Choose One Word With Jason Fox

Dr.: The Daily Talk Show.

Tommy: It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 563, and it's New Year's Eve when you're listening to this.

Josh: Yes, uh, happy New Year's Eve.

Tommy: Yeah, I mean, it doesn't have the same buzz to New Year's Eve like it did when I was 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, actually all just all the times that I was drinking.

Josh: Well, uh, yeah, uh, tonight New Year's Eve is Evening, I'm going to be on the margaritas.

Tommy: Mate, you go hard, please.

Josh: I will.

Mason: I'll be on them as well, actually.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. Baby's gonna drink.

Tommy: Yeah. Good boy. All right, well, let's bring on our guest for this New Year's Eve show.

Josh: It's, uh, the very magical Dr. Jason Wizard Fox.

Tommy: Come on.

Dr.: Yes, this is the greatest, the greatest guest reveal we've ever had in our—

Josh: the only guest reveal.

Dr.: How was that?

Tommy: Can you breathe? Oh, good.

Dr.: Yes, I was just in another realm, but I heard the call, so here I am.

Tommy: How are you, Jason?

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, good, good.

Tommy: Yeah, can you— oh, you can put your hat back on if you're listening to this. Jason has just appeared. He's got a wizard hat on and it looks perfect on top of your headphones.

Josh: Oh, good, good, good. What's your relationship with wizardry? When did this all start?

Dr.: Oh, well, that's a good question because people aren't born wizards necessarily. That would be a sorcerer, right? As TJ knows, yeah.

Josh: Why does TJ know?

Tommy: 'Cause you watch.

Dr.: Oh, you just say I had a knowing look about him. Confused, Jason. A wizard/mage is someone who dedicates their life to studying the mysteries of the cosmos and try to unearth the kind of the underlying fractals, the magic that lies betwixt and between all of the complexities of life. And so that's, you know, that's why technically I'm an arch wizard, which is one who's mastered all the schools of magic.

Tommy: Except I mean, you've got the headphones on too, so it's hard.

Dr.: But yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's wizardry.

Tommy: I got into a deep conversation. Well, I was just listening to somebody who'd researched it quite a bit. He'd listened to a bunch of podcasts and he knew a lot about wizardry, on witchcraft.

Josh: Okay, sure.

Tommy: Which I was like, fuck, is this, this is a thing? Like people are actually practising witchcraft, wizardry, witchcraft. Any correlation and did it ever exist? Were wizards like a thing many, many, like in the 6th, in the before the thousands?

Dr.: Okay, cool. This is a great question because if you, if we go really back, the tribes would have different shamans and shamans would have rituals that would connect folks to different types of meaning. And if we look at the power of placebo effect, it's 30 to 50% sometimes. It's quite powerful that the the how belief can be channelled to good effect, and so how people can be healed, and then make the association, oh wow, it was the shaman's magic. And so from that notion, you can then have a lot of different stems. Like, there's— yeah, there's witches, there's druids, there's wizards, there's, um, you know, priests and shamans and all these other types of magic users. Uh, from my perspective and the perspective of Wizard, uh, it's kind of, um Magic is— there's different ways to think of magic, right? So what we're doing right here could be a type of magic. It exists at an order of complexity that I can't even begin to describe without, you know, taking heaps of time. The fact that folks are watching us, listening to us, uh, right now across the other side of the planet, it's like magic. So magic becomes a placeholder for something that is of an order of complexity too, too beyond our ability to succinctly explain. And then there's a kind of magical thinking where people believe that their thoughts and feelings and emotions can directly influence the wider And that's where things get a little bit more fuzzy. And I think that, you know, a pinch of scepticism and rationalism is useful in that regard, but not to the point where it blinds you, but just as a thread to hold on to so you don't get lost in that world.

Josh: You work with a bunch of corporates. Are you rocking up to like Boopa to do a presentation with a wizard hat?

Dr.: This is great. So have you guys heard of idiosyncrasy credit?

Tommy: No, no.

Dr.: Okay, um, so there's a, there's a study that says that, um, the more you play by convention, the more you can get away with, uh, idiosyncrasies. Um, and so therefore, the fact that, you know, I've got a PhD, written a few books, have lots of clients and stuff like that, allows me to kind of rock up and be in a different mode a little bit and kind of get away with it.

Josh: Whereas if I had, uh, if you ask if I rocked up with the wizard hat—

Dr.: Too many reds last night, mate. What's happened? So, so yeah, you don't want to push it too far. But, um, but, uh, in terms of archetypes to show up in at an event— and an event is like an orchestrated ritual, an experience— um, showing up as some sort of gentleman explorer, pirate, wizard, or whatever does evoke different, uh, feeling tones and different ways that people relate to, uh, what's, what's emerging. I'm finding my, my hat is just precariously balanced right now, so I'm just—

Josh: there's a lot of course. Why don't you, um, put it over your, the headphones over.

Dr.: I think that could work.

Josh: Okay, so we're just doing a quiz. There we go. Now, try now, because it almost adds as a bit of a holder.

Dr.: Oh yeah.

Josh: And so then if you just put the headphones over the top, I reckon over, like, you can put it on there.

Dr.: Crunch it down.

Josh: Yeah, crunch it.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Dr.: Oh yeah, better.

Josh: Yeah, real good. DJ Wizard. Do your New Year's Eve party.

Dr.: I could imagine that being quite a thing.

Josh: Dungeons and Dragons. I never played Dungeons Dragons ever in my life. I feel like potentially I could be a candidate for this.

Dr.: Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. So Dungeons Dragons, this is life. This is impro, right? Dungeons Dragons, you have someone who's the dungeon master who sits behind a screen and rolls dice to determine the outcome of things. And then you have different players in a group kind of just playing with what emerges with reality. And the beautiful thing about Dungeons Dragons is it's an infinite game. It's not played for the purpose of winning. Played for the purpose of continuing the play. And there's a kind of a mirrored reality to life itself, because in life you don't ever win at life. You might win in some of the minor games of life, but you know, you don't play life to win or to kind of beat everyone. You play it to kind of continue the play. And so Dungeons Dragons is a really, really fun reflection of, of the richer complexity of, of real world life, uh, that if you have a good mix of folks that, um, you know, that you can have some fun with in random situations. You know, you guys should get a dungeon master on someday.

Tommy: Well, we had, um, your mate Michael Bungay Stanier.

Dr.: Oh yes.

Tommy: And he said that he was going to be with his family and he tried it a year, a year ago and he's like, it could have gone either way, but I introduced the kids to Dungeons and Dragons. And so he was saying he was going to go play a heap of it up there because they love it. I still didn't at that point understand what he was talking about. I thought it was a board game or something like, what is it?

Josh: And also the infinite game, like when do you go home? If it's the infinite game, like how do you?

Dr.: There are kind of narrative arcs that can come to a certain conclusion. So it's, imagine it's mostly adults that play this and there's a bit of resurgence now because of Stranger Things and other popular shows that are making D&D cool again, just like nerds are cool again somehow. Well, I just like to tell myself. But yeah, you just sit around, you talk and you have one person that's creating these challenging scenarios scenarios that are threaded into a narrative, and people are playing with the meaning-making of like, what would happen if this and that, and, you know, the living—

Tommy: it's like storytelling, improv storytelling.

Dr.: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Imagine, imagine you guys— imagine there was someone here providing the provocations and the scenarios and stuff like that, and enough of the subtext and the tension with certain characters that are appearing as non-player characters, and seeing how the dynamics are different players interact. And then there's also impossibly secret motives of different players that they live out and act out in terms of how their characters work.

Tommy: How much more fun is it when you drink red wine and do it?

Dr.: Yeah, there's a— yeah, there's like a balance though, right? Because you don't want to get too— you don't want to get too reflective with this stuff. And I, um, yeah, yeah, there's, there's this notion that's just emerging at the moment. Have you guys heard of LARPing? No.

Mason: Wow.

Tommy: Can we get in? LARPing, laughing, harping on while laughing.

Dr.: I don't know, I don't know. LARPing, it's live action role play.

Josh: Okay, okay, right.

Dr.: So this is my life, I'm LARPing all the time. And so the notion of LARPing reality has become a thing where people are talking like—

Josh: Podcasting, isn't it?

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, you guys are in costume, you're showing up, you're doing the thing.

Tommy: This is just some merch, Jason.

Josh: LARPing, so how do we integrate like And so the Dungeons and Dragons thing, could we do it as a podcast? Would it be interesting, like, if we were to do once a month a Dungeons and Dragons episode with the Grom Squad?

Tommy: Let me look it up if it actually is a thing.

Josh: Would that work?

Dr.: Uh, if you have a really good dungeon master, I can hook you up.

Tommy: And how do you become a dungeon master? Like, it seems like there's some sort of power-hungry people.

Dr.: I don't know. I have a friend who has, uh, done a lot of improv. He's done stuff in the different comedy festivals, written screen shows and stuff like that, has an understanding of narrative arcs and tensions and stuff like that. So that could be something.

Tommy: Oh God, it's a whole bunch of actors that haven't seriously broken yet that have now got into it.

Josh: I love that.

Tommy: They've found a niche. This is amazing.

Dr.: Yeah, to flex in between sets.

Josh: Yeah. The book, so is it Improv? Is there a book or Improv?

Dr.: There is, there is a book called Improv. Improv.

Josh: Improv.

Dr.: Yeah. And so, Keith Johnston.

Josh: And you're— it's all about like status and stuff like that.

Dr.: What is the component? Yeah. Yeah. So, in any interaction, there are people kind of vying for higher status or lower status. And this can be a fun dynamic, like when you have situations, you know, that kind of like the improv game where someone said something bad about, you know, The barista stuffed up my coffee order this morning. And the next person says, ah, yeah, you can afford coffee. You know, I had to have, you know, a recycled tea bag and stuff. It's like, um, uh, recycling? I don't live in a society that has recycling. You know, it just kind of gets progressively worse as people are trying to lower status each other. Uh, this kind of makes for fun improv, and but it also shines an interesting, uh, black mirror on the actual games that happen in everyday life where, uh, we inadvertently create verticality between how we relate to each other. We put people up on pedestals or we kind of see people below us. And the notion here is we need to remember, ideally, we try to cultivate only horizontal relationships with everyone that we work with. People are neither better than you nor worse than you, neither higher or lower. And then, and then if there are any kind of tensions that we play with, it is done in the spirit of play. So just like mates can kind of play and or a lot of mammals kind of play fight and stuff. That's how we relate to each other in society. But the trouble is when people start to internalise this, they literally think that they're better than other folks, that they literally think they're not as good as other folks. And that's where all sorts of awkwardity emerges.

