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A
The gist is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Introducing Family Freedom from T Mobile we'll pay off four phones up to three 200 and give you four free phones all on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com familyfreedom up to $800 per line via virtual prepaid card typically takes 15 days. Free phone via 24 monthly bill credits with finance agreement. Example Apple iPhone 16128 gigs $829.99 Eligible trade in example iPhone 11 Pro for well qualified credits end in balance due if you pay off early or cancel Contact US It's Tuesday, November 11, 2025 from Peach Fish Productions. It's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. The Government shut the government will never shut down again until it does very soon. The next time it inconvenienced millions and got us. I'm not going to say nothing but not much. Morning Joe called it a big win for the Democrats. Here's some of that argument. Massive, historic in some ways where Steve Bannon said Democrats erased 10 years of Republican gains in one night. And why did that happen? Donald Trump said it happened because of the government shutdown. So all this fear and loathing and all this whining. I wish Democrats for once, just once could take a win and then understand the Republicans. They were never going to help working Americans. They learned that through this process. So you know who else learned that through this process? The American voter. The great thing about our media ecosystem is you could choose whichever reality you want if you want. Great win for the Democrats. There is a very well watched cable network to tell you that other outlets are going with the fact that almost every Democrat besides the eight who defected strongly disagree with the defectors. I'm talking everyone from AOC to Roc Hannah to Amy Klobuchar and John Hickenlooper. Here is the ABC podcast Start Here where they express incredulity over Democrats. I don't want to say caving, but doing a toe touch of a spelunk in agreeing to settle at this juncture.
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B
One of the biggest reasons Senate Democrats were not funding the government is cuz they were like we cannot let people lose their health care or pay way way more for their health care. We're going to shut down the government to make sure this happens. And now a month later, 40 days later, they're caving on that effectively for what? A pinky promise that we might vote on the health care thing and it might not even pass. What, like, is that going to fly with constituents? I mean, that's right. They didn't really end up getting very much out of this. Despite a very long fight about it. There are some Democrats in the group that voted to advance this thing who are going to say that this was a concession that had to be made. I understand that not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement, but waiting another week or another month wouldn't deliver a better outcome. They say that this is a record shattering shutdown and the pain that it was beginning to cause the country was starting to really escalate. We were seeing lines to our food banks in Northern Nevada. These were lines that I hadn't seen since the pandemic.
- [03:35]
A
The shutdown did inconvenience a lot of people. Did it ruin lives? No, but it rerouted aircraft and caused a lot of stress among those who rely on snap. There is still uncertainty for people hoping for a favorable outcome on ACA rates. That is, by the way, I got to tell you the just difference. I did not weigh into this the day ins, the day outs. I covered the broad contours, but I really didn't see it being much more than a time wasting bummer. I didn't see it resetting politics. I talked to a lot of people citing polls showing Democrats were winning okay, and yet eight actual elected Senate Democrats disagreed with those polls. Did they not see the polls? Did they not think they themselves would be helped by the polls? I know a couple of them aren't running for office again or aren't up for reelection, but why would they then care if they're not getting elected again about their constituents? I'm talking about Dick Durbin, who's 80 and said he won't run for election. So he's a humanitarian who cares for the people of Illinois, but not politically motivated and doesn't think he himself will benefit. Isn't that more of a good thing, say something good about Dick Durbin than something bad. Other senators read the situation quite differently, right? Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Bernie Sanders, Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Bernie Sanders from Vermont. I just skipped over that. You know, he's from Vermont. These Democrats, I guess have better poker playing instincts than the eight who caved. They read the Republicans as somehow close to guaranteeing ACA subsidies rather than just doing what they did saying ok, we'll one day vote on ACA subsidies. By the way, that vote might just turn out to be a win for the Democratic position. Plenty of Republicans, Marjorie Taylor Greene among them, know that they will be hurt and if their constituents have to pay a lot more for health care. It does strike me as a little bit odd that the eight defectors are being assailed as weak or cowardly or even having caved, because in other contexts wouldn't we say the opposite of any politician who reads the polls and sees that the polls show the tactics are working for their political advantage, but still rebukes the politics in favor of the wealth, health