Sam George

Sam George

[00:00:00] Ed Watters: The biggest question of this interview Sam, what are we going to do if it all breaks and we have to go back to meeting face to face?

[00:00:14] Sam George: If it all breaks?

[00:00:16] Ed Watters: Yep, no more internet.

[00:00:18]

 I had, on that particular one, all I can say is, we'd figure it out,

[00:00:34] Sam George: okay, we'd figure it out. Because before the telephone, we did it, okay. So we figured it out,

[00:00:40] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:00:41] Sam George: right? You know, so

[00:00:42] Ed Watters: I like that response.

[00:00:43] Sam George: Yeah. Since I don't know the development, you know, like we would figure it out. For, for, I, I believe the telephone, so up until 1900, we were fine, okay, there's no reports of, uh,

[00:00:54] Sam George: you know, mass suicides or anything. So in other words, for millions of years, up until 1900, we were able to do that. Everything broke because there was nothing, you know? And that's, that's about around that time, nineteen fifteen, twenty, the telephone was created. So yeah, we'd be fine, we were fine back then and we would be fine without it.

[00:01:18] Sam George: And we would be happier,

[00:01:19] Ed Watters: I believe that.

[00:01:20] Sam George: we would be happier in a world without email, we would be happier without text, we would be happier.

[00:01:25] Sam George: Yeah.

[00:01:32] Sam George: To overcome you must educate. Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all Dead America, we can all learn something. To learn, we must challenge what we already understand, the way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have conversations with others, however, some of the best conversations happen with ourself. Reach out and challenge yourself. Let's dive in and learn something right now.

[00:02:22] Sam George: Today we are speaking with Sam George, Sam George is the author of I'll Get Back To You. Sam, could you please introduce yourself, let people know just a little bit more about you, please?

[00:02:38] Sam George: Well, thank you, Ed, I really appreciate the opportunity.

[00:02:41] Sam George: Uh, I must say I, I, I was very excited to be on a podcast called Dead America because I thought, wow, this guy's really got it. But anyway, I'll be talking about the death of, uh, communications today, that does affect America. Um, so, uh, I started out in politics and that really was my career. Uh, I was a political consultant who focused on messaging, not so much the details and not legislative, like laws, but the big picture, you know, how do you develop a message?

[00:03:18] Sam George: And then I translated that into television, and radio, and worked on some big projects. I've been an advisor to Nancy Pelosi, was very key in electing her speaker. But the biggest project I worked on is, I legalized marijuana. But I, there would be no legal marijuana without me. And that's the really, I was the architect of that whole movement.

[00:03:39] Sam George: I was hired by George Soros and a couple other billionaires, and they said, how are we gonna do this? And so we did the research and stuff and then, um, uh, we did a multi-state ballot measure campaign. And I knew, that one, I needed a message that would deconstruct the existing paradigm. And that was the power and the authority of medicine,

[00:04:01] Sam George: wasn't so much the patients, it was the medical brand. And the second thing is, as each state's go, these are earned media. And basically we deconstructed the narrative and that paved the way for the final stage, which was, uh, marijuana legalization. It's one of the, it's a huge industry. And, um, you know, it was a very lucky day that I met George Soros. And him to me because they never thought about doing a national ballot campaign.

[00:04:30] Ed Watters: Yeah. That's, what, what was the reasoning behind the push to legalize marijuana?

[00:04:36] Sam George: Well, they

[00:04:36] Sam George: were all billionaires, which George Soros, the drug war was failing, I mean, you know, uh, millions of people incarcerated, largely African American and Latino. It wasn't like, they were like, wow, we wanna do, we think, we feel people have the right to do drugs,

[00:04:52] Sam George: it was the fallout of the drug war. And so, so, you know, we worked on two fronts, although one front got the most [00:05:00] attention, which was the medical marijuana. But we also did a number of, uh, ballot measures and really helped change the, you know, back then, this is talking about 2000, uh, uh, 1990, 1995, you know, they had commercials the government was running where people on drugs would drop in, you know, would go off of diving into a concrete pool.

[00:05:25] Sam George: That's where we were at. And, uh, you know, was seen as a criminal and moral wrong thing. And we, and other people, but through these ballot measures and, you know, it was the medical model. People knew that the drug war was failing, but they wanted a different form of control. And that basically, it wasn't the fact of the empathy for patients, but rather the doctors, if the doctors are doing it, well, they didn't know that the doctors were kind of a scam, but, but you know, public opinion changes.