Josh: The horizontal relationship thing, does that— could that also create classism in regard— if it's not done correctly? So, if you only do horizontal relationships, not by bringing people up, but only by connecting with those that are equal to you? Is that a—

Dr.: That's kind of like, yeah, so underlying then there's like the notion of equal. As in, if you expand that to encompass all beings, then you're probably fine. Um, but like, if you're like, oh, I'm only going to really connect with people that are of this particular thing, then you're kind of a little bit screwed because you're going to be cultivating a bit of a filter bubble. And then even then, you might notice there's tensions within that group where you're like, oh, that person's an idiot, and da da da. All natural and fine, but it's just how we relate and connect with each other. Just, uh, if we can— improv allows us to play with, uh, variations and status and, and stuff, but reality, that game is still going on. And if we can kind of, um, uh, if we can not get swept up and identify so much with that and approach it with the spirit of infinite play, we may be able to navigate with more fluidity and grace.

Tommy: Do you see life like a game?

Dr.: This is good. I see like there's a phenomenal book that shaped my life immensely is a book called Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility. There are at least two types of games. One could be considered finite. A finite game is a game that's played for the purpose of winning. An infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play. So finite players play within boundaries, infinite players play with boundaries. I'm quoting the book here. Only that which can change can continue is one of the first principles of infinite play. And so I don't like the word game because it has so much, uh, baggage to it. Like, my first book was called The Game Changer, and some people were like, oh, so you're into gaming? And when I said gaming, they were like, casino gambling, you know? I was like, no, not right, not really. And then they went to like sports games and competitive things where you play to win. Um, it's a deeper philosophy than that. Uh, so yes, I guess, uh, I consider life to be an infinite kind of game. Um, And there's, there's a lot more richness and complexity to that notion, um, than some people— there is a board game called The Game of Life where the idea of the board game is you go through, you accumulate resources, you buy houses, you invest in shares and whatever, and whoever dies with the most money wins.

Tommy: And what happens if you do barefoot?

Josh: And does it have buckets, little buckets?

Tommy: I tell you what, Barefoot should do a board board game.

Josh: Yeah, I could imagine that. Yeah, put it in the Splurge, you know, you've got all the different—

Dr.: that's actually probably a legitimately good idea for him. I don't know if he's listening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, next, next Christmas, uh, keep your eye out. Anyway, so that— this is the stuff, um, and this is kind of all of this stuff for me. One of the biggest things that has emerged for me is, is this notion of fluidity of character, of not getting too caught up in who we think we are to the point that it prevents us from becoming who we need to be with the—

Tommy: with whatever context is emerging.

Dr.: And I've become recently fascinated by notions of existential crises. And I, because I think that I've kind of been mildly, uh, well, not necessarily mildly, but I've been enjoying one, um, for the last couple of years. Um, the crisis, uh, yeah, like an existential crisis, a kind of, uh, as this is the situation is usually triggered by a death, divorce, disaster, displacement, or other kind of calamities.

Tommy: Did you buy a sports car?

Dr.: That's typically what would happen, right? So people would go through— back in the day, um, people would have a career path. Remember that language career path where there's like one single path and they'd work really hard and they'd earn the promotions and that eventually in their mid-40s or whatever they'd have achieved everything and they'd be kind of thinking, is that it? And then they'd be like, hang on, shit, well, who am I outside of the context of work here? And what does any of this— what does this all mean? And this kind of the, the kind the scaffolding of their worldview starts to fall apart. They're like, shit, I used to be cool, man. I used to like do— and then they go buy a motorbike and they'd kind of do these things and I'd try to kind of, uh, form a new version of identity post that achievement. And for some folks, it would be regressing back to an earlier form, uh, and, uh, that's what minimalism is, right?

Josh: In a lot of ways, if you think about like, if you hear the people who find minimalism, it's normally they've gone the other way first. They've had heaps of shit Yeah, and then sort of brought it back down.

Dr.: Well, that's, that's the other thing too, is this kind of post-material phase of life where you realise that meaning is not by the accumulation of material stuff. And, uh, I find that, you know, hipsters and hippies are very good at realising this. It's kind of like there's, there's, there's a kind of meaning, uh, meaningness that can be cultivated through simple things, through, you know, patching up your clothes, through old records and stuff. And The thing is, like, nowadays we don't have a career path. It's not a linear path. And these midlife crises are happening much more early and much more often for more folks than ever before. And the thing that's different nowadays, we have streaming and, you know, gaming and all sorts of distractions so that people actually don't spend time addressing these deeper niggling questions around, hang on, am I actually happy here? Who am I? What is actually meaningful? What am I doing with my life? And, and so for years, potentially these questions to go unanswered whilst we kind of you know, subsume algorithmically fed content that inevitably informs and shapes who we are. Um, so I've become fascinated by those that are feeling the angst and thinking, okay, how can we be more productive? How can we more be more generative with this kind of dark patch? Um, and, uh, yeah. And so one of the practises that I end up doing is, uh, every year, particularly around this year— I'm lucky, uh, my abbreviation, my stage name abbreviation is DJF, Dr. Jason Fox. Yeah, December, January, February is my time to kind of do this reflective bit. Um, and that sets me up for July, August, September, October, November, which is Jason. Um, so, uh, so the calendar is rigged for my favor. Um, but, uh, yeah, I have this process of going deep into choosing one word to cast forth 12 months into the future.

Tommy: Sorry, we just need to give that Jason thing a bit more. July, August, September, October, November, Jason. That is phenomenal.

Josh: That's pretty good. When you said it first, I thought that you skipped the A or something.

Tommy: I was trying to work it out.

Dr.: That's why we managed to get it.

Josh: I thought it was like, okay, July, September. No, that worked. But there's August.

Tommy: That should be your holiday. Like, you just take that off.

Dr.: Yeah, yeah. It tweaked me in primary school when I saw it.

Tommy: Really?

Dr.: Hang on.

Josh: How does that come about? How do you work that out?

Dr.: You just see the letter off the month's letter.

Tommy: For me, my one, which is—

Mason: I thought was good.

Josh: Yeah, what's that?

Tommy: I'm born in 1988. Yeah, I was born on the, I was born on the 1st of the 9th, '88, which, oh, that's 1988. If you were to just to do 19 and then slash 88 for the year '88. Yeah, 1988, 1st, 9th, '88.

Josh: Oh, that's good.

Tommy: I quite like that, but fuck, yeah, I'm retiring. I'm never gonna speak of that again because I just heard yours.

Dr.: I love it though. Don't you love it when there's those moments that emerge, like we've had that a few times where this is the last time it'll be the 11th of the 11th, 2011, you know. And then now we're going to go into a new millennium and that'll screw with all of those.

Tommy: What does it all mean though? Do you find— are we placing meaning in it? Does it actually mean something?

Josh: Is that your wizard hat?

Dr.: So thank you. Ah yes. What does it all mean? Um, I think that, uh, the world generally speaking has, has, um, possibly some, uh, how do we say this, um, um, meaning. It's best to relate to meaning in terms of meaningness. And one of the most profound sources of insight for me personally has been a site called meaningness.com, which was started by someone who was originally doing a lot of research in artificial intelligence back in the early days, the naive days, where they're trying to create a kind of consciousness, and realised that this path isn't going to work, and then took him deeper into— I think he's a monk now, but also a researcher and writer— uh, into exploring the nature of consciousness and how we make meaning. Um, so meaningness.com is a blog. It's a, it's a kind of like a, a hyper book, like a, like a book but with lots of hyperlinks. That's kind of living. And it's cool.

Josh: Does it look like old school? Is it like, like '90s, like HTML sort of style?

Dr.: Almost, almost. It's got a nice cream background and a lovely you know, serif font. Um, and so the idea is like meaningness refers to both meaning and meaninglessness, so meaningfulness and meaninglessness. And meaningness, the way that we talk about meaning, it's neither subjective nor objective. It's kind of this nebulous yet patterned intersubjective thing. So some people go through a dark patch of life where they're like, nothing seems meaningful, and they have these superficial forms of nihilism, which means that they believe that nothing's meaningful and they can't find any meaning in life. And, and that's very relatable because of all the bullshit in society at the moment.

Tommy: And also, those people just not grateful, because I mean, if you were to stop and think what— yeah, because I mean, can you be nihilistic— is that the right word— and grateful at the same time?

Dr.: This is, this is— that's, that's an interesting question. Like, the notions of juxtaposition are really, really important. This is what we'd call both-ending. So you're kind of taking a hybridised or you oscillate between the different poles or you juxtapose those two views. And that's quite mature and healthy. But this notion of gratitude is one of the ways of really bringing meaning back into life. And it's one of the things that, yeah, people lose sight of. So they become nihilistic because people are fixating on hustling on a global stage where we're kind of so distracted all the time, we're pursuing hollow achievement metrics. But when we bring it back to simple things that we're grateful for, little things like the coffee you brought me this morning, this has changed my— this has changed the, I don't know, the outlook of the whole year ahead, right?

Mason: Thanks, man.

Dr.: It was phenomenal. I was angsty.

Josh: What about climate change? Because that's like the issue with this, right? Like you can be grateful for these smaller things, but then there's all— I feel like the nihilism comes from The world's fucked, we're fucked. I don't know how to get out of it. I don't know what to do. I keep buying the reusable, the disposable cups. Yeah, no, I'm not doing that. That's the thing. But there's all these, there's all of this stuff.

Dr.: Yeah.

Josh: And it's like, yeah, I just remembered my, um, it doesn't matter now, but my fridge meal is in my bag. I should put that in the fridge.

Tommy: That's fine.

Josh: Anyway, so Big, small.

Tommy: Yeah, I say the people who are in that nihilistic state thinking nothing matters haven't— I think there's probably a moment, taking from mindfulness or meditation practice, where you actually sit back from that because that's in a state of judgment. If you're not thinking anything has meaning, it's actually a thought, or you've wrapped some thinking around what it all means. And if you pull back from that, there's another position which is just, it is.

