:53):
of luck is at the moment of our birth. There's
just it's just luck, right, Like who are we born to?
What country are we born to? What year are we
born in? Are we tall? Are we short? Are we fast?
Are we slow? Like? All of these things that literally
(33:15):
you have no control over, right, that just is you
were born into the family work. Did you have any
control over that? No, of course not right. I was
born into the family I was. Did I have any
control over that?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
No?
Speaker 4 (33:30):
Right, And very similarly to you, like tough childhood, very
deeply alcoholic mom, very rough household to grow up in.
But you know, I think I developed a lot of
resilience from that that served me well at the time.
I was sad, right, But I think that there were
a lot of things that again created like resilience, resilience
(33:54):
for me, like this sort of bounciness, this ability to
sort of be like it's okay, like I'm going to
move forward, that came from that. But think about if
I had been born in sixteen hundred, right, So when
we think about like I'm born in the late twentieth century,
I'm a woman, I'm born in the late twentieth century,
what are the outcomes that were available to me? Versus
(34:17):
if I were born as a woman in the sixteen hundreds, right,
where I would have been property, I in fact just
missed the generation where it was mostly like secretary wife
that was available, you know, that was mainly available to
you as outcomes, Right, So that moment that you're born
(34:38):
actually sets into place what the distributions of outcomes are
that are available to And then here's the thing, you
get to make decisions that can affect where you land
in that distribution, because you can think about somebody else
who's born into the circumstances you were, you know, doesn't
end up in the situation you are today. Some of
(35:01):
that has to do with luck that happens along the way,
like right place, right time, Like who knows if you
have been born before podcasts right, like you know, who knows?
Right Like, we don't know, But like you, you found opportunities,
you made something of them. But there's other people that
are born into those circumstances that don't get themselves out
of it. Some of them make pretty good decisions, some
(35:23):
of them don't. But the fact is that because of
the circumstances that you were born into where you ended up,
it is actually a much lower probability outcome that someone
who's born into upper middle class, upper class, stable family
goes to the best high school, goes to the best college,
(35:47):
you know, so on so forth, Right, Like, the outcomes
that are available to that person compared to you are
very different. Particularly in the probability that they're going to occur.
And that's because of this thing that literally at the
beginning of your life, have you had no control over that?
Speaker 5 (36:05):
Hank Ty, the Bobby Cast will be right back. Welcome
back to the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
So no inherent value good or bad in luck?
Speaker 4 (36:29):
Right, Yeah, so it just is right.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
And I think where I would take that as if
what if you were born fifty years from now and
women were the rulers of civilization, what was good luck
is now bad luck? So it's neither because they can
always be good or bad in comparison. So luck has
no value. It just exists.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
It's like gravity. It's gravity good, it is gravity bad.
I don't like it just is. It's just it's just
part of the equation, right, And I think that we
do better when we don't judge it as good or bad.
I think we just do a lot better as decision
makers when we say it's there. I should take that
into account, Like, as I'm thinking about the decisions, I
(37:10):
don't want to, you know, one of the things that
happens to us and one of the you know that
really degrades our decision quality, Like it makes us make
worse decisions. Is that we actually discount how much luck
is in the equation. In other words, we think we
have a lot more control over outcomes than we actually do.
(37:32):
It's called the illusion of control as a matter of fact.
So I think that the more that we can basically
approach life in this way, the decisions that I make,
the quality of the decisions that I make, are going
to change my possibilities. They're going to change the things
that are possible for me in a couple of ways.
(37:55):
One is, it might create outcomes that wouldn't otherwise be possible. Right,
So that would be like winning the lottery versus not.
If I don't play, that's not even a possible world,
right So okay, So it changes the possibilities. But then
it can also change the chances of those possibilities happening,
(38:19):
the chances that I'm going to actually have that thing happen.
