If Books Could Kill - The Let Them Theory

00:00:00.000 okay i have a zinger but you need to tell me if it's bad we might have to do it again okay

00:00:03.620 michael peter what do you know about let them all i know is that this is the first time we've 0.52

00:00:09.720 covered a norwegian horror thriller on the podcast what the fuck does that even make sense 0.99

00:00:15.200 what is that reference fuck never mind 0.99

00:00:20.080 wait okay well now i need to come up with a fucking real one that's that's the first time 1.00

00:00:26.420 I've never had any idea what you're talking about. 0.98

00:00:29.140 Just dead silence?

00:00:31.200 Because literally all I have now is like they them jokes about the title, which I don't

00:00:36.360 think is a very good idea. 1.00

00:00:38.600 There's a sweet spot for pronoun jokes where LGBT people think you're joking with them. 1.00

00:00:44.320 Yeah.

00:00:45.280 And homophobic people think that you're making fun of LGBT people.

00:00:49.760 I was on Tumblr once and I saw the joke.

00:00:51.540 Somebody said, it's so hot out that all my gender fluid friends are now gender vapor.

00:00:56.420 And I immediately went to the account to be like, is this a transphobic joke or is this a pro trans joke?

00:01:02.980 That's too deep.

00:01:04.020 That's too deep to be transphobic, right?

00:01:06.980 OK, let me let me try.

00:01:08.300 Let me try.

00:01:08.800 OK, Michael.

00:01:10.400 Peter.

00:01:11.000 What do you know about the let them theory?

00:01:14.060 Finally, we're talking about a book based on the Democrats approach to the Trump administration.

00:01:26.420 the let them theory is a book hot off the presses came out in december 2024

00:01:37.660 written by mel robbins a self-help author and podcaster two red flags two red flags

00:01:45.300 immediate new york times number one bestseller i've seen reports that it sold over a million

00:01:51.560 copies in its first month oh to give you some background on robin's she struck it big in 2017

00:01:57.980 with her book the five second rule about dropping food on the floor i feel like we're at a point

00:02:03.060 where you could see an entire book that's just like you've got five seconds to pick that burger

00:02:08.320 you know just pad it out man get some testimonials every chapter is just a different food it's like

00:02:15.080 chicken yeah you got five seconds grilled cheese it's five seconds right there some aristotle

00:02:20.860 quotes from quotesbrout.com. They knew the secret of dropping food. Yeah, I don't know why she called

00:02:26.980 it this, but whatever. The idea behind the five second rule was that you have five seconds to turn

00:02:31.740 an impulse into an action if you really want to make it happen. So sort of like an anti-procrastination

00:02:38.480 tool when it comes to simple tasks like getting out of bed, count to five and do it or else your

00:02:43.600 brain will sort of move on, right? All of my impulses are for bad things, so that wouldn't

00:02:47.960 work for me, but some people have impulses for good things. Yeah. No, it's cool if what your

00:02:51.960 impulses are, are to like do work or something. When she opens up the let them theory, she tells

00:02:59.240 the tale of her rise to prominence and the sort of success of the five second rule. She opens up

00:03:06.120 the book saying, at the age of 41, I found myself $800,000 in debt, unemployed and watching my

00:03:14.080 husband's restaurant business crumble. She goes on to detail their situation a bit, basically how

00:03:19.440 it left her depressed and how it helped her come up with the five second rule. And then she sort

00:03:25.080 of uses that rule to lift herself out of it. Right. She says this and I'm going to send it to 1.00

00:03:31.340 you just for your reference. There's a lot of things that I'm going to send you less for your

00:03:36.380 reaction and more because I need you reading something. There's unfortunately so little of

00:03:42.800 substance that there's not a ton to like send you and be like thoughts. But people do need to hear

00:03:48.220 you speak. And so I will be sending you something to read. I'll just be sitting here reading a

00:03:51.960 different book as you talk. This is expert podcasting I'm doing. She says, but that all

00:03:57.280 changed one fateful day when an old roommate recommended me as the perfect person to give

00:04:01.740 advice on career change at a small event. I suppose she thought of me because I had changed

00:04:05.840 my career so many times. Even I had lost count. When I walked on stage and saw 700 people in the

00:04:10.820 audience staring back at me, my mind went blank, and I could feel my chest and neck turning red.

00:04:15.580 I then proceeded to have a 21-minute-long anxiety attack on stage. About 19 minutes in, I forgot how

00:04:21.220 to end my talk on career change, so I blurted out the five-second rule on how I use it because I

00:04:25.840 couldn't think of anything else to say. I must have blacked out because I also don't remember

00:04:29.680 the part where I gave everyone in the audience my email address. And as I walked off that stage,

00:04:34.300 I thought that was the worst experience of my life. Thank God it's over. It turns out that

00:04:38.420 small event was one of the first TEDx conferences ever held. They filmed it and a year later posted

00:04:43.640 the video online. Not only did it go viral, it's become one of the most... Not only did it go viral,

00:04:50.280 it's become one of the most watched TED Talks of all time. This is just a really long, humble brag.

00:04:56.260 I was so nervous and it was so bad, but it turns out it's like super good and everybody loves it.

00:05:00.400 I've heard her say this in interviews too, that she was like so flustered on stage that she just

00:05:04.640 blurted out the five second rule and like, whoa, it changed her whole career trajectory. It's a

00:05:09.380 miracle, right? But if you watch the video, she has slides for it. Right. It's built into her

00:05:15.480 presentation. Yeah. On stage, she says she hosts a syndicated radio show. Okay. And also that she

00:05:22.080 had a book that she was promoting. In Let Them, when she's describing this, she says she's

00:05:27.200 unemployed. Right. She says that her friend recommended her because she switched careers a

00:05:31.080 lot and not to be too nitpicky it wasn't actually a talk about career change oh the name of the talk

00:05:38.520 is how to stop screwing yourself over and it's sort of standard self-help stuff about how to

00:05:43.340 like get out of your own way in various regards she doesn't say the word career once no way

00:05:48.880 check the whole transcript people always write their own ambition out of these things it's always

00:05:53.040 like oh i just happened to stumble into this huge opportunity but like it's actually fine to look

00:05:57.760 for opportunities. That's actually the kind of thing that like self-help advice might be useful

00:06:00.840 for. And we're already into one book theory territory because one of the quintessential

00:06:06.380 elements of these people is that almost all of them were pitching their advice before they were

00:06:11.460 actually successful. So like even in her own sort of fictionalized telling, once again, we see the

00:06:18.140 self-help career preceding the actual success. So this is someone who claims she was floating

00:06:24.660 from career to career she was like a lawyer and then she was doing she was like a pundit for a

00:06:29.120 bit she was apparently in severe debt and then strikes it big with this big TEDx talk and

00:06:34.700 suddenly her self-help career is up and running so it's like the five second rule itself doesn't

00:06:42.340 change her life right it was the motivational speaking circuit that resulted from it that

00:06:47.840 changed her life it's an Escher painting it's an Escher painting of a sector there's no actual

00:06:52.320 like insight being produced they're selling you the fact that they're selling you insight and so

00:06:57.020 she's relatively self-aware about this she says meanwhile my friends and extended family had no

00:07:01.620 idea what i was doing because i was too scared to tell them mel giving advice give me a break

00:07:06.380 she nearly destroyed her own life wasn't she a talk show host yeah looking back i can see how

00:07:13.440 paralyzed i was with imposter syndrome what right did i have to call myself an expert in anything

00:07:17.980 Well, that's the thing. It's like, this isn't really imposter syndrome, right? This is just

00:07:23.660 being an actual imposter. What do I, Michael Hobbs, have the right to give people advice on

00:07:31.320 17th century France? I felt like an imposter.