Dr.: And just to be fair, and I want to kind of go to the, uh, you know, the deep existential angst that's afflicting many of us these days with regards to the multi-dimensional, uh, crisis of ecological devastation and systemic inequality and the meaning crisis. Um, but there's the other side of this. You've got nihilism, you've also got what David Chapman describes as, uh, eternalists, where they see meaning in every single thing. Um, and this, this might, may partly explain kind of the resurgence of astrology and other forms where everything is significant, meaningful. And so back to your juxtaposition thing, you've got nihilism, everything's meaningless, and it's kind of a judgmental thing. And you've got, uh, eternalism, where everything is meaningful, that has a fixed eternal meaning. And, uh, neither of those stances are necessarily true or apt, but there is something that exists in the nebulosity betwixt and between those spaces where something like mindfulness, where you kind of you get a chance to observe and reflect on that, that helps us to see a path. But it's understandable that people are feeling a bit of despair now, you know, in Australia with the bushfires and everything going on, and, uh, the, the, the kind of the existential angst of that. I'm gonna— I can't help myself, and you guys mentioned this on, uh, Michael Bungay Stanier's, uh, the chat that you had with him earlier. Metamodernism has been something that I found really helpful, uh, in that it is a synthesis of deep scepticism and cynicism about our outlook for the future coupled with like an optimism and a naive hopefulness. It's like a romantic response to crisis. It's kind of like, yeah, we're all fucked, but that's not necessarily a helpful stance to say. Let's actually act as though there is hope and there's possibility that we can work our way out of this because hey, we might be wrong and there might actually be hope through this. And so that kind of juxtaposition of like showing up in a form that is positive and hopeful and optimistic whilst also suspecting that, yeah, maybe we're in over our heads here and that, you know, we're on the pathway to mass extinction. And that if you can navigate that tension, you might be able to just save yourself from tipping over back into nihilism and the abyss.

Josh: I was thinking about death the other day, and specifically what if we viewed death as like— so like, I feel like something that faith or religion has on people who aren't is that they've got like a storey for post-life or whatever, or like when you die. And I thought, what about if I just went into like life thinking that the experience of death is actually the most amazing thing ever? Like, actually, like whenever it happens, it is awesome. I don't have to think about it, worry about it, but it allows you to be present.

Dr.: Is that like a—

Josh: is that a thing, or am I a bit—

Dr.: it's, um, it's actually very good. I mean, one of the things that has people, uh, accumulate and hoard material possessions and act in more selfish and defensive ways is a kind of deep-seated fear of death. They're kind of, uh, an inability to reconcile with our own mortality. And I think contemplating our own demise, our death, the, the reminder that we're here fleetingly, which then reminds us to be grateful and to kind of invest in the relationships and things around us it helps us to mature into a better, a more benevolent and abundant disposition. It kind of allows us to, you know, this notion of a story, we can't help but make meaning of things. We just, we look back, all of us right now have a storey about who we are and where we are in life. And that's a kind of narrative fallacy. We look back at moments in our life and we can't help, they may not be connected, but we can't help but draw meaning and make a coherent thread of a storey of who we are.

Tommy: Is that safe, like, for ourselves internally? It feels better to do that.

Dr.: I don't think that we—

Josh: I think—

Dr.: I don't think we can do any other way.

Josh: I mean, because it doesn't always serve us, the stories. The storeys aren't always— they can sometimes be—

Dr.: if we obsess and fixate and polish and preen our stories, they can become tyrannical narratives. Um, and this is worrying when people say, I've always had a dream, you know, when I ever since I was 4 years old, I wanted to da da da, and they kind of build this into their identity, and then it becomes like a calcified, ossified, rigid, fixed, uh, like suit of armour that they can't escape from, and they become prisoners in the storey of their own making.

Josh: Is that extremism? Like, if you look at like what puts people out into fighting wars or like going overseas and doing that sort of stuff, where do you think that actually comes from? And is there the— like, is media overcommunicating that worry, or with this sort of crisis mode that we're in, are we actually going to have more extremism across the board?

Dr.: That's a really good question, and, uh, the answer is yes. I mean, all extremism is, I would say, is based upon a set of beliefs which are informed by narratives, which are informed by norms within society. And, you know, we think about there's some internet forums that will radicalise folks, so folks that are kind of feeling dejected by mainstream society or don't actually have a natural community that can hang out with. They find this space and it kind of becomes a way of, you know, they get the feedback loops, they feel a sense of meaning and connection and stuff like that, and become radicalised in particular belief. I think that therefore it's very useful for us to have a healthy distance from our own beliefs, like, or at least an ironic disposition. So one of the other tenets of metamodernism is ironic sincerity, or sincere irony. Sincerity is where you work with a single point of truth, where, you know, I've always known— here's, let me tell you what I know to be true. Irony is where you acknowledge actually there's multiple perspectives here, there's multiple versions of truth. And the trouble is when people are in pure sincerity, it can seem like they're a bit of a simpleton. Like, it seems like they're a little bit too narrow, too, uh, too much conviction, and haven't really considered things beyond their own personal point of view. The trouble with irony, if you're in pure irony, is that you're, oh, look at you, you're so clever, you know, but no one really knows what do you really think, what do you really feel, what do you really believe. Give because you're all just, oh, look at me, I've got the smart witty replies. And the beautiful thing is the juxtaposition of irony and sincerity, where you can show up with tentative beliefs, like a tentative stance that if it doesn't actually work or doesn't serve, or you realise actually there's a better way here, you can let go of fluidly to embrace a better form.

Josh: Putting like, uh, the like, um, I love Jesus, or putting like the crucifix or whatever in your Instagram bio Yeah, or what do they say, like a son of Jesus? Is that what people say? What do people say, like they put like a, um, like if they're religious, communicating that in an Instagram bio, what do you think that that's trying to, to communicate?

Dr.: It's probably trying to communicate a certain set of values, a sense of belonging to a particular community, and a disposition, way of looking things. I'm— there's probably a younger version of me that was more in, uh, in kind of indoctrinated in the dogma of scientism, that would have scoffed and, you know, played the atheist card. Um, nowadays I'm trying to be a little bit more curious and trying not to presuppose what it might mean, because we realise that it could mean a whole bunch of things. Like, um, uh, is it identity?

Josh: I guess the— if it's in your bio, there's a sense that you associate your identity to it. Here we go. Which potentially I worry that through— I don't know how you can have a conversation potentially, or the, the critical nature of it seems to be potentially lost when identity is associated to something.

Dr.: So this is an example of LARPing, right? Like the, the, the bios that you create for your social media, you're presenting a certain aspect of your otherwise infinitely complex, uh, selfness to the world. So you're thinking, I want to show up and I'm just going to choose to shine a light on this facet of myself.

Josh: Like minimalism. Like if you said in your Instagram bio I'm a minimalist. Yeah, I'd be less likely to have it feel comfortable with having a critical conversation on minimalism because it would feel like a personal attack on that person's identity rather than—

Dr.: I know, I know, it's, it's, it's hard. I don't know how you guys do this. Um, you do it so deftly with when it comes to interviewing folks because I've had folks on my, uh, my poultry podcast of Amir I can't even remember how many episodes I've had. It's certainly—

Tommy: 40-something?

Josh: 49.

Tommy: 49.

Josh: There you go.

Dr.: Yeah. No, it's no 500 and whatever, you know, you guys have got. But I've had times where I've had people come over, you know, I've chatted with them and they identify as an expert in something. And I realise, oh, I've actually got a quite a, you know, a set of questions here that might undermine your expertise and authority. I don't know what to do because I care about you and your reputation. And, you know, this is being recorded. At the same time, if you are an expert— expert, I don't actually like the term expert, by the way, because it implies a finality. I mean, most of us are all just learning as we go along, and some people have expertise, as in more time learning in that domain, but I think it's unhelpful to call ourselves expert or master, you know, I've mastered this. So, yeah, I get trapped, like, so someone said they call themselves a minimalist, and then you happen to know about some of the early philosophers of minimalism, and you wanted to ask them about that, and you can see that kind of flinch in their eye where you realise you just dropped a name that they have no idea what they're talking about, what you're talking about. And then they kind of, you know, and they know that you know that you're— they're trying to bluff their way through an answer. Fuck, it gets meta, right? And like, say, and then you've got to gently cradle them because they're so wrapped up in their identity around this. And this is the thing, any kind of arguments or disagreements like this becomes, uh, an ontological affront. Our ontology is our worldview, everything that we've— that's shaped us, uh, about how we see the world, what we value, what we— how we make judgments If you're suddenly undermining someone's sense of identity, how they show up in the world, um, that's, that's a tricky territory to play in. Um, and all of this stuff is, look, if we can, if we can just be more curious and kind and loosen our grip on who we think we are, it may just allow us to become a more apt version of self. It may allow us to grow into, uh, versions of self that is more congruent and coherent with the the time and situation that we find ourselves in.

Tommy: Well, I think the master or the guru or the, the per— the person who, like, what was the word you use?

Dr.: Expert.

Tommy: Expert. So painting yourself as an expert and being on LinkedIn, there's a million video experts. And for a moment I think you got— yeah, have you actually made a video that's got more than 200 views? Maybe not. And so I get that point, but I see where it serves.

Dr.: Yeah.

Tommy: As sort of crafting it so someone can make a instant judgment, which is the bio thing, right?

Josh: That's a finite game. That's—

Dr.: that's part of the infinite game.

Tommy: Yeah. And so how does that serve the infinite game if it is?

