The Let Them Theory

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Let Them Theory" Episode of If Books Could Kill

Podcast Information:

• Title: If Books Could Kill
• Host/Author: Michael Hobbs & Peter Shamshiri
• Episode: The Let Them Theory
• Release Date: April 23, 2025

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1. Introduction to "Let Them Theory"

In this episode, hosts Michael Hobbs and Peter Shamshiri delve into Mel Robbins' latest book, The Let Them Theory. They introduce the book as a New York Times bestseller that has amassed over a million copies within its first month of release. The hosts set the stage by highlighting Robbins' previous success with The Five Second Rule and segue into their exploration of her newest work.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter: "The Let Them Theory is a book hot off the presses... immediate New York Times number one bestseller." [01:31]
• Michael: "It’s an Escher painting of a sector. There's no actual like insight being produced." [06:48]

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2. Overview of Mel Robbins and Her Previous Work

Mel Robbins is portrayed as a prominent self-help author and podcaster who gained fame with her book The Five Second Rule. This earlier work centered around overcoming procrastination by acting on impulses within five seconds. The hosts use humor to critique the simplicity of the concept, suggesting it could be stretched into absurdity.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter: "The idea behind the five second rule was that you have five seconds to turn an impulse into an action if you really want to make it happen." [02:13]
• Michael: "My wife said, this could have been an essay. And I keep thinking about it. It actually does seem like it could be a pretty good children's book." [20:57]

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3. The Core Idea of "Let Them Theory"

The Let Them Theory revolves around the simple mantra "let them." Robbins posits that by letting others be as they are, individuals can free themselves from the stress of trying to manage or control others' behaviors. This concept is linked to principles of stoicism, radical acceptance, and detachment theory.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter (as Mel Robbins): "The let them theory is about freedom. Two simple words, let them, will free you from the burden of trying to manage other people." [08:08]
• Mel Robbins (audio clip): "Other people hold no real power over you unless you give it to them. This... is true. So let them." [12:07]

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4. Analysis and Critique of the Book's Content

Michael and Peter provide a critical examination of Robbins' book, acknowledging the central idea's merit but condemning the expansion of this simplistic concept into a full-length book. They argue that while "letting them" can be beneficial in minor daily irritations, it often becomes impractical or even harmful when applied to more significant or complex personal relationships and societal issues.

Notable Quotes:

• Michael: "It's like, there's many situations where letting them is like, sociopathic advice." [20:45]
• Peter: "The bulk of the book ends up sucking. She's creating all of these situations where the framework isn't a great fit." [48:21]

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5. Plagiarism Allegations

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to discussing allegations that Robbins may have plagiarized a poem by Cassie Phillips. The poem, which predates Robbins' book, shares striking similarities with the "let them" concept. Despite these claims, Robbins denies having read the poem, leading to ongoing litigation.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter: "Robbins tries to trademark the phrase 'let them.' Litigation still ongoing, by the way." [15:12]
• Michael: "It's a grift. She's not contributing anything. It's a stolen idea." [52:24]

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6. Practical Applications and Exceptions Raised

The hosts critique Robbins' advice on applying the "let them" theory across various life scenarios, ranging from workplace conflicts to familial tensions. They argue that while the advice might be suitable for trivial matters, it falters when addressing deeper emotional or toxic relationships, where active communication and intervention are necessary.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter: "The high stakes, the less effective the framework. If you're dealing with a family member who's causing real emotional turmoil, you can't just breathe your way through that relationship." [30:07]
• Michael: "If someone is being shitty to you, you probably shouldn't let them. You should start a conversation about that." [30:36]

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7. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In wrapping up, Michael and Peter acknowledge that while The Let Them Theory presents a valid psychological insight, its execution falls short. The book's reliance on padding simple ideas with numerous anecdotes and questionable applications dilutes its effectiveness. The hosts express frustration over the perceived lack of originality and ethical considerations in Robbins' approach, ultimately deeming the book as more of a marketing ploy than a substantive contribution to self-help literature.

Notable Quotes:

• Peter: "It's a good idea at the heart of the book, but by padding it out and making it into 200 pages, you have to add 190 pages of bad shit." [48:20]
• Michael: "She's took someone else's idea that wasn't even that good and she made it worse instead." [53:07]

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Episode Takeaways

• Simplistic Concepts Extended Inappropriately: While foundational ideas like "letting them" can offer value, their expansion into comprehensive self-help guidance needs careful consideration to avoid oversimplification and misuse.

• Ethical Implications of Idea Ownership: The alleged plagiarism highlights the importance of acknowledging original sources, especially in the realm of self-help where ideas are frequently repackaged.

• Contextual Application of Advice: Effective self-help advice must account for the complexity of real-life situations, distinguishing between when to apply such principles and when active engagement is necessary.

Final Quote:

• Peter: "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." [50:27]

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Note: This summary captures the essence of Michael Hobbs and Peter Shamshiri's critique of Mel Robbins' The Let Them Theory. Their discussion highlights both the potential benefits and significant shortcomings of applying oversimplified self-help advice to diverse and complex personal and societal issues.

Transcript

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, I have a zinger, but you need to tell me if it's bad. We might have to do it again.

[Peter]

Okay. Michael, Peter, what do you know about Let Them?

[Michael Hobbs]

All I know is that this is the first time we've covered a Norwegian horror thriller on the podcast.

[Peter]

What the fuck is Horror?

[Michael Hobbs]

Does that even make sense?

[Peter]

What is that reference?

[Michael Hobbs]

Fuck, Never mind. Wait. Okay, well, now I need to come up with a fucking real one.

[Peter]

That's the first time I've never had any idea what you're talking about.

[Michael Hobbs]

Just dead silence. Because literally all I have now is like they them jokes about the title, which I don't think is. Which I don't think is a very good idea.

[Peter]

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

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

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

[Michael Hobbs]

I was on Tumblr once and I saw the joke. Somebody said, it's so hot out that all my gender fluid friends are now gender vapor. And I immediately went to the account to be like, is this a transphobic joke or is this a pro trans.

[Peter]

That's too deep. That's too deep to be transphobic. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, okay, let me try one. Let me try one. Let me try.

[Peter]

Okay. Michael Peter, what do you know about the Let Them Theory?

[Michael Hobbs]

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

[Peter]

The Let Them Theory is a book hot off the presses. Came out in December 2024, written by Mel Robbins, a self help author and podcaster.

[Michael Hobbs]

Two Red Flags. Two Red Flags.

[Peter]

Immediate New York Times number one bestseller. I've seen reports that it sold over a million copies in its first month. To give you some background on Robbins, she struck it big in 2017 with her book the Five Second Rule about.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dropping food on the floor.

[Peter]

I feel like we're at a point where you could see an entire book that's just like, you've got five seconds to pick that burger up.