[00:05:58] Sam George: Uh, and this is a great way, you know, with votes to transform. We saw each, each, each cycle, you know, it took over 15 years that, you know, we were seeing a change in more people. So, so that's what it was. So, yes, I mean, the idea was to end the drug war primarily. And the result is we really have ended a lot of the drug war.

[00:06:21] Sam George: Um, drugs are no longer seen as a, you know, as, at the possession level, as a criminal thing. And, uh, um, you know, now we have legalized, uh, pot. But even hard drugs are not seen as a, you know, criminal unless you're dealing it. So we really helped, um, transform the debate. But I could tell you structurally without that message of the medical and without the, the multi-state ballot measure, we would not have, we would not have legal marijuana today,

[00:06:51] Sam George: absolutely not.

[00:06:53] Ed Watters: Yeah. You know, I, I look back at prohibition and it's the same kind of cartwheel going on there. So I, I think we would've learned by that. Back in the founding of America, we all grew hemp to help support the nation. So, you know, yeah. All of that kind of gets pushed by the media and, you know, they, they are the ones that set the narrative per se.

[00:07:25] Sam George: Yeah.

[00:07:26] Sam George: During the sixties, seventies, you know, there was a lot more openness to, uh, to this sort of stuff. But with Nixon afterwards, uh, it just became, anti-drugs, anti-drugs. You know, they ran commercials 24/ 7 with people jumping into a concrete, uh, pool, so you can see the problem.

[00:07:46] Ed Watters: Well, there's, there's a lot of implications that come along with that, you know, property seizures, and, uh,

[00:07:53] Sam George: Right, right.

[00:07:54] Ed Watters: These, these, these implications, they ruin lives and,

[00:07:58] Sam George: Yeah, we did

[00:07:59] Sam George: work on some ballot measures, Ed, we didn't do a lot of 'em. But I, I worked on a ballot measure in Oregon that prohibited or greatly limited the government's ability, uh, to, to, to seize assets and things of that, of people who had just been accused of, uh,

[00:08:14] Sam George: wrongdoing. So many of those people who, who have those property, their property, uh, taken, never get it back. But if they're not guilty,

[00:08:23] Ed Watters: Yeah, yeah. And, and I see that changing, you know, they're actually,

[00:08:28] Sam George: Yeah, I know it's all

[00:08:29] Sam George: changing, it's all changing, at least in the area of drugs, you know. Not, not at,

[00:08:32] Ed Watters: And it

[00:08:33] Ed Watters: takes years, that, that takes years,

[00:08:35] Ed Watters: you know, we, we have to let the process unfold.

[00:08:40] Sam George: And it came down to the reframing though of something, not a moral or legal, but the authority of medical. I was reading a philosopher named Michel Foucault at the time and that's where I got the idea. Foucault said, the power's not just in government, it's in all these other apparatuses.

[00:09:00] Sam George: You know, he points out how schools are designed like prisons and stuff. And one of the things birthed the clinic, which is the power of the medical institution, well, I use that to my advantage. But it's still here today. Oh my God, if you wanna legitimate your brand, I have a yoga company, you know what it is?

[00:09:18] Sam George: It's, it's a medical yoga company.

[00:09:21] Ed Watters: Huh.

[00:09:22] Sam George: Yeah.

[00:09:22] Ed Watters: Really?

[00:09:22] Sam George: It has great, great, uh, credibility and, and, uh, you know, what doctors say really matters, although increasingly, I don't know, they're even being challenged. But, uh, but, but then I got into, after a while I just kept burning out. Um, I, I, I ran for office and narrowly lost and then I decided, you know, this is just not what I want to do.

[00:09:43] Sam George: And, um, uh, I formed a medical yoga company and, uh, later I, uh, formed a couple of nonprofit organizations. Um, one seeks to change the electoral college cuz currently we don't directly elect the [00:10:00] president. Um, so, uh, for example, uh, Joe Biden won by 7 million votes, but the difference in the electoral college, the final say, was only 47,000 votes.

[00:10:12] Sam George: And that's why Trump challenged it. You can overturn 47,000 votes, but you can't overturn 7 million. Now, he wasn't crazy, that was in with the,

[00:10:23] Ed Watters: Now, Sam,

[00:10:24] Ed Watters: Sam, when we talk about the electoral college, there's a reason that was set up, and that's to protect the rural type people.

