0:00

You know the Kendrick Lamar song, bitch

0:02

don't kill my vibe. Yeah. All week,

0:05

I have had bitch who moved my

0:07

cheese in my head. And I understand that that

0:09

doesn't make any sense, but I can't help it.

0:11

It's been there. Well, make it a zinger then,

0:14

Peter. I don't know how to fucking figure that

0:16

out. You can't turn this into a zinger. Bitch

0:18

who moved my cheese. I thought you were just

0:20

going to make a cheese joke. Like, I

0:22

wanted to read this book, but I couldn't come and bear it

0:25

or something. Good Lord. My

0:28

God. There's so many things to choose

0:30

from. I'm going to be

0:32

honest. If I had thought about it, I would have

0:34

written down every cheese I could think of in advance.

0:36

That way I could just bust out puns as they

0:38

come to me. There's still time, Peter. There's still time.

0:41

Yeah. You're going to be going through some data set that

0:44

you looked at and I'm going to be just

0:46

googling list of cheeses. You

0:51

did it with Pinocchio characters. No reason you can't

0:53

do it with cheese. That was off the dome,

0:55

folks. I know you had the thing open in

0:57

front of you. You don't know anything. There's no

0:59

way you knew that many characters from Pinocchio. I

1:01

think. All right. I got it. Let's just do

1:03

it. Peter. Michael.

1:05

What do you know about who moved my

1:08

cheese? Most of our books are

1:10

books that you pick up in an airport

1:12

on a whim and this is the first

1:14

one that your boss forces you to read.

1:30

Since this is a

1:32

book that deals with cheese and

1:35

mazes and mice, I was going

1:37

to have you guess what the

1:39

subtitle of the book is. Let's get

1:41

that cheddar. No,

1:44

it's so much worse than that. It's who

1:46

moved my cheese, colon, an amazing

1:49

way to deal with change in

1:52

your work and your life by

1:54

Spencer Johnson, M.D. So

1:56

the emphasis is on the maze. It's supposed to

1:59

be hyphenated. Uh, Dax. The

20:00

little people are asking for more cheese

20:02

despite not deserving it. So

20:05

we're going to take a little break

20:07

and talk about Spencer Johnson, M.D., the

20:09

man who wrote this story. One

20:11

of the, I think, most appealing things

20:14

about Spencer Johnson is that he

20:16

gave very few interviews over

20:18

his life. There's no photo of him in

20:20

the book jacket of any of his books.

20:22

And I got almost all of his books

20:25

because I was like, there's no biographical information

20:27

about this fucking guy. Like, surely one of

20:29

these books, he's written like a million books,

20:31

surely one of them, he describes like a

20:33

little like, I grew up here, I did

20:35

this, then I switched. There's essentially no information.

20:37

Like he was not somebody who was like

20:39

seeking fame. That's a dream. You

20:41

just write some dumbass bullshit and then

20:43

get incredibly rich and balance. So the

20:46

only thing we have to go on

20:48

is the about the author text, which is almost

20:50

identical in all of his books and has been

20:52

almost identical for like 30 years. So

20:56

I'm going to send you the

20:58

first paragraph. Keep

21:01

in mind, most authors write their own

21:03

about the author. So we're just going to have

21:06

that little fact in mind. Okay.

21:10

Spencer, this guy rocks. Okay. Spencer

21:13

Johnson, M.D., is one of the most respected

21:15

and beloved authors in the world. He

21:18

has inspired and entertained millions with his

21:20

insightful stories that speak directly to the

21:22

heart and soul. He has

21:24

often been referred to as the best there is at

21:26

taking complex subjects and presenting simple solutions

21:29

that work. People often describe him that

21:31

way. Here

21:33

is the rest of it. This

21:36

is the intro to Who Moved My Cheese

21:38

for Teens, which I also read for this.

21:40

I'm sorry, but is this existing parable not

21:42

simple enough for teenagers? No, the thing is

21:44

the framing device is different. It's like a bunch

21:47

of high school kids in the cafeteria, but the

21:49

parable itself is the same. Sorry. It's

21:51

a whole different book where the

21:53

only difference is that in the

21:56

introductory chapter where a

21:58

bunch of people. are in a cafeteria instead of

22:00

a restaurant. That's a whole other book. And then

22:03

one of them is like this girl

22:05

dealing to like the change that she's managing is

22:07

like her dad left. Spencer Johnson, you are a

22:09

king. He's using the cheese. I

22:13

forgive you for whatever crime Michael is going to tell me

22:15

that you committed later. Two

22:18

decades after the story was created, this book,

22:20

Who Moved My Cheese, was published. It

22:23

soon became an accelerating word of mouth

22:25

number one international bestseller with one million

22:28

hardcover copies in print within the first

22:30

16 months. People have reported

22:32

that what they discovered in the story

22:34

has improved their careers, businesses, health and

22:36

marriages. Critics, on the other hand,

22:38

do not understand how many critics

22:41

on the other hand do not understand how so many

22:43

people could find it so valuable. They

22:45

say the story is so simple a child could

22:47

understand it as it is just

22:50

obvious common sense. They get nothing out

22:52

of the story. I

22:56

love putting like a sick burn on your haters

22:58

in your author bio. That rules. On the book

23:00

jacket of your book. It's

23:04

like Michael Hobbs group in Seattle, Washington. People

23:06

who don't like his podcast are fucking losers.