[Michael Hobbs]

You know, just pad it out, man. Get some testimonials.

[Peter]

Every chapter is just a different food. It's like chicken. Yeah, you got five seconds. Grilled cheese. It's five seconds right there.

[Michael Hobbs]

Some Aristotle quotes from queensprout.com they knew. They knew the secret of dropping food.

[Peter]

Yeah, I don't know why she called it this, but whatever. The idea behind the five second rule was that you have five seconds to turn an impulse into an action if you really want to make it happen. So sort of like an anti procrastination tool. When it comes to simple tasks like getting out of bed, count to five and do it or else your brain will sort of move on. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

All of my impulses are for bad things, so that wouldn't work for me. But some people have impulses for good things.

[Peter]

Yeah, no, it's cool if what your impulses are are to like do work or something. When she opens up the Let Them theory, she tells the tale of her rise to prominence and the sort of success of the five second rule. She opens up the book saying, at the age of 41, I found myself $800,000 in debt, unemployed, and watching my husband's restaurant business crumble.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Peter]

She goes on to detail their situation a bit. Basically how it left her depressed and how it helped her come up with the five second rule. And then she sort of uses that rule to lift herself out of it. Right? Okay. She says this and I'm going to send it to you just for your reference. There's a lot of things that I'm gonna send you. Less for your reaction and more because need you reading something, there's unfortunately so little of substance that there's not a ton to like send you and be like thoughts. Yeah, but people do need to hear you speak and so I will be sending you something to read.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'll just be sitting here reading a different book as you talk.

[Peter]

This is fine. This is expert podcasting I'm doing, she says.

[Michael Hobbs]

But that all changed one fateful day when an old roommate recommended me as the perfect person to give advice on career change at a small event. I suppose she thought of me because I had changed my career so many times, even I had lost count. When I walked on stage and saw 700 people in the audience staring back at me, my mind went blank and I could feel my chest and neck turning red. I then proceeded to have a 21 minute long anxiety attack on stage. About 19 minutes in, I forgot how to end my talk on career change. So I blurted out the five second rule on how I use it because I couldn't think of anything else to say. I must have blacked out because I also don't remember the part where I gave everyone in the audience my email address. And as I walked off that stage, I thought that was the worst experience of my life. Thank God it's over. It turns out that small event was one of the first TEDx conferences ever held. They filmed it and a year later posted the video online. Not only did it go viral, it's become one of the most not Only did it go viral. It's become one of the most watched TED talks of all time. This is just a really long humble brag. I was so nervous and it was so bad. But it turns out it's like super good and everybody loves it.

[Peter]

I've heard her say this in interviews too, that she was like so flustered on stage that she just blurted out the five second rule and like, whoa. It changed her whole career trajectory. It's a miracle. Right, but if you watch the video, she has slides for it.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right?

[Peter]

It's built into her presentation.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

On stage she says she hosts a syndicated radio show.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Peter]

And also that she had a book that she was promoting in. Let them. When she's describing this, she says she's unemployed.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

She says that her friend recommended her because she switched careers a lot. And not to be too nitpicky, it wasn't actually a talk about career change.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh.

[Peter]

The name of the talk is how to stop screwing yourself over. And it's sort of standard self help stuff about how to like get out of your own way in various regards. She doesn't say the word career once.

[Michael Hobbs]

No way.

[Peter]

I checked the whole transcript.

[Michael Hobbs]

People always write their own ambition out of these things. It's always like, oh, I just happened to stumble into this huge opportunity, but it's actually fine to look for opportunities. That's actually the kind of thing that self help advice might be useful for.

[Peter]

And we're already into one book theory territory.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Peter]

Because one of the quintessential elements of these people is that almost all of them were pitching their advice before they were actually successful.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

So even in her own sort of fictionalized telling, once again we see the self help career preceding the actual success. So this is someone who claims she was floating from career to career. She was like a lawyer and then she was doing. She was like a pundit for a bit. She was apparently in severe debt and then strikes it big with this big TEDx talk and suddenly her self help career is up and running. So it's like the 5 second rule itself doesn't change her life. Right. It was the motivational speaking circuit that resulted from it that changed her life.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's an Escher painting. It's an Escher painting of a sector. There's no actual like insight being produced. They're selling you the fact that they're selling you insight.

[Peter]

And so she's relatively self aware about this. She says, meanwhile, my friends and extended family had no idea what I was doing because I was too Scared to tell them, Mel giving advice. Give me a break. She nearly destroyed her own life.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wasn't she a talk show host? Yeah.

[Peter]

Looking back, I can see how paralyzed I was with imposter syndrome. What right did I have to call myself an expert in anything?

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, they ain't gonna agree with her there.

[Peter]

That's the thing. It's like, this isn't really imposter syndrome. Right. This is just being an actual imposter.

[Michael Hobbs]

What do I, Michael Hobbs, have the right to give people advice on 17th century France? I felt like an imposter.

[Peter]

Well, this is like, you know that tweet that's like. Like, I don't support all women. Some of you bitches are dumb.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

This is like. Like, I don't. A lot of you are out there being like, oh, like, here's how to fight through your imposter syndrome. But my message to some of you would be, maybe just sit with it for a minute.

[Michael Hobbs]

The core narrative of all of these books is someone getting over their imposter syndrome and just continuing to be an imposter. Like, I used to feel bad about giving advice, and now I still get bullshit advice. I just don't feel bad about it.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

Really rooting for the underdog.

[Peter]

So let's talk about the let them theory. In the book, she describes how she came up with this theory. She says, two years ago, I stumbled upon these two words, let them, and it was like flipping a switch in my life. She says, the let them theory is about freedom. Two simple words, let them, will free you from the burden of trying to manage other people. So I'm going to send you a bit.

[Michael Hobbs]

So what does this look like? Imagine you're at work and your colleague is in a bad mood. Instead of letting their negativity affect you, just say, let them. Let them be grumpy. It's not your problem. Focus on your work and how you feel. Or maybe your dad makes another comment about your life choices and it hits you like a brick. Instead of letting it ruin your day, just say, let him. Let him have his opinions. They don't change who you are or what you've accomplished or your right to make decisions that make you happy. The truth is, other people hold no real power over you unless you give it to them. This. I mean, like most of these books, this seems like a nugget of good advice at the center of it.

[Peter]

Yeah. There are many situations where it's like, I can't control that. I'm not going to freak out. Right. Right now we're trying to record. And some workers outside my house are throwing giant logs into a wood chipper. At intervals designed to drive us insane.

[Michael Hobbs]

People are always like, release the uncut episodes. And it's like every three minutes, we're like stopping mid sentence. Be like, fuck, yes.

[Peter]

Just. Just us being like, oh, there's a wood chipper. She says. But perhaps the most surprising thing about the let them theory is how I discovered it in the first place. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you the story. I discovered something that changed my entire approach to life at a high school prom.