Dr.: Yeah, well, totally, because we're all participating in our own myth-making here. A myth is a storey that is retold and retold for the sake of its retelling. And the— for example, the more I show up as a wizard, um, and I hope that people get the kind of ironic note here, like, um, Hopefully the viewers realise I didn't actually teleport in today. It was under the desk. Um, and we haven't added any effects, so there is no confusing teleportation. You never know. Anyway, so, um, the kind of the— for me, I, I've chosen wizard persona because I have discomfort within term thought leader. And that's another thing on LinkedIn, everyone's a thought leader nowadays. Everyone's also self-published their own book, so everyone's an author, uh, and everyone's an expert of some description, and everyone's a speaker nowadays. And so if there was an archetype that kind of encapsulates, uh, kind of like the suggestion that there's some knowledge and wisdom but doesn't necessarily subscribe to the same standard, uh, you know, expert thought leader, wizard could be it for me. And it's a role that I can play, so So, it comes back to the bios that we create, the signals that we put out in the world shape how others perceive us to be. And when we think about it, you only appear in other people's lives in certain moments. Like a lot of people around this time, end of year, they're catching up with family, friends back at home that they haven't seen all year. And then these family friends will say something like, oh yeah, how'd you go with that thing that we're talking about 12 months ago? And you realize, oh shit, they've got such an outdated version of who I am right now. I have to kind of update them. And so their view of who you are is only seen in these snapshots. And so then it gets us thinking, but not thinking too hard, not trying to craft or preen or present or be fake versions. But it does make us realise how we show up in the world influences how— who people perceive us to be. And so your bios and all the other things then shapes this kind of interesting character. And if we think about it that if we think about life as though we're not the central protagonist here, life is not all about us, we actually show up as characters in the lives of others, and then gets us thinking, how do we want to show up in the world? And hopefully we orientate towards showing up in a way that's more, uh, kind and encouraging and in a way that brightens and enlivens and enriches the lives of those around us.

Tommy: I'm sure you've— I mean, I'm sure there's people watching this, listening who have been told the advice or read that they should become a thought leader, an expert, a guru in their specific field. And if you look at it as a box, inside of the box is that sort of mantra or thinking. Outside is the bold move of becoming a wizard that not everybody can do. And, and if you believe, like, I don't think I'll be a wizard or put on some persona. I don't think I want to go an expert route. Where do you land? What is the alternative? Because I think it probably doesn't do a good job if you're like, I know quite a bit about this, you know, the comms of that message.

Dr.: Yeah, totally.

Tommy: Where does it land if you don't feel right being the expert or trying to? Because you'll get unstuck because you know that will happen.

Dr.: If I think about you guys with it when it comes to video production, like there's this beautiful thing where, uh, and this is the beautiful, probably the message for everything, everyone, um, Like, even though, uh, you know, I'm a wizard, of course I try, yeah, I try not to, I try not to bang on too much. But it's, it's a funny thing to say that the videos that you guys, you, you've found, uh, at least to my perspective, and I, and I've shopped around, a kind of, uh, like a unique style disposition, a way of unearthing a realness, uh, that doesn't use the standard bag of tricks that many folks do. There's a kind of I don't know, it's similar in how this manifests in the show here, kind of an ability to get beneath the surface narratives, uh, to kind of really unearth the human beneath it all. I love that. And it's kind of like, continue doing that great work and sharing that work, and you kind of don't need to talk up the work itself or who you are because the work speaks for itself. Uh, and similarly in my world, uh, it's less about what I say about myself and more about the, the thoughts and the writing and the stuff that I share in the world. And my worry is with the whole thought leader thing is, uh, and I, I love thought leadership in the early days. I think it was really, really good. And then, and then it just became, as all things do, that's just like even mindfulness now is becoming corrupted by consultants and capitalism. Um, I worry that now, nowadays, thought leaders, it's much more obsessed around, you know, how, how you write your bios, how you present in the world, what, what clothes you wear, what your colours and logos is. And it's all that superficial shit instead of actually Well, what, you know, if we look at thought leadership specifically, real thought leadership is suspect. Like, a real thought leadership is like, hang on, I don't really— I don't, I don't know, where does that come from? Because that's actually leadership, because you're so out of the field from where most people are thinking.

Josh: Well, it's not as polished.

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's raw, it's real, it's emerging, it's still in draft. Most of the thought leadership that people experience in LinkedIn and stuff is just the conventional narratives that has polished again and maybe presented in a very, very slightly new light.

Josh: Are you playing in the— is it called the second simplicity?

Dr.: Is that the— Second simplicity refers to the fact that in complexity one might find these fractal simplicities, these kind of recurring patterns. So if you look at a fern that's unfurling, you'll see patterns within the fern because the fern's like a fractal, same as broccoli and cauliflower and stuff. And so second simplicity refers to the fact that some people have spent enough time exploring the complexity that they've identified a pattern that's like, oh yeah, this, this kind of, this holds true. The trouble with second simplicity is people can ape that and you'll have people saying the same thing as a first version of simplicity without having to, without having done that exploration.

Josh: So is that the thought leadership stuff then? People are coming up and saying Jason's doing, Jason's got the speaker's guide or whatever, you know, like the booklet and it's got the website and he wears a wizard hat. And so they do all that sort of stuff, but they don't understand the strategy, the irony.

Dr.: So here's the thing, right? So I've launched this programme called Choose One Word, chooseoneword.com, an annual ritual of becoming, a way to practise fluidity in who we are and who we might become.

Tommy: I'll just stop you right there. We need to give kudos to where kudos is due. Oneword.com, what a domain.

Josh: Chooseoneword.com.

Tommy: Chooseoneword.com.

Josh: Thank you, Sam.

Tommy: Let's just say one more time. Chooseoneword.com. Amazing debate.

Dr.: Yeah, thank you, thank you.

Josh: And cleverness.com, I think, is a wizard.

Dr.: That's right.

Josh: Yeah.

Dr.: Um, uh, I also have the quibble.

Josh: The quibble.

Tommy: The quibble.

Dr.: But the, the kind of like, if you've got a the in there, it kind of—

Josh: yeah, not good. Is that Daily Talk Show?

Dr.: Oh shit. And I've got your identity there, the Tommy Jacket.

Josh: I think there is a thing about Facebook.

Dr.: It's something I know. Oh yeah, right, right.

Josh: And so I— but I think that potentially—

Dr.: oh, it was the— the—

Josh: no, that is back. I think that it's almost like— I think what Facebook has become, as soon as they dropped the—

Tommy: the—

Josh: they became this capitalist, capitalistic sort of IPO'd, you know, company that lost all of its soul.

Tommy: So Yeah, like I interrupted you. You've got your website.

Dr.: Oh, so this is the thing, right? So we're talking about second simplicities, first simplicities, and choose one word, right? How frickin' hard is it to just choose one word? And so there's folks out there that will, you know, say, here's how you can pick your word. Pick is an interesting choice. And why?

Josh: What's it? What's—

Dr.: Oh, well, you think about the semantics and linguistics and the kind of the tone of pick. Pick. What rhymes with pick? You know, stick, dick, lick, you know, it's just, it doesn't have a bunch, like it doesn't sound good. It's a bit like that, a pick, you know, it's like, whereas like choose or find, kind of there's a softer, there's a more, there's a different quality to that word. So of course though—

Josh: Discover.

Dr.: Yes, discover, yeah, of course.

Josh: I'm trying to think about the words.

Dr.: Yeah, well, you can do more. The domain discoveryourword.com. So this kind of online programme that I put together has, uh, about 75 videos and more than, uh, I think more than 6 hours of content to help people to, uh, choose their word for the year. It involves deep exploration, self-knowledge, self-development, self-actualization. And I also know that, uh, it could equally— people could arrive at the first simplicity and just go out there and pick a word that sounds good at the moment. I did a presentation just a couple of days ago, and in my keynotes, I introduced the topic to them. And then afterwards, the CEO came and thanked me, and, you know, as they're doing, and said, 'And I reckon I've got my word. My word is pride. I'm so proud of this group, and I think my word next year is going to be pride.' And I thought, 'Oh dude, that is a shit word.' Like, just like, can you just put a little bit more thought into this? Because my issue with word pride, right? Is this typically masculine approach of appropriating other people's achievements? So the team's done amazing work. I'm so proud of you. I am so proud of you.

Tommy: Where's the responsibility? I mean, you could— it could be, I want to act in the way that I would be proud of. Yeah, respectively. I don't know, but I see where you're at.

Josh: So the one word thing. How long have you been doing this for? Because I feel like maybe 2015, I think I saw a presentation I filmed one. I think that it was around the one word stuff at like one of the Agile conferences potentially.

Dr.: Yeah, that's right. When I was at Envato, I've been speaking about this for a good 9 years.

Josh: And so the idea is rather than goals, New Year's resolutions, it is that— is it— is this the second simplicity, like coming up with one word, or how would you describe it?

Dr.: I would say it does have a fractal simplicity to it. One of the charms I love about choosing one word is that But if you're a young person and you still got a beautiful naivety about you, you're still believing in everything and the universe is wonderful and enchanted, it works for you. If you're a jaded sceptical person who has kind of lost the sense of meaning and sees life as really complex but can't actually find any solid ground to make meaning, the one-word process still works for you. It works for busy folks. It works for— that the part of the gift of choosing one word is if you choose a word that has enough social stickiness, that it's got like enough fuck yeah quality to it, like that's just like, oh, that's a good word. Like your friends remember that. And then through the year, they cheque in with you occasionally. Like, I think your word was—

Josh: So, this is the thing, we're actually doing an archetype. Like, so this time last year—

Tommy: No, it was Jam. We bumped into you at the coffee shop.

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every day.

Tommy: And you and I had spoken about it. That's right. We'd chosen our words and then we saw you. Mine was deliberate consumption. Yeah, yeah.

Josh: Um, and yours is consistent. So this is what's fucked up.

Tommy: I remember mine. I'm trying to remember yours.

Josh: Yours was deliberate consumption.

Dr.: I think it was conscious consumption.

Josh: I fucked it. And so the thing is, I think like in— upon reflection, speaking to you, it potentially falls into that sort of pride, sort of being proud, because it doesn't— because you—

Dr.: what if it's not as dangerous as the pride thing? That you're not going to be evoking feelings of shame potentially as which is the shadow side of pride.

Josh: So what have your words been previously? Oh, so this year, what's 2019?

Dr.: It's the Year of the Fool. It's about inverting paradigms and embracing philosophies that may have me be laughed at, which is kind of why I've ramped up metamodernism as a thing.

Josh: Which you and I are always sort of butting heads on because when I film you, I say, do a dance.

Tommy: Oh yeah.

Josh: Be more foolish.

Dr.: Fool, yeah. He's trying to get me to dance on a rock the other day, which is great. I have a more mythic lens of the Fool. Um, if you think about the tarot card of the Fool, uh, you know, the, you know, the little sack on the end of a stick walking off in society being chased by a dog. Um, Jester—

Josh: have you been a Jester?

Dr.: I'll take us through. So I had Rogue, which was more about me finding my own way. I had Kingly, which is more about me stepping up and stop elevating everyone around me. I had a year of the word prime, and prime I think falls in the same trap that, uh, delivery. But yeah, that was more like prime numbers. It was far too abstract. People couldn't remember it. I couldn't remember it.