And I think that when you approach life that way,
it actually gives you a much greater sense of agency,
right that. Okay, Yeah, Like the world happens, and there's
a whole bunch of stuff that I can't control, but
there's this thing that I really can control, which is
(38:40):
if I make better decisions than on average, I'm going
to have better possibilities that are available to me, and
those possibilities are going to be more likely than they
otherwise would have. And over time, that's just going to
increase the chances that I live a better life than
I otherwise would have. And I think that's actually like
a really hopeful message.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Yeah, I think so too. And I think you know,
when we look at these two words luck and quit luck,
most people go good positive good positive, because that's you know,
maybe they're they're micro association with it. Quit negative negative negative. However,
you've challenged that as well, and so why did you
start researching quitting?
Speaker 4 (39:23):
So I only write books where something has made me
very mad, And the reason is that writing a book
is torture. It's just like it's a lot, you know,
writing a book is like, first of all, it's hard,
you know, it's just it's a lot of work. And
for me, at least, you know, it's a lot of
(39:45):
anxiety about like whether I'm being clear, whether people are
going to get what I'm trying to say, whether the
message that I'm writing about that it's so incredibly important
to me is something that other people are going to
care about that's hard. And then when the book, you know,
when the book actually goes out into the world, it's
(40:06):
like you have just literally opened yourself up to criticism, right,
and you know that being a public figure, right, Like,
you know, that's where it's like, Okay, now everybody sees
my work. Right. So there's a lot of things that
are just like really hard about writing a book. So
I won't write a book unless there's something that's just
digging at me. And what was digging at me in
(40:30):
the case of quitting is that Angela Duckworth has written
this wonderful book, wonderful book called Grit, and everybody loves it.
And as I was watching the discourse around Grit, what
I realized is that people were kind of, like, what
I felt like, missing the point of what she was saying.
(40:56):
What she says in that book Grit is even if
things are hard, if they're worthwhile, it's a good quality
to stick to them. Simple message, right, just because it's
hard doesn't mean that you should stop. Being Gritty means
sticking to hard things when those things are worthwhile. How
(41:17):
would we define worthwhile? Well? Worthwhile might be different for
you than me because we have different goals. But let's
broadly say worthwhile means that I am doing something that
is going to help me to advance toward my goals.
It's going to help me achieve my goals in alignment
with my values. That let's define worthwhile that way. Okay,
(41:39):
So I think that's an amazing message, because I think
that's great and it's true. The problem is that as
I saw the discourse around grit, it was just sticking
to things is good, full stop, period. That's a good
quality to have, sticking to things. And I just looked
at that and I said, well, that's completely absurd. And
(42:02):
the reason why it's completely absurd is because if something
isn't worthwhile, it's not a good thing to stick to it. Now,
that wouldn't be a problem if our bias was to
stop doing things. If our bias was as soon as
something got hard, we were going to stop doing it. Then, Okay,
maybe it's not a big deal because we're actually quitting
(42:24):
too much, right, But it's not true for adults. For
a little kid, like for a six year old, it's true, right,
like you got to encourage a six year old to
stick to things, even when they have a bad day
on the soccer bitch, right, but someone twenty five years
or older. The science is really really clear that we
stick to things too much, actually, that we're naturally way
(42:45):
too gritty, and that we don't quit enough. And you
can see that in the way that people talk about quitting, right,
just as you just said, it's just negative, right, It's
like quitting, quitting is for losers, man, Like, if you
quit something, you failed. You know, quitters never win. Winners
(43:05):
never quit, right like. And I you know, I just
looked at that, and I was like, everybody thinks that
quitting is failing, that it's such a bad thing. But
first of all, it's not failing if the thing you're
doing isn't worthwhile, because then you get to stop doing
something that's not worthwhile and you get to go and
(43:27):
do something else that is worthwhile, right Like, So that's
a double win. Right, So that's clearly true. So how
could it possibly be a failure to quit something that's
not worthwhile? Right Like? That has to be a good thing,
But everybody thinks that's a bad thing. And I just
(43:49):
I just was like, I just got to rehabilitate this
world word because It's such an incredibly important skill when
you're living in a world where there's luck, because sometimes
you make a great decision, the world doesn't go your way.
Should just stick to it, no, So like when you're
(44:13):
making decisions where their luck can influence the outcome, and
you know, like you're not omniscient, right, you know so
little in comparison to all there is to be known
in the whole universe. That what that means is that
when we start things kind of definitionally speaking, like after
(44:33):
we start them, we're going to learn new things, and
sometimes those new things are going to make us say, ah,
I wish I had known that when I made the
decision in the first place. I wish I knew then
what I know now, because I would have done something else.