[Michael Hobbs]

Damn it. I was hoping she was going to be on a scuba boat and her husband had a meltdown.

[Peter]

Let him. Let him kill everyone on the boat. She says she discovered the idea when she was dealing with a bunch of chaos surrounding her son, Oakley going to the prom. They're scrambling to get him ready. It's raining. The kids all want to eat a pre prom dinner at a taco bar that might not have enough seating. Mel is freaking out, trying to convince them to do something else. And then she has this exchange with her daughter, Kendall. Okay, I'm gonna send you something. Let's do it as a script. I will be Mel Robbins.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay?

[Peter]

And you will be her wise young daughter.

[Michael Hobbs]

Mom, if Oakley and his friends want to go to a taco bar for pre prom, let them.

[Peter]

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

[Michael Hobbs]

Let them get soaked.

[Peter]

But his new sneakers are going to get ruined.

[Michael Hobbs]

Let them get ruined, Kendall.

[Peter]

They're brand new.

[Michael Hobbs]

Mom, you're being annoying. Let them show up to prom in wet tuxedos and dresses. Let them go eat where they want. It's their prom, not yours. Just drop it. Let them. And then she says, the effect was immediate. Something inside of me softened. I could feel the tension disappearing. My mind stopped racing and the stress of trying to control what was happening evaporated. Why did I need to get involved? Why did I have to manage this situation? Why not worry about what I was going to do for dinner tonight rather than what they were? Why was I stressing out about them at all? Let them. It's their prom, not yours. Stop controlling it or judging it or managing it and let them. Honestly, good advice. This seems fine to me.

[Peter]

So she takes us to heart and says that within a week her whole outlook changed. She's letting things happen, and the result is that little things aren't getting to her. Great. She says, I felt at ease, happy and centered. The impact was Undeniable. Even Chris noticed her husband. You seem different. And the fact is I felt different. I felt so good I had to share Let them online. So I posted a 60 second video explaining the let them theory on social media and I am now going to send you that video.

[Mel Robbins]

So I've been using this thing called the Let them theory. I love this. I want you to try it. Here's how it works. The next time you feel left out, your friends all go out to brunch together and they don't invite you. Let them. Or maybe the person you're dating doesn't want a commitment. Let them. Or perhaps your spouse does not want to do the 5k with you. Let them. Your company is laying people off. Let them.

[Peter]

We'll circle back on that one.

[Mel Robbins]

You spend so much time and energy trying to control other people and getting emotionally worked up about things that are beyond your control. You can tap into peace and true control if you let them be themselves. And here's the other thing. If you let them, people will then reveal who they truly are. And when they reveal who they truly are to you, you now know what you can choose next. That's right for you. So let them.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay. Oh, then she's got like a little graphic at the end. Mel.

[Peter]

The script of her name, just Mel coming in. It's so fucking good.

[Michael Hobbs]

And she has her little microphone, has the Mel Robbins podcast on it. So this is like a well established influencer.

[Peter]

The reality of this, Michael, is that this person is extremely famous in a of society that we do not participate in at all.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the LinkedIn community. She's famous among the LinkedIn community.

[Peter]

That's exactly right. So this goes mega viral as we discussed and bam. Mel decides to turn it into a book. Okay, I'm going to send you a poem and you can just read the first few lines.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're sending me a poem right now?

[Peter]

I'm sending you a poem.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm always saying, peter, stop sending me poems constantly throughout the day.

[Peter]

But I never stop. You have to just let me. Let me be homophobic. Let me be annoying.

[Michael Hobbs]

It says just let them. If they want to choose something or someone over you, let them. If they want to go weeks without talking to you, let them. If they are okay with never seeing you, let them. If they are okay with always putting themselves first, let them. Do I have to keep going? This is so boring.

[Peter]

And so now just read me what's at the very bottom there.

[Michael Hobbs]

Cassie Phillips, is that what you mean?

[Peter]

That's right. Not Mel Robbins. But a woman named Cassie Phillips wrote this poem in 2019. Oh, so the message of the poem is pretty obviously the same as the book. Right. But maybe more importantly, it follows the same style and format that Mel Robbins is using. Right. Something happens, let them. Something happens, Let them.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like the da na na na na in blues. The same little riff after every sentence.

[Peter]

The poem goes viral in September 2022, just a few months before Robbins made a video about the let them idea.

[Michael Hobbs]

No way.

[Peter]

Not only that, but in October 2022, Phillips follows it up with a Facebook post where she says that once you absorb the lesson of let them, you can finally let you. Meaning, like you can be yourself and do yourself without worrying too much about other people.

[Michael Hobbs]

Sure.

[Peter]

That post goes viral too. Robbins, throughout the book uses the same exact concept. She just calls it let me. First you let them.

[Michael Hobbs]

No way.

[Peter]

And then you let me. She says that's why the theory only works if you say, say let them. You make a conscious decision not to allow other people's behavior to bother you. When you say let me, you take responsibility for what you do next.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Peter]

Not only is Cassie Phillips not thanked or mentioned in the book, but before it comes out, Robbins tries to trademark the phrase let them.

[Michael Hobbs]

No way.

[Peter]

Litigation still ongoing, by the way, we've.

[Michael Hobbs]

Actually talked about this on the show before. There's been other plagiarism scandals among self help gurus. And it's always interesting to me because the fundamentals of the field is that people are basically repackaging the exact idea in a million ways. This is the whole, like, this is the whole meta behind our one book joke. It's like it's all the same shit. And so there's a finite number of ways in the English language that you can repackage the same idea. Although in this case it's particularly egregious.

[Peter]

It's egregious in this case. It's very obvious in my mind.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah. Cause it's not like some obscure, like, 1950s thing. This would have been floating around the Internet when she was allegedly coming up with this, like, let them theory.

[Peter]

It goes viral right before it comes across her, you know, it comes into her field of vision in some way. We don't know exactly how. Maybe it was indirect, maybe it wasn't from the poem itself, but it's very obvious that this is the same idea lifted.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Peter]

Here's her response when confronted by the New York Post.

[Michael Hobbs]

When asked about the timeline allocations, Robbins reiterated. People can obsess over Any detail. But the facts are simple. I've not seen her poem. I have not read her poem. And it was not and will never be the source of inspiration for my book. This is nonsense. I've spent 10 years shining a light on other people's work, so the allegation that I would steal someone else's work is ridiculous. As I write in the Let them theory, you cannot control what people say, do feel, or choose to make up about you. People can say anything about you at schools, at work, on the Internet and you can't control it. Let them. Oh, she's good. She turned it into marketing for the costume.

[Peter]

She fucking turned it into self promotion.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes.