Josh: And what was it trying— what were you trying to do with that?

Dr.: I was— I was— I felt like, uh, I think I was turning 31, which is a prime number. I felt like it was— I was in the prime of my life. I thought it was time to go prime time in terms of having more visibility and showing up in the world. There was a bunch of eloquent meaning wrapped up into it, but it didn't serve me as a word because because it didn't have enough social stickability. Like, it's just not— didn't have that fuck yeah quality to it. Um, I— after Prime, I had Pirate. Pirate had a lot of fuck yeah quality to it. Um, uh, being jolly, drinking more rum, exploring my uncharted territories, looking after my mates, being commercially savvy and buoyant. I then had the year of the Gentleman Pirate, um, or Gentleman. Now, Gentleman had the root word of invest. I got to a point in life where I realised I'm kind of squandering like opportunities here and stuff. I want to invest, invest in like quality in all things, to be a paragon of aplomb, to actually care about stuff. Invest itself though is a pretty boring word, but as something that is more lively in other people's worlds, I was thinking, okay, invest, invest. Well, who is Vest? Vest, a gentleman. Oh yeah, this is kind of like a gentleman explorer, gentleman pirate. And that's—

Mason: I love that.

Dr.: Yeah, with the year of pirate, people are like, oh, yar! And I was like, no, no, it's more like yore. And so, gentleman pirate. And then I had the Jester. Jester was about telling truth to those in positions of power. I was doing a lot more work with CEOs and stuff. And, uh, then I had the Year of the Wizard, which is all about going deep into my tower and writing my book and exploring the cosmos. Here I am in the Year of the Fool.

Tommy: And what's next year? Have you ever worked it out?

Dr.: Yeah, yeah, I, I, I suspect— and, you know, I try not to leap to words, so this has been a process of percolating. I was playing with the word supervillain for some time.

Josh: I like it.

Dr.: I was playing with hyphenations.

Josh: Okay.

Dr.: Yeah, you can also write that word without the hyphenation.

Josh: Okay.

Dr.: So no rules, man. But so supervillain, because I kind of— I'm pissed off by heroes sometimes. They're kind of the hero interventionalists, the consultants or whatever that think they have all the answers and come in and end up causing more problems than they're solving. But then the Joker came out and supervillain just kind of had a different different, you know, quality to it. And, you know, with like mass shootings and stuff like that going on in the world, we don't need another supervillain. I do like supervillains that are kind of clever and thinking about how can we solve the ecological crisis, you know, the ends justifies the means. But it had too much darkness. So I've oscillated to, um, uh, the word bard. Uh, like bard is like an entertainer. How do you spell it? B-A-R-D. B-A-R-D. Yeah, it's a word.

Tommy: That's a word.

Dr.: Yeah, it's a character class in Dungeons and Dragons too. Um, uh, minstrel or skald, uh, troubadour. What I've noticed particularly for this word is the last two words that I've had, wizard and fool, have drawn me away from society, have drawn me like into my own cave. And this is a year about coming, coming back into having more visibility, being more prominent. I set up a good rhythm with, um, you guys to get some filming done regularly so we can have more films going out in the world, which I love. And so, so for me, it kind of guides me to see a bit more poetry and things to kind of have a little bit more and to bring a bit more enchantment rather than darkness and bitterness, which is I've done in the past.

Tommy: So the word I chose, which in the moment of telling you at the cafe, you said you're already nailing it, and it was consistency. And retrospectively, I think that I chose a word that I knew was working and I wanted to ramp that up. And so this year I've been more consistent in the things that I've applied myself to than any other year of my life. And I feel like then moving into a new year, I've built the muscle around that to keep it going. Is the idea that a new word, new year, is not pushing that aside?

Dr.: Or no, you take on and you subsume the stuff, you assimilate, because it's still part of who you are.

Josh: That's why you're wearing a wizard outfit. Oh yeah, 2019. Yeah, Wizard was 2018.

Dr.: That's right. Yeah, exactly. I'm still the Pirate as well, all of the things. Um, uh, it's, it's a kind of— it's, it's a, it's a, it's self-growth, it's self-development. You kind of— I, I really like that notion of consolidating. So it's not, you know, you might have had some good consistency, but you could just, you could just think, ah, cool, I've got it sorted, and not really bed that down. Uh, so I think that's, that's marvelous, and you don't lose that. That's still part of what you do, but it might just be that another aspect of your own growth edge comes into focus. And so this is why I think that with the choosing a word for a year it's not helpful for, for people to choose. Like, a lot of people choose things like, ah, love, happiness, balance. And these are kind of eternal things that we'd probably want in every single year. It's not like, not, not in one particular year, every single year. So it's worth them thinking, all right, well, given what I know about who I am, given what I know about the patterns that exist in, in life as I lead it, given what I know about the frictions and the tensions and the fulfilment factors and the hidden commitments and conflicting values that I experienced in, in the years beforehand, what might be a directionality to lean into? What might be something that I, I could just foster and cultivate and grow a little bit more, knowing that I'll probably stumble? Because the thing about choosing one word is it's not a goal. You're not kind of trying to narrow your focus and try to win at that. It's more like a, for want of a better word, a North Star, a guide, a beacon to guide you in the complexities of life. So, I'd be curious to see what, you know, after some reflection, what like, what might be something you want to lean into? And then if you end up with a word that's something like consistency or conscious consumption, playing with that for a little while and seeing what's a, you know, an archetype word or an aspect word that may show up. Like when I say aspect, um, I mean like if I would say it's the Year of the Tiger, people might have a sense of, oh, oh, like ferocity. Or, you know, if I was to say it's the Year of the Lion, what does that evoke for you?

Josh: Tigers and lions are sort of— they merge into one for me.

Dr.: Okay. If I was to say it was the year of the peacock.

Josh: Yeah, you're right.

Dr.: Yeah, so definitely standing out, resplendent, flourishing, you know. So you can choose like a particular— if you find what's your intention and then play with it and think, okay, what's a fuck yeah word that I can drop?

Josh: So potentially I'm worried about the social stickiness of it.

Dr.: I've played with this. So yeah, it's one of the things I had. I was going to use the word fei one day Fae. No one knows what Fae is. No one knows what the Fae folk are.

Tommy: I've met Fae before.

Dr.: She's lovely. F-A-E. Bard. And this is something I still like, I've still got a softness to this. It might be something that I still need to spin a little bit more. So like the Year of Jester, I was really trying to tap into Fae folk, fairy folk, you know, the folk that is bringing about magical realism in the world. Bard might It's very strong for me, but I might just need to tilt or jilt it a little bit to kind of work a little bit more. Like the most mundane version of that would be entertainer or showperson.

Josh: So where's the nuance in it? So, but because if you take just Bard, then we can make sure that we keep you accountable. So can you describe exactly if you change?

Tommy: We're happy to go.

Josh: So what is Bard? So how do you describe it? So layering onto the entertainer thing. So it's an entertainer with a nuance. Want is—

Dr.: okay, so I'm going to draw heavily from Dungeons and Dragons here. If you're going to play a bard class in Dungeons and Dragons, they are like a master of all things, but especially not so much a specialist of any particular things. They pick up different skills. And I've— I like that notion of being a generalist. I think that— I mean, shit, the stuff that you guys do, the number of conversations you're building, this kind of pool of knowledge, and that appeals to me. So in terms of principles though, the things that I personally need to lean into reflecting on the previous years is bringing more enchantment and liveliness and brightness into the world. I kind of, for the last 2 years, I've been sidling up talking about how—

Josh: that's fine, that's a nightmare. Sorry, no worries at all.

Dr.: Talking about how, um, uh, you know, how fucked the world is and stuff like that. That's not really— that's, that's— I don't think that's serving the world as well as it could be. So trying to bring a bit more enchantment and liveliness. There's also a nimbleness and grace. Like, so I'm trying to cultivate more lightness and play in my own world instead of being heavy and serious. And so part of the art of a performer is you work with reality. So whatever reality dishes up to you, you improvise, you respond fluidly. And I also, uh, there's a kind of a way of embracing the notion of poetry. And I don't mean that in terms of like a bunch of words that rhyme, I mean that in terms of how can we smuggle in kinds of truth that don't otherwise work in conventional ways. So for me, it's like, how do we show up in society? And how all of my things, I tend to try to play with a trickster thing. Like, I speak to large corporate audiences that I know that there are many plants within the organisations that are just waiting to— or working their way into positions of influence so they can pull the levers on the right things.. But I also know there's this wonderful quote from a book called The Name of the Wind. It's a fantasy book by Patrick Rothfuss. And one of the fae is explaining to one of the characters there, we understand how dangerous masks can be. We all become what we pretend to be. And this notion of we become what we pretend to be, this notion of pretending, as in if you tend to do a particular things, how can you pretend so that that pretending becomes the tending, becomes who you are. And this is, this is something dangerous for me because I know, I know folks that say to themselves, I'm just going to do this fly-in fly-out work just for a couple of years just to get enough money to pay for the house. And then 6, 8 years later, they're still working the job because they become, they become what they pretended to be. And for me, as someone who speaks in corporate audiences and stuff like that, there are certain elements I'm like, I need to kind of sidle into different forms of self. But I also know how dangerous a mask can be, which is why we choose a word every single year.

Josh: Year.

Dr.: So there's a lot of myth, enchantment, liveliness, entertainment, wonder that I'm bringing as a bard. At least I hope to. It still takes some time. Like, the first 3 months is still like awkward, and then you start to really learn the lessons. And then there's something beautiful that happens around midwinter if you're choosing this at this particular time of the year in the southern hemisphere. Midwinter reveals the darker, deeper lessons that you didn't want to learn or didn't realise you needed to learn. And then as you come into spring, you start to contemplate the new word for the ahead.

Josh: I think it's exciting, 2020, for you because there's— you've been giving all of this information to top executives, CEOs, corporates, whereas I feel like this Choose One Word and all that sort of thing is moving into allowing just the regular gronks to get some of this.

Dr.: Oh yeah, I'm actually getting a little bit tired of that whole world. And, uh, yeah, I think that, um, it's— it's all of this is how do we orientate towards future relevance. And, you know, if you think to— if you think like, I imagine that, uh, when— and I've forgotten, what was your—

Josh: what's your kid's name? Bodhi. Bodhi.