[00:10:35] Sam George: Well, yeah, it,

[00:10:36] Ed Watters: from, from these big cities where a lot of mass population is, uh,

[00:10:43] Sam George: Right.

[00:10:43] Ed Watters: What's the reason, how do we change, see, because I live in the rural area and I get ruled by people in the city and, and sometimes that causes these clashes to happen. I'm not saying it's always bad because we, we need some oversight out here in the rural districts also, you know. I'm not saying we should be lawless or anything like that, but I think that we should have, uh, a different oversight per se to our districts.

[00:11:26] Ed Watters: So,

[00:11:27] Sam George: well,

[00:11:27] Sam George: you know, I mean, essentially I was just gonna tell you, my first book was just about this. My first book, and I authored it, was called The Great Divide. This is in 2004, The Great Divide: Metro versus Retro America, talking about the great divide. And it is rural and urban, but now it's become even more complex because, you know, the divide, you know, many of these states, even if the urban states have divides between the rural and the urban and, uh, you know, some of these issues are really not the federal, uh, but have to be handled at the state level.

[00:12:02] Sam George: For example, what state do you live in?

[00:12:04] Ed Watters: I

[00:12:05] Ed Watters: live in Oregon.

[00:12:07] Sam George: Okay, well, Oregon, you know, Portland,

[00:12:12] Sam George: Portland,

[00:12:12] Ed Watters: I live in Klamath county.

[00:12:14] Sam George: pretty much, they, you know, Portland and, uh, Salem, pretty much in two cities, they dominate, right?

[00:12:20] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:12:20] Sam George: And, and, and this is an advantage, but it, but they make decisions that affect the, you know, there's, but the actual electoral college, you're right,

[00:12:30] Sam George: it was, the issue did get back to red and blue states, it does go back to that. But the issue was in terms of the states with slaves, which are largely more rural because of the, the, what happened is they, they had a lot of African American slaves. So for Congress, the vote was set up so each person, they would get allocated three fifths of a vote,

[00:12:57] Sam George: okay, for the African Americans, in terms of their, they were given an, you know, an, an equalizing power. But with the, with the vote, you can't do that. So why we have an electoral college ultimately has to do with what you say, but more precisely with slavery. So, um, you know, there was no way of equalizing the, the rural/ urban thing.

[00:13:21] Sam George: And they did that in Congress by allocating, uh, by population based of, um, regular people, including slaves.

[00:13:30] Ed Watters: Yes. What, what is your thought on rank style voting?

[00:13:35] Sam George: You know, I'm against anything, but one person, one vote. I think that's what America's founded on. And this is what I'm trying to work very hard, um, you know, I don't, you know, I, you know, I, I I'm, I'm in, I disagree with that as much as I disagree with the current system, um, that benefits Republicans tremendously.

[00:13:55] Sam George: Here's the situation, Donald Trump in 2016, lost by 3 million votes and he became president. George Bush in 2000, lost by a half million votes and he became president. And Joe Biden won by 7 million votes and the margin between Biden and Trump was only 47,000 votes in the electoral college, it's a, it's a scam,

[00:14:21] Sam George: you know what I mean? And it favors some people over other people, it favors white people over black and Hispanic people, it, it favors Republicans over Democrats. And so, you know, well, I, I'm sympathetic, you know, so anyways, that's enough about the politics. So I got into digital communication to, to, to raise money,

[00:14:42] Sam George: you know, I had to, I got some grant money to get these organizations started. And, and I had to fund them. Donations, it's hard, donors are not a regular stream. So, um, I learned the ropes, I had done a lot of work in digital advocacy. But, but, I did, I done about 10 years where you try and get [00:15:00] people and create a number, like a university to get their alumni to send emails, that kind of stuff to their Congressman, whatever.

[00:15:10] Sam George: But then I learned the ropes. Uh, I hired someone, the consultant, to help me with this fundraising. Within a few months, it was pretty easy to figure out. And so, uh, I became a digital marketing expert. And then I also used my digital marketing and my yoga, but I'm very successful at it, and that's where I got to understand the digital landscape and, uh, you know, better.

[00:15:36] Sam George: And so that gave me a context in writing this book. What the book is about is a simple experience that's at the heart of the book, it's much bigger than that, is when someone returns our, doesn't return our message. Um, it kind of goes like this and doesn't return our message, it doesn't matter if they're a friend or whatever, you know, uh, the first stage is, you know, after awhile you get anxious, maybe agitated, anxiety about it, you're thinking about it.