And under those circumstances, then you should do something else.
(44:54):
You should quit, right, But we over index on grit
and we don't quit because we think that we failed
if we do. So that's why I was just like
so passionate about this idea that people like, mostly you
should be quitting, you should actually be sticking to very
few things, And I wanted people to start quitting more
and feeling better about it. And feeling like it was
a success to do that.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I feel like talking with you and I think a
couple of things that you've said have led me to
this that you feel like as long as you're playing
the odds, regardless of what happens, continue to play the odds.
Would that be an accurate assessment?
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Yeah, I mean, I mean you have to take you
don't have to take some risk into account there. But
let's set risk aside for a second. Life is let's
you know, I'm a poker player. Life is a game.
Let's act like we're playing poker, where you're trying to
(45:52):
make decisions that, on average open up better possibilities for
you and make those better possibility is more likely to happen.
And if you keep doing that over and over again,
what that means is that you're making decisions that have
a higher chance, this is where the odds come in,
(46:13):
have a higher chance of getting you to achieve the
things that you want to achieve, getting you to achieve
your goals, whatever those goals might be, right, it's going
to help you do that. And the better decisions you make,
the more likely that you'll achieve the things that you
want to achieve. Compared to another version of you who
(46:35):
made worse decisions. So that's all we're trying to do, right,
So it is a game of odds, right, We're trying
to increase the likelihood that good things happen to us.
That's a thing that we're trying to do, and we
do that through great decision making. So you just have
to keep saying, I just I just have to focus
(46:58):
on my decisions. I've got to make sure or that
my decisions are really good, because that's the thing that's
going to make you have a better life.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
So focus more on your decisions than the outcome, generally.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Speaking, well, for sure, for sure, for sure. So there's
a problem called resulting, which is we get very very
outcome focused. And not only do we get really outcome focused,
but just sort of like the luck thing, we put
a judgment on whether an outcome is good or bad,
and then we decide whether a decision is good or
(47:31):
bad based on that, And that's actually really bad to do.
In a situation where we actually already know that a
decision is good or bad, we can see this mistake
pretty easily. So, Bobby, if you go through a green
light and you get in an accident. Are you like, damn,
that decision to go through a green light was terrible.
I'm never going to do that again. I'm not right.
(47:52):
And if you go through a red light and you
happen to get through safely or you like, great decision,
I'm a great red light driver, I'm going to do that. No.
And the reason that you're not doing that in that
situation is because it's kind of settled, right, It's like,
we know green light good, red light bad, So we're
not going to make this air. But like, in the
(48:13):
simplest sense, I know a lot of people and I'm
sure you do, where they're like obsessing over a menu
at a restaurant and they're trying to decide what to order. Remember, like,
they haven't been at the restaurant before last time I
checked their non omniscient and they don't have a DA machine,
so they can't travel forward in time and see what
that dish is like before they order it. So this
(48:37):
is a good example where you're just trying to think,
like what are the things I like and increase the
probability that you have a yummy meal. Right. So what
happens though, when you order the chicken and it's dry,
and it's not very good, and maybe you don't even
finish it. Right, what's the first thing that everybody thinks, Ah,
(49:00):
I should have short ordered something else and made a mistake.
That's a very good example of what we call resulting. Right, Well,
how you should have ordered something else, Like, you've never
been in that restaurant, you haven't tasted that food before it,
and you don't have a dime machine, so you were
making your best gass. It's not a mistake that you
ordered the chicken. That was your best decision given the
information that you had at the time. Right, it's kind
(49:21):
of hard for people to wrap their heads around it.
Speaker 5 (49:24):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby cast.
Speaker 1 (49:40):
The last thing that I want to touch on, and
I really appreciate the time I wrote in one of
my books the whole thing about it's better to make
a decision and get it wrong than to make no
decision at all, because a lot of my friends get
paralyzed by decision making because they don't want that. They
don't want to make the wrong decision because that will
set them back, to which I would argue it's better
to be set back quick and learn why you're being
(50:01):
set back so you can set forward, then to always
sit there and be paralyzed in the fear of making
the wrong decision. So make the wrong decision better than
make no decision at all. Do you subscribe to that?