00:07:36.000 This is like, you know, that tweet that's like, like, I don't support all women. Some of you

00:07:41.440 bitches are dumb this is like like i don't a lot of you are out there being like oh like here's how 1.00

00:07:48.740 to fight through your imposter syndrome but my message to some of you would be maybe just sit 1.00

00:07:56.000 with it for a minute the core narrative of all these books is someone getting over their imposter

00:08:00.400 syndrome and just continuing to be an imposter like i i used to feel bad about giving advice

00:08:05.360 and now i still get bullshit advice i just don't feel bad about it right really rooting for the

00:08:09.300 underdog so let's talk about the let them theory in the book she describes how she came up with

00:08:15.980 this theory she says two years ago i stumbled upon these two words let them and it was like

00:08:21.760 flipping a switch in my life she says the let them theory is about freedom two simple words

00:08:28.060 let them will free you from the burden of trying to manage other people so i'm going to send you a

00:08:33.960 bit so what does this look like imagine you're at work and your colleague is in a bad mood instead

00:08:38.940 of letting their negativity affect you, just say, let them. Let them be grumpy. It's not your

00:08:43.880 problem. Focus on your work and how you feel. Or maybe your dad makes another comment about your

00:08:48.640 life choices and it hits you like a brick. Instead of letting it ruin your day, just say, let him.

00:08:53.760 Let him have his opinions. They don't change who you are or what you've accomplished or your right

00:08:57.800 to make decisions that make you happy. The truth is other people hold no real power over you unless

00:09:02.720 you give it to them. This, I mean, like most of these books, this seems like a nugget of good

00:09:06.560 advice at the center of it yeah there are many situations where it's like i can't control that

00:09:12.280 i'm not gonna freak out right right now we're trying to record and some workers outside my house

00:09:18.660 are throwing giant logs into a wood chipper at intervals designed to drive us insane people

00:09:25.560 are always like release the uncut episodes and it's like every three minutes we're like 0.98

00:09:29.500 stopping mid-sentence like fuck yes just just us being like oh there's a wood chipper

00:09:33.960 she says but perhaps the most surprising thing about the let them theory is how i discovered it 0.99

00:09:39.440 in the first place i'm almost embarrassed to tell you the story i discovered something that

00:09:44.000 changed my entire approach to life at a high school prom damn it i was hoping she was going 0.95

00:09:48.820 to be on a scuba boat and her husband had a meltdown let him let him kill everyone on the boat 0.98

00:09:55.300 she says she discovered the idea when she was dealing with a bunch of chaos surrounding her

00:10:01.080 son Oakley going to the prom they're scrambling to get him ready it's raining the kids all want

00:10:07.360 to eat a pre-prom dinner at a taco bar that might not have enough seating Mel is freaking out trying

00:10:14.040 to convince them to do something else and then she has this exchange with her daughter Kendall

00:10:18.780 okay I'm gonna send you something let's do it as a script um I will be Mel Robbins okay and you

00:10:24.140 will be her uh wise young daughter mom if Oakley and his friends want to go to a taco bar for pre-prom

00:10:30.480 let them. But it's too small for all of them to fit in. They're going to get soaked. Mom,

00:10:35.320 let them get soaked. But his new sneakers are going to get ruined. Let them get ruined. Kendall,

00:10:40.200 they're brand new. Mom, you're being annoying. Let them show up to prom in wet tuxedos and dresses. 1.00

00:10:45.580 Let them go eat where they want. It's their prom, not yours. Just drop it. Let them. And then she

00:10:50.960 says, the effect was immediate. Something inside of me softened. I could feel the tension disappearing.

00:10:56.120 My mind stopped racing and the stress of trying to control what was happening evaporated.

00:11:00.480 Why did I need to get involved?

00:11:02.020 Why did I have to manage this situation?

00:11:03.880 Why not worry about what I was going to do for dinner tonight

00:11:06.160 rather than what they were?

00:11:07.620 Why was I stressing out about them at all?

00:11:09.700 Let them.

00:11:10.620 It's their prom, not yours.

00:11:12.420 Stop controlling it or judging it or managing it and let them.

00:11:15.860 Honestly, good advice.

00:11:17.160 This seems fine to me.

00:11:18.320 So she takes us to heart and says that within a week,

00:11:21.300 her whole outlook changed.

00:11:22.820 She's letting things happen.

00:11:24.320 And the result is that little things aren't getting to her.

00:11:27.000 Great.

00:11:27.140 She says, I felt at ease, happy, and centered.

00:11:29.320 The impact was undeniable.

00:11:30.980 Even Chris noticed, her husband.

00:11:32.500 You seem different.

00:11:33.340 And the fact is, I felt different.

00:11:34.940 I felt so good I had to share Let Them online.

00:11:37.760 So I posted a 60-second video explaining the Let Them theory on social media.

00:11:42.320 And I am now going to send you that video.

00:11:45.620 So I've been using this thing called the Let Them theory.

00:11:48.240 I love this.

00:11:48.940 I want you to try it.

00:11:49.680 Here's how it works.

00:11:50.760 The next time you feel left out, your friends all go out to brunch together and they don't invite you.

00:11:55.420 Let them.

00:11:56.160 Or maybe the person you're dating doesn't want a commitment.

00:11:59.180 Let them.

00:12:00.240 Or perhaps your spouse does not want to do the 5K with you.

00:12:03.760 Let them.

00:12:04.400 Your company is laying people off.

00:12:06.940 Let them.

00:12:07.340 We'll circle back on that one.

00:12:08.160 You spend so much time and energy trying to control other people and getting emotionally

00:12:13.620 worked up about things that are beyond your control.

00:12:17.080 You can tap into peace and true control if you let them be themselves.

00:12:23.040 And here's the other thing.

00:12:24.140 If you let them, people will then reveal who they truly are.

00:12:28.740 And when they reveal who they truly are to you, you now know what you can choose next that's right for you.

00:12:36.220 So let them.

00:12:38.500 Okay. 1.00

00:12:39.360 Oh, then she's got like a little graphic at the end.

00:12:42.880 The script of her name, just Mel coming in. 0.98

00:12:46.460 It's so fucking good. 0.94

00:12:47.600 And she has her little microphone, has the Mel Robbins podcast on it. 0.98

00:12:50.540 So this is like a well-established influencer.

00:12:52.560 The reality of this, Michael, is that this person is extremely famous in a certain part

00:12:57.580 of society that we do not participate in at all.

00:13:00.580 This is the LinkedIn community.

00:13:01.940 She's famous among the LinkedIn poster community.

00:13:03.740 That's exactly right.

00:13:04.740 So this goes mega viral, as we discussed, and bam, Mel decides to turn it into a book.

00:13:11.280 Okay.

00:13:11.660 I'm going to send you a poem.

00:13:13.860 And you can just read the first few lines.

00:13:16.560 You're sending me a poem right now?

00:13:17.960 I'm sending you a poem.

00:13:18.980 I'm always saying, Peter, stop sending me poems constantly throughout the day.

00:13:22.180 But I never stop.

00:13:23.420 You have to just let me.

00:13:26.120 Let me be homophobic. 0.83

00:13:27.740 Let me be annoying.

00:13:29.740 It says, just let them.

00:13:31.720 If they want to choose something or someone over you, let them.

00:13:34.720 If they want to go weeks without talking to you, let them.

00:13:37.600 If they are okay with never seeing you, let them.

00:13:40.840 If they are okay with always putting themselves first, let them.

00:13:44.640 Do I have to keep going?

00:13:45.420 This is so boring.

00:13:46.240 And so now just read me what's at the very bottom there.

00:13:49.540 Author Cassie Phillips.

00:13:51.240 Is that what you mean?

00:13:51.760 That's right. Not Mel Robbins, but a woman named Cassie Phillips wrote this poem in 2019.