and well being of their the shutdown was hurting everyone's constituents. Some Democrats wanted to press on ahead and some said no. I wanted if you're TIM Kaine, the 15000 federal workers who I represent, to get paid. My initial assessment stands. This was a fine fight for Chuck Schumer to take up, not because he would win, but because the alternative would. Where he didn't take up the fight would have killed him. And it is a bit of a rallying cry for Democrats who I don't think were ever going to get the win, but benefited from the fight, but the benefit accrued to success in the midterms. I don't think it would carry over if they pressed it for weeks and weeks or months and months. And look, they did do very well in the midterms. So that's it. Mission accomplished. It's plausible that they will have a reputation for showing a little bit of spine in 2026. But overall, I more hate this aspect of government, the one where everyone can pull the brakes but no one has any incentive to actually reroute the train for all the sympathetic appeals to medical insurance, accessibility subsidies of course come at a cost. And I am not echoing that Republican line that Obamacare has failed or that there is some big beautiful Nixon plan to end the war in Vietnam. I'm sor Trump plan to fix health care. But I do acknowledge that in the real world it all costs money and yet nobody in Congress, I don't know, maybe 10 people in the Tea Party and half of them really might well be nuts, actually care about the national debt, which added a trillion dollars, a trillion dollars during the shutdown. This was when spending was supposedly halted. So if you want to be mad at Chuck Schumer, be mad at Chuck Schumer. Being mad at Chuck Schumer is basically what makes you a good Democrat these days. He tried to keep his caucus in line. He did not because of the underlying dynamics. I really do not think he was ever going to, quote, unquote, win this shutdown, except to the extent that Joe Scarborough Van Jones also agrees with this, to the extent that I guess he already won the shutdown. But the members of his caucus who defected have rational self interest and constituent interest at heart. They define their jobs in a way that said, I'm going to get my people paid and fed before I'm going to press on with a tactic that is winning in the polls but might not win on the metric that we have defined the point of this shutdown. They saw Republican cruelty and Trump indifference as a constant. And in that regard, I think they're right on the show today. I'll give you a little spiel since I gave you a long preamble, a little spiel about things like cooked rice and if Bono is indeed the lead singer of U2. But first, we're joined by John Levy and I was joined by John Levy or I joined John Levy for an event which was fairly cryptic, which he invited influencers who didn't know each other to come cook a meal and meet really quite interesting. John Levy is the kind of guy who collects interesting people and interesting anecdotes and interesting studies. He is a behavioral scientist who is out with a new book called Team How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius. John Levy up next. True work. I'm wearing it right now. Fall weather changes fast, so I'm dressed in layers. I've got this hoodie that's a lovely shade of green, but on top of that I've got a true work zip up jacket and if I wanted to, I could pivot to a truer coat. A true, true work coat. They're made by trade professionals who are tired of wet, heavy gear weighing them down, and every piece is tested on job sites with trade pros. The trade could be podcaster or it could be, you know, actual construction worker or logger. I wear true work. I don't know, maybe a little too much given how often I'm clearing brush, which is not much. But it's just a testament to the fact that this stuff really and truly does work. And it also looks damn good. Upgrade your day with workwear built like it matters and get 15% off your first order@truewerk.com with the code the gist. That's spelling's important on this one. T r u e w e r k.com and use the code the Gist. Life's a little crazy lately and members of my family definitely need to unwind. This is not the throwing under the bus. This is about relieving aches and discomfort and CBD gummies, which as I said, there are many people around here who avail themselves of the Cornbread Hemp Gummy. They're formulated to work with your body, not against it. Cornbread Hemp CBD gummies are made to make you feel better, stress, discomfort, if you need a little relaxation. They use the best part of the hemp plant, the flower, for the purest and most potent cbd. All products are third party, lab tested and USDA organic to ensure safety and purity. Right now, the Gist listeners can get 30% off their first order. Just head to cornbread hemp.com the gist and use code the gist at checkout. That's cornbread.com the gist and use code the Gist. I met an interesting person and you know, this is part of my commitment to you, the Gist listener and I hope maybe the Gist viewer. I shall bring you the interesting people who I've met. And this interesting person has a similar idea. He too is a collector of of interesting people. They show up in different ways for him than a podcast. His name is John Levy and he is, among other things, the author of Team Intelligence. There's the book. See, I'm plugging the video. How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius. He's done us so, so much more and we're going to talk about all of that. Hello, John. Welcome to the Gist.