23:10

My critics will die without cheese. So

23:13

very again, very little information about this

23:16

guy. He's born in South Dakota.

23:18

He grows up in LA.

23:20

He trains as a surgeon. Originally, that's where

23:22

the MD comes from. I was all ready

23:24

to like, it's a fake MD or

23:26

something, but like, no, it appears to be real. He

23:28

studied in Ireland. He died in

23:31

2017 from his New York Times obituary

23:33

as they're going through his biographical information.

23:35

They say with medical clerkships

23:37

at the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical

23:39

School, he seemed assured of a physician's career.

23:42

But while working in the hospital, he grew

23:44

frustrated at seeing the same patients return with

23:47

the same ailments as if they were not

23:49

trying to better their lives. Said Margaret McBride,

23:51

his literary agent. He felt a lot of

23:53

diseases were people lacking something in their soul.

23:55

She said he wanted to fix them from

23:58

the inside. Isn't fixing them from. the inside

24:00

what surgeons do? This is

24:02

Chekhov's toxic positivity. We're going to see

24:04

how this informs the content

24:06

and the impact of the book later.

24:09

But for now, Spencer Johnson ends up

24:12

leaving medicine and going to

24:14

work as a PR person

24:16

for a medical devices company.

24:19

And nights and weekends, he starts

24:21

writing children's books. They're

24:23

all little parables. One

24:25

of them is like, the Wright brothers,

24:27

the value of patients. Louis Pasteur, the

24:30

value of believing in yourself. Charles Dickens,

24:32

the value of imagination. This is so

24:34

perfect, dude. This guy

24:36

who writes stories for literal babies,

24:39

just writes one and is like, this one's

24:41

for adults and every corporate

24:43

executive on earth is like, whoa, everyone

24:46

in my business needs to read this. Do

24:49

you want to get to the real good

24:51

shit? Who moved my cheese is not his

24:53

first business bestseller. His first business bestseller was

24:55

15 years before called The One Minute Manager.

24:57

Hell yeah. In the early 80s, he links

24:59

up with this guy, Kenneth Blanchard, who's a

25:01

consultant to a bunch of companies, motivational speaker

25:04

type guy. But he's really

25:06

bad at marketing his messages. So

25:08

at the time, there are business

25:11

bestsellers. What we now

25:13

would think of as business airport books,

25:15

those do exist, but they're all really

25:18

dry. They're more like textbooks

25:20

and they're 500 pages long. This category of

25:22

business oriented self-help garbage doesn't really

25:24

exist in the early 1980s. And

25:28

so this kind of Blanchard guy is

25:30

making a ton of money as a

25:32

motivational speaker and consulting companies, but his

25:34

previous book is called Management of Organizational

25:36

Behavior Utilizing Human Resources. This

25:39

is great that there used to be

25:41

an industry of actually informative business books.

25:43

And they just got dumber and dumber

25:45

and dumber until finally it's like, there

25:48

were two mice and two

25:50

little tiny people. So like him and this kind

25:52

of Blanchard guy get together. They write this

25:54

book called The One Minute Manager. And

25:57

as they're shopping it around to publishers, all the

25:59

publishers are like this isn't a real book. It's

26:01

like 65 pages. We can't

26:03

charge full price for this. And him

26:05

and Kenneth are like, no, no, no, you must

26:08

charge full price for this because business people don't

26:10

have a lot of time. And

26:12

if it's discounted, people are going to think it's not

26:14

worth as much. So you actually need to charge the

26:16

full, it was $15 in 1983 bucks, so like 40

26:18

bucks. You

26:21

need to charge 40 bucks. And

26:23

so this turned out to be a

26:26

genuine insight that business

26:28

people want something like easily digestible.