[Peter]

You can already see the dangers of Let them now. Oh, yeah, yeah. She's using it to gaslight you about whether she stole the idea itself.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

So instead of addressing the obvious contradictions in her story, the issues with the timeline, she just deflects, promotes her book, and then predicates a lot of her denial on I didn't read the poem, which might be true, but it's sort of beside the point. Right. The reality is that the idea and the phrase were both taken from the poem, either directly or indirectly. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah.

[Peter]

It might be that she read the poem. It might be that she heard someone else quoting the poem. Doesn't matter. Still stolen. And on top of that, in the process of researching this book.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly.

[Peter]

There is absolutely no way that no one came across this poem. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is what's so wild. Cause when we were developing ideas for the name of this show, we came up with various things and we would Google them and be like, oh, that's taken.

[Peter]

I remember once, I can't remember what it was. I remember making a joke on 5 to 4 that someone on social media was like, that was word for word, a tweet. I read and just sent it to me and I was like, oh, I must have read that tweet and forgot it.

[Michael Hobbs]

I've done this too. Yeah.

[Peter]

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

[Michael Hobbs]

No, let me.

[Peter]

There's another mini drama surrounding this book, which is that in the book itself, she says that she wrote it with her daughter, but her daughter was not listed on the COVID And so a lot of people are like, well, that's kind of shitty. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

So after a while, they put her daughter in a smaller font. So newer versions have her daughter's name in little letters. If your daughter has. Hold on. The truck is now backing up down my street. Take your time. Boys, take your time.

[Michael Hobbs]

Let them. Let them.

[Peter]

I need let them in my life so badly when this shit is going on. I'm just losing my mind as this truck backs up.

[Michael Hobbs]

But isn't that the whole thing though? It's like, well, let them. Let them ruin your podcast recording. Well, no, that's not reasonable advice for many situations. Oh, just let this happen.

[Peter]

No, I'll go even farther. If I were the type of person to not get annoyed by a beeping truck on my street while we tried to record, I really think I would lose some of my. You know what I mean?

[Michael Hobbs]

You're supposed to be grumpy.

[Peter]

Yeah, that's a lot of the flavor I bring to the table. If you want to hang out with Peter, you're signing up to hear me complain about little things that are happening in my life that's part of the Peter experience. And if you take that away, what am I? I'm just some fucking guy.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's your book about masculinity. You're like, you gotta moan about some random shit.

[Peter]

Oh, what about this? What about this? Now tell me if this is good. Bitch like a Man.

[Michael Hobbs]

And I'll write a companion book called Man Like a Bitch. You write one called Man Up, I'll write one called Man Down.

[Peter]

Anyway, that was the intro portion to this episode because sometimes when we do these sort of like fluffy, at times harmless self help books, people get mad at me. People are like, oh, that book's not that bad. So what I did this time is make you hate her first. And now all of the bad faith shit talking I do do is going to be framed properly and you're all going to love it.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, the book is actually fine, but you want us to hate this person first so we can just do bitch eating crackers for the rest of the episode.

[Peter]

The idea is actually lovely. So let's turn to the substance of the book. I think big picture. This book has some good ideas in it, but it suffers from a couple of common self help book problems. One, very simple idea that, as you saw, can be summarized effectively in a TikTok video. And then it's stretched out to a few hundred pages, right? Two, it's an idea of very limited utility that she wants to think can be applied broadly to almost everything in your life.

[Michael Hobbs]

Because even in this poem that Cassie posted, a lot of these situations are not situations where you should let them. Like, if your partner is being shitty to you, you probably shouldn't let them. You should probably start a conversation about that. It's like, there's many situations in which letting them is like, sociopathic advice.

[Peter]

You know, a lot of our books are like, this could have been an essay. But my wife said, this could have been a children's book. And I keep thinking about it. It actually does seem like it could be a pretty good children's book.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Don't be like the busy body rabbit. Be like the bear who lets them.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's honestly kind of good advice, especially for kids. Yeah.

[Peter]

She talks about the roots of this idea in stoicism, radical acceptance, detachment theory, all of these sort of related ideas, basically being like, this is not a totally novel idea. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

In fact, if you go on Instagram in 2022, you'll actually find you'll find.

[Peter]

Roots of this idea. In the poem that I stole it from directly, she says that the biggest use of the idea is to rise above the tiny stressors that you face every day. And this is where I think that she's right. It actually is useful. She speaks with another author, Aditi Nurukar, in their book the Five Resets. This person is an actual doctor, and they talk about the brain. The basic idea that she presents is that your brain's prefrontal cortex regulates emotions, and then during times of stress, it becomes less active, while the amygdala becomes more active, which can lead you to respond to things more emotionally. As far as I know, that's like, roughly true. Also, I want to say, when I took bio in, like, ninth grade, my teacher pronounced it amygdala. And I thought people that said amygdala, big dummies. Until I looked up the proper pronunciation, knowing that I was gonna be hounded if I got it wrong. And it turns out I'm the dummy.

[Michael Hobbs]

It was named after Natalie Portman in the Phantom Menace. That's where they got the name of the brain part. God, who can forget?

[Peter]

Every podcast I'm on has some fucking Star wars nerd on it.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm not even a Star wars nerd. I'm just a gay man. And Natalie Portman is just, like, implanted in my brain.

[Peter]

I'm gonna send you one of her sort of overview of how it works.

[Michael Hobbs]

The problem is that the second you feel stressed by the guy coughing on the plane, the line, that is taking too long, or the test results that you're waiting on, your brain goes into a stress response. And that prefrontal cortex that is so important is no longer in control, and neither are you. The moment you say, let them, you're signaling to your brain that it's okay. This isn't worth stressing about. You're willing your amygdala to turn off. You're resetting that stress response by detaching from the negative emotion you feel. Here's how you do. The moment anything happens that stresses you out, say, let them put yourself in. Pause, then say, let me. And take a breath. Let me take another breath. Slow your stress response. Calm your body and brain down. Take control and regain your power.

[Peter]

Okay, so she.

[Michael Hobbs]

She's already. She's already mixing up, like, different categories of things, though, because, like, the guy coughing on the plane and also test results that you're waiting on, those are very different things. And one of those is, like, kind of okay to stress about.

[Peter]

She quotes Dr. Aditi saying that deep breaths can be helpful in mitigating a stress response. But. But there's no indication in the book that this doctor said anything about the let them idea specifically.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right, Right.

[Peter]

So she's sort of saying, like, there's research that shows pausing and taking a deep breath can lower your stress response. So if you pause, take a deep breath and say, let them, that'll work too. And it's like, yeah, I guess you're right. But can I do the same thing? Can I be like, take a deep breath and say, subscribe to if books could kill, and you will find your stress response fading.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm the kind of person who stresses out about minor things like this, and sometimes it does help me to talk myself out of it. Be like, oh, yeah, someone in front of you in line is taking a long time, but whatever, you'll be a minute late to the thing you were going to. It's really not that big of a deal. It sort of. It helps to talk through these things.