Speaker 4 (50:13):
Okay? Like so completely all right, So this is a
super fun topic. It actually relates to quitting. So let
me start at the basics, right, what's happening is that? Okay,
So let's imagine that this friend of yours is in
a job that they hate and they have to make
(50:33):
a decision like should they quit their job and go
to a new job? I bet this is probably a
conversation that you have a lot and they say, oh, like,
I don't want to do that because what if I
take this new job and I hate that and what
if I make a mistake and what if it turns
out really badly? Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 2 (50:47):
It does?
Speaker 4 (50:48):
Yeah, Okay, here's the deal. Staying in the job you're
in is a decision. That's the thing that people miss.
So you described it as they'd rather make no decision
at all, right, than a decision that might work out badly.
But making no decision at all doesn't exist, Like it's
(51:09):
grammatical as a sentence of English, but it doesn't make
any sense because making quote unquote no decision at all
is allowing the status quote to continue whatever you're doing. Right, Like,
I'm in a relationship, I don't want to make a
decision about whether to leave it. Well, that's a decision.
I'm choosing to stay in it. I'm in a job
I hate it, but I don't want to quit because
(51:30):
what if I take a new job and I don't
like that either? Okay, then I'm making a decision to
stay in the job that I'm in. So let's just
start there. It's a decision either way, right, So like
if you can reframe it that way and say which
is better, right, like a choice to stay where you
are or a choice, because they're both choices. That's number one. Now.
(51:55):
Part of the problem is that there's this phenomenon which
is really interesting. It's called loss of version and it
was identified by Daniel Kaneman and Amos Tversky and Daniel
Kahneman is a Nobel laureate. He wrote a very very
famous book called Thinking Fast and Slow, very very very popular,
(52:15):
Super super Smart Guy Nobel Laureate in economics identified this
thing called loss of vision and loss of version is
basically the phenomenon that when we experience what we would
what we would think of in the moment as a
bad outcome. But I'm going to say in the moment,
because we've had this discussion, right, when we experience what
(52:36):
we think is a bad outcome, it feels a lot
worse to us than a sort of symmetrically good outcome. So,
like we think about this way, like if you lose
fifty dollars in blackjack, it feels about as bad to
you as winning one hundred dollars feels good. So there's
this like asymmetry. Losses feel really bad to us. So
(52:57):
when we're making decisions, we actually sort of over index
on the chances of a bad outcome, right, So we're
not thinking the same way about good outcomes versus bad
outcomes in the way that I'm talking about, right, Like, well,
on average, is it going to be good or bad?
And so maybe when you're thinking about the past, you're like, ah, wait,
(53:17):
but what if it gets intercepted and that instead of
thinking about overall, does this help me win? Right? Okay,
So that's loss of version. It turns out that this
like cognitive phenomenon that you just identified, it's actually really
really like deep. It's a it's like such a deep
concept once you actually think about it. This idea of
(53:39):
I don't want to make a decision because what if
the decision I make is turns out badly. That when
we stick with the status quo, we don't think about
it as a decision. So what that means is that
we're not loss of verse in the same way, we're
not as worried about bad things happening from the status quo.
(54:01):
We don't feel like it's our fault. So when I
stay in that job that stinks, or I stay in
that relationship that stinks, it doesn't feel as bad to me.
Then if I switched to something new and that stinks,
because I only worry about the bad outcome, the outcome
(54:21):
I'm not going to like, I worry about it so
much more on the switch. So what that does is
it gets us to stick to things that are bad
for us. And I remember, I had a conversation with
someone that I thought was so interesting. There's a woman
who was like stuck in a job that she really
hated and I really hate it. I mean for years,
really hated it. And I was having a conversation with her.
(54:44):
She actually reached out to me because she had heard
me on a podcast talking about quitting and she wanted
to talk about it with me. And she said she
had a new job offer and she just was like
she didn't know whether she should take it or not.
And so I said, well, well, you tell me about
the job that you're in. And it was like, it's horrible.