26:31

These books kind of disappear from

26:34

the cultural consciousness really quickly because

26:36

they're always churning through and getting replaced by new

26:38

fads. But like this book was a massive deal,

26:40

the one minute manager, and it spawns a whole

26:43

series of books. So there's like

26:45

the one minute salesperson, one minute

26:47

for myself, the one minute teacher,

26:49

and the one minute father. I'm

26:51

ready to be the one minute father. That

26:53

is all the time I have for my

26:55

child. So basically, this is

26:58

how Spencer Johnson becomes, I mean,

27:00

he's essentially a management guru for like

27:02

10 to 15 years before Who Moved

27:04

My Cheese comes out. He publishes some

27:06

other books during that time too, all

27:08

of it did really well. But he

27:10

basically cracked this code of like less

27:13

than 100 pages, charge full price, and

27:15

like tell companies these like simple messages

27:17

basically. Dude, the one minute father, what

27:19

a title. That's going to

27:21

stick with me. Sorry. That's like resonating. Like

27:24

the hook being like, you barely

27:26

have to spend any time at

27:28

all parenting your child. It's like

27:30

four minute abs. In the work context, it

27:33

makes total sense because of course, you

27:35

don't want to engage with work any more than

27:37

you have to for most people. But to

27:40

think that it works

27:42

just the same with parenting, that is

27:44

beautiful. Loving my kids any percent. One

27:47

minute love making, my guide to marriage.

27:49

So back to the book, when we

27:51

left on, our

27:54

little people were in a

27:56

huff. They were hemming and hawing, you

27:58

might say. And they are still fighting

28:01

amongst themselves and

28:03

just saying, oh no, we should just come back

28:05

to Cheese Station C again and again. Maybe there

28:07

will be more cheese here. So

28:09

here's the next script. You're

28:12

going to be him again. You're going to

28:14

be him. Okay. The more clearly Ha saw

28:16

the image of himself finding and enjoying new

28:18

cheese, the more he saw himself leaving Cheese

28:20

Station C. Let's go. No,

28:22

I like it here. It's comfortable. It's

28:24

what I know. Besides, it's

28:26

dangerous out there. No, it isn't. We've

28:29

run through many parts of the maze before and we can

28:31

do it again. I'm getting too old for that. And

28:34

I'm afraid I'm not interested in getting lost and making a

28:36

fool of myself. You know, if we

28:38

just work harder, we'll find that nothing has really

28:40

changed that much. The cheese is probably nearby. Maybe

28:42

they just hid it behind the wall. The next

28:45

day, Hem and Ha returned with tools. Hem held

28:47

the chisel, while Ha banged on the hammer until

28:49

they made a hole in the wall of Cheese

28:51

Station C. They peered inside but

28:53

found no cheese. They were disappointed

28:55

but believed they could solve the problem. So

28:57

they started earlier, stayed longer, and worked harder.

29:00

But after a while, all they had was

29:02

a large hole in the wall. Ha

29:04

was beginning to realize the difference between activity

29:06

and productivity. Maybe we should just sit here

29:08

and see what happens. Sooner

29:11

or later, they have to put the cheese

29:13

back. Ha wanted to believe that. So each

29:15

day he went home to rest and returned

29:18

reluctantly with Hem to Cheese Station C. But

29:20

cheese never reappeared. Finally, one day Ha began

29:22

laughing at himself. Ha, ha, look

29:25

at us. We keep doing the same things

29:27

over and over again and wonder why things

29:29

don't get better. It's okay. The

29:31

listeners aren't going to understand why this

29:33

is weird, but he spells out the

29:35

laughter. I know, it is Ha. H-A-W-H-A-W,

29:38

which is Ha, Ha, which is also

29:40

the name of the little person. So

29:42

it just reads like he's saying his

29:44

own name twice. Ha, Ha, look at

29:46

us. This is awful. Why?

29:49

How did no editor jump in here? Also,

29:52

even for something that's really short, it's like

29:54

the pacing. It's like, okay, they're

29:56

still there. We know, we know what's going to happen.

29:59

We don't need more C. means of them just

30:01

staying in the same place and they're still not cheese.

30:04

Right. Okay, we get it. You

30:06

said 94 pages, but now that I'm hearing the arc of

30:08

the story, this is a three-page story.

30:11

Easily, easily. It's 2.30 AM at Olive

30:13

Garden right now and Carlos

30:15

is going to jump out of the window. There's

30:17

also this weird thing that says nothing to anything

30:19

but I'm just completely baffled. It says, obviously,

30:22

Ha decides to leave. We all know this is going to happen.

30:24

So Ha decides to leave. He's going to leave him, the fear

30:26

of change guy. He's going to leave him in the maze at

30:28

Cheese Station C and he's going to go out and he's going

30:30

to search for new cheese. It

30:32

says, as Ha prepared to leave, he started

30:35

to feel more alive knowing that he was

30:37

finally able to laugh at himself, let go

30:39

and move on. Ha laughed

30:41

and announced, it's maze

30:43

time. It's maze time. That's

30:45

what I've always said. Is that

30:48

a pun or something? This

30:50

is the climax of the story, right?

30:54

And Ha lets loose his famous

30:56

catchphrase, it's maze time. Okay,

31:00

so he then, okay. God,

31:04

this book is so repetitive. I don't want to make you read

31:06

the same fucking thing like 300 times, although there's no way not

31:08

to do that. And I guess now that Hem has

31:11

been abandoned, he's prove alone in

31:14

his house. Still

31:17

got it, folks. So

31:20

basically, Ha leaves, but

31:22

he's afraid. There's this long sequence where he's wandering

31:25

around and he's like, I'm afraid there's dark corridors

31:27

in the maze. There might be monsters in there.