Dr.: Yeah, when Bodhi came into your world, there are probably this whole thing of like, geez, there's probably some things that need to kind of shift and change. There's a new context you're living into now. You're, you know, you're a father, and that's another archetype for you to step in and live into. And then for many of folks, as they get to this point in the year, they're thinking, what's what's going to be different about the year ahead? If you think about your life as though it were an autobiography where every single moment has been written down in this book— it's a narrative fallacy but still helpful— and then if you look back in the last few years and you see these same patterns repeating and you know that they trigger the same angst and disappointment and suffering, and then you look at the blank chapters of the year ahead, you think, what might be different about the year ahead? I think this is a question that all of us can tap into, and I think that the work required to choose and find a word You can't— it's not something you can do every week or every month. It would lose its efficacy. But once a year, to actually just reflect, introspect, and then potentially project a kind of word to serve as a beacon, I think could be really helpful for all of us.

Tommy: I love it.

Dr.: I'm super curious to hear what your words are. I'll give you some time, you know. I'll give you access to this program. I also want to point out, by the way, I know I mentioned the choose one word thing. There's— I've, I've made a special link because I love the Daily Talk Show. I've made a special link that if you guys are hearing this and if you're curious and you'd love to kind of go into this, don't use the link on my actual website. Find the link underneath the podcast thing or in the YouTube video for this episode. I set up— this is the first time. There you go.

Tommy: I don't do it, Mason.

Dr.: Um, I— this is the first time I've done this, uh, but this is like apparently this auto magic thing where anyone who signs up, then you guys will get like a portion of the thing.

Tommy: So amazing, we'll be able to keep the lights on. Thank God, it's a good— it's going to be a good year.

Josh: How do you deal with, within the infinite game, finite game, uh, business? So making cash, how does, how does that play? Because I can see how, uh, a bunch of pushback that after reading the infinite, you know, finite and infinite games, uh, thinking—

Dr.: you nearly mentioned Simon Sinek's book, The Infinite Game.

Josh: Same, same. Yeah, the trying to sort of live a life and be a responsible adult while still following—

Dr.: Yeah, man.

Josh: The infinite game.

Dr.: Yeah, it's fucked. It's so hard. I come back to the both ending it. It's kind of the irony and sincerity. I don't know because we're still all operating within the current, you know, dominant system of capitalism. And I don't know how to, you know, there's glimmers of how we can kind of get beyond this,, but I, I suspect it's going to require some sort of big system collapse, which is not going to be a fun time for anyone. So in the meantime though, um, I was super inspired by Sam Harris's Waking Up course. He has this line, and I borrowed the inspiration from him, um, if you're in a situation you truly can't afford it, um, send us an email and we'll gift you it for free. And we've got that stance as well. It's like, if, if there are people that would really love this but genuinely can't afford it, send us an email and we'll give them lifetime access for free. And I think there's this kind of way of just softening things. You're talking about minimalism before. I think one of the noblest things that we can do in this world that we're in right now is not just, uh, consume less, uh, not just buy more material stuff, and not, not, not simply be conscious about our consumption, which I think is very noble. It's also like, do we need to hustle and earn as much? Do we really need to get in that rampant capitalistic growth pathway that we're so often encouraged, because you end up working more to earn more to then buy more stuff that you then need to work harder to pay for. And if we can get to this point where we realize, okay, coming back to gratitude, some of the best things in life, uh, going and grabbing a coffee, sitting in the sun chatting with some friends for the morning, uh, or simpler things that like that that just don't require us to obsess There's a beautiful book called How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell.

Tommy: There's nothing in it.

Josh: It's just blank.

Dr.: Oh, it's beautiful. She's a birdwatcher and, you know, it just— there's some sensibilities that I think we're kind of reawakening to that require us to— well, that don't require us to get onto that hypergrowth pathway that many folks love to trumpet.

Josh: I'd love to go birdwatching. Would that be something you'd be interested in doing with me? Have you got binoculars?

Dr.: I've never done it before, but I— well, no, I've What? We're talking about birds that fly.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr.: The boys. Yeah, no, that'd be lovely. Yeah, let's do, let's do that.

Josh: I wonder what it's like in Melbourne, like in Victoria. I guess we can find out.

Dr.: I feel like there's a— here's, here's something interesting. I'm someone who identifies as a hiker and a camper. I love the outdoors. But if I look back at the number of times that I actually—

Josh: Never done it.

Dr.: Which is interesting how identity and evidence, right? So I I haven't been out anywhere near as much. More time in nature next year is definitely something as part of the enchantment of the Year of the Bard, or whatever word I choose so that people understand.

Josh: That thing I think is very interesting, the identity, like what we think that we are and then reconciling it with our actions.

Tommy: Yeah, because we are our actions.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: They speak more true to who we are than what we just say we are.

Josh: I guess that pretending plays well into that.

Dr.: Mm-hmm.

Josh: So it's like rather than trying to, uh, sculpt and say I'm a writer and all that sort of thing. What about the actual act of writing? Like, actually, that's the hard bit though.

Tommy: Yeah, it's just great to say it. I think it's also like understanding what the success is or what, what success looks like for you. So for instance, around the, um, the, the master, the guru thing, and there's people making money doing that stuff. They might not know the most but they're not like— I find the conversations with you, I feel proud of myself based on feeling like I can keep up with the intellectual nature of the conversation versus when you're on sub-100 of these episodes. And that's like, for me, the, the growth I feel inside. Your brand is very intelligent, thoughtful. It's, it's, um, it's thought out, you know, like you've been pondering these things for a long time, it feels like. And you have knowledge to back it up. Whereas I think I have empathy for the person that gets into the, I'm a coach, I'm a, you know, like, I'm a video, you know, expert because I know how tough it is to even get started.

Dr.: Yeah.

Tommy: And when you don't have the intelligence to back it up, which I don't in the way that you, you know, present, there's this like, I've got to just fucking give something a crack. And if, and And that's not even at the moment of taking into consideration what success looks like. So for some of these people I see that have success, probably have come from the like, I actually don't know much, but fuck it, but I'm just, I have to assume this and then it works, then I make money and then you shift. And so there is so much nuance to these things in brand and what we're doing, presenting to the world.

Dr.: Oh, 100%. And let's come back to this, the curiosity and kindness and we're all kind of, uh, living a complex world with many battles on many fronts, and we're trying to make the best of it with the resources that we have. Uh, and certainly I look back on, like, one of the funniest things is look to look at, use, uh, Wayback Machine to kind of like look at where people have come from. And yeah, I used to claim to be a thought leader, an expert. Um, my first business card had efficacy expert on it, and because people didn't know what efficacy was I put the definition of efficacy on the back of this guy. That's great. So like, it's, it's a, it's the Allen Weiss quote: I'm constantly surprised by how stupid I was 2 weeks ago.

Tommy: Yeah, I've heard you say that.

Dr.: I love that. And this is so— I'll give us permission. Let's all have permission to grow. And, you know, this, the young person who's thinking, I'd love to get into video, it seems like the whole thing, you know, there's a certain way of like, like the swagger of how you show up in the world that, you know, if we can Make it, uh, it's tricky, right? It's nuanced. An authentic swagger, or at least a kind of—

Josh: there's an—

Dr.: if there's a knowingness or a—

Josh: yeah, well, no baggage. No baggage as well. Like when you— when someone starts filming, they don't realise that you can fuck the white balance and do all that sort of thing, so it's a non-issue. I really want to do these cards. I'm going to do the first thing that I've never done on the show before. I'm going to piss.

Tommy: Yeah, I needed to. Okay, so I'm going to keep talking. So naive So the naivety—

Dr.: I'll do it. I can do a reading for— yeah, perfect. For Tom. Oh no, do you want to go?

Tommy: I'll just— I just want to— the naivety that someone enters a career with, you could say the, the quote around the person I was 2 weeks before, you know, even 3 years before, of course, is 3 minutes. You cringe at. And so if you lose that naivety and you're still playing in a similar realm, it can be crippling based on having too much context next, not willing to be as confident or not willing to step up like you used to when you had no understanding of—

Dr.: Yeah, the outcome. Totally. And this is the fragility of success, right? So when people do well and they start to develop systems and it's working really well for them, um, it— success is fragile. Once you are successful, you have more to lose, and then people start to protect the systems and the way that they do things, and it becomes all defensive and rigid, and they've lost that naivety and can-do and let's just see and let's explore, and I don't know what I'm doing, but let's, let's say yes to this. And it becomes heavy and serious. And so part of the, part of the process here is there is a— like, you're right, there's a beautiful, brilliant charm to the naivety of the early stage. And this is something that we can subsume into naive knowingness, because if we go from naivety to knowing to then thinking, I've got it all figured out, I know it all, then you kind of, you lose curiosity and wonder. Um, whereas if there's a way that you can bring or rekindle naivety back into the mix, you still know stuff, but you're trying to be naive as well. You may just open up new pathways.

Tommy: Is it maybe like the shift, so from when you had those business cards to the person you are now entering into like a new persona or, I mean, the word thing associating to a way of outwardly projecting who you are or who you want people to see you as gives you the ability to step into I actually haven't done this before. I can be a bit naive. I actually don't know how people are going to perceive it.

Dr.: And it's an advantage too. It's like sometimes you can say, look, I know there's like, I know there's a standard way to do things and then there's plenty of other folks that will give you this, this, this, and this. I'm not so sure. And it's going to be pretty fun to explore what we can do together. But I got some suspicions we can do this, this, and this, or at least play in these areas. And so it's like a fresh offering compared to all the other other professionals that are doing it the right way.

Josh: What about the identity— I'm back, guys, by the way— uh, the identity of the devil's advocate?

Dr.: Uh, I'd say it's like a role that we can play. I wouldn't identify as, I am, I am a devil's advocate. It's a role we can play. And this, this notion of roles, right, it's a, it's like, it's orientation towards relevance. How can we contribute in a meaningful way? And you're talking about like where people at, if we zoom out even beyond a year, there are phases within life. Like there's the schooling and the education and stuff like that. And then there's learning the ropes of your particular industry and stuff like that, and maybe switching roles and stuff. And then there's building and trying to establish some foundations. And, you know, and particularly on what life phase you're in, maybe it does make sense that someone's in hustle mode. I'm personally incredibly fatigued by the hustle culture that exists in the world, but I also understand that it's an incredibly competitive world now and people have to compete on a global world stage nowadays instead of just within their local community. Community. And so it's, it's bloody tough. And so I can understand and empathise if you're in that particular phase of life. Yeah, there's a different shift in ordering of priorities.