[00:16:06] Sam George: The next stage is you decide something's wrong. Now, never mind the fact that nothing is ever wrong. I mean, it's just like when some, you know, you, you've gone through this before, you've had these ideas, and the first thing, you'd catch up with them and there was nothing wrong. But no, still you decide something's wrong.

[00:16:23] Sam George: And here's the dangerous thing, in 70% of the people, of all the things we've polled, you know, these, these, these three, this, these characteristics apply to them on a regular basis, probably universally. But these 70% say they jump to a worse case scenario. In other words, they're not just going negative,

[00:16:45] Sam George: they're going all the way negative and there's a reason for that, we'll talk about that, there's a reason. And then from there it's catastrophizing and can't get it outta your head. You know, it's like a negative loop, you know, you know, you know, you know, four or five hours later, it keeps on buzzing back, you know, like, fuck him.

[00:17:03] Sam George: Here's the craziest thing, we imagine our wife at a conference might be sleeping with another man, all this distrust, no shit. Or even worse, the stuff we concoct,

[00:17:15] Ed Watters: Exactly.

[00:17:16] Sam George: you know, right? Delusional. And that's because when you start out with a delusional premise, the worst case scenario, you're gonna have, it's, it's delusional thinking.

[00:17:25] Sam George: And if you look back and, you know, this happens to people with regularity because so many emails and texts. Emails and texts are broken loops of communication, they are not communication, emails and texts are discommunication.

[00:17:45] Ed Watters: And, and that is actually your website, dyscommunication.com. Fascinating.

[00:17:54] Sam George: Yeah, go ahead, Ed.

[00:17:55] Ed Watters: It, it, it is fascinating what you've come up with here, because nobody talks about this. How you actually feel when you get an email and you take the time and you get right on it and you get right back to the person. But sometimes you'll wait hours and days and that's not a good feeling, because like you just stated,

[00:18:22] Sam George: Not a good feeling?

[00:18:23] Ed Watters: The worst always,

[00:18:24] Sam George: The terror.

[00:18:25] Sam George: It's a terror.

[00:18:25] Ed Watters: It's always the worst.

[00:18:27] Sam George: It's terrible.

[00:18:28] Ed Watters: Why is that? Why is that our mind goes to the worst?

[00:18:33] Sam George: Usually I go into the communication thing. I, there's a, okay, so why is it that, uh, and this is typical, like when people are late, oh, what does a brain fill in? Oh, the brain fills in, they were in an accident, okay.

[00:18:48] Sam George: Here the brain fills in, and you know, it's a worst case scenario. So why does the brain fill in these worst case scenarios? If you haven't heard back from your boss, you texted him two days, you must be getting fired. So why does the mind fill in the blanks? Not just with negativity, but the worst possible delusional thing.

[00:19:07] Sam George: And the reason why, it has to do, is with the way that the brain works. It's not fear that causes us to do this. It's not anything, self-esteem all that, forget that, all those books be gone. It's just simply the way, you know, whether you're confident or unconfident, you're secure or insecure, this experience will happen to you because the mind thinks in patterns.

[00:19:33] Sam George: And if it cannot complete a pattern, it will impel you to do so. So for example, back with the call, I could have had three positive reasons of why they didn't return the message. And I could have had three really negative reasons. But the reason why I went to the worst case scenario is it terminates, it provides

[00:19:56] Sam George: a loop, right? Only worst [00:20:00] scenarios are, are final endings, therefore completing the pattern. Any other scenarios, we don't know, right? But with the worst case scenario, you do. So that satiates the brain and, but actually it has to do, I worked with a psychiatrist who helped me, uh, process this, you know?

[00:20:18] Sam George: And, uh, he was the founder of The Biological Psychiatry Institute, which looks at neuroscience in the brain. But yes, when we don't know, we fill in the blanks. And typically, we fill in the blanks with the most absurd, worst case scenario, whether it be a phone call, or whether it be an email or a text, whatever it is.

[00:20:42]

[00:20:56] Ed Watters: Is that why some of these tweets bug us too?

[00:21:00] Sam George: Well, I think,

[00:21:01] Ed Watters: You know because they're short and,

[00:21:03] Sam George: anything where there's an indeterminate communication, right?