31:29

Watch out. Fuck. Ha

31:32

ha ha. You literally have a list

31:34

in front of you, don't you? Oh, no. Yeah,

31:36

that wasn't a joke. There really is a list. Ha ha

31:38

ha. You're just work

31:40

shopping these as I'm talking. You've completely disengaged. I've

31:42

been, well, to be fair, I've been waiting to

31:44

say monster for a while. That was like one

31:46

of the ones that jumped out to me as

31:49

a real possibility up top. So

31:53

we then have Ha wandering around the

31:55

maze and he's just he can't find

31:57

it. He's afraid of the cheese. Whenever

32:00

he started to get discouraged, he reminded

32:02

himself that what he was doing, as

32:04

uncomfortable as it was in the moment,

32:06

was in reality much better than staying

32:08

in the cheeseless situation. He

32:11

was taking control rather than simply letting

32:13

things happen to him. You can't just

32:15

let things breathe. Wait,

32:18

that doesn't even work. That doesn't even work.

32:20

Well, I was, you know, one

32:22

star. I was going to try to

32:24

say breathe if the opportunity arose. That's

32:27

worse. Oh, yeah, I think maybe the most

32:29

famous thing that comes out of this book,

32:32

and I think this is where it comes

32:34

from. As he's leaving, he's

32:36

very nervous to go wander around the maze.

32:38

He writes, what would you do if you

32:40

weren't afraid? And this becomes like in all

32:42

the sort of epilogue shit about like the

32:44

footprint of this book, what would you do if

32:46

you weren't afraid is like one of the catchphrases that

32:49

comes up all the time. He writes it in his

32:51

own blood on the wall. He

32:55

also writes, smell the cheese often so

32:57

you know when it is getting old.

32:59

Okay, so he's losing his mind. He's

33:01

walking through this maze for cheese. His

33:04

mind is fading. Meanwhile,

33:07

Ham is back at home just dying with

33:09

dignity. Well, also starvation doesn't seem to be

33:11

a risk because it appears that it's been

33:13

like weeks now that they haven't had cheese

33:15

and nothing bad seems to be happening. I

33:18

feel like he hasn't done enough world building.

33:20

Okay, here is the final section

33:22

of this section. This is

33:24

where it gets very suspenseful. Ha wondered if Ham

33:26

had moved on or if he was still paralyzed

33:29

by his own fears. Then Ha

33:31

remembered the times when he had felt his best in

33:33

the maze. It was when he was moving

33:35

along. He wrote on the wall, knowing

33:37

it was as much a reminder to himself as

33:39

it was a marking for his friend Ham, hopefully

33:41

to follow. Movement in a

33:43

new direction helps you find new cheese. The

33:45

words of the prophets. To his surprise, Ha

33:48

started to enjoy himself more and more. Why

33:50

do I feel so good? He wondered. I don't

33:52

have any cheese and I don't know where I am going. Before

33:55

long, he knew why he felt good. He

33:57

stopped to write again on the wall. Stop

34:00

being afraid. You feel good. He feels

34:02

good. The more clearly he saw the image

34:04

of himself enjoying new cheese, the more

34:06

real and believable it became. He

34:09

could sense that he was going to find it. He

34:11

wrote, imagining yourself enjoying your

34:13

new cheese leads you to it. Imagine

34:15

your cheese. I love a

34:17

parable where they just explain the

34:19

feelings that the character has. It's

34:22

like, yeah, this guy's searching

34:26

in a maze, lost, starving.

34:29

But he feels good because

34:31

he's trying. And you're like, yeah. His

34:34

life is an immortal nightmare. And

34:36

yet he is happy. So this

34:39

little sequence here was where the

34:43

demonicness of the book really

34:45

became clear to me because the whole

34:47

thing obviously is propaganda for people being

34:49

okay with change, right? When

34:51

someone above your head changes something in a way that

34:53

harms you, you should just adjust to the change, right?

34:56

You shouldn't sit there complaining. You shouldn't be asking

34:58

for benefits. You shouldn't be trying to figure out

35:00

what went wrong, right? You should just move on

35:02

really quickly, right? You should wander the halls

35:05

of your office writing on the wall, what

35:07

would you do if you weren't afraid? Even

35:09

like even as pernicious as that is, we

35:12

then get to this sequence where it's like

35:14

once he realizes he's moving forward, he feels

35:16

good. So it's now telling us that it's

35:18

like, well, once you just accept that and

35:20

move on and basically become this little mice

35:23

scurrying around the maze, then you're actually happier.

35:25

You felt bad, but what if you just felt

35:27

good? Yeah, exactly. What if you just felt good?