00:13:59.880 Oh.

00:14:00.480 So the message of the poem is pretty obviously the same as the book, right? But maybe more

00:14:05.860 importantly, it follows the same style and format that Mel Robbins is using, right? Something

00:14:12.100 happens, let them. Something happens, let them.

00:14:15.300 It's like the da-na-na-na-na in blues. The same little riff after every sentence.

00:14:20.180 The poem goes viral in September 2022, just a few months before Robbins made a video about

00:14:26.780 the let them idea.

00:14:28.020 No way.

00:14:28.500 Not only that, but in October 2022, Phillips follows it up with a Facebook post where she

00:14:33.300 says that once you absorb the lesson of let them, you can finally let you, meaning like

00:14:38.540 you can be yourself and do yourself without worrying too much about other people.

00:14:41.660 Sure.

00:14:41.860 That post goes viral too.

00:14:43.920 Robbins throughout the book uses the same exact concept.

00:14:46.880 She just calls it let me.

00:14:48.140 First you let them.

00:14:48.840 No way.

00:14:49.340 And then you let me.

00:14:50.300 She says, that's why the theory only works if you say both parts.

00:14:53.120 When you say let them, you make a conscious decision not to allow other people's behavior

00:14:57.640 to bother you.

00:14:58.640 When you say let me, you take responsibility for what you do next.

00:15:03.660 Not only is Cassie Phillips not thanked or mentioned in the book, but before it comes

00:15:09.020 out, Robbins tries to trademark the phrase let them.

00:15:12.820 Litigation still ongoing, by the way.

00:15:14.600 We've actually talked about this on the show before.

00:15:16.300 there's been other plagiarism scandals among self-help gurus. And it's always interesting to

00:15:21.220 me because the fundamentals of the field is that people are basically repackaging the exact same

00:15:25.440 idea in a million ways. This is the whole meta behind our one book joke. It's all the same shit.

00:15:31.240 And so there's a finite number of ways in the English language that you can repackage the same 1.00

00:15:36.100 idea. Although in this case, it's particularly egregious. It's egregious. In this case,

00:15:41.340 it's very obvious in my mind. Yeah, yeah. Because it's not like some obscure 1950s thing. This

00:15:45.280 This would have been floating around the internet when she was allegedly coming up with this, like, let them theory. 0.88

00:15:49.780 It goes viral right before.

00:15:51.800 Yeah.

00:15:52.020 It comes across her, you know, it comes into her field of vision in some way.

00:15:56.800 We don't know exactly how.

00:15:57.960 Maybe it was indirect.

00:15:59.020 Maybe it wasn't from the poem itself.

00:16:00.400 But it's very obvious that this is the same idea lifted.

00:16:03.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:03.420 Here is her response when confronted by the New York Post.

00:16:07.380 When asked about the timeline allocations, Robbins reiterated, people can obsess over any detail, but the facts are simple.

00:16:13.420 I've not seen her poem.

00:16:14.540 I have not read her poem, and it was not and will never be the source of inspiration for

00:16:18.600 my book.

00:16:19.360 This is nonsense.

00:16:20.420 I've spent 10 years shining a light on other people's work, so the allegation that I would 0.95

00:16:23.940 steal someone else's work is ridiculous.

00:16:25.860 As I write in the let them theory, you cannot control what people say, do, feel, or choose

00:16:30.580 to make up about you.

00:16:31.720 People can say anything about you, at schools, at work, on the internet, and you can't control

00:16:35.980 it.

00:16:36.440 Let them.

00:16:37.160 Oh, she's good. 0.92

00:16:38.480 She turned it into marketing for the concept. 1.00

00:16:40.540 She fucking turned it into self-promotion. 1.00

00:16:43.520 Yes. 1.00

00:16:43.920 You can already see the dangers of let them now.

00:16:47.020 Oh, she's using it to gaslight you about whether she stole the idea itself.

00:16:53.600 Yeah.

00:16:53.840 So instead of addressing the obvious contradictions in her story, the issue with the timeline,

00:16:59.800 she just deflects, promotes her book, and then predicates a lot of her denial on I didn't

00:17:05.960 read the poem, which might be true, but it's sort of beside the point, right?

00:17:09.780 Like the reality is that the idea and the phrase were both taken from the poem either

00:17:15.140 directly or indirectly, right?

00:17:16.900 It might be that she read the poem.

00:17:18.560 It might be that she heard someone else quoting the poem.

00:17:21.260 Doesn't matter.

00:17:22.220 Still stolen.

00:17:23.340 And on top of that, in the process of researching this book, there is absolutely no way that

00:17:29.600 no one came across this poem, right?

00:17:31.620 This one's so wild because when we were developing ideas for the name of this show, we came up

00:17:35.760 with various things and we would Google them and be like, oh, that's taken.

00:17:37.820 I remember once, I can't remember what it was. I was like, I remember making a joke on five to four that someone on social media was like, that was like word for word, a tweet I read and just like sent it to me. And I was like, oh, I must have read that tweet and forgot it.

00:17:54.120 I've done this too. Yeah.

00:17:54.840 The idea that you could be like, no, I didn't do it.

00:17:59.560 No.

00:17:59.720 Let me.

00:18:00.200 There's another mini drama surrounding this book, which is that in the book itself, she

00:18:05.940 says that she wrote it with her daughter, but her daughter was not like listed on the

00:18:10.120 cover. 0.65

00:18:10.780 And so a lot of people are like, well, that's kind of shitty, right? 0.79

00:18:13.320 Yeah.

00:18:13.580 So after a while, they put her daughter in a smaller font.

00:18:16.520 Newer versions have her daughter's name in little letters.

00:18:20.760 If your daughter has...

00:18:21.900 Hold on.

00:18:22.420 The truck is now backing up down my street.

00:18:25.140 Take your time, boys.

00:18:26.120 Take your time.

00:18:26.900 Let them.

00:18:27.760 Let them. 1.00

00:18:29.000 I need let them in my life so badly when this shit is going on. 1.00

00:18:32.080 I'm just losing my mind as this truck backs up. 0.99

00:18:34.960 But isn't that the whole thing, though?

00:18:36.060 It's like, well, let them ruin your podcast recording.

00:18:38.700 Well, no, that's not reasonable advice for many situations.

00:18:41.980 Like, well, just let this happen.

00:18:43.020 No.

00:18:43.620 I'll go even farther.

00:18:45.100 If I were the type of person to not get annoyed by a beeping truck on my street while we tried

00:18:50.880 to record i really think i would lose some of my pizzazz you know what i mean you're supposed to

00:18:56.440 be grumpy yeah that's that's a lot of the flavor i bring to the table you want if if you want to

00:19:02.140 hang out with peter you're signing up to hear me complain about little things that are happening

00:19:06.700 in my life that's part of the the peter experience and if you take that away what am i i'm just some 0.98

00:19:11.800 fucking guy that's your book about masculinity you're like you gotta moan about some random 0.99

00:19:16.080 shit oh what about this what about this now tell me if this is good bitch like a man 1.00

00:19:20.480 and i'll write a companion book called man like a bitch 1.00

00:19:28.220 you write one called man up i'll write one called man down anyway that was the intro portion to this 0.98

00:19:34.840 episode because sometimes when we do these sort of like fluffy at times harmless self-help books

00:19:41.860 people get mad at me. People are like, oh, that book's not that bad. So what I did this time is

00:19:47.520 make you hate her first. And now all of the bad faith shit talking I do is going to be framed 0.98

00:19:54.380 properly and you're all going to love it. Also, the book is actually fine, but you want us to 0.70

00:19:57.620 hate this person first so we can just do bitch eating crackers for the rest of the episode. 0.99

00:20:00.980 The idea is actually lovely. So let's turn to the substance of the book. I think big picture, 0.99

00:20:07.480 this book has some good ideas in it, but it suffers from a couple of common self-help book

00:20:13.280 problems. One, a very simple idea that, as you saw, can be summarized effectively in a TikTok

00:20:19.700 video, and then it's stretched out to a few hundred pages. Two, it's an idea of very limited

00:20:25.760 utility that she wants to think can be applied broadly to almost everything in your life.