[00:21:07] Sam George: So emails and texts, which any kind of digital, it's what we are doing. And here's the communication theory, this is the big ship, this is the paradigm in which this sits. So up until about 1990, the only form of human communication, we're talking about radio and stuff like that. The only form of human communication in 1990 was

[00:21:31] Sam George: direct communication by phone, or person, or other medium, where there was a real time exchange like this. You could clarify things if they were uncertain, you could broaden the depths of, God knows where you could go. Um, you know, you felt, uh, some connection typically, and, uh, it doesn't matter if it's by phone or by person.

[00:21:54] Sam George: This was the model, actually before our civilization two, two, two generations, two ancestral generations. Talk is what made, that's, it's not homo sapien, it's homo talker. I mean, our civilization was created on it's first words. And, uh, can you imagine, 1990, that complete, this is the biggest revolution in communication, human.

[00:22:17] Sam George: You had the printing press, but that wasn't about communication between you and I, right. In terms of what we call conversation. And what happens is it just created an infinite number of situations where the mind has to fill in the blanks, okay. Because you never get direct immediate response.

[00:22:37] Sam George: And so what happens is, is just an infinite number of these, uh, worst case scenarios, negativity. And it, you know, whatever the positive sides, I mean, everybody, I'm not here, there's always ying and yang, I'm here to talk about the yang. Uh, arguably we would've been, we would, we would be happier without emails and texts. They have, they have caused us so much anxiety,

[00:23:04] Sam George: it causes, uh, so much stress, um, they have narrowed our ability to communicate. I mean, I mean, if this is like, oh my God, Ed, right now, we've, it would've taken a thousand texts, thousands to have this conversation, you know?

[00:23:20] Ed Watters: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:21] Sam George: This is, direct conversation is an ocean compared to a tiny, tiny puddle. That's what an email can communicate.

[00:23:29] Sam George: There's creativity, you enjoy yourself frequently. Here's another thing, is that the brain releases dopamine. I mean, you rarely have people, I mean, you always hear about people, very rarely, somebody say I had a bad conversa, a good conversation that, and people like, you know, have a good conversation the dopamine gets going and people like later, they talk to like, what's up here.

[00:23:52] Sam George: Because the dopamine has pumped up to it. The key thing is you feel heard and, you know, at the end of the conversation, would you agree or you disagree there's closure and you know, you're strong and that's security. So we went to that as the anchor to this pinball machine, okay. I mean, it really, it's insane.

[00:24:15] Sam George: I don't know if they still have pinball machines, but , you know, I mean, it, they're, by definition, they're broken. I can just tell you that emails and texts are not, if you talk about human conversation, and we talk about human communication, or conversation. By all the dictionaries, including, uh, from Oxford to Merriam, the, they're not conversations,

[00:24:37] Sam George: they are not. They are not an exchange, um, in real time. And, and that's only, that's the only form of conversation that currently is available. Even after, since 1990 Oxford and these dictionaries haven't changed it to include email, um, and texts because,

[00:24:54] Ed Watters: Interesting.

[00:24:55] Sam George: it's not a real time communication, it's not a reciprocal.[00:25:00]

[00:25:00] Sam George: And you know, it's so funny because people, they do kind of point to why, you know, there's too many messages, this is this, this and that, but they're not really clear. It's kind like you say, you know, they, they know there's some, well, the bottom line is that a lot, a lot of times people talk about the technology. It has nothing to do with the technology, at least on the user's end.

[00:25:22] Sam George: 80% of the people open up their emails on their phones and 100% of the people open up their texts. Same technology, telephone, okay, so on the user's end, nothing's changed. What's changed is this, this, we don't have this direct connection and is, people don't get it because it's an abstract concept.

[00:25:45] Ed Watters: Yeah. Conversations are what changes lives, you know, I, I say that all the time, conversation is my key focus. If, if you cannot communicate effectively, you're not gonna change at all. And our life is all about change. We, we need order to that change.

[00:26:07] Sam George: Well, I

[00:26:08] Sam George: mean, that's the other thing, you know, that, that's the bigger problem is that, um, one, there's the miscommunication problem.

[00:26:17] Sam George: But what I see is the bigger problem, is just what you say, conversation and in human interaction, because human interaction's just not an exchange of ideas, people grow through conversations,

[00:26:31] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:26:31] Sam George: they develop through conversations, we learn through conversations. We can't do that through emails and texts, okay, when's the last time you had an illumination through emails and texts about yourself. There are key wellness things.

[00:26:46] Sam George: And that's the danger that now, I mean, people don't want to talk on the telephone, let, oh, they'll do everything to avoid it, um, they don't want to meet in person. And that's the danger, is that, that's the piece, that's the most dangerous thing of all that we lose that, that, I mean, I never hear people say, oh, we talk for hours.