35:29

And actually, once you accept the fact that you can't

35:31

do anything and that change just happens and like don't

35:33

look backwards, you're going to achieve

35:35

some kind of self-actualization, right? It's

35:38

not enough just to promise you like everything will be okay

35:40

in the end. They're now promising you

35:42

this is actually going to make you happier. Right. So

35:45

we're going to depart from the book a little

35:47

bit to talk about the message of the book

35:49

and where the message of the book

35:51

comes from, the context in which this book is

35:53

getting released. This is my attempt, Peter, to

35:55

try to make this episode interesting because this is a

35:58

fucking 94 page book. I think it's been interesting. Interesting.

36:01

I'm losing my fucking mind. And

36:04

the thing is, this book

36:06

is indicative of an ideological shift that

36:08

I'm sure you've heard a lot about.

36:10

You know the rise of the sort

36:13

of shareholder value model that came to

36:15

take over corporate America in the 80s

36:17

and 90s? Can you

36:19

summarize this? Yeah, the idea that

36:21

the primary goal of business is

36:24

to increase value for

36:26

shareholders. The most direct consequence

36:28

of which is that employees

36:31

are not viewed as stakeholders in

36:33

a company in the same way.

36:36

So you can do many things like

36:38

layoffs, for example, that benefit shareholders to

36:40

the expense of employees. Exactly. And

36:43

this book comes out in 1998, which is

36:45

really the release of this book in the

36:47

year 1998 kind of marks the end of that

36:49

shift. That shift was complete. I've read

36:51

various accounts of like the rise of this ideology,

36:53

but I don't know that I ever really understood

36:56

what caused it. And

36:59

it's also often contrasted with, you know,

37:01

before the shareholder value model, corporations

37:04

really cared about their workers and they cared

37:06

about their communities. And now it's all profits,

37:08

right? That always felt a little

37:10

bit one dimensional to me, right? Because companies have

37:12

always cared about profit. So why

37:15

did they suddenly start caring about them in

37:17

this radically different and more harmful way?

37:19

Like I never really understood what originated

37:21

this. So before

37:23

the stakeholder value model, the previous model was

37:26

known as retain and reinvest. So after World

37:28

War II, America was kind of the last

37:30

country left standing. We had all these companies

37:32

that were doing really well and it was

37:35

really easy to be a profitable company in

37:37

like the fifties and sixties. And there was

37:39

a kind of group think at the time

37:41

that when you're a successful company, what you

37:44

should do is retain and reinvest your profits.

37:46

So what you want to do is you

37:48

want to buy other companies, acquire firms that

37:50

are doing something slightly different from you. And

37:53

you also want to maintain a large workforce.

37:55

The example that really stuck out to me

37:58

was Gulf and Western. You know, you watch

38:00

old and we like Paramount Pictures, a

38:02

Gulf and Western company. Yeah. Gulf and Western

38:04

was a Texas oil company. And then in

38:07

the 1960s, because this conglomeration model is so

38:09

popular, it buys up an auto parts firm.

38:12

It buys a sugar plantation. It buys

38:14

a Polynesian tourism company. It buys Paramount

38:16

Pictures. It buys the clothing company that

38:18

runs the Miss Universe pageant. It buys

38:20

a gold mine. And it buys Madison

38:23

Square Garden. And this was

38:25

like what companies were expected to do at the time.

38:27

And then what starts to happen is in the 1970s,

38:30

the problems with this model start to emerge.

38:32

So one of them is just a lot

38:34

of these companies are way too fucking big.

38:37

If you're the head of an oil company,

38:39

all of a sudden you're determining whether Paramount

38:41

should make comedies or action movies next year.

38:43

You're just not qualified to do that. So

38:45

you have a huge amount of inefficiency. And

38:48

a lot of these companies

38:50

were genuinely very bloated. And America

38:52

hadn't really faced competition in

38:54

the post-World War II world until Europe and

38:57

Japan start producing their own really

39:00

good companies. And the obvious example

39:02

is the automakers, right? That American

39:04

companies were completely bloated. They were

39:06

essentially running a tripartite monopoly. And

39:08

then all of a sudden Honda and Toyota come

39:10

in. And it's like, oh shit, they're making good

39:12

cars for cheap that don't use a ton of

39:14

gas. And we're just absolutely getting walloped. So

39:17

it became more and more clear throughout the 70s that

39:20

companies needed to change. Like this model

39:22

had gone too far. Another

39:24

really big change was essentially all the economic

39:27

growth of the 1960s started

39:29

to slow down in the 70s. So

39:31

I'm just gonna do a paragraph from,

39:34

this is from a fascinating article called

39:36

shareholder value and workforce downsizing 1981 to

39:38

2006 by

39:40

Jin Wook Jung. The prosperity of the post-war years came

39:43

to an end in the 1970s, culminating

39:45

in stagflation and bear markets. As

39:48

a result, many large US companies experienced a

39:50

chronic decline in their market share and profitability.