00:20:31.280 Because even in this poem that Cassie posted, a lot of these situations are not situations where

00:20:35.420 you should let them. Like if your partner is being shitty to you, you probably shouldn't let

00:20:39.420 them. You should probably start a conversation about that. It's like there's many situations

00:20:42.740 in which letting them is like sociopathic advice. You know, a lot of our books are like,

00:20:47.380 this could have been an essay. But my wife said this could have been a children's book.

00:20:52.220 And I keep thinking about it. It actually does seem like it could be a pretty good children's

00:20:57.560 book. Yeah. Don't be like the busybody rabbit. Be like the bear who lets them.

00:21:03.140 Like that's honestly like kind of good advice especially for kids.

00:21:06.000 She talks about the roots of this idea in like stoicism, radical acceptance, detachment

00:21:11.940 theory, all of these sort of like related ideas, basically being like, this is not a

00:21:16.640 totally novel idea, right?

00:21:18.220 In fact, if you go on Instagram in 2022, you'll actually find...

00:21:22.400 You'll find roots of this idea in the poem that I stole it from directly.

00:21:26.480 She says that the biggest use of the idea is to rise above the tiny stressors that you

00:21:31.660 face every day. And this is where I think that she's right. It actually is useful. She speaks

00:21:37.980 with another author, Aditi Nurukar, in their book, The Five Resets. This person is an actual doctor

00:21:45.760 and they talk about the brain. The basic idea that she presents is that your brain's prefrontal

00:21:50.280 cortex regulates emotions. And then during times of stress, it becomes less active while the amygdala

00:21:56.200 becomes more active which can lead you to respond to things more emotionally as far as i know that's

00:22:01.820 like roughly true also i want to say when i took bio in like ninth grade my teacher pronounced it

00:22:09.540 amygdala and i thought people that said amygdala were big dummies until i looked up the proper

00:22:16.300 pronunciation knowing that i was going to be hounded if i got it wrong and it turns out i'm

00:22:20.980 the dummy it was named after natalie portman in the phantom menace that's where they got the name

00:22:24.960 of the brain part. God. Who can forget? Every podcast I'm on has some fucking Star Wars nerd

00:22:28.860 on it. I'm not even a Star Wars nerd, I'm just a gay man and Natalie Portman is just like implanted 0.99

00:22:32.640 in my brain. I'm going to send you one of her sort of overview of how it works. The problem is that

00:22:38.520 the second you feel stressed by the guy coughing on the plane, the line that is taking too long,

00:22:42.800 or the test results that you're waiting on, your brain goes into a stress response and that

00:22:46.640 prefrontal cortex that is so important is no longer in control and neither are you. The moment

00:22:52.220 you say let them, you're signaling to your brain that it's okay. This isn't worth stressing about.

00:22:56.660 You're willing your amygdala to turn off. You're resetting that stress response by detaching from

00:23:01.300 the negative emotion you feel. Here's how you do it. The moment anything happens that stresses you

00:23:05.760 out, say let them. Put yourself in pause. Then say let me and take a breath. Let me. Take another

00:23:11.220 breath. Slow your stress response. Calm your body and brain down. Take control and regain your power.

00:23:16.780 Okay. So she's already mixing up like different categories of things though. It's like the guy

00:23:24.100 coughing on the plane and also test results that you're waiting on. Those are very different things

00:23:29.180 and one of those is like kind of okay to stress about. She quotes Dr. Aditi saying that deep

00:23:34.380 breaths can be helpful in mitigating a stress response, but there's no indication in the book

00:23:39.840 that this doctor said anything about the let them idea specifically. So she's sort of saying like

00:23:44.920 There's research that shows pausing and taking a deep breath can lower your stress response.

00:23:49.400 So if you pause, take a deep breath and say, let them, that'll work too.

00:23:53.300 And it's like, yeah, I guess you're right.

00:23:54.920 But can I do the same thing?

00:23:56.300 Can I be like, take a deep breath and say, subscribe to If Books Could Kill and you will

00:24:00.920 find your stress response fading.

00:24:04.240 I'm the kind of person who stresses out about minor things like this.

00:24:07.200 And sometimes it does help me to like talk myself out of it.

00:24:09.520 Be like, oh yeah, someone in front of you in line is taking a long time.

00:24:12.080 But like, whatever, you'll be a minute late to the thing you were going to.

00:24:14.660 It's really not that big of a deal.

00:24:15.740 It sort of, it helps to talk through these things.

00:24:17.540 The deep breath and sort of like a who cares kind of works for me.

00:24:20.860 I don't think saying let them would work for me just because it's too much focus on the

00:24:25.000 other person who I hate.

00:24:26.160 I hate that person. 1.00

00:24:28.100 The lady counting change in front of me in line. 1.00

00:24:31.200 Yeah. 1.00

00:24:31.380 She should go to jail.

00:24:32.520 But you know what?

00:24:33.160 I'm not, I'm not going to work on it right now. 0.97

00:24:34.760 She will get hers in hell. 0.95

00:24:35.960 Yeah. 0.86

00:24:36.160 so there's again a little bit of one book theory here because this is a very simple concept that's

00:24:45.680 stretched out to book length yeah so she's endlessly filling space with like anecdotes

00:24:50.620 and scenarios that illustrate something that's already been illustrated within a few pages

00:24:54.920 so she's like if someone's holding up the line and you're getting impatient let them if someone's

00:24:59.280 being inconsiderate let them if your friends aren't texting you back let them yeah and you

00:25:04.040 know at different points he's just like you might wonder how this applies when you're stressed out

00:25:07.740 at the airport it's like no i get it what about at the zoo what about at the library

00:25:11.480 what if you're at this address what if you're at this address how does this work at lax now let's

00:25:19.080 talk o'hare another example she likes to use is your friend not texting you back the framing she

00:25:25.440 likes to use is like if you let them you see who people really are and i think that's very catchy

00:25:30.940 but like is this better than having a conversation with someone yeah exactly if a friend or a spouse

00:25:36.400 is doing something you don't like isn't step one a simple chat and also even that depends on the

00:25:41.420 situation there's like if it's someone you met on a dating app and they're not texting you back

00:25:44.540 like yeah probably just move on it's a big deal exactly but it's like a close friend like yeah

00:25:48.000 maybe bring it up it's like all of these things break down because there's so many there's so

00:25:52.420 many examples where it isn't good advice she also tries to back this idea up with research about how

00:25:56.960 people are resistant to change and especially change through negative feedback which is true

00:26:02.320 although i don't think it supports the let them concept exactly it just means that you need to be

00:26:06.380 sort of conscious of how you approach people i don't know people are like dynamic and willing

00:26:10.660 to change in many different circumstances right and maybe not always but i think it's weird to

00:26:15.560 build your worldview around the idea that other people are generally static creatures right you

00:26:20.740 can't change also i want her to go through like painstaking every specific example of this of like

00:26:26.120 Imagine you're getting negative feedback, such as, I don't know, you plagiarize your book.

00:26:29.980 What should you do in that situation?

00:26:32.180 Gaslight your haters.

00:26:33.380 That's what you should do.

00:26:35.060 This is another area where she brings in actual research, but the applicability doesn't feel like it's quite there.

00:26:41.460 She's talking about people's receptiveness to negative feedback, and she uses warning labels as an example.