[00:27:10] Sam George: I never hear that anymore,

[00:27:11] Ed Watters: Connection.

[00:27:12] Sam George: we talked all night. I mean, no, I mean, yeah. I mean like conversations are short conversations.

[00:27:21] Ed Watters: Yes. And, and you're so right, you know, we, we feed off of that connection through conversation,

[00:27:28] Sam George: Absolutely.

[00:27:29] Ed Watters: you know?

[00:27:29] Sam George: Absolutely.

[00:27:30] Ed Watters: I remember, do you remember writing letters and sending correspondence out and waiting for a reply. That is such a different, uh, feeling inside and how we

[00:27:45] Ed Watters: arrange it in our head, we're anticipating with a more gleeful feeling waiting for that letter that we're, we know we're gonna get. We're disappointed when we don't get that letter, so what's the difference there?

[00:28:05] Sam George: The big difference is that a letter is not a conversation, right? No one would say that made a conversation,

[00:28:11] Sam George: okay. A conversation is a real time, uh, you know, back and forth communication. Sometimes texting, sometimes achieves temporarily, uh, a level of, uh, of a conversational tone. And then all of a sudden somebody disappears , you know, so, so there's no real time communication. Um, do you remember the Cuban missile crisis?

[00:28:36] Ed Watters: Yes. Well, kind of.

[00:28:37] Sam George: I, I know, I'm not sure that everybody remembers. You now have Putin in Ukraine and now we're, we're getting, when, when, when I grew up, or actually my parents in the early sixties, the United States were on the brink of nuclear war. They were 50/ 50 adversaries going at it, taking over countries.

[00:28:58] Sam George: And what happened is the United States, there was a Cuban dictator named Castro, he was a communist in Cuba. Well, we didn't like communists in Cuba, you know, we thought communism was the end of the world. So what did we do? We went and invaded him and you know what? It was a disaster, okay. But we started this, okay.

[00:29:20] Ed Watters: Bay of pigs.

[00:29:21] Sam George: We started this, right? The bay of pigs, right? So then what happens is Castro cohorts with the Russians and all of a sudden there are nuclear missiles in Cuba. Can you imagine if China put nuclear missiles in Cuba? The problem is this whole situation between Khrushchev, he was the Putin back then, and John Kennedy, the president, was all done through telegrams, which are text messages,

[00:29:50] Sam George: they're just like text messages, incomplete.

[00:29:53] Ed Watters: I didn't know that.

[00:29:54] Sam George: Yeah, right. There was no phone calls, you know what I mean? And in that, oh my [00:30:00] gosh, what could have been settled fairly quickly, we, it's the closest that we've ever been to nuclear war. And the reason why was all this paranoia and misunderstandings, we talk about now with texts and emails, and you know, what they did after that?

[00:30:17] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:30:17] Sam George: They, they instituted a hotline, a, a direct communication, uh, to, to, um. Actually, you know, the, the, Johnny, uh, Robert Kennedy, who was the attorney general, went to the Russian ambassador, camped out for seven hours, and talked to him and they just cut a deal right there on the spot, boom, okay. We're gonna pull out some, whatever missiles in Europe, Eastern Europe, and you get these things out of here, done. That could have been done from the beginning,

[00:30:46] Sam George: you know, but the fact that there was this discommunication, and if that shows you how dangerous, and that's, that's the kind of danger, that's the epic we live in. Um, and you know what? I don't know, but, uh, you know, I just, uh, I just have to tell you, so, you know, in my book though, I do give some prescriptions. Remember the heart of the book was,

[00:31:11] Sam George: was about, okay, you know, like the centerpiece was, you know, how do you, you know, get people to return your messages, get people to understand your messages, reply quickly? The quicker people reply, the closer and the better that they understand. The closer we are, now it doesn't emulate this, but Hey, we gotta do the best we can.

[00:31:33] Sam George: And some basic things, there are some basic things I tell people. Now for, I have two chapters, so it's much more complex, what I did, as I mentioned to you, I'm a digital fundraiser, this is how, partly how I make my living now. So I'm an expert, like for example, I send out nine emails a week between my two different organizations and, that I write and send out. And, um, and they're trying to sell yoga, get contributions for these causes and stuff.