39:53

This stimulated emerging power groups and financial markets

39:55

to search for a remedy. Leading

39:57

the charge were institutional investors, such as large public

39:59

companies. with pension and mutual funds. In

40:02

a social movement like fashion, they began

40:04

to challenge management of leading US firms

40:06

and promoted the new financial orthodoxy that

40:09

the only legitimate goal of corporations is

40:11

to maximize returns to their shareholders. This

40:13

is kind of like bleak that as

40:16

more people started getting pension funds, these

40:18

pension funds started becoming more active

40:20

and saying, hey, wait a minute, why aren't

40:22

you producing enough profits for us? This has

40:24

always been the argument for the shareholder

40:26

value model, right? This is sort of

40:29

democratic in a sense

40:31

because the shareholder gains get passed

40:33

through to pension

40:36

funds, et cetera, that

40:38

are held by middle

40:40

class citizens who then

40:42

benefit. Exactly. That's the

40:44

logic anyway, right? Or at least the way that people are defending

40:46

it at the time. So as

40:49

these institutional investors become more powerful, there's

40:51

also a series of deregulations throughout the

40:53

1970s which allow institutional investors to hold

40:55

more corporations. There used to be limits

40:58

on how much corporate equity they could hold. Those

41:00

are lifted. There's reforms that Wall Street

41:02

pushes for in the early 1980s that

41:04

deregulate savings and loans. There's all kinds of

41:06

junk bonds flowing around. There's just like a

41:08

series, like little tick-tock small movements that nobody

41:11

really notices as being all that big of

41:13

a deal throughout the 70s and 80s, but

41:15

it becomes much easier for these institutional

41:17

investors to essentially become activists.

41:20

In parallel with this and somewhat linked to it, there's also

41:22

the thing where a lot of CEOs start to be paid

41:25

in stock options. All of

41:27

the incentives are essentially for making these

41:29

companies more, quote unquote, lean, which typically

41:31

involves laying off a shitload of people.

41:35

Throughout the 1990s, we essentially

41:38

get an unprecedented wave of

41:40

layoffs. There's a really interesting feature in the

41:42

New York Times in 1996 that says 43 million jobs

41:46

were lost between 1979 and 1996. There's

41:50

a survey in the 90s that one third

41:52

of all households had a family member lose

41:54

a job. Companies in

41:56

America, of course, they'd always done layoffs. Companies

41:58

go to business. having an economy. But

42:01

what was different about the wave of layoffs in

42:03

the 1990s was that they were, first of all,

42:05

hitting middle class people. This wasn't just manufacturing jobs

42:08

being outsourced overseas. And so that meant that it got

42:10

a lot more media attention, because middle class people were

42:12

losing their jobs. And then companies are

42:14

doing layoffs when times were good. It

42:17

wasn't like we need to shrink because

42:19

it's the only way that we'll survive. It's

42:21

like we boosted profits and now we're going

42:23

to trim the fat. And this

42:25

is something we've totally become used to. The tech companies

42:28

just did this. Video game companies are doing this now.

42:30

But this was a new thing in the 1990s

42:33

and was a huge political issue. I almost

42:35

feel like now, something

42:37

like layoffs have become completely depoliticized.

42:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. This

42:42

is just something that happens. There's also this weird

42:44

rise of the first green shoots of

42:46

gig work economy that 42 million people

42:50

lost their jobs basically in the 1980s and 1990s. But

42:53

70 million people got jobs during

42:56

that time. So the economy overall was

42:58

growing. And the economy

43:00

was replacing the jobs that were lost kind

43:02

of on the aggregate level. But

43:05

for a lot of individuals who

43:07

were pushed out of the workforce, a lot of

43:09

them never got back in. There's now statistics about

43:11

people who were laid off during this period. Around

43:14

one third of them got jobs that paid less money.

43:17

35% of people who were laid off were unemployed

43:19

for more than two years. There's

43:22

this really fucked up study of people who were

43:24

laid off during the 1982 recession that

43:27

20 years later, they were still earning 20% less

43:31

than people who weren't laid off during that recession.