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B
Hello. Hello. This is. I'm so excited to be here. I had an absolute blast eating terrible food with you.
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A
Okay, so there he's throwing out a crumb. As actually happened when I met John. So I got this invitation and it said you're invited to very. A very vague event where you and other people who you don't know and you're not allowed to ask really who they are by last name or profession will create a meal and then bond. And John is the Svengali behind this project. Now, I will also admit I could have done more research on this. He wasn't. And the organization. I wasn't trying to be purposefully opaque. There was more information in the original email than I clicked on, but I guess I let it be a mystery. I went to this unnamed or it was named that the address was given location and I didn't know if I would be human trafficked. I wasn't. I did create a meal. But John, what was going on here? Tell me or if Someone gets an email, tell them as much as you can about what they might expect in such an event.
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B
So for the past 15 years, we've been inviting people, usually about 12 at a time, to come to a person's home, cook what can be described as, like a moderately decent meal. And then once we're done cooking, we sit down to eat and we play a guessing game where we pick a person and we all try to guess what they do professionally. And then there's a big reveal. And the wild thing is that the guests that attend are business leaders, CEOs, Olympians, astronauts, the occasional Nobel laureate or princess. We've hosted everybody from Daniel Hume, the number one chef in the world, who couldn't make up for how bad the rest of us were cooking, all the way through to the guy who won a Grammy for barking on who let the dogs out.
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A
Who, Who? Who?
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B
Yeah, exactly. His name is Steve Greenberg. And here's the funniest thing about him.
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A
He.
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B
He is actually famous because he discovered Hanson, the Jonas Brothers, ajr, like every brother band out there, was discovered by him and managed by him.
- [14:42]
A
Some one hit wonders, some two. As a broad. He has a broad portfolio of the brother bands. Yeah, and he barked. And the Baja Men asked him to bark. What was good about his barking, by the way?
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B
He was their manager and they were recording the album. It was, I think, their fifth studio album. And he's like, guys, that's not how you bark. And he went into the recording booth and he said, this is how you bark. And the producer of the track said, that's it. And so they kept about the. The album, and it ended up winning for best Pop Song. And he has a Grammy for that and another Grammy for show liner notes that he did.
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A
Okay, so you get these people together and the purpose is for you, what, experimentation or curiosity?
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B
It's. It started out as a way for me to try to improve my life. So there's this kind of research that you may have heard of, TED Talk about it, where people were looking at, is obesity spread from person to person, like a cold, or is it a percentage of the population, like Alzheimer's? And what the researchers discovered was that if you have a friend who's obese, your chances increase by 45%. Your friends who do not know them have a 20% increased chance, and their friends have a 5% increased chance. And this is true for happiness, marriage and divorce rates, smoking habits, voting habits, literally everything. And so I said, wait, maybe I'm overweight, broke and underemployed. Not because I'm like, not a nice person or something like that, but because I'm just hanging out with the wrong people. Maybe if I figured out how to connect with all these people, my life would get better by kind of like osmosis. Right. And so I just spent years kind of studying trust and connection and how to meet people. And we ended up designing the dinner and you know, I just never stopped doing it. And it's been completely insane considering who's shown up.
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A
Yeah. And there are wonderful aspects to it that I won't give away if anyone goes. Even some aspects that you're kind of open with. You not. You don't just have this dinner and the salon presents.
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B
You can tell you can talk about anything you want as long as you don't share anything that's like the guests asked not to be repeated.
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A
Sure. Okay. So those bodies are buried where? I'm just doing a mental Rolodex.
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B
Okay. It's usually Staten island is the answer a lot of.
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A
Right. I thought, I thought that particular member of the Lucchese crime family was trying to throw us off the scent and I guess Gambino. So I was wrong. But yes, the salon of after this meeting, you know, 60 people come and guessing game are played and that's when if there were no Olympians or Tetris inventors or so just, just so your.