[00:32:04] Sam George: They go out, they're cold emails, you know, to people. And, um, one of the biggest things is the subject line. And when you say, Dead America, my next email is gonna have a subject line, Dead America, right? Cause what, what happens here, I'm gonna use that a lot, because what happens here, you know, as a direct marketer, the only, this is all meaningless unless you get them to open the email. And, you know, if you put sell the product, you know, no one's gonna, you know, buy me, you know,

[00:32:36] Sam George: No one's gonna open up the thing. And the same is true, the open rate, believe it or not, for inter, for, even among friends and colleagues is below 40%. So there's only a 40% chance that they'll ever open it, okay, so that's the first problem. uh, the second problem is, is that, uh, people see it come across their screen,

[00:33:00] Sam George: you know, we've got a ping of about 20 emails, uh, we have less of a ping for checks, you see about 10. You know, and, and then quickly it recedes down, you know, you say to yourself, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna get back. But the re , if you say something like medium, meeting, or some launch, or some predictable thing where they think that they know what it's about, if it doesn't intrigue them,

[00:33:26] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:33:27] Sam George: they're gonna file it. And, and that's actually file and forget, the two reasons are file and forget. Uh, very few people don't return intentionally, it's less than 10%. They're trying to like just, you know, it's either due to, uh, getting lost messages or file and forget. Okay, so how do you, how do you handle that? Well, um, the first thing you do is you've got to get them, like with marketing, to open the email on the spot. Like I told you, we use some, some really extreme things like, uh, oh, your prescription has expired, you know, and then they open it up,

[00:34:03] Sam George: okay. And they always, they always donate, they don't go back to their email and donate. It either happens or doesn't happen, okay. It's on the spot, they never revisit it, file it and go back, okay. So what that means is people completely, so if you can get, okay, so what I say to you is, obviously this is, you don't want to be looking up crazy subject lines.

[00:34:27] Sam George: So I just have a very simple process for, for the general public, which is very easy. Now, Ed, what is, what is it, just name a concept, first idea that comes not related to this, the first concept, just the first idea that comes to your head or image.

[00:34:48] Ed Watters: Uh, the mountains.

[00:34:50] Sam George: Okay, put mountain or the mountains, you mean, that's fine. I guarantee you,

[00:34:56] Ed Watters: The mountains.

[00:34:57] Sam George: Yeah, the mountains, anything. You put, [00:35:00] blue, yellow, whatever, you, you know, just think of one or two words that basically, it's like a pattern intro. They'll then see this, it will jump out to them, mountains?

[00:35:10] Sam George: Okay? So rather than they won't, you know, it's less likely to get lost and it's highly probable that they'll open the email. You know, we see these emails come in, the problem is we just don't wanna deal with it. We think, you know, whatever, it's just blah, blah, blah. But if you put them in like the mountains, then you get them to open the email.

[00:35:30] Sam George: The most important thing is to get them to open the emails because,

[00:35:34] Ed Watters: That wow factor.

[00:35:36] Sam George: Yeah. It's a high, just, you know, when I was talking about that loop, about how we want closure. For the same reason,

[00:35:42] Ed Watters: Perfect sense, yeah.

[00:35:43] Sam George: They're likely to get back to you right there, you know what I'm saying? They're gonna process it

[00:35:47] Sam George: and deal with it, right? They wanna complete the loop.

[00:35:50] Ed Watters: Well, I'm, I'm visual, I'm visualizing that as you're saying that. I'm going to be opening my emails and I get many emails. So the first thing in the morning, that's the first thing I have to do is, and I'm checking 'em off for delete, you know, looking for that, you know,

[00:36:11] Sam George: Difference.

[00:36:11] Ed Watters: obvious,

[00:36:12] Ed Watters: Oh, I need that, yes, I need that.

[00:36:14] Sam George: Yeah,

[00:36:14] Sam George: something different, you know what I mean? So, so the key thing

[00:36:16] Ed Watters: Exactly.

[00:36:17] Sam George: is don't put a, never put, I mean, there are some exceptions, but really not. Even in a corporate setting, you know, now these email clients, they group them. So it's not like, you can say anything, it'll group your emails together, your, what Gmail calls a conversation, right?

[00:36:34] Sam George: So all the back and forths remain glued, no matter what the, uh, so don't, the last thing on earth you should ever do is put the subject in the subject line, do not do that. Put something different, something radically different, something, anything but what the email is about, that's number one, don't put what the email is about.

[00:36:58] Sam George: Um, there are a couple exceptions, but not even really, because almost always they're more likely to open it up. Even, yeah, yeah.