[Peter]

The deep breath and sort of like a who cares? Kind of works for me. I don't think saying let them would work for me just because it's too much. Focus on the other person who I hate. I hate that person.

[Michael Hobbs]

The lady counting change in front of me in line. She should go to jail. But you know what? I'm not gonna work on it right now.

[Peter]

She will get hers in hell.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

So there's again, a little bit of one book theory here, because this is a very simple concept that's stretched out to book length. So she's endlessly filling space with, like, anecdotes and scenarios that illustrate something that's already been illustrated within a few pages. So she's like, if someone's holding up the line and you're getting Impatient. Let them. If someone's being inconsiderate, let them. If your friends aren't texting you back, let them.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

And you know, at. At different points, he's just like. You might wonder how this applies when you're stressed out at the airport and it's like, no, I get it.

[Michael Hobbs]

What about at the zoo? What about at the library? What if you're at this address? What if you're at this address?

[Peter]

How does this work at LAX? Now, let's talk O'Hare. Another example she likes to use is your friend not texting you back. The framing she likes to use is, like, if you let them, you see who people really are. And I think that's very catchy. But, like, is this better than having a conversation with someone?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly.

[Peter]

If a friend or a spouse is doing something you don't like, isn't step one a simple chat?

[Michael Hobbs]

And also, even that depends on the situation. There's like, if it's someone you met on a dating app and they're not texting you back, like, yeah, probably just move on. It's no big deal.

[Peter]

Exactly.

[Michael Hobbs]

But if it's like a close friend, like, yeah, maybe bring it up. It's like all of these things break down because there's so many examples where it isn't good advice.

[Peter]

She also tries to back this idea up with research about how people are resistant to change and especially change through negative feedback, which is true, although I don't think it supports the let them concept exactly. It just means that you need to be sort of conscious of how you approach people. I don't know. People are dynamic and willing to change in many different circumstances, and maybe not always, but I think it's weird to build your worldview around the idea that other people are generally static creatures who you can't change.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, I want her to go through painstaking every specific example of this. Imagine you're getting negative feedback, such as, I don't know, you plagiarize your book. What should you do in that situation?

[Peter]

Gaslight your haters. That's what you should do. This is another area where she brings in actual research, but the applicability doesn't feel like it's quite there. She's talking about people's receptiveness to negative feedback, and she uses warning labels as an example. Basically, there's some research that shows that even though people understand rationally that warning labels are telling you the truth, they tend to believe that they are the exceptions. That's sort of generally true warning labels. Generally speaking, are not very effective. There are exceptions. Like the horrific warning labels with, like, pictures of smoky lungs and stuff. Actually, there's evidence that those do work. And, like, the more. Basically, the more outrageous warning labels get, the more affected they tend to be. But also, I was just like, okay, that's a cool little tidbit of psychology, but we're a little far afield from the let them idea, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, Peter. Warning labels. You know, I have tendonitis right now, which is why I can't go rock climbing. And so you're supposed to put, like, heat on it. So I bought these toe warmers that, like, you're supposed to put in boots when you go skiing to, like, keep your feet warm.

[Peter]

Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar.

[Michael Hobbs]

So I got a bunch of those. And when you pull them out of the package, it's, like, on the package, on the outside, it's like, do not put on skin. And then you pull them out of the package, and it's like, do not put on skin. And then you peel off the backing, and it's like, do not put on skin. And so I put it on my skin because I was like, it's like a fake. Like, we're surrounded by warning labels. Like, warning, coffee is hot, right? Like, we're surrounded by these, like, fake warnings all the time. Put on my skin. I put, like, an elbow wrap thing over it to, like, keep it stuck against my skin. And I was, like, working on my computer for, like, an hour or two, and I was like, how this feels a little too warm. Like, uncomfortably warm. And I pulled off the elbow thing. I pulled off the pad, and there was, like, a fucking divot. It had, like, a burned a, like, dime sign.

[Peter]

Jesus Christ.

[Michael Hobbs]

Divot into my arm. I have a fucking scar, Peter. It's, like, so bad.

[Peter]

Oh, my God.

[Michael Hobbs]

And the thing is that the first instinct that I had, like, the first emotion that I felt was anger. I was like, why didn't they tell me this is bullshit. Like, someone could do something. Why didn't they tell me not to put it against my arm?

[Peter]

The reality is that if they had just showed a picture of what could happen to your arm.

[Michael Hobbs]

Exactly. Of my now, dude.

[Peter]

Then you wouldn't have done it. So it is their fault. It's not your fault, Michael. You're perfect. So let's talk about how this works in the workplace. She basically says that if you're in a situation where you deserve a promotion or something like that and you're not getting one, you don't use. Let them to get the promotion. You use it to accept that they aren't likely giving you what you deserve and think what power you do have, like taking steps to find another job or something like that.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, but then that's not. Let them.

[Peter]

You're letting them not give you a promotion. Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

But then you're doing something about it that's.

[Peter]

Let me. Oh, first you let them and then you let me.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Peter]

This is the thing, though, is that she makes it seem like it's a natural delineation between letting them and letting you, but it's actually not.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

You can assert yourself in all sorts of ways, and I don't think she's particularly clear on, like, when you should be letting me.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's the kind of thing for which people read advice books. Right. It's like, when should I assert myself and when should I not?

[Peter]

She also talks about using this with difficult family members. I was a little bit worried about this part at first. I thought that she was maybe going to advocate for complacency in the face of mistreatment or even abuse. I actually think that this section is mostly good. There's definitely some good advice. She talks about how it's, like, very normal to have negative opinions about people you like and love. Right. So, like, if a family member or close friend is upset at you or doesn't like this thing about you, it's not something that should weigh you down. Like, this is just what normal human relationships are like. Right. Useful thing to keep in mind, little family spats and stuff like that. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

She says that you should let your family be judgmental or inappropriate and focus on yourself because you can't control them. She also says if, like, eventually, if you let them and it turns out that cutting them out is, like, what's best for you, then do that. That's letting you.

[Michael Hobbs]

But this is every piece of advice of, like, let them end less.

[Peter]

Yeah, but the.

[Michael Hobbs]

In less is the hard part.

[Peter]

Exactly. And this is, again, you can just sort of see there's good advice in here, but the higher the stakes, the less effective the framework. Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

When it's a small thing. Sure. You take a deep breath because your brain is sort of, like, irrationally irritated.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

But when you are dealing with a family member who's a consistent part of your life and is causing, like, real emotional turmoil for you, it's much harder to just work through that. You can't just breathe your way through your relationship with your father or whatever.

[Michael Hobbs]

And this would be psychotic advice in particular situations. I'm sure she's not giving that like you're in an abusive relationship.