- [17:27]
B
Audience knows what you're talking about. The. In the salon after some of the dinners, we have kind of well known speakers come and present and. Or we'll play a game where we have to guess what when the people who they are. And so there was a guy named Hank up there and he was the guy that the Tetris movie was based on because he was the guy that went into Russia, managed to get the rights to Tetris and then brought it to the world. And now it's probably the most popular game of all time.
- [17:55]
A
Right. So this is, this is John's vocation. This is his passion. He collects these interesting people, but he does something for them which is. Introduces them to each other. And it's not just one dinner. It's an ongoing rolling salon where among other things, games are played, people are introduced to each other. I understand that the New Year's since so many people bring bottles of champagne when they meet each other, there' some drinking party with a goal of to drink thousands of dollars worth of champagne. And you've created connections and interconnections. And that is a theme of the book. And I want to get to that. But first I want to ask you a couple questions about this salon. How do people come to your radar about who you want to invite? Mostly by other existing guests, a small portion of them.
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B
So there's kind of three major ways or four major ways. One is I'll go to a conference and I'll see a speaker and I'll say, hey, I'd love to suggest you to my team. And so people give me their contact info, I pass it to the team for review. And there's people who approve it or just like. Because here's the truth, I might know about science. If you ask me who's an important surgeon or who's an important astronomer, I have no idea. Like, so we have experts who approve or disapprove guests. We have people can self recommend or you can recommend people just on our website. And we review every one of those. And then we have a research team that scours the web and they look across every possible industry. I think it's like we have A list of 170 industries or something like that. And they go category by category, place by place and try to find all the experts in those areas. So if you've won an Emmy, you're probably on our list. If you have received the Fisker award for architecture, you're probably on our list, right? It's all these people who have gotten their industry respect, right?
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A
Who have you over indexed for in your self assessment and under index for who? What kind of person would you like more of either by profession or temperament?
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B
So by profession it would be all those people that made the cartoons that I grew up watching. So I got to host the voice of Optimus prime one time and it was the greatest experience of my life. Right. If you were like working with Stan Lee in the early days of Marvel comics, I want you in that room and I need you in there. Yeah, I need you. So here's what I've oddly discovered is that I could host a dinner with a famous celebrity and like well known Nobel laureate. And if you run the paleontology department, the museum of Natural History, like you are the dinosaur person. Nobody cares about the Nobel laureate and the celebrity. All they want to hear about is dinosaurs. It's the things that are oddly nostalgic that people are really into, right?
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A
The things probably, probably Nobel laureates in physics and other profession that they might be fascinating, they might know something. But unless they could translate that to even very smart people, it's going to be somewhat opaque. But if there's that entry point of I know Optimus Prime, I know dinosaurs. I've always had questions about Tetris. It unlocks a lot of things.
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B
And it also, you have a personal experience that has lasted years and years, right? Whether it's watching Jurassic park or being a little kid and going to the Museum of Natural History. It's got a sentimental value. And so you'd be surprised, like the celebrities that'll gush and the world leaders that'll gush on the things that are nostalgic.
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A
Since you've been doing this for over a decade, how has your conception of what constitutes an interesting person changed? Maybe going in you thought this type of person might be interesting, but now you realize it's another type of person or that type of person is often uninteresting.
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B
So I actually was looking at the research on something similar recently, researching this book specifically, and I was looking at the research around popularity. So, like, what makes somebody popular? And it turns out that popularity is a byproduct of two factors. There are people who have high status, so wealth, power, good looks, right? Think head cheerleaders or captain of the football team, maybe the bully, right? And then there's likability. And in high school, the people who had high likeability were the people that had friends across as many categories as possible. So they were friends with the A.V. club and the Spanish club and the yearbook and all that. And they had one other characteristic. They told people why they liked them. Meaning if I say, wow, you know, what I really respect about you is the effort that you go to to make sure that your, your guest stories are told. A lot of people will just hop on a call and do a podcast and clearly didn't do any research. You actually do that work. It turns out that if you can get people to feel that you like them and you're friends with a lot of variety of people, that'll actually be the person that's most popular. The people with high status, it turns out, often have lower rates of employment, higher rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, all these other things. It's the likable people that really make it.