00:26:47.460 Basically, there's some research that shows that even though people understand rationally that warning labels are telling you the truth,

00:26:54.840 they tend to believe that they are like the exceptions that's sort of generally true warning

00:26:58.980 labels generally speaking are not very effective there are exceptions like the horrific warning

00:27:05.040 labels with like pictures of smoky lungs and stuff actually there's evidence that those do work and

00:27:09.840 like the more basically the more outrageous warning labels get the more effective they tend to be

00:27:14.700 but also you just i was just like okay that's a cool little tidbit of psychology but we're a little

00:27:20.300 far afield from the let them idea right okay peter warning labels you know i have tendinitis

00:27:25.160 right now which is why i can't go rock climbing and so you're supposed to put like heat on it

00:27:28.720 so i bought these toe warmers that like you're supposed to put in boots when you go skiing to

00:27:33.740 like keep your feet warm i'm familiar so i got a bunch of those and when you pull them out of the

00:27:38.140 package it's like on the package on the outside it's like do not put on skin and then you pull

00:27:42.920 them out of the package and it's like do not put on skin and then you peel off the backing and it's

00:27:47.240 like do not put on skin and so i put it on my skin because i was like it's like a fake like

00:27:53.260 we're surrounded by warning labels like warning coffee is hot right like we're surrounded by these

00:27:57.040 like fake warnings all the time put on my skin i put like an elbow wrap thing over it to like keep

00:28:01.820 it stuck against my skin and i was like working on my computer for like an hour or two and i was

00:28:05.620 like how this feels a little too warm like uncomfortably warm and i pulled off the elbow 0.75

00:28:09.580 thing i pulled off the pad and there was like a fucking divot it had like burned a like dime 0.95

00:28:14.740 size divot into my arm. I have a fucking scar, Peter. It's like so bad. And the thing is that 0.99

00:28:21.460 the first instinct that I had, like the first emotion that I felt was anger. I was like,

00:28:24.980 why didn't they tell me? This is bullshit. Like someone should do something. Why didn't they tell 1.00

00:28:30.020 me not to put it against my arm? The reality is that if they had just showed a picture of what

00:28:35.700 could happen to your arm, then you wouldn't have done it. So it is their fault. It's not your fault,

00:28:40.720 Michael you're perfect so let's talk about how this works in the workplace she basically says

00:28:46.460 that if you're in a situation where you deserve a promotion or something like that and you're not

00:28:50.200 getting one you don't use let them to get the promotion you use it to accept that they aren't

00:28:55.360 likely giving you what you deserve and think about what power you do have like taking steps to find

00:29:01.300 another job or something like that but then that's not let them you're letting them not give you a

00:29:04.920 promotion yeah but then you're doing something about it that's let me oh first you let them and

00:29:09.360 then you let me okay this is the thing though is that she makes it seem like it's a natural

00:29:13.660 delineation between letting them and letting you but it's actually not right you can assert

00:29:19.240 yourself in all sorts of ways and i don't think she's particularly clear on like when you should

00:29:23.800 be letting me that's the kind of thing for which people read advice books right like when should i

00:29:28.420 assert myself and when should i not she also talks about using this with difficult family members

00:29:33.180 i was a little bit worried about this part at first i thought that she was maybe going to

00:29:38.240 advocate for complacency in the face of mistreatment or even abuse i actually think that this section

00:29:43.700 is mostly good okay there's definitely some good advice she talks about how it's like very normal

00:29:48.440 to have negative opinions about people you like and love right so like if a family member or close

00:29:54.900 friend is upset at you or doesn't like this thing about you it's not something that should weigh you

00:30:00.980 down like this is just what normal human relationships are like right um useful thing

00:30:04.800 to keep in mind in little family spats and stuff like that right yeah she says that you should let

00:30:09.100 your family be judgmental or inappropriate and focus on yourself because you can't control them

00:30:14.840 she also says if like eventually if you let them and it turns out that cutting them out is like

00:30:22.300 what's best for you then do that that's letting you but this is every piece of advice of like

00:30:26.220 let them in less yeah but the unless is the hard part exactly and this is again you can just sort

00:30:31.260 of see there's good advice in here but the higher the stakes the less effective the framework right

00:30:36.840 yeah when it's a small thing sure you take a deep breath because your brain is sort of like

00:30:41.800 irrationally irritated yeah but when you are dealing with a family member who's a consistent

00:30:47.500 part of your life and is causing like real emotional turmoil for you it's much harder to

00:30:52.820 just work through that you can't just breathe your way through your relationship with your

00:30:55.820 father or whatever and this would be psychotic advice in particular situations i'm sure she's

00:31:00.600 not giving that like you're in an abusive relationship let them i want to be clear i i

00:31:04.740 do think that she makes room for like there's a line that you can draw for yourself yeah yeah

00:31:10.240 she doesn't seem as like psycho as some of the other people we've covered on the show there are

00:31:13.820 moments where i'm like i don't know about this mel but her advice is less problematic than a lot

00:31:22.220 of the authors we've covered it's not like kiyosaki right the rich dad poor dad guy who's

00:31:26.400 basically just like do crimes. Right. Tax fraud. Do it. Do you not have enough money? Have you

00:31:30.880 tried crimes? She does in this section do another quintessential self-help gimmick where like 0.99

00:31:37.900 extremely basic and common advice is sort of repackaged and then sold to you as if it's really

00:31:43.580 novel. I'm going to send you this bit. My friend Lisa Bilyeu, who is a bestselling author, host of

00:31:50.360 Women of Impact podcast and co-founder of the billion dollar nutrition company Quest Nutrition

00:31:54.820 shared the concept of frame of reference with me.

00:31:57.620 It's a tool to help you deal with situations

00:31:59.360 where someone disapproves of who you are,

00:32:01.400 who you love, what you believe,

00:32:02.720 or how you're living in your life,

00:32:04.280 and you want to navigate this at a deeper level.

00:32:06.860 Our global podcast audience went crazy

00:32:08.740 over frame of reference when Lisa described it

00:32:10.740 as a mindset tool that's helped her relationships.

00:32:13.360 Frame of reference is a fancy way to say

00:32:15.040 understanding the lens through which somebody sees something,

00:32:17.680 and it works beautifully with the let them theory.

00:32:20.300 Okay, yeah, this is like try to see things

00:32:21.900 from other people's perspective.

00:32:22.980 There's something so funny about this.

00:32:24.820 It's like she has this method of giving like an aura of authority to this generic nothing

00:32:30.420 advice.

00:32:30.820 My friend, who is a bestselling author, host of this podcast, co-founder of this billion

00:32:35.420 dollar company, our global podcast audience went crazy over this idea.

00:32:39.980 And the idea is like something that straight up you should have heard for the first time

00:32:44.800 as a child.

00:32:46.360 Have you ever thought about other people's perspectives?

00:32:48.860 It's like, well, yeah, because I'm not an actual psychopath.

00:32:53.080 My billionaire friend, who's a bestselling author, taught me about a principle called

00:32:57.180 sharing, where if I eat a cookie, other people can't have the cookie, and so I should break

00:33:02.380 apart the cookie and give it to others. 0.94

00:33:03.940 My podcast audience went fucking nuts when they found out about sharing.

00:33:08.680 So this leads me to one of the sort of like uncomfortable stories she shares about her 0.93

00:33:15.680 own life. And I think it shows how difficult it is to actually square the let them theory with

00:33:23.180 like the challenging scenarios that you encounter in the real world. Her primary example for the

00:33:28.400 frame of reference concept is a story about her mom. I'm going to send you it in chunks.