Josh: Something appealing about Sovereign Hill, thinking about like, especially when you wear your outfits, and I think about like, uh, you've got like a ye olde sort of mentality sometimes. Talking about the, the time that, that was, yeah, the 1800s, not specifically the adventure park that is the costumes.

Tommy: There there was no toilets, there was— well, I just think about the plague.

Josh: But just think about— there's something nice, but just think about like working in a shop. Like, I guess when you talked about the, like, the hyper-local stuff, or like, it got me just thinking about the beauty of working on the main street and the main street actually meaning something. And it's where everyone has to walk through. And it's— you can work at the lolly shop, or you could be like a blacksmith Smith.

Dr.: So this is— I mean, there's a lot of pining for the nostalgia of times past. And, um, you know, it's like that point, like, when people are saying, why can't we just return to all growing our own food, you know, like people used to do? And they had this romantic view, and they forget that actually when you're living on subsistence farming and then your crops die out, you run the risk of starvation, your whole family could die. Like, it's like, it's like, cool, that's this beautiful charm there. But, you know, the thing that's different nowadays is back then we would have these communal areas where we had moments of interaction, and people would read the newspaper, and there'd be a shared narratives so people could talk about the same issues together. Nowadays we're living in fragmented, atomized society. People are getting their information and worldviews and connecting community via their devices and kind of bumbling about. And we're, uh, in many places we're losing that sense of community via collision and shared space. But we're also seeing the rekindling of this. And this is where I, I hat tip and thank the, the hipsters and hippies of the world who are bringing a little bit meaning and enchantment. Like, you know, a lot of other bullshit as well, but like, um, but the sense of, yeah, let's like, let's do some slow food stuff. Like, it's actually like spend some time. Let's like go hang out near a fire and, you know, under the stars and stuff, because we're kind of otherwise losing that togetherness and community and charm.

Tommy: Like, I, I think I've— it's probably a judgmental thought though, um, when I've met someone who I believe is living a simple life You, you know, you're out in the bush or whatever, you're driving through a small town, you meet somebody like, you're happy with this because they seem happy and it's like less worry. But then I actually think about we're all humans having our own experience and so they would be battling with their own stuff.

Dr.: Yeah.

Tommy: And then I think about taking on more and building a business and having more responsibility and family. I was like, it's just a level of playing. At that. So you have to change. You can't be as simplistic in thinking or you can't act as simplicity. Yeah. As that. And so I feel like I always look to people who have less responsibility and I don't even have that much in comparison to the, you know, the Fortune 500 CEO that has so much responsibility. And so then I think, I think I look to the simplicity as like, oh, that would be easier.

Dr.: Oh yeah. I do that all the time too.

Josh: Yeah. It's the same thing with money, right? Like if we had heaps of money, then it's like, even though they say money doesn't buy happiness or whatever, you're like, I reckon it would help. Yeah.

Tommy: Yeah.

Dr.: And there's, I mean, there's a notion. I mean, I do the same, like probably on every 3 or 4 days I say to Kim like, oh, wouldn't it be nice just to kind of work 9 to 5 and then at 5 o'clock you just switch off and you don't think about work at all. But you know, we're all playing different roles here and life has kind of dealt us different hands and we're kind of, we're doing the best we can with the resources that we have. What was that you just said?

Josh: I said about the money thing.

Tommy: Oh yeah, the money.

Dr.: So, the notion of hedonistic adaptation is an important thing for us to keep in mind.

Josh: Like it's lifestyle creep, right?

Dr.: Yeah, exactly. So, we get more money, cool, but then our expectations increase. And that's why I kind of, back when I did do hiking and camping, I love how there's like a reset button to your hedonistic adaptation. You know, like you get back home and you're just so grateful for water that comes out of a tap or, you know, the notion of a mattress that you can lay down on. And I think that without us disrupting the otherwise lifestyle creep or hedonistic adaptation, we just end up kind of wanting more and more. And so maybe there are some, yeah, and then maybe there is a kind of a wisdom to those that have found some sort of groove. And yet possibly that they're possibly in their world, they're like thinking, I should do more. I'm not sure what my other friends think of me, or who knows what's going on in the inner worlds of others.. But it comes back to curiosity and kindness and doing the best we can with the resources we've got.

Josh: So you brought this out.

Tommy: I'm going to go to the toilet while you're still talking.

Josh: This is great. So you've got cards that— can I describe it? It's in a black box. It's got some silver foiling. First edition. It is 506 of 5,000 of these have been made. It's a— how do you pronounce that?

Dr.: Supra.

Josh: Supra. It's a Supra Oracle and it's got someone doing something with their hands.

Dr.: Oh yeah, it's got beautiful gold foil. What I love about this— so this is a Kickstarter project I backed. I really like the artwork of it. Um, and a lot of people carry oracle cards with them. It's kind of like, uh, you know, have you heard of tarot cards? Um, tarot cards has a— has quite a formula to it. Um, you know, there are certain cards that have certain meanings attached to it. I don't necessarily know enough about that world. Um, all I know is there's a bunch of cards in here that have different words or concepts on them that serve as useful provocations to help me to think about some of the things that are vexing me, or from new perspectives and new angles.

Josh: This is fun.

Dr.: So I would like to layer magical realism here. So for anyone who's playing along at home, if you can find an oracle deck. It is entirely possible for you to maintain your rational intellectual scepticism and still have fun doing this. And at the same time, if you want to allow yourself to indulge, um, so I did this just spontaneously the other day with someone, uh, there's a tarot deck on the bookshelf and I'll say, here, let me, let me read your omen. And then I picked out a card, uh, for them, uh, and it said The Tower. And then later we walked, uh, to go find some lunch and they didn't know what they wanted to eat for lunch lunch. We looked at the menu and there was a burger called the Tower.

Josh: This is perfect.

Dr.: That's—

Josh: I would always have that card. Oh no, the Tower again. That's the fifth day in a row. But if the Oracle said so.

Dr.: So what I'm going to—

Josh: there's no Oracle card that says Muscle Chef. What was it? What do I do?

Mason: My Muscle Chef.

Josh: My Muscle Chef.

Dr.: I'm gonna get you to shuffle this deck.

Josh: Okay, great.

Dr.: And then we're going to choose 3 cards. And let's set the context for this. This might be 3 cards that might help to influence or guide the theme of your year ahead.

Josh: Perfect. I like that.

Dr.: I might— terrible. You see the softening of my language?

Josh: It's like, no, no, no, this is it. Okay, all right. So I'm going to get 3 cards.

Dr.: Yes.

Josh: Yeah. And then turn them over.

Dr.: Don't necessarily have to pick them all from the top, by the way. Okay, sure. Just like, hang on, if it helps, if it helps, just like maybe hum a little bit and, you know, sense out the cards. Has anyone done like, um scratchy or something, and you kind of, you kind of like scratchy.

Josh: Yeah, we did one in—

Tommy: they're more complex in the States. It was like, oh, you had to come back and get another one.

Josh: Mr. 97 asked when they're announcing the winner. He didn't realise it's on the scratch.

Tommy: It's not your $1 here where you just— it's either, you know, match, match 3 things and you're done.

Josh: So, all right, okay, good luck.

Dr.: Okay, that's, that's great. That's enough.

Tommy: There's one.

Dr.: Okay, one at a time, one at a time.

Josh: Okay, now turn it over.

Dr.: Yeah, yeah.

Josh: Okay, okay.

Dr.: What have we got?

Josh: So I was really feeling something here. Uh, it is— does that say animus?

Dr.: Animus.

Josh: Animus.

Dr.: Animus.

Josh: What's animus?

Dr.: Uh, animus is, uh, tapping into the male aspect of, or more masculine energies within your psyche. So there's anima and animus. Um, anima I think refers to the the feminine side, animus is a more masculine side. I may have got this mixed up, which could screw things dramatically.

Mason: Yeah, an inner masculine part of the female personality in the analytic psychology.

Tommy: Oh, there you go, speaks quite truly.

Josh: Yeah, so this means— so this is trying to find— untap the masculine bit. Okay, yeah, that's good. I'm thinking about—

Dr.: or if you also think about it from the yin-yang perspective, like within any of us, there's like feminine aspects within, uh, blokes, and there's also potentially masculine elements within, uh, uh, lady folk as well. So, um, so it might just be— I don't know what— don't rush to make meaning of this right now, but it could, it could, you know, be tapping into the masculine sides of things.

Josh: So maybe we should do another testosterone test.

Dr.: Oh, hang on, do you want— should we oscillate? Do you want to do it?

Josh: Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Tommy, make it.

Dr.: You just need to shuffle it so that you have to shuffle. So that you You don't accidentally get Joshua's, you know, fortune. The fortune is an interesting word, right? Because it comes from the Greek god Fortuna. And there was this wheel of fortune, you know, the old TV show, The Wheel of Fortune. But in mythology, the wheel of fortune was the fact that you might be having a good time in life, but at any moment Fortuna might turn the wheel and what is good might turn you into like despair and stuff. Stuff, and those that are having a bad time might actually have a good time. So it's this whole— if we can be kind of— have a grace or a stoicism where we're not so swept up in the whims of Fortuna and just kind of stoically go about life, um, that could be great. All right, up again, DJ.

Tommy: Let's see this. Um, okay, myth, myth.

Dr.: Oh, there you go.

Josh: What does it mean, myth?

Dr.: My interpretation is, um, and it's open to your interpretation. So subsume this, this is provocation for you.

Josh: What's the illustration, Jason? How is that?

Dr.: I would say that it's like a glass balloon being blown. Um, um, I would say that, you know, for myth, I'd be encouraging you to think about, uh, the storeys that you live in the world. We all live in a world of stories. We swim in the sea of storeys and meaning, and there are storeys that you have and hold about yourself that have become myth. Myths, and there are storeys that others have been told about you that are kind of like the myth of TJ. And you might want to be thinking, okay, how might— what types of storeys do I want to tell of myself and for others to tell of me?

Josh: How good is this? I feel like I'm really connecting with this. Okay, I'll shuffle.