- [23:32]
A
Do you think our current world of how we present ourselves to each other, especially intermediated by social media, gets in the way of that or confers more status on the high status people and kind of confuses us about what truly constitutes popularity. So I can see it both ways.
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B
By the way, I think that in general, we need to separate social media into two categories. There's social media that's status seeking, and social media that's Entertaining. So in general, if you go onto Reddit, it's kind of like entertaining. You see cute cats and things like that. Right. You're not saying, wow, I'm not as cool as that cat. I feel bad for myself. But if you go onto Instagram and you compare the highlights of people's lives to your day to day, while you're sitting in the bathroom scrolling, you're like, oh, I'm doing this. And this is what their life is like. They're on a yacht, you know, or whatever it is, you're going to feel terrible about yourself, and it's going to be more isolating. So I think that it's. We need to understand what is the actual thing that's being triggered. It's not as simple as black and white.
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A
Do you have an insight as to the trend in the last 10 or 20 years, the word authenticity, especially as it's applied to political leaders who, one might argue, can have and should have a lot of traits. But is authenticity, should it be as highly prized as it is? Shouldn't something like good ideas be more prized? When we say authenticity, do you think we're really trying to select for something else?
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B
So authenticity is a funny one. When I was researching this idea of leadership, authentic leadership kept coming up over and over and over again. And what the actual research showed was kind of funny. It worked like this. The first thing was that the idea of authenticity in our culture came from, like, California gurus that were trying to talk about, like, oh, there's a pure you in the center of you, and everything else is just preventing that. And this is a very nice idea that if I was a jerk to somebody, I get to say that wasn't the real me. It's very convenient. The problem is that's not how the brain works. The brain is more a collection of sections that fight for dominance. And depending on how hungry you are, how tired you are, if somebody stepped on your foot, you're going to have a different version of you emerge. To put this to the test, researchers have people sit around a table and have a conversation and then rate each other on their authenticity and themselves. And what they found were two really interesting patterns. The first was that your rating for yourself didn't match what everybody else rated you. Okay, you could say that person doesn't have a relationship to reality. The second thing was that nobody's ratings matched each other. And that's weird, because if there was an authentic you, we should all generally be pretty close to each other in the way we rate you.
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A
There'd be some correlation. Right. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would. It would point to some direction.
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B
Yeah. It might be like, I'll give a 4, somebody else gives a 5, but it won't be, I give a 1 and somebody else gives a 10. That's weird.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And what we end up seeing is. Or what the researchers concluded was that authenticity isn't about you. It's, do you fit my narrative of who you should be? If you fit that narrative, you're authentic. And I'll give you two quick examples. When one of the Jenners, I don't remember which one, did a Pepsi ad that was trying to solve the Black Lives Matter movement, do you remember this?
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A
Yeah, sure. Yes.
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B
People's response was, spoiler.
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A
It didn't work.
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B
Yeah. Both of people's response were like, I just became stupider. Why is this on television?
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A
Kendall, by the way.
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B
Thank you. I'm. I'm not. I. I didn't even know that there were that many Jenners until yesterday.
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A
So hard to keep. And they were all with K's and all. Yes.
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B
It's just ridiculous. So here's the problem. The reason that that was quote, inauthentic is that it didn't fit either the narrative of Pepsi or Kendall Jenner. Neither of them have a leg to stand on when it comes to that social conversation right now. Notice, though, that if you act consistent with my narrative of who you should be, you're viewed as authentic. If you were different off the mic than on the mic, people would be like, oh, he's a phony. Right. But when I interacted with you at the dinner, you're the same person on and off the mic. So we call that authentic. You fit my narrative. I'll give you an example of how stupid it is to be overly focused on authenticity because we don't actually want it. Nobody ever said Harvey Weinstein wasn't authentic.
- [28:26]
A
Yeah, that guy was true to himself.
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B
Right? Exactly. And that's the problem. We don't really want authenticity. We want to just, like, have a functional work environment where we can predict what's going on.