00:33:33.220 When I met my husband, Chris, I was ecstatic and madly in love. And when he proposed,

00:33:37.460 I was absolutely over the moon. At the time, I remember my mom not seeming as excited as I

00:33:41.940 expected her to be. So I had this conversation with her where I told her I wanted her to be

00:33:45.520 excited for me and I asked her to act as though she was the one who chose him for me and she said

00:33:50.220 but I didn't choose him for you and if it were up to me I wouldn't have so I'm not going to act like

00:33:55.000 I did. At the time I was so angry I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to cut her out of my

00:33:59.700 life but I had no idea how to handle the situation. Here I am madly in love with someone I know is my

00:34:04.460 soulmate and my mom tells me to my face I never would have picked him for you and then refuses to

00:34:09.680 act excited for me. I went on to marry Chris but I felt this tension of disapproval underneath the

00:34:14.260 dynamic between me and my mom for years it was hard for me to forget what she said and i didn't

00:34:18.840 know how to let it go she says she eventually used the frame of reference concept taught to her for

00:34:24.520 the first time by her friend who sells granola or whatever to see it from her mom's perspective

00:34:30.140 her mom had moved away from her own parents after marrying and then after that didn't see them very

00:34:36.500 often and she says that her mom was scared of the same thing happening with her daughter

00:34:41.000 So I'm going to send you another bit.

00:34:42.080 She says, when you look at it from my mother's frame of reference, she saw her story playing

00:34:45.880 out in front of her all over again.

00:34:47.660 I was going to move away and meet somebody and never come home.

00:34:50.480 And she was right.

00:34:51.520 I'm sure she wanted me to marry someone from Michigan so I would settle down close to them.

00:34:55.280 30 years ago, I met Chris and I didn't think about my mom's frame of reference.

00:34:58.480 I was just offended and angry and concluded that she didn't support me.

00:35:02.100 I can now see that she supported me.

00:35:03.900 She was just scared of losing her daughter.

00:35:05.760 So I think that this is when letting them goes too far because I agree.

00:35:09.960 it's important to understand why your mom reacted in a certain way right but that doesn't mean that

00:35:17.580 it was an okay reaction yeah yeah exactly you told her you were in love with someone and engaged 0.88

00:35:23.220 and she openly shit on it right so like it might be true that this is because of some bottled up 0.89

00:35:28.020 trauma or whatever but that doesn't mean she was being supportive she very much wasn't and the way 0.98

00:35:34.000 that she yeah it's like it's understandable this stuff but it also it's like it's up to her the

00:35:37.660 way that she expresses that and how much she lets that affect her behavior right so like yeah

00:35:42.320 regardless of where it comes from you need to be nice to my husband right that's not that's not

00:35:46.820 like a line too far this was like one of my concerns going into it that like there are going

00:35:53.160 to be people who would use this idea yeah to sort of like accept a certain amount of toxicity into

00:35:59.760 their life right right well my mom has a different frame of reference so i'm just gonna let her 0.89

00:36:05.560 shit on my choice of soulmate or whatever it's also i the thing is i actually really like this

00:36:09.960 as an instinct of like yeah hey mom i'm getting some weird vibes like do you know where that's 0.98

00:36:14.280 from and sort of using this as the opening of a conversation yeah but then also yeah if if you're

00:36:19.400 like oh well it's okay that she's mean to my husband because she's afraid of me moving away 0.55

00:36:23.500 that's nuts as long as your shitty behavior comes from trauma then i accept it and you're great also 0.91

00:36:28.960 like most people's bad behavior comes from trauma on some level you imagine the same story but it's 0.99

00:36:34.660 like uh why she's racist it's like i understand like i learned that as a young person someone

00:36:40.440 yelled a slur at me from a car and then i saw it from their perspective that i'm actually harming

00:36:44.860 the world in front of god she also loses me a little bit when she says that this can be used

00:36:48.960 to handle stress from politics oh this is a relatively quick aside in the book but it was

00:36:54.060 very off-putting to me first there's like a whole section where she talks about how everyone is

00:36:59.560 stressed about politics these days. Let me send it to you. She says, we live in a moment where

00:37:05.200 we're more polarized than ever. The stakes feel so high and everyone seems so far apart and either

00:37:10.460 angry or scared about where things are or both. It's impossible to have a civil conversation with

00:37:15.100 most people who have a different point of view because none of us really want to take the time

00:37:18.800 to understand where the other person is coming from. Ah, this stuff is a sickness. It's fucking

00:37:24.320 everywhere such a dumbass guy analysis of the current political moment like politics are 1.00

00:37:30.160 polarized because no one just no one wants to understand each other anymore this is like the 0.99

00:37:34.800 very like ted talk approach to politics where it's like aren't things just a little too political

00:37:38.960 these days we don't have to get into this too much but i see this so much that i don't want to i do

00:37:43.880 want to give it like a minute to say that like there's a ton of research about political

00:37:48.960 polarization. My one paragraph explanation for why we're polarized is basically over the span

00:37:54.820 of the last four or five decades, we've seen the parties become ideological. American political

00:37:59.940 parties used to be like a mishmash of interest groups, right? And then that changes after the

00:38:03.300 Southern Democrats split with the party on segregation. And over the years, we've seen

00:38:08.380 all of this demographic sorting between the parties so that now partisan identity aligns

00:38:14.380 more with like other identities social cultural whatever which leads to polarization and then on 0.89

00:38:19.380 top of that you have like social media uh you have media ecosystem shit right incomplete answer but 0.61

00:38:24.500 like i just hope no one listening to this thinks that polarization is because we're listening less 0.98

00:38:30.020 or some dumb ass shit like that like that's the stuff we just know is not true i also don't even 0.98

00:38:34.420 agree with the like the framing of like polarization being the problem that like right people are more 1.00

00:38:39.100 right and left people are more left and like that just isn't what the evidence shows the evidence

00:38:42.660 shows that America has like a fairly standard center left party and a completely deranged far

00:38:47.560 right party. And so it's not that the parties have each drifted further from the center. It's

00:38:53.200 that one party has completely gone off the rails. There's also some evidence and a lot of people

00:38:57.480 believe that like the polarization has started from the top, that like it happened first at the

00:39:04.280 party level among like Republican elites, especially, and then trickled down, which is I

00:39:09.280 I think, like, this is just not how people think about it.

00:39:11.420 Everyone's just like, we're all in our own little bubbles.

00:39:14.080 Yeah, I know.

00:39:15.020 It's like, no, not exactly.

00:39:16.760 That explanation totally flatters power.

00:39:18.500 I always think about after Princess Diana died, you know, in the chase with the paparazzi,

00:39:23.620 there was all this stuff about, like, we're all to blame.

00:39:26.020 We're all to blame for the way that her fame killed her.

00:39:28.300 And it's like, no, there's like five, like, high-level editors of tabloids who are to

00:39:32.720 blame.

00:39:33.720 100%. 0.99

00:39:34.120 And blaming every single person who ever bought a fucking newspaper is just a way of letting 0.99

00:39:38.700 those people off the hook. And whenever you distribute blame throughout society to this 0.99

00:39:43.140 level, oh, aren't we all polarized? Like, no, we're not. There's a specific problem. And we

00:39:48.140 can look at the features of that problem, but it's just brain dead to say like, oh,

00:39:52.080 we all just have our opinions and we're not hearing other people's opinions. There's no

00:39:55.560 evidence of this whatsoever. So here's her theory of politics. I'm going to... 0.72

00:40:00.520 Ooh, there's more. Okay, good.

00:40:01.620 There's more.

00:40:02.620 So how do you use the let them theory to change the state of politics at a local,

00:40:06.700 national, or global level? You don't. The school board has already decided. The Senate has voted.

00:40:12.520 These are the two candidates running. The election is over. It's tied up in the courts. Let them.

00:40:17.120 You can't change what just happened. But I never said you couldn't change the future.