43:34

Where this book comes into it is that

43:36

this was a shift in the quality of

43:39

American jobs. You have this vast increase in

43:41

precarity. So essentially, you get this feeling

43:43

that anyone can lose their job at any time. It

43:45

doesn't matter whether you fucked up at work. It doesn't

43:47

even matter whether your company is doing bad. You

43:50

can just get laid off. And there's

43:52

a decent one in three chance

43:55

you're either not going to get a job again, especially

43:57

if you're older. It was really hard on older

43:59

workers. And even if you

44:01

do get a job, there's a one in three chance it's not going

44:03

to pay as much. And so

44:05

essentially both managers and workers

44:08

needed an ideology to

44:10

help them deal with this. Managers needed

44:12

an explanation that could let them not feel

44:14

like a huge piece of shit for laying

44:16

people off. And

44:19

this is where you get this euphemism

44:22

of change management. And there were change

44:24

management consultants that companies would bring in

44:26

that oftentimes would do layoffs, but then

44:28

would also do these bizarre motivational

44:30

speeches as part of the layoffs of like,

44:32

you're going to be better in the new

44:34

job. Like don't think of this as the

44:37

end of one opportunity. Think of this as

44:39

the beginning of something new, the new you,

44:41

right? They had to sell this back to

44:43

workers as, oh, you're

44:45

going to be better in the

44:47

end. If you're moving forward, you're

44:49

actually going to be happier. This

44:51

all sort of interestingly situates the

44:53

book because it's not just corporate

44:56

bullshit, but a specific

44:58

type of corporate bullshit that's meant

45:00

to like ease the transition from

45:02

one type of business world to

45:05

another. It's not just like

45:07

you should learn to be a better employee.

45:09

It's like, yeah, we're going

45:11

to be firing some of you sometimes.

45:14

And if you want to be a success,

45:16

you need to learn to navigate

45:18

that maze. And

45:21

here's a little book where you're

45:24

a science experiment. That's

45:27

the allegory, is you are being

45:29

tortured by scientists. It's also kind

45:31

of perfect in that 1998 was

45:33

the year where there was the

45:35

highest economic growth for the entire

45:37

decade. And there were more layoffs

45:39

than any other year in the

45:41

decade. I would have loved to

45:43

see the dot com crash

45:45

update to this, like the recession

45:47

update to who moved my cheese.

45:50

So this is an excerpt

45:52

from Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright Sided, How

45:55

the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking

45:57

Has Undermined America, which... is

46:00

a really good chronicle of the rise

46:02

of the motivation industry. Reality sucks a

46:04

computer scientist with a master's degree who

46:06

can find only short-term, benefit-free contract jobs

46:08

told me, but you can't change reality,

46:10

at least not in an easy and

46:12

obvious way. You could join a social

46:14

movement working to create an adequate safety

46:16

net or to bring about more humane

46:18

corporate policies, but those efforts might take

46:20

a lifetime. For now, you can only

46:22

change your perception of reality from negative

46:24

and bitter to positive and accepting. This

46:27

was the corporate world's great gift to its

46:29

laid-off employees and the overworked

46:31

survivors' positive thinking. She also

46:33

has this, which this is

46:35

only tangentially relevant, but I

46:37

can't help myself. This is

46:40

about the motivational seminars that companies were doing

46:42

in the 90s. For example, in the midst of downsizing

46:44

in the mid-90s, 9x subjected

46:46

its employees to mandatory exercises, such as one

46:48

in which you had to show how many

46:50

ways you could jump around a room. Oh,

46:53

no. So the employees

46:55

jumped on one leg, on both legs, with

46:57

their hands in the air, with one hand

46:59

covering an eye. They jumped, and they jumped,

47:02

and they jumped some more. Then the leaders

47:04

would say things like, look how creative you

47:06

are. How many different ways you can manage

47:08

to jump around the room? I

47:11

would be jumping out a window. Dude. Check

47:14

this one out. These

47:16

are like adults, dude. It's so

47:18

belittling this shit. Absolutely not. I'm coming back

47:21

with a gun. So I read whomovedmycheese.com,

47:24

which archive.org, it's

47:26

not around anymore,

47:28

but it has testimonials

47:31

from people who used who moved

47:33

my cheese in the workplace. And

47:35

what's so fascinating about it is

47:38

they're almost all from managers. It's

47:40

not like workers were like, hey, I used this, and it was

47:42

actually really helpful for me. It was

47:44

managers saying, I gave this to my employees. I

47:47

loved making those little sluts jump around the

47:49

room. I know. They

47:51

looked pathetic. Dude, but it also

47:53

recasts that list of companies at the beginning,

47:55

right? Where it's like, Southwest Airlines sent it

47:58

to 27,000 employees. Okay,

54:00

so now, okay, we're almost done, Peter. I know

54:02

we're both trying to get ourselves out of this

54:05

book as fast as fucking possible. He

54:08

then finds Cheese Station N,

54:10

which has an even bigger

54:12

pile of cheese. He

54:14

gets there and the mice are already there.

54:16

Ha quickly said his hellos

54:18

and soon took bites of every one of

54:20

his favorite cheeses. He pulled off his shoes,

54:22

tied the laces together, and hung them around

54:24

his neck in case he needed them again.

54:27

Sniff and Scurry laughed. They nodded their

54:29

heads in admiration. Then Ha jumped into

54:32

the new cheese. When he had eaten

54:34

his fill, he lifted his piece of

54:36

fresh cheese and made a toast. Hooray

54:38

for change. Nice. Also, keep in mind

54:40

when we're reading this, every time he

54:42

says change, he means layoffs. Right. So

54:44

then I'm going to make you read

54:47

the very last couple paragraphs, the emotional

54:49

crescendo of the book, Peter. He knew

54:51

he had learned something useful about moving

54:53

on from his mice friends, Sniff and

54:55

Scurry. They kept life simple. They didn't

54:57

overanalyze or overcomplicate things. When the situation

55:00

changed and the cheese had been moved,

55:02

they changed and moved with the cheese.