I hate it. It's ruining my relationship with my children.
(55:06):
I have to work twenty four to seven. My phone's
always going off, like they're always like Mommy, why aren't
you paying attention to me? I'm totally miserable. Now you
can imagine. At that point, I was like, hold on
a second, like what's going on? Why aren't you quitting?
And she said to me the thing that your friends say,
what if I take the new job? And I hate that. Ah. Oh,
(55:27):
it's this loss of version problem, right, So I said
to her, okay, again, thinking about playing the odds, I said,
all right, I want you to imagine that you stay
in the job that you're in. It's a year from now.
What are the chances you're happy, and very quickly she
(55:48):
said zero percent. I said why. She goes, well, I've
been happy for unhappy for a really long time. I
don't think at this point anything's going to change. I said, oh, okay,
zero percent. So let's imagine you take the new job.
I understand it might not work out, but it's a
year from now. What do you think the chances are
that you're happy in that role? She said, well, I
(56:10):
don't know, like I'm not in it yet, but I
would say fifty to fifty. And I literally just said
it's fifty percent greater than zero. And it was like
this moment, right, it was like she got it, released
her from the clutches of this I don't want to
make a decision what if that new thing doesn't work out?
(56:31):
Because she it was just like this total it was
like a revelation and she quit. The next day she
was like, oh, oh, I get it right. So I
think that this is like really important conceptually to understand,
like there is no such thing as not making a decision,
(56:52):
because you're making a decision to stick with the thing
that's already happening. So once you recognize that, I think
you can start thinking about it differently separately, And I
would recommend this for your friends. A lot of times
when we go to make a decision, we kind of
make it the biggest version of the decision. And we
(57:12):
do that in two ways. One is we're like, we
just we're moved to a new city, and we just
thought we're going to buy a house instead of rent. Right, Like,
buying a house is a lot more consequential than renting.
So that makes like the bad outcome kind of bigger,
like the possible bad outcome kind of bigger, because we
(57:33):
sort of committed to something much bigger. Right That's one thing.
The other thing is we imagine when we go into
the decision that we can't stop it, right, Like we
think about that is I'm going to choose this thing,
and I'm good, I have to just do this for
the rest of my life, which also really increases the stakes.
So what I always recommend, and this was your point,
like do something small and find out fast, is do
(57:57):
things that lower the impact of getting a bad outcome
and that you can stop doing really easily. So if
I rent, it's a lot easier for me to get
out of a rental than if I buy a house.
Dating is way easier for me to get out of
than marrying. Right, So you can think about, like, let
me do some small things that can help me to
(58:18):
get information and increase my confidence about the bigger thing
that I might end up doing. So instead of thinking
about the big thing, do small things really fast and
figure out like do they work? Do they not work?
Like does it feel good to me? Does it feel
like this is making me happy? Am I getting good
outcomes or bad outcomes from it? And like rep that, Like,
(58:41):
do try to be more of a dater in your
life because that releases you from that fear of making decisions.
Speaker 1 (58:49):
The book we reference was Quit the Power of Knowing
when to walk away. And you have a substack that
I want to send everybody to. You can go to
Annie's website Antie Duke dot com and subscribe to a substack.
This is so fun for me. I hope this wasn't
a waste of your time.
Speaker 2 (59:03):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (59:03):
You no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (59:05):
Yeah, I really appreciate the time. And yeah, I love
to see you when you're speaking. I'm really uh, you know,
I subscribe to a lot of the things that you
say and you're write about, So thank you for the time. Annie.
Speaker 4 (59:16):
Well, I appreciate that you're you're a very good intuitive psychologist,
That's what I would say, because like you you you
actually you actually think a lot of the things that
that I already write about, and I think that that's
it's amazing. Like the way that you were putting those
in this kind of intuitive way. It was so helpful
and so fun for me in terms of the conversation.
(59:38):
So I just really want to say I appreciated that
so much about you and the conversation was super fun
for me. Thanks, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (59:46):
Or thanks doctor Duke. I should say thank you doctor Duke,
and hopefully I'll see you sometime soon. Thank you very much.
Speaker 5 (59:51):
This has been a Bobby Cast production.
Host
Bobby Bones
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