00:40:21.320 Does it seem overwhelming? Yes. Does it feel like it won't make a difference? Yes. Do it anyway.

00:40:26.680 Let me stay engaged and vocal on the issues I care about and do something that can change the future

00:40:31.400 of my local, national, and global politics. Don't sit around and wait for someone else to clean up

00:40:36.160 the mess that you see stay engaged get out there get get vocal let them let them deport you to

00:40:43.340 seacoat in el salvador this is the uh join the conversation pepsi ad with kendall jenner join

00:40:49.680 the conversation people holding up signs the sign just says like protest yeah i don't think this is

00:40:56.300 an adequate way to address politics or other larger problems like i was sort of waiting for 0.99

00:41:03.760 her to be like by the way uh this doesn't apply to politics like i i kind of thought that was

00:41:09.100 where we were going yeah it's interesting how this spirals out because she starts off with being like

00:41:14.520 there's real science and by the way she like brags about how there's like real science behind this

00:41:19.120 and she brings in the science and so i was sort of like ready for there to be some actual uh real

00:41:23.660 like some science throughout but this is a good example of what she does where she's like here's

00:41:28.520 the science about the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala and you're like okay there's a real

00:41:33.820 material hook right we're sort of sitting in with one foot in reality but then the idea

00:41:41.140 evolves so much that you reach a point like this where the science that she described earlier has

00:41:47.720 no applicability at all where is queen amygdala now she's gone her clone her clone has been killed

00:41:53.940 but she has not been killed one of the weird whenever you make these nerdy jokes it's not 0.82

00:41:58.160 even a nerdy of a joke it's a fucking it's a major movie that made like hundreds of millions of 0.98

00:42:01.740 dollars whenever you make these nerdy ass jokes all i can think is like i'm sort of like you know 0.98

00:42:12.740 i'm obviously a nerd in many different ways uh which is why i enjoy being extremely judgmental 0.97

00:42:17.940 about the ways that i'm not a nerd yeah you're a nerd about gambling i was gonna i was gonna keep

00:42:22.700 going but later in this episode she makes an analogy to playing cards and then i get really

00:42:26.600 pedantic about it so i i now have to drop this i've been completely owned in advance when you 0.61

00:42:32.540 bring up this nerdy shit peter about sports betting well i just wonder what percentage of 0.96

00:42:37.240 our audience is just like what are they talking like everyone is gonna get that joke no they're 0.98

00:42:43.520 not sound off in the comments folks sound off in the comments the only the problem is that the

00:42:47.800 people who reply to us on social media are not an emblematic cross section for better or for worse 0.76

00:42:57.800 my understanding is they are 100 lesbians due to the feedback we've gotten on our last couple 0.92

00:43:02.040 episodes yeah if you're listening to this right now and you're not a lesbian we don't believe you 0.76

00:43:06.300 exist we have no proof of this reach out yeah what do you want to hear there's another self-help

00:43:12.240 trope that we, I don't think we've talked about as such, but we've touched upon many times.

00:43:17.960 At some point, all of these authors will tell you life isn't fair, but you need to suck it up.

00:43:23.900 Again, something I've read in children's books numerous times, but okay.

00:43:27.020 A hundred percent.

00:43:27.840 Sending you a two mice in a maze.

00:43:30.580 She says, you are the problem.

00:43:32.640 And the first step is accepting the truth.

00:43:34.680 Life isn't fair.

00:43:35.520 It's just not.

00:43:36.540 It's not fair that you're drowning in student debt because you couldn't afford the tuition.

00:43:40.020 It's not fair that your sister looks like a supermodel and everyone flocks to her at the bars while you're sitting there off to the side buying your own drinks.

00:43:47.400 It's not fair that your supervisor keeps giving you the crappy shift at work.

00:43:50.800 I don't need this many examples.

00:43:52.320 It's not fair that your country is torn apart by war.

00:43:55.060 Pause, pause, pause.

00:43:56.160 The transition that we made right there and you and you were like, this is too many examples.

00:44:00.700 But now you can see why I had to keep them all because she goes from, yeah, maybe your

00:44:06.100 country's torn apart by war or like your sister's hot.

00:44:11.100 She's giving her TED Talk in Chechnya.

00:44:13.020 She goes on.

00:44:15.120 She says, in life, you're not playing against anyone.

00:44:18.360 You're playing with them.

00:44:19.920 Someone will always have better cards than yours.

00:44:22.380 It's not about the hand you've been dealt.

00:44:24.360 It's about how you play it.

00:44:25.940 I mean, whatever.

00:44:26.740 While you've been busy comparing yourself to everyone else, you've missed one of the

00:44:30.560 greatest secrets in life.

00:44:32.040 Other people teach you how to be a better player, and that's how you win.

00:44:36.760 It's true.

00:44:37.440 A lot of people have been dealt a luckier or more successful hand of cards.

00:44:41.460 Let them.

00:44:41.960 I mean, this is fine advice, but-

00:44:43.980 Is it?

00:44:44.640 Is it?

00:44:46.300 I would phrase it differently, but also like, there are things you cannot change.

00:44:50.060 There are things you can, like freaking out about stuff you can't change is not great

00:44:53.140 for your mental health.

00:44:53.980 Fair enough.

00:44:54.460 Coming to terms with these things is important.

00:44:58.460 I totally agree.

00:44:59.680 Whatever.

00:45:00.360 Again, the choice to include war in here is so crazy.

00:45:04.220 I know.

00:45:04.620 I don't know if you've thought about this child in Gaza, but some people's sisters are way hotter than them.

00:45:10.520 Also, yeah, I will get nerdy about the what is this card playing metaphor?

00:45:15.280 You might be dealt a bad hand, but you learn how to win from other people who you're not competing against.

00:45:21.840 And also the cards don't matter.

00:45:24.160 It's how you play them.

00:45:24.900 Yeah, that's actually not true of cards, right?

00:45:26.700 Dude. 1.00

00:45:26.940 I saw rounders. 1.00

00:45:27.800 I'm an expert. 1.00

00:45:28.360 I know this.

00:45:28.700 She uses this line, and I've heard you hear it so much.

00:45:31.820 Like, any top card player will tell you it's not about the cards.

00:45:34.740 It's how you play them.

00:45:36.100 Huge pet peeve of mine.

00:45:37.620 Any card player will actually tell you that the cards are way more important.

00:45:41.400 Way more important.

00:45:42.160 This is the thinnest possible excuse for you to talk about cards.

00:45:47.320 We did not need this.

00:45:48.840 Let's talk about probabilities.

00:45:51.220 There are 52 cards in every deck.

00:45:54.920 Did you know that there are different – there are more arrangements of cards in a deck than there are atoms in the universe?

00:46:00.000 Yeah, 52 factorial.

00:46:01.100 I watch a whole video about this because I'm a nerd in different ways.

00:46:03.960 Interesting.

00:46:04.400 I understood it intuitively.

00:46:09.140 It is funny.

00:46:09.960 That's like a very common idiom and it is just false.

00:46:12.440 100% false.

00:46:12.680 Like it doesn't matter the cards you're dealt.

00:46:14.120 It matters how you play them.

00:46:14.900 No, it really does matter the cards you're dealt.

00:46:17.520 Genuinely, I'm a pretty middling poker player.

00:46:20.300 I like it, but I'm a pretty middling player.

00:46:21.860 You could put me up against the best player in the world, and if I chose my cards every time, I can guarantee victory.

00:46:29.400 You know this from cards.

00:46:30.360 I know this from roguelikes.

00:46:31.760 You have poker.

00:46:32.560 I have dead cells.

00:46:33.500 Like sometimes your run just can't get off the ground.

00:46:35.220 I do want to cover a couple of like generally good sections in the book.