- [28:36]
A
There's a guy who did all the things, right. He followed his bliss. He valued himself a lot of me days for Harvey Weinstein.
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B
And that's like, the problem is that we get caught up in these, like, completely absurd ideas that have nothing to do with what we actually want. And we repeat these things at, like, gurus say without really thinking them through.
- [28:56]
A
I agree. I also think it's very weird or odd with authenticity. In politicians, I think more about politics than maybe other walks of life. And when I was reading the leadership book, my mind didn't go. I'm somewhat sports oriented, but my mind didn't go to CEOs of businesses and went more to political leaders. But there is the certain kind of politician who is called authentic, like Bernie Sanders or aoc, and I think this means something like when they speak, their words connect to the audience, calling them authentic in a way that the audience doesn't perceive it as a pre written robotic speech. But if you watch their speeches, they say the same things all the time. Yeah. So we're giving. We're bringing a lot to that relationship. And John Fetterman's another interesting character who I don't know, he had a brain injury. I don't know how much he changed, but he went from, oh, he's the big gigantic shrek, like guy who's authentic. Because we kind of like what he's saying when he's very progressive. And now I don't hear him being called authentic as much. So I don't know if there is to take a celebrity, Jennifer Lawrence is seen as authentic. But when actors or actresses portray that, they know what they're doing. So it probably means some combination of we like them and they admit frailties in a way that our perception of like very famous, high status people wouldn't. But it could be calculated.
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B
Here's what's interesting. There's this thing called the pratfall effect. And if you've ever watched a rom com, they're basically built on this. It's that we actually like the character. Not despite the fact that they're constantly falling all over themselves, but because of it. Jennifer Lawrence is actually the perfect example of this because I think she like tried to walk up the stairs at the Oscars and then fell down and laughed at herself. And so it fits this. Like, I think it's also been called like the Manic Pixies. Dream girl. Yeah.
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A
Yes.
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B
So it's when you can demonstrate your humanity without having it damage your credibility. People actually like you more because if somebody comes off as too perfect, then it mirrors our imperfections and we feel uncomfortable. Right. Like for me it would be if I'm a kid, I have a one year old and a two year old right now. If I meet a parent and they're dressed in white clothing with no dirt on them, I'm like, you're. How are you accomplishing any of this? I am so incompetent in comparison. Like, I basically Just have food all over my pants constantly. So it just mirrors my imperfections. And I think certain actors really demonstrate this in different ways. Keanu Reeves does a great job of, like, being very approachable and human. His isn't about falling on himself. His is about, like, talking about the dark times in his life and sharing openly about it. Whereas certain, you know, like Jennifer Lawrence we mentioned, you know, there are certain actors that are the exact opposite, though. Like, they'll have writers in their contracts that say that they can never lose a fight because they can't be seen as less manly. Like, are you kidding me? What kind of weird world are you in that you are so fragile that you can't handle getting beat up in a movie?
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A
So you mentioned leadership, because the book is about leadership. Let's just start with how we as a society decided to define leadership. It's in the. Really a few years into last century, MBA programs are invented. And will you take it from there? And was that the pivot point where we got everything wrong? We've been trying to claw our way back to sanity from that point.
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B
I think it was one of these big turning points. Basically, companies had grown so big in around 1908 that they needed, like, a middle layer of management, but nobody took them seriously because it's like me saying, hey, I'm going to tell you how to assemble a car, but I don't know how to. Right? So why would you listen to this person? And so Harvard said, you know what? We're going to create a certification for leadership.