55:04

He would remember that. Ha

55:06

had also used his wonderful brain to do

55:08

what little people do better than mice. He

55:11

envisioned himself in realistic detail, finding

55:13

something better. Much better. There's no

55:16

evidence in this book that his brain has helped him in

55:18

any way. I don't even understand. He says like he's used

55:20

his brain to do what he can do better than mice,

55:22

but what? He was late to the fucking cheese. There's also

55:24

nothing he can do. You're in a mace. All you can

55:27

do is find the cheese. He

55:29

reflected on the mistakes he had made in the

55:31

past and used them to plan for his future.

55:33

He knew that you could learn to deal with

55:35

change. You could be more aware

55:37

of the need to keep things simple, be flexible

55:39

and move quickly. You did not

55:41

need to overcomplicate matters or confuse yourself

55:43

with fearful beliefs. You could

55:45

notice when the little changes began so that you would

55:47

be better prepared for the big change that might be

55:50

coming. He knew he needed to adapt

55:52

faster, for if you do not adapt in time,

55:54

you might as well not adapt at all. He

55:57

had to admit that the biggest inhibitor to change

55:59

lies within yourself. and that nothing

56:01

gets better until you change. You change. You

56:04

have to change. He realized that there is always

56:06

new cheese out there, whether you recognize it at

56:08

the time or not. But is that true in

56:10

this scenario? Do we know that there's

56:12

new cheese? No. Just,

56:14

they're in a maze. Yeah.

56:17

What is it? This is an argument

56:19

for the unexamined life. This is a

56:21

book for hobgoblins of little minds. You

56:23

want to be stupid. That's

56:25

like- Yeah. You want to succeed as

56:28

an employee. You need to be a dumb little bitch.

56:30

Go run after your cheese, bitch. That's

56:33

the lesson. Oops, we moved the cheese.

56:36

Run, run, motherfucker. Also as usual, the

56:38

only insights in these books are accidental.

56:41

They're telling themselves that there will always be new cheese,

56:43

but the cheese is being

56:45

put there by the same people who built

56:48

the maze, presumably. You live in hell, and

56:51

the person who has created this hell for you is

56:53

also giving you little rewards to make you

56:56

forget that you live in hell. That's

56:58

also a lot of jobs. They made

57:00

him and haw human beings, I realize

57:02

now, so that it wasn't

57:05

so on the nose that you

57:08

are a fucking rat. We then go back to

57:10

our framing device. Oh, we're back at the Olive

57:12

Garden. We're back at Olive Garden. Hell yeah. They

57:14

all trade stories about how they've struggled to adapt

57:16

to change. Nathan, his

57:19

family runs a chain of small businesses, and

57:21

they're being put out of business by like

57:23

a big box store. He

57:25

has this whole thing where he's like, I

57:28

guess we didn't adapt to change fast enough.

57:30

It's our fault. Cuts to a refugee camp.

57:33

You did not adapt quickly enough. You

57:35

have to hunt for the cheese. This

57:38

is actually not that much better, Peter.

57:40

Here's another little snippet. Angela

57:42

asked, do you think that him ever changed

57:44

and found new cheese? New cheese. Elaine

57:47

said, I think he did. What are you

57:49

talking about? This is a fake story that

57:51

my dumbest friend just told you. I

57:54

don't, Corey said. Some people never

57:56

change, and they pay a price for it.

57:58

I see people like Hammond. making

1:08:00

their employees read this bullshit. I know, you can

1:08:02

feel yourself getting dumber. You can feel yourself getting

1:08:05

dumber. It's like YouTube shorts. Like, I

1:08:07

gathered my employees two hours early

1:08:09

to read them this, and they

1:08:11

seemed engaged. It's like, it's literally

1:08:13

their job to look engaged, right?

1:08:15

Yeah. They're just trying to be nice.

1:08:17

They're just trying to impress you. They're just trying not to

1:08:20

alienate their boss. The only reason that they

1:08:22

are listening to this is because they know

1:08:25

that there's a decent chance that next year

1:08:27

their job is going to be Corgan Sula.

1:08:31

Goddammit, goddamnit, goddamnit. I got the list

1:08:33

too, motherfucker. How are you getting the

1:08:35

last one? How are

1:08:37

you getting the last one right now? Fuck, fuck.

1:08:40

You didn't get there. Does

1:08:42

anything rhyme with Appenzeller? Michael, you are

1:08:44

a fontina of puns.

1:08:52

Yes. All right, folks, we'll

1:08:54

see you in a couple weeks.