Dr.: I hope this is good for the listeners at home.

Josh: No, thank you.

Dr.: All right, cool. You've done your humming and stuff too, so that's out of the way. Okay, good.

Josh: Yeah, sure, it's fine, it's fine.

Dr.: But all right, great.

Josh: Okay, so I'm just about to pick another card.

Tommy: Second card.

Dr.: All right, okay, what have we got here? Oh, what is that?

Josh: What is it? So it doesn't say anything. It looks like they're holding a big biscuit.

Dr.: That's great.

Tommy: Or like a, um, cheese board.

Josh: Yeah, cheese board. Cheese board. Have you seen near your place there's a sign for a cheese subscription?

Dr.: No, I haven't, but that makes sense, you know, looking at all sorts of subscriptions.

Tommy: So does this have any meaning?

Josh: Well, so there's nature and then there's cheese board. So I think I need to go out more picnics.

Dr.: That— yeah, so that's meaning in action.

Tommy: So this is—

Dr.: provocation evokes the meaning within.

Josh: It's so funny because that's what I've been thinking about, like, what, just, uh, going outside? Yeah, but just like getting Bren and I had a great time like a couple of years ago. We went to Daylesford, the lake house or whatever. And the best— I hated the restaurant, no offense, but the, um, the picnic bit where we had like wine and we're chilling out next to the lake was awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr.: So that's great.

Tommy: I'll pick my one. Second card, self. And it's a hand holding rings that are holding another— oh, it's like a serpent.

Josh: More self.

Tommy: It's a um, it has an eye in the middle of this snake that's a ring.

Dr.: So that's— the snake represents that. That's an Ouroboros, which is the snake eating its own tail, which talks about the infinite nature of time. Um, so I would, I would suggest this notion of selfness, and given all the loops and cycles and that, you might be thinking about— it might be an opportunity for you to think not just about the storeys of who you are and what others say of you, but also think of yourself from a more eternal or infinite perspective, because you're— we all experience ourselves in this particular moment of time. But if we were to imagine what our future selves would think of us, or if we think about ourselves as viewing, uh, the entirety of our lives, what's that all about? And I mean, these are the questions that we don't normally get time to consider, but once a year we might just kind of use that as a provocation.

Josh: It could be like— that's really good. We need to take photos of these so I can remember them. Yeah, put them in Evernote 2021 again, into— back into Evernote.

Dr.: Nice shuffling.

Josh: Thank you.

Dr.: Okay, okay, here we go. Third and final card: Provocation.

Josh: Threshold.

Dr.: Threshold. And what's the picture?

Josh: Lions or tigers? Kings? No, King Lion King. Lions. They're lions. Um, and it sort of looks like, uh, the lion from Wizard of Oz, and there's— cool.

Dr.: And what is this?

Josh: Clouds.

Dr.: Lovely. And what does threshold mean for you?

Josh: Threshold, uh, is about finding the perfect balance. So it's like— oh yeah, I'm imagining like a slider, and like I'm thinking about the slider of the contrast threshold. And so I'm trying to get just enough—

Dr.: I'm—

Josh: your video is Photoshop.

Mason: Beautiful.

Josh: Oh, so it's like a threshold is about like finding, like for me, if I'm using like an audio compressor or whatever, you're trying to find the exact balance to make it work. Is that what threshold— what's the definition of threshold? 97.

Dr.: Can I jump in? Yeah, yeah. Um, this is, this is good. I love this. And you're actually, I think you're correct with that, finding the right threshold, which is like a balance. But I also say it's like a, uh, like a moment that we cross, or what is the technical difference?

Mason: The magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded needed for a certain reaction, phenomenon, or result.

Dr.: So in, um, uh, the, uh, what's his name, um, Hero of a Thousand Faces, the book that explores the monomyth, um, I forget the author's name, uh, Joseph Campbell, yeah, uh, talk about the hero's journey, uh, of being one that crosses certain thresholds, uh, where you, you start, you resist the call to adventure, but some sort of catalysing thing gets you on the adventure. That's crossing the first threshold. There's some sort of like conquering the dragon, which is an external threat, cross another threshold. But then there's an inner threat or an inner world, uh, thing to threat. Now I don't know what threshold you might be at, but it seems like a pretty powerful year for you tapping into your inner, uh, your animus, um, having more cheese and picnics. And there's some sort of threshold that you will know that it may be time for you to cross.

Josh: I like it. How good is it?

Tommy: All right, just a quick little—

Dr.: it says provocations, right? So, you know, now this is it.

Josh: This is a framework.

Dr.: It's like if people draw a card that says death, right? It's not like, oh, I'm gonna die. No, it's not like, okay, what does that concept represent?

Tommy: All right, um, improbability is the card I've chosen. There's a— is that a duck? That's something. That's someone— it's an arm shooting a bow. Towards the sky, and there's a sort of silhouette of the moon.

Dr.: When you hear the word improbability, what does that evoke for you?

Tommy: Improbability. I don't even know what it means, to be honest. What is it? What does it evoke?

Josh: That's probability.

Tommy: Yeah, probability. The likelihood of something happening in improbability. Impossible.

Mason: Im—

Tommy: improbability. I have no idea.

Dr.: What I would suggest for you is that this could be a lovely provocation as is like, okay, so you're contemplating these future possibilities, right? One way to look at this is like, there's a possibility in the future that you think, nah, that's very unlikely to occur. That's very improbable. You know, like the probability of that, very slim. And it might be like, maybe in terms of the storeys that you say and that kind of the way that you relate to the storeys that are around you, maybe that's something to lean into. If there was something that you thought, ah, we're not ready yet, or a few years' time, maybe that could be something that could be part of the radar for the year ahead. Or maybe not. Maybe this is all just bullshit, right? So this is part of the— this is part of the kind of oscillation. If it helps, if it's just what a tarot card reader would do.

Tommy: Now they're convinced.

Dr.: Um, uh, which actually does that— you know, that there is a predatory form of like self-development capitalism that I don't like, where, where people who are in vulnerable stages of life can get sold these mythical magical programmes that are are bullshit that don't necessarily help. And of course, there are some things where this process itself is quite helpful and therapeutic. So, with all these things, keep your wits about you. And if any of this helps you, maybe it might evoke some thoughtfulness.

Tommy: I think what I'm trying to do is connect it to the thing I think. So, I think I have like a— I don't know the word, but I have the sort of understanding of where I want to focus on, and then I'm trying to connect it to that. So, I think that's what happens, Right. If you're feeling internally like you're onto something, but you don't, haven't verbalised it, and then you start, oh, this made like you're connecting meaning.

Josh: It uncovers the unconscious as well, I guess. Right. And so then it's like it forces us to say, okay, within the bag of storeys that we have, what are these provoking?

Dr.: Yeah.

Josh: And so then it turns out that the cheese thing in Daylesford that happened over a year ago, I'm able to pull upon that and totally think about it.

Dr.: Bring back that into your consciousness. And like, if you're having to draw a card and you're like, fuck that, no way, it kind of doubles your conviction or your sense of like, yeah, no, I think I feel like I've got this, you know, that provocation. Nah, nah, I think, and either way, like there's no right and wrong of this, but it just helps us to think about who we are and who we might become, think about what's important from new lights. So yeah, well done guys, love it.

Josh: Thank you, Jason. chooseoneword.com, but yeah, use the link in the—

Dr.: Yeah, use the link under this in the show notes or under the video. Um, that way you get to support the Daily Talk Show too.

Josh: And how many videos are there in total?

Dr.: You do like 75, uh, current counting. I'm hoping to keep this as a dynamic thing. That may seem intimidating to some folks, but I've categorised them as like essential, uh, extended, and esoteric. You know, I like to get into the esoteric territories, but you can do this as a pick-a-path adventure. You can just choose which ones you want to watch, and you get a lifetime access that's always there for you. And I hope to update it year on year.

Josh: Yeah, and I also love just hanging out with you because I think that you, uh, bring such an interesting sort of thought processes and experience. And I feel like potentially I don't have to read as many books because I can just ask you.

Dr.: That's what we're all doing in life, really. Uh, yeah, we're all just— we're all just—

Josh: someone's got to read this. So you're doing the reading, but you're reading body language, right?

Dr.: You're reading the tone and the language that happens. Like, there's diff— like, books are just one form of capturing knowledge. Like, the conversation The living knowledge is another form too. So it's all good. Everything is everything.

Josh: Thank you, Dr. Jason Fox, the wizard. It's a Daily Talk Show. Thank you everyone for a great year.

Tommy: Should we just quickly reflect?

Josh: Yeah, definitely.

Tommy: Um, it's been a great year.

Josh: There we go. What have you been thinking about '97 coming to the, to the end of 2019?

Mason: Um, well, I mean, I just based off that chat, I've been thinking about I guess the term of leaning into stuff. There's always like a, a barrier or a thought before I do something, thinking about the consequences or like ramifications of what I say or the actions that I take. So I think stepping into it and really leaning into the stuff that makes me uncomfortable is, yeah, something that I want to focus on. I don't know the word for it yet, but yeah, that's the sort of idea.

Josh: I think it's also like the doing this every day, I think it's shown us the power of the smaller action, if anything, right? Which is like, it compounds. And I think that doing it every day, we haven't actually been able to give things much thought, but we've been pretending for the entire year. And through that, these things actually emerge. And then it's almost like what you were talking about, where you go to Christmas, you know, with your family, and people are saying things that are actually quite, I find that quite connected with what we're doing because we are constantly out there. And so I think there's definitely something in that where it's like, oh, these actions are actually adding up to something. And so maybe there's an opportunity, you know, at the end of this year now to say, okay, let's, we can actually steer it a little bit now. What's the casting it off as you were sort of saying, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Dr.: Got some intentionality, directionality in this.

Tommy: Like, yeah, I love it. Thanks for coming on, mate.

Josh: And thank you to all the Gronks for the past year, for all the emails, for the reviews, for the fun on Instagram. It's always great. And I think it's like the reason why we love doing it is actually having people that we can chat to and listen to and all think about all the friends we've made in the last year. It's pretty crazy.

Tommy: And all the firsts Mason's ticked off. It's bloody unbelievable.

Josh: Happy New Year, everyone. And we'll see you in 2020, which is tomorrow.

Tommy: See you guys.

Dr.: Bye.