[Peter]

Let them. I want to be clear. I do think that she makes room for like, there's a line that you can draw for yourself, right? Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. She doesn't seem as like psycho as some of the other people we've covered on the show.

[Peter]

There are moments where I'm like, I don't know about this, Mel, but her advice is less problematic than a lot of the authors we've covered.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's not like Kiyosaki, like the rich dad, poor dad guy who's basically just like, do crimes. Right.

[Peter]

Tax fraud, do it.

[Michael Hobbs]

Do you not have enough money? Have you tried crimes?

[Peter]

She does. In this section, do another quintessential self help gimmick where like extremely basic and common advice is sort of repackaged and then sold to you as if it's really novel. I'm going to send you this bit.

[Michael Hobbs]

My friend Lisa Bilyeu, who is a best selling author, host of Women of Impact podcast and co founder of the billion dollar nutrition company Quest Nutrition, shared the concept of frame of reference with me. It's a tool to help you deal with situations where someone disapproves of who you are, who you love, what you believe or how you're living in your life and you want to navigate this at a deeper level. Our global podcast audience went crazy over frame of reference when Lisa described it as a mindset tool that's helped her relationships. Frame of reference is a fancy way to say, understanding the lens through which somebody sees something. And it works beautifully with the let them theory. Okay, yeah, this is like try to see things from other people's perspective.

[Peter]

There's something so funny about this. It's like she has this method of giving like an aura of authority to this generic nothing advice. My friend who is a best selling author, host of this podcast, co founder of this billion dollar company, our global podcast audience went crazy over this idea. And the idea is like, like something that straight up you should have heard for the first time as a child.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter]

Have you ever thought about other people's perspectives? It's like, well, yeah, because I'm not an actual psychopath.

[Michael Hobbs]

My billionaire friend who's a best selling author taught me about a principle called sharing where if I eat a cookie, other people can't have the cookie and so I should break apart the cookie and give it to others.

[Peter]

My podcast audience went fucking nuts when they found out about sharing. So this leads me to one of the sort of like uncomfortable Stories she shares about her own life. And I think it shows how difficult it is to actually square the let them theory with, like, the challenging scenarios that you encounter in the real world. Her primary example for the frame of reference concept is a story about her mom. I'm gonna send you it in chunks.

[Michael Hobbs]

When I met my husband, Chris, I was ecstatic and madly in love. And when he proposed, I was absolutely over the moon at the time. I remember my mom not seeming as excited as I expected her to be. So I had this conversation with her where I told her I wanted her to be excited for me. And I asked her to act as though she was the one who chose him for me. And she said, 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 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 life, but I had no idea how to handle the situation. Here I am, madly in love with someone I know is my soulmate, and my mom tells me to my face, I never would have picked him for you, and then refuses to act excited for me. I went on to marry Kris, but I felt this tension of disapproval underneath the dynamic between me and my mom. For years, it was hard for me to forget what she said, and I didn't know how to let it go.

[Peter]

She says she eventually used the frame of reference concept taught to her for the first time by her friend who sells granola or whatever, to see it from her mom's perspective. Her mom had moved away from her own parents after marrying, and then after that, didn't see them very often. And she says that her mom was scared of the same thing happening with her daughter. So I'm going to send you another bit.

[Michael Hobbs]

She says, when you look at it from my mother's frame of reference, she saw her story playing out in front of her all over again. I was going to move away and meet somebody and never come home. And she was right. I'm sure she wanted me to marry someone from Michigan so I would settle down close to them. Thirty years ago, I met Chris, and I didn't think about my mom's frame of reference. I was just offended and angry and concluded that she didn't support me. I can now see that she supported me. She was just scared of losing her daughter.

[Peter]

So I think that this is when letting them goes too far, because I agree it's important to understand why your mom reacted in a certain way. Right. But that doesn't mean that it was an okay reaction.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Peter]

You told her you were in love with someone and engaged and she openly shit on it. Right, right. So, like, it might be true that this is because of some bottled up trauma or whatever, but. But that doesn't mean she was being supportive. She very much wasn't.

[Michael Hobbs]

And the way that she. Yeah, it's like, it's understandable, this stuff, but it also. It's up to her the way that she expresses that and how much she lets that affect her behavior.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

So, like, yeah, regardless of where it comes from, you need to be nice to my husband.

[Peter]

Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's not like a line too far.

[Peter]

This was like one of my concerns going into it, that, like, there are going to be people who would use this idea to sort of like, accept a certain amount of toxicity into their life. Right, right. Well, my mom has a different frame of reference, so I'm just gonna let her shit on my choice of soulmate or whatever.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also the thing is, I actually really like this as an instinct of like, hey, mom, I'm getting some weird vibes. Like, do you know where that's from? And sort of using this as the opening of a conversation.

[Peter]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

But then also, yeah, if you're like, oh, well, it's okay that she's mean to my husband because she's afraid of me moving away, that's nuts.

[Peter]

As long as your shitty behavior comes from trauma, then I accept it and you're great.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, like, most people's bad behavior comes from trauma.

[Peter]

On some level, you imagine the same story, but it's like, why she's racist. It's like, I understood. I learned that as a young person.

[Michael Hobbs]

Someone yelled a slur at me from a car, and then I saw it from their perspective that I'm actually harming the world in front of God.

[Peter]

She also loses me a little bit when she says that this can be used to handle stress from politics. This is a relatively quick aside in the book, but it was very off putting to me first. There's like a whole section where she talks about how everyone is stressed about politics these days. Let me send it to you.

[Michael Hobbs]

She says, we live in a moment where we're more polarized than ever. The stakes feel so high and everyone seems so far apart and either angry or scared about where things are or both. It's impossible to have a civil conversation with most people who have a different point of view, because none of us really want to take the time to understand where the other person is coming from. Ah, this stuff is a sickness. It's fucking everywhere.

[Peter]

Such a dumbass guy. Analysis of the current political moment. Politics are polarized because no one wants to understand each other anymore.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the very TED talk approach to politics where it's like, aren't things just a little too political these days?

[Peter]

We don't have to get into this too much, but I see this so much that I do want to give it a minute to say that, like, there's a ton of research about political polarization. My one paragraph explanation for why we're polarized is basically over the span of the last four or five decades, we've seen the parties become ideological. American political parties used to be like a mishmash of interest groups. Right, right. And then that changes after the Southern Democrats split with the party on segregation. And over the years we've seen all this demographic sorting between the parties so that now partisan identity aligns more with other identities, social, cultural, whatever, which leads to polarization. And then on top of that, you have social media, you have media ecosystem shit. Incomplete answer, but I just hope no one listening to this thinks that polarization is because we're listening less or some dumbass shit like that. That's the stuff we just know is not true.