- [33:05]
A
Oh, I want to hear more. Of course you do. That's why it's called a tease. We're antagonizing you to induce you to listen to more of John as we talk about Harvard is a ticket to success. MBA program sports talk join Peska plus go to subscribe.Mike Pesca.com and there you will find all our bonus content. You can listen to the show without any of this infernal advertising. God bless you and thank the advertisers. Or you can opt out. Go to subscribe.mikepeska.com ad free Pesca plus support the show. Listen to more of John Levy. I've been using Cove Pure water purification and it's great. There's no installation. It tastes good and I'm thinking about giving it to my parents because they're always drinking bottled water, which can be fine, but it's inconvenient and not good for the environment. And you've got to, of course, recycle it. Not with COVID Pure, you just fill it up right from the tap and you put it into the unit. And what you can get is purer than, say, boiling water. And you could get hot water, you could get cold water. I like the cold water. But you know, my mom, she enjoys a cup of tea. And my dad, he enjoys a decaf coffee. And they have a tea kettle that. And this is more about the tea kettle than co Pure. It's metallic on the top. So when you try to open the latch on the tea kettle, you're engaging with a piece of metal that was just on a stove and burns ensue. Not with COVID Pure. Cove Pure also has this. My dad's gonna like this because he's very imperative. Has the number right there on the front. So TDS is the total dissolved solids. And there's, I don't know, 500 in the water that we have. And after going through Cove Pure, it's down to nine, sometimes five. This is what makes the water of COVID Pure taste so good. So pure. But it's not just the taste. You know, what's in your water could be here in New York, we have pretty good drinking water, but I've been to places where you just don't drink the water. And cove pure removes 99.9% of contaminants. We're talking PFAS and pharmaceuticals, fluoride, lead, arsenic. It is the purest water you could get. So if you're looking for a gift that's good for your loved ones and one that they will actually use, I highly recommend Cove Pure. And because I partner with them, they're giving you a special $250 holiday discount with my link covpure.com thegist that C O V E P U R e to get $250 off covepure.com the gist, hurry before the sale ends. AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R I K.com and now the spiel. When I work for NPR, one of the things I gently and lovingly criticized the network for was what I called Bono, lead singer of U2 Disorder. Meaning if you say Bono, you couldn't just leave it there, even though literally everyone knows that Bono is the lead singer of U2. You have to wonder and wonder, worry about that one guy in the audience who, if you don't say lead singer of U2, will be thoroughly confused, even though that guy is probably going to be more confused because you said YOU two and his mind immediately goes to Gary Francis Powers. What? Adam Clayton Powell? No. Adam Clayton. Larry Mullen Jr. Now I've confused everyone about you too, and that's the gist edge. But this is what I like about the new media order. If you didn't get any of my last references, it's okay. We're going to go fast and we're going to leave it to you, if you care to to do a little research. That's how I consume my podcasts and really all the things I like to read. I might listen to a baseball podcast that routinely uses phrases like ERA plus or whip or zone rating, something like that. Someone else might just want to listen to a podcast that argues Red Sox bullpen bad. And you know what? The Red Sox bullpen was pretty bad. And that's all great. Recently I realized that I flatter myself as the type of person who doesn't slow down, who takes it as a point of pride that you could go faster than me and it'll be on me. Incumbent upon me to look it up. This is the speed at which the media I like goes, and there's so much media to choose from. This was a little bit of another annoyance at npr and by the way, most of working there was really, really quite enjoyable. I liked it. But there was a structural terror of ever confusing the audience, which the organization seemed to define as the most clueless 20% of listeners. Lots of hand holding, lots of Bono defining. Recently I read one of the best New York Times articles I have seen in years about the crackup of the Sierra Club over social justice initiatives. You got to read it. At one point a former executive said this we have two FTS devoted to Trump's war on the Arctic refuge and we have 108 going to DEI. I don't think we have our priorities straight, Mr. Darity said, using the acronyms for full time employees and Diversity, equity and Inclusion. Now at this point I think everyone knows what DEI is and I wondered if he didn't say the FTE thing, which really does require according to the Time Style Guide, which really does require a definition, would they also have used the DEI definition? Now listen, if they had used either, I might have figured out that FTE was full time employee. But even if I didn't I'd either look it up or just assume it was something like full time employee. Then there was another example. This was fascinating. This was in the Philadelphia Inquirer. I would like your opinion