00:46:39.200 She writes a lot about using the let them concept in adult friendships with the general theme being that people sort of like naturally grow distant in adulthood and you can't force it.

00:46:49.240 You can't force these friendships.

00:46:50.140 You know, there's like a shocking amount about adult friendships.

00:46:54.400 It was obvious that she needed to pad this book out.

00:46:56.420 And they were like, we need three chapters on adult friendships.

00:46:59.880 There's a ton of stuff about like how to make new friends as an adult.

00:47:03.280 And you're just like, what does this have to do with the last theory?

00:47:06.160 What's going on here?

00:47:07.300 Is this why when I text you, Taylor Swift, lyrics, you text back, I'm actually at capacity

00:47:11.080 and I'm unable to hold space for you right now.

00:47:14.580 I like the portions about like the early stages of romantic relationships, right?

00:47:19.900 another area where i think the let them framework makes a lot of sense right like if you're searching

00:47:25.540 for romance and someone's not giving you what you need it's important to understand that you're

00:47:30.240 probably not going to change them and like work from there right although in gay world instead of 0.69

00:47:34.400 let them at the end of every sentence we just say send nudes they're not texting you back send nudes 0.85

00:47:38.820 you're not getting what you need from them send nudes i think when i originally jotted my outline

00:47:43.620 down i had a piece where i was like here's where we'll put the good sections and then over time

00:47:47.880 that just dwindled as i realized that i hated almost every section of the book

00:47:50.800 i do worry we're being too mean to her honestly this book seems like okay on the relative scale

00:47:57.800 by which we judge books on this show it's so much less toxic than like 90 of the garbage we've

00:48:02.480 talked about absolutely and i do think there's a sort of weird problem here where the fundamental

00:48:08.940 idea that she can convey in the span of a couple pages is pretty decent but because she needs 200

00:48:16.580 to 250 pages the bulk of the book ends up sucking right you know she's creating all of these

00:48:22.840 situations where the framework isn't a great fit right but she has to because otherwise it's not

00:48:29.780 a book that's actually an interesting thing it's like it's like a good idea at the heart of the 0.67

00:48:33.580 book but by padding it out and making it into 200 pages you have to add 190 pages of bad shit one

00:48:39.140 last section that i really didn't like and i think is worth mentioning there was a chapter about

00:48:44.200 helping people who are struggling. Obviously, if you know someone who is having a really hard time,

00:48:50.380 especially with self-destructive behavior, for example, let them seems like very questionable

00:48:55.440 advice. You want to send nudes. You want to send nudes. Where it leads her is that when someone

00:49:00.740 is struggling, you don't want to just bail them out because that can often make things worse.

00:49:06.340 She gives a classic example of giving money to an addict, right? It doesn't help them. It often 0.80

00:49:10.180 just enables them. Everyone knows this is true in the abstract, right? The hard part is knowing

00:49:16.300 when to help and when not to and how you can help in ways that aren't enabling, right?

00:49:22.620 It's almost as if you have to know the specifics of a situation to give meaningful advice rather

00:49:26.400 than just generic two-word phrases to solve every problem. I don't know if my reaction to

00:49:30.860 this section was like entirely rational or if it just pissed me off to read this person and be like,

00:49:34.880 here's how to use this idea i stole from social media to avoid enabling addicts she's sort of

00:49:42.020 saying like you might think that this wouldn't be useful for someone who's really struggling

00:49:47.480 but actually it would be because you can just let them because otherwise you're enabling them

00:49:53.040 it's like come on i guess that's the problem with these books i guess like as you were saying

00:49:56.440 earlier because if you tried to actually write this out it would be like 10 pages of a decent

00:50:00.640 idea and then 190 pages of exceptions.

00:50:03.320 Yeah.

00:50:03.520 But you can't write a book about a bunch of exceptions, like where this doesn't apply.

00:50:06.600 So you have to just pretend that it does apply. 0.79

00:50:09.240 That's the challenge that I face with Bitch Like a Man, my book about complaining in a 1.00

00:50:15.760 masculine way. 0.90

00:50:17.880 So that's the book.

00:50:19.820 I feel like you can look at both the content of the book and the context in which it exists

00:50:25.340 as like essentially a stolen product.

00:50:27.800 Right. Mel Robbins and all of these self-help authors, what they're really good at is taking these existing self-help concepts and then packaging and marketing them. Right. Right. But if what you're stealing is the marketing. Right. Let them is the marketing. Like let them. That's the package. Right. You're stealing the marketing.

00:50:49.020 That is the only work of writing one of these self-help books is like literally like I came 0.95

00:50:53.220 up with a little bumper sticker slogan for this idea and she didn't even do that. 0.99

00:50:56.960 Right.

00:50:57.720 Right.

00:50:58.200 What's the elevator pitch? 1.00

00:50:59.860 She fucking stole the elevator pitch. 1.00

00:51:02.160 She stole the whole like top to bottom. 1.00

00:51:04.680 Like we've had the discussion before about like what's what's a grift and what's a grifter.

00:51:10.580 Right.

00:51:10.840 And I mean, I don't know how this is anything other than a grift.

00:51:13.620 Yeah.

00:51:13.780 Sorry.

00:51:14.140 Like, you know, not to say that she is necessarily purely a grifter, but this book is a grift.

00:51:19.360 Like she's not contributing anything.

00:51:22.560 It's a stolen idea.

00:51:23.820 Right.

00:51:24.140 Not even repackaged, just glossed up and some marketing money put behind it.

00:51:30.140 I do love the sort of meta-ness of it where it's like she's grifted somebody else out of their idea.

00:51:35.800 And if they're mad, she can be like, well, let me.

00:51:38.520 I'm going to let you be mad.

00:51:39.940 You let me get rich off of this. 0.98

00:51:42.020 just take my advice it's right there in the book someone like this she's just like rent seeking on 0.92

00:51:47.700 the american psyche i think you're overdoing it this is like a dumb book but is reasonably i mean 0.95

00:51:54.600 other than the fact that it's a fucking stolen idea you don't think it's rent seeking this whole 0.99

00:51:59.140 sector is fucking rent seeking you ever you get so mad at landlords but this lady is occupying 0.96

00:52:03.700 space in your mind and that's that's the thing is like a big complaint that i have about these 0.99

00:52:09.300 like grifty self-help authors, they're just good at marketing these already existing ideas and sort

00:52:15.620 of pretending that it's their idea and that they came up with this or they have some like real

00:52:19.620 inspiration. Right. But it's not literal in most cases. In this case, it's literal.

00:52:24.620 And Cassie Phillips, the author of the poem, has said, I didn't want any money off this. I don't

00:52:30.040 want any money off this. Right. So all you have to do is just give a little bit of credit where

00:52:34.560 do and you're good but the thing is that like if you give credit then you're sort of just like

00:52:40.280 the reason she can't give credit is because as soon as you read that poem you're like oh you

00:52:44.120 stole this that's like right you couldn't put the poem in the front of the book as someone would be

00:52:48.100 like why are you writing the book i want to hear from the person who wrote the poem right we always

00:52:51.660 complain about how someone stretched out what was basically a brief essay to a book right in this

00:52:57.000 case she literally did just stretch out a one-page poem adds nothing of substance right she took

00:53:04.260 someone else's idea that wasn't even that good and she made it worse instead goes like very far

00:53:08.540 afield being like politics also peter you really are bitching like a man now you're really embodying 1.00

00:53:14.340 the premise of the book give me one million dollars and i will deliver you bitch like a man 1.00

00:53:19.420 if you do this peter i'm absolutely gonna fabricate a jpeg that says bitch like a man 0.99

00:53:23.700 came out in like 2021 offer michael humps yeah 0.98

00:53:34.260 We'll be right back.

If Books Could Kill - April 23, 2025

The Let Them Theory

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