[Michael Hobbs]

I also don't even agree with the framing of polarization being the problem, that white people are more right and left people are more left. And like, that just isn't what the evidence shows. The evidence shows that America has like a fairly standard center left party and a completely deranged far right party. And so it's not that the parties have each drifted further from the center, it's that one party has completely gone off the rails.

[Peter]

There's also some evidence, and a lot of people believe that like the polarization has started from the top, that like it happened first at the party level among like Republican elites especially, and then trickled down, which is, I think, like, this is just not how people think. Think about it. Everyone's just like, we're all in our own little bubbles. And that's the problem. It's like, no, not exactly.

[Michael Hobbs]

That explanation totally flatters power. I always think about after Princess Diana died, you know, in the, the chase with the paparazzi, there was all this stuff about like, we're all to blame. We're all to blame for the way that her fame killed her. And it's like, no, there's like five like high level editors of tabloids who are to blame 100%. And blaming every single person who ever bought a film newspaper is just a way of letting those people off the hook. And whenever you distribute blame throughout society to this level. Oh, aren't we all polarized? Like, no, we're not. There's a specific problem, and we can look at the features of that problem. But it's just brain dead to say, like, oh, we all just have our opinions and we're not hearing other people's opinions. There's no evidence of this whatsoever.

[Peter]

So here's her theory of politics. I'm gonna.

[Michael Hobbs]

Ooh, there's more. Okay, good.

[Peter]

There's more.

[Michael Hobbs]

So how do you use the let them theory to change the state of politics at a local, national, or global level? You don't. The school board has already decided. The Senate has voted. These are the two candidates running. The election is over. It's tied up in the courts.

[Peter]

Let them.

[Michael Hobbs]

You can't change what just happened. But I never said you couldn't change the future. Does it seem overwhelming? Yes. Does it feel like it won't make a difference? Yes. Do it anyway. Let me stay engaged and vocal on the issues I care about and do something that can change the future of my local, national, and global politics. Don't sit around and wait for someone else to clean up the mess that you see.

[Peter]

Stay engaged. Get out there. Get. Get vocal. Let them. Let them deport you to Seacoat in El Salvador.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the Join the Conversation Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner. Join the Conversation. People holding up signs.

[Peter]

The sign just says, like, protest. Yeah, I don't think this is an adequate way to address politics or other larger problems. I was sort of waiting for her to be like, by the way, this doesn't apply to politics. I kind of thought that was where we were going. Yeah. It's interesting how this spirals out because she starts off with being like, there's real science. And by the way, she brags about how there's real science behind this, and she brings in the science. And so I was sort of like, ready for there to be some actual, real. Some science throughout. But this is a good example of what she does where she's like, here's the science about the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. And you're like, okay, there's a real material hook. Right. We're sort of sitting with one foot in reality. But then the idea evolves so much that you reach a point like this where the science that she described earlier has no applicability at all.

[Michael Hobbs]

Where is Queen amygdala. Now she's gone. Her clone has been killed, but she has not been killed.

[Peter]

One of the weird. Whenever you make these nerdy jokes, it's.

[Michael Hobbs]

Not even that nerdy of a joke. It's a fucking. It's a major movie that made, like, hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Peter]

Whenever you make these nerdy ass jokes, Fuck. All I can think is like, I'm sort of like, you know, I'm obviously a nerd in many different ways, which is why I enjoy being extremely judgmental about the ways that I'm not a nerd.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, you're a nerd about gambling.

[Peter]

I was gonna. I was gonna keep going, but later in this episode, she makes an analogy to playing cards. And then I get really pedantic about it. So I now have to drop this. I've been completely owned in advance when.

[Michael Hobbs]

You bring up this nerdy shit, Peter, about sports betting.

[Peter]

Well, I just wonder what percentage of our audience is just like, what are they talking about? Amygdala.

[Michael Hobbs]

Everyone is gonna get that joke.

[Peter]

No, they're not.

[Michael Hobbs]

Sound off in the comments, folks. Sound off in the comments.

[Peter]

The problem is that the people who reply to us on social media are.

[Michael Hobbs]

Not an emblematic cross section, for better or for worse. My understanding is they are 100% lesbians due to the feedback we've gotten on our last couple episodes.

[Peter]

Yeah, if you're listening to this right now and you're not a lesbian, we.

[Michael Hobbs]

Don'T believe you exist. We have no proof of this.

[Peter]

Reach out. What do you want to hear? There's another self help trope that we. I don't think we've talked about as such, but we've touched upon many times. At some point, all of these authors will tell you, life isn't fair, but you need to suck it up again.

[Michael Hobbs]

Something I've read in children's books numerous times, but okay, 100%.

[Peter]

Sending you two mice in a maze.

[Michael Hobbs]

She says you are the problem. And the first step is accepting the truth. Life isn't fair. It's just not. It's not fair that you're drowning in student debt because you couldn't afford the tuition. 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. It's not fair that your supervisor keeps giving you the crappy shift at work. I don't need this many examples. It's not fair that your country is torn apart by war.

[Peter]

Pause Pause, pause. The transition that we made right there. And you were like, this is too many examples. But now you can see why I had to keep them all. Because she goes from, yeah, maybe your country's torn apart by war. Or, like, your sister's hot.

[Michael Hobbs]

She's giving her TED Talk in Chechnya.

[Peter]

She goes on, she says, in life, you're not playing against anyone. You're playing with them. Someone will always have better cards than yours. It's not about the hand you've been dealt, it's about how you play it.

[Michael Hobbs]

I mean, what.

[Peter]

And while you've been busy comparing yourself to everyone else, you've missed one of the greatest secrets in life. Other people teach you how to be a better player, and that's how you win. It's true. A lot of people have been dealt a luckier or more successful hand of cards. Let them.

[Michael Hobbs]

I mean, this is fine advice, but is it?

[Peter]

Is it?

[Michael Hobbs]

I would phrase it differently, but also, like, there are things you cannot change. There are things you can. Like, freaking out about the stuff you can't change is not great for your mental health. Fair enough.

[Peter]

Coming to terms with these things is important. I totally agree.

[Michael Hobbs]

Whatever.

[Peter]

Again, the choice to include war in here is so crazy.

[Michael Hobbs]

I know.

[Peter]

I don't know if you've thought about this in Gaza, but some people's sisters are way hotter than them. Also, yeah, I will get nerdy about the. What is this card playing metaphor? You might be dealt a bad hand, but you learn how to win from other people who you're not competing against. And also, the cards don't matter. It's how you play them.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's actually not true of cards. Right? Dude, I saw Rounders. I'm an expert. I know this.

[Peter]

She uses this line. And I've heard you hear it so much. Like, any top card player will tell you, it's not about the cards, it's how you play them. Huge pet peeve of mine. Any card player will actually tell you that the cards are way more important. Way more important.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is the thinnest possible excuse for you to talk about cards. We did not need this.