on this. Tell me what you knew going in. I wrote about this on the gist list yesterday. It was behind a paywall. Come with me as we scale that paywall. Okay, so this was about my ongoing fascination with the ouster of the director of the Philadelphia Art Museum, recently renamed from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, by the way. That's why, as far as I could tell, she was fired because she renamed the museum. But also there were the attendant costs of rebranding. So I'll read from the Inquirer as reporting. The cost of the rebrand's discovery strategy and visual labs came to $250,000 plus additional costs for, quote, wayfinding and paid media. End quote, according to museum spokesperson Laura Coogan, who declined to specify the full expense of the project. She also declined to specify what wayfinding is, as did the Inquirer. At first I wasn't upset. I was a little maybe worried that wayfinding was going to be something like figuring out who we are in the world, getting in touch with one's truth, maybe some chakra alignment, if you will, self actualization. But now, upon investigation, I learned that wayfinding is museums jargon for signs. And not just museums. Hospitals, airports, I assume the bowels of most Chuck E. Cheeses. They employ wayfinding signage, directions, that sort of things. Did you know that? Did you know that wayfinding was not some piece of esoterica but an actual 64 point font on sturdy sheet metal? Anyway, I didn't. I found it out. I'm fine. I'm fine with all of that. I suppose in that instance I could have used a little explainer. But I'd rather learn from my media than have my media slow down and become an obstacle to my interest in education. Please don't treat me like I'm lost in the international arrival section at Dulles after being diverted from Cabo because of lack of signs. Then we come to another example, and this is also on me. I'm going to take the blame for this one. I'm not going to blame my media, but the costs were enormous. I am a cook in that I do sometimes cook food, mostly the kind that comes with idiot proof instructions. My past meal kits were indeed idiot proof because I cook them well. I am a self defined idiot. Things don't burn. They turn out okay. I won't say who the sponsor is because they no longer sponsor the show. And I factor that in to what I say, who I greet, who to whom I say hello. Fresh. As though that it's blue apron. Blue apron is who gives me my food and my little paint by numbers card. I am a paint by numbers chef. But I did decide to expand my horizons with a New York Times recipe. Crispy rice with shrimp and bacon. Guess what the three big main ingredients were? Scallions. Got you. The recipe called for cooking some bacon, blanching some vegetables. I know how to blanch. It told me how much oil to use. It told me how long to cook each thing. But it also said four cups of cooked rice. Now, I ask you, if a recipe said one pound of cooked shrimp, how much shrimp would you think to cook? I would guess a pound. So I thought no further than that. 14 cups of cooked rice. They're not going to take you through all the steps. They're just telling you to cook four cups of rice. I measured out four cups of rice, dry cups. I know how to do that. I did it. I added the 2 cups of water per cup of rice. And I think if you're halfway smart and an actual chef and not a cook by numbers chef, you know what happens? Rice triples in volume when cooked. A third of a cup of raw rice. Dry rice yields a cup of cooked rice, which, now that I'm saying it makes a lot of sense, what happens to those two cups of water when they combine with the one cup of rice you have? The volume doesn't dissipate. You have three cups in volume. So anyway, there I am with a tremendous amount of rice with not 4 cups of cooked rice, but 12 cups. The water has to go somewhere. Damn it. I'm an idiot. I got 12 cups of rice. But I don't blame the New York Times. I really don't. A person should know that. Or if they don't know that, now they know that. And if you didn't know that, now you know that. By the way, did you know that? Did you both know? Do you think most people in the audience who knew wayfinding also knew how to find their way around a cup of uncooked rice? I do have to say, if I hadn't cooked so much damned rice, the recipe would have come out lovely. But now with all the rice, I could feed the extra to my six FTEs who I'm going to credit right now. And that's it for today's show. The show is produced by Cory Wara Kathleen Sykes helps me write the gist list at your green is working working on the web page. Jeff Craig he's out there. He's doing a lot. He's doing a lot with video, he's doing a lot with audio. He counts as two FTEs. That's how hard he's working in the last FTE. But first, in my heart. Michelle Pesca Improve and thanks for listening. Hey guys, Finding the perfect gift for the food lover in your life is easy thanks to Gold Belly. Gold Belly ships America's most iconic foods straight from world famous restaurants right to your door. So if you want to treat someone to Joe's Stone Crab from Miami, Franklin BBQ from Texas, or desserts from famous foodies like Ina Garten or Martha Stewart, Goldbelly has you covered. Just go to goldbelly.com and for a limited time get 20% off your first order with promo code Gift.
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