[Peter]

Let's talk about probabil. Let's talk about probabilities. There are 52 cards in every deck. Did you know that there are different. There are more arrangements of cards in a deck than there are atoms in the universe.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, 52 factorial. I watch a whole video about that. Because I'm a nerd in different ways. Yes.

[Peter]

Interesting. I understood it intuitively.

[Michael Hobbs]

It is funny. That's A very common idiom, and it is just false 100%. Like, it doesn't matter the cards you're dealt. It matters how you play them. No, it really does matter the cards that you're dealt.

[Peter]

Genuinely, I'm a pretty middling poker player. I like it, but I'm a pretty middling player. You could put me up against the best player in the world. And if I chose my cards every time, I can guarantee the.

[Michael Hobbs]

You know this from cards, I know this from roguelikes. You have poker, I have dead cells. Sometimes your run just can't get off the ground.

[Peter]

I do want to cover a couple of generally good sections in the book. She writes a lot about using the let them concept in adult friendships, with the general theme being that people sort of naturally grow distant in adulthood, and you can't force it. You can't force these friendships. There's a shocking amount about adult friendships. It was obvious that she needed to pad this book out, and they were like, we need three chapters on adult friendships. There's a ton of stuff about how to make new friends as an adult. And you're just like, what does this have to do with the life? Yeah, what's going on here?

[Michael Hobbs]

Is this why when I text you Taylor Swift lyrics, you text back, I'm actually at capacity and I'm unable to hold space for you right now.

[Peter]

I like the portions about the early stages of romantic relationships. Right. Another area where I think the let them framework makes a lot of sense. Right. Like if you're searching for romance and someone's not giving you what you need, it's important to understand that you're probably not going to change them and work from there. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

Although in gay World, instead of let them at the end of every sentence, we just say, send nudes. They're not texting you back. Send nudes. You're not getting what you need from them. Send nudes.

[Peter]

I think when I originally jotted my outline down, I had a piece where I was like, here's where we'll put the good sections. And then over time, that just dwindled as I realized that I hated almost every section of the book.

[Michael Hobbs]

I do worry we're being too mean to her. Honestly, this book seems like, okay on the relative scale by which we judge books on this show. It's so much less toxic than 90% of the garbage we've talked about.

[Peter]

Absolutely. And I do think that there's a sort of weird problem here where the fundamental idea that she can convey in the span of a couple Pages is pretty decent, but because she needs 200 to 250 pages, the bulk of the book ends up sucking.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

She's creating all of these situations where the framework isn't a great fit. Right. But she has to, because otherwise it's not a book.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's actually an interesting thing. It's like a good idea at the heart of the book, but by padding it out and making it into 200 pages, you have to add 190 pages of bad shit.

[Peter]

One last section that I really didn't like and I think is worth mentioning, there was a chapter about helping people who are struggling. Obviously it's if you know someone who is having a really hard time, especially with self destructive behavior, for example, let them. Seems like very questionable advice.

[Michael Hobbs]

You want to send nudes. You want to send nudes messages.

[Peter]

Where it leads her is that when someone is struggling, you don't want to just bail them out because that can often make things worse. She gives the classic example of giving money to an addict. Doesn't help them, it often just enables them. Everyone knows this is true in the abstract. The hard part is knowing when to help and when not.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right? Exactly. Yeah.

[Peter]

And how you can help in ways that aren't enabling. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's almost as if you have to know the specifics of a situation to give meaningful advice rather than just generic two word phrases to solve every problem.

[Peter]

I don't know if my reaction to this section was like entirely rational or if it just pissed me off to read this person be like, here's how to use this idea I stole from social media to avoid enabling addicts. She's sort of saying like, like you might think that this wouldn't be useful for someone who's really struggling, but actually it would be because you can just let them because otherwise you're enabling them. It's like, come on.

[Michael Hobbs]

I guess that's the problem with these books. I guess as you were saying earlier, because if you tried to actually write this out, it would be like 10 pages of a decent idea and then 190 pages of exceptions.

[Peter]

Yeah, but you can't write a book.

[Michael Hobbs]

About a bunch of exceptions like where this doesn't apply. So you have to just pretend that it does apply.

[Peter]

That's the challenge that I face with Bitch Like a Man, my book about complaining in a masculine way. So that's the book. I feel like you can look at both the content of the book and the context in which it exists as like essentially a stolen product.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

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 da, da da. Let them. Let them. That's the package you're stealing.

[Michael Hobbs]

The marketing that is the only work of writing one of these self help books is like literally like I came up with a little bumper sticker slogan for this idea and she didn't even do that.

[Peter]

Right, right. What's the elevator pitch? Right. She. She fucking stole the elevator pitch. She stole the whole top to bottom. We've had the discussion before about what's a grift and what's a grifter. And I mean, I don't know how this is anything other than a grift. Sorry. Not to say that she is necessarily purely a grifter, but this book is a grift. She's not contributing anything. It's a stolen idea. Not even repackaged, just glossed up and some marketing money put behind it.

[Michael Hobbs]

I do love the sort of meta ness of it where it's like she's grifted somebody else out of their idea and if they're mad, she can be like, well, let me.

[Peter]

I'm gonna let you be mad. You let me get rich off of this.

[Michael Hobbs]

Just take my advice. It's right there in the book.

[Peter]

Someone like this, she's just like rent seeking on the American psyche.

[Michael Hobbs]

I think you're overdoing it. This seems like a dumb book, but is reasonable. I mean, other than the fact that it's a fucking stolen idea.

[Peter]

You don't think it's rent seeking?

[Michael Hobbs]

This whole sector is fucking rent seeking.

[Peter]

You get so mad at landlords, but this lady is occupying space in your mind. And that's the thing is a big complaint that I have about these grifty self help authors. They're just good at marketing these already existing ideas and sort of pretending that it's their idea and they came up with this or they have some real inspiration.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right. But it's not literal in most cases. In this case it's literal.

[Peter]

And Cassie Phillips, the author of the poem, has said, I didn't want any money off this, I don't want any money off this. Right. So all you have to do is just give a little bit of credit where it's due and you're good. But the thing is that if you give credit, then you're sort of just like. The reason she can't give credit is because as soon as you read that poem you're like, oh, you stole this. You couldn't put the poem in the front of the book. If someone would be like, why are you wrong? I want to hear from the person who wrote the poem.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Peter]

We always complain about how someone stretched out what was basically a brief essay to a book. In this case, she literally did just stretch out a one page poem. Adds nothing of substance. Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

She took someone else's idea that wasn't even that good and she made it worse instead.

[Peter]

Goes very far afield being like politics.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, Peter, you really are bitching like a man now you're really embodying the premise of the book.

[Peter]

Give me $1 million and I will deliver you like a man.

[Michael Hobbs]

If you do this, Peter, I'm absolutely gonna fabricate a JPEG that says like a man came out in like 2021. Author Michael Ho.