[00:37:08] Ed Watters: Um, yeah. That wow factor.

[00:37:11] Sam George: And you know what? People will never say to you, why did you put mountains in the email? They've got too much shit going on. They won't,

[00:37:19] Ed Watters: Exactly.

[00:37:19] Sam George: Well, they don't care. You know, they get into the email,

[00:37:22] Ed Watters: What do you mean mountains?

[00:37:24] Sam George: They don't care, no one's gonna care.

[00:37:25] Ed Watters: That's right.

[00:37:26] Sam George: They, people get so much shit, but they open the email. So how do , here's here's the next biggest, this is, this is the biggest problem. Uh, not so, it's a problem in terms of return messages, but just an overall problem with miscommunication or discommunication, people scan the emails,

[00:37:44] Sam George: everybody scans the emails. Oh my God, I tell, listen, I don't put more than one point in an email to somebody, but I'll explain that to you. Like I said, this is just the thumbnails of two chapters of strategy. So the second thing is how do you get them to read the email? Well, it's very simple. You start out dear Ed, at the point of action you say Ed, action.

[00:38:11] Sam George: And then three, thanks Ed. Sound, that's it, your name. You know, it's the oldest thing, there's nothing, they've hooked people up, but all kind. There's nothing, I mean, that people respond to more than their first name. Ed, have you ever had, you know, you know, a friend you've known them for years, a friend of a friend, and you're at a party and you're talking to them and you get this uneasy feeling that, huh?

[00:38:40] Sam George: Did they, I think they've forgot my name. Does that ever happen? How do you feel?

[00:38:46] Ed Watters: Yeah,

[00:38:48] Ed Watters: uh, I, I overlook it anymore, but I, I kind of reminisce to thinking, wow, that kind of sucks, I'm not recognizable.

[00:38:58] Sam George: Yeah, you know what I mean?

[00:38:59] Sam George: As we get older, but, but, okay. Let's say you go to a grocery store, the typical response is not a positive one, uh, that, you know, like you said, that, that can vary. But it's not a positive feeling.

[00:39:11] Sam George: Um, but if someone you don't know very well, like a grocery clerk, you haven't seen her in two months says, Ed Watters. How do you feel? Good, right?

[00:39:21] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:39:22] Sam George: Yeah. I mean, you feel, oh yeah, yeah. And so we respond, it's as simple, every salesman knows this, but it actually is based in neuroscience and the way our brain works,

[00:39:33] Sam George: so people respond. A lot of people do not start out their emails with dear Ed, or just Ed, right? They don't put a salutation on it, almost nobody does it on text. But you, that you should do it there with text. Oh yeah, because the name is presumed, right? People, they, they got your name, right? There's, it's on the phone call.

[00:39:54] Ed Watters: That's foreign

[00:39:55] Ed Watters: to me. You, that's foreign to me, you know, names are so [00:40:00] important.

[00:40:00] Sam George: Well, then you understand this principle. But go look at your text to you and see how many times people have put your name, dear Ed, you know what I mean? It's presumed because it's in the contact, it's right there. You're looking at their name, you know, so people, in other words, if I get a text message from you, it says from Ed, you know. So, so the last thing on her,

[00:40:22] Sam George: so, so, so you wanna use their name, um, at least three times in an email. And I think the simplest formula is at the beginning, at the point of, uh, uh, action, and then at the end. Um, it's not like you have to compliment them, it's not that, it's a different kind of validation. It keeps them tuned. The second thing is, and this is very important,

[00:40:44] Sam George: I get emails all the time and you do too, and even when I open 'em up, I have no, I have no clue as to what they're getting at. I have, I don't even know sometimes what they're talking about. And many times, I don't know what they want me to do, right? You know, it's not asking for a response, you know what I mean?

[00:41:03] Sam George: And if it's asking for me to do something it's very vague, you know. What do you, what's your, what do you think? Or something like that. So the most important thing is to obviously make it succinct, your email. Uh, the main body should be a paragraph and in that paragraph you should ask a question. You must always ask a question, no matter what you're doing, you reframe and put in the centerpiece a question. Because a question means they have to respond,

[00:41:31] Sam George: it also crystallizes the meaning, you know what I mean? If I say, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I say, how do, and I say, well, you know, gay marriage is good, we're big, gay marriage is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If I say, Ed, do you support gay marriage? Yes or no. It, it crystallizes the point, you see what I'm saying?

[00:41:54] Sam George: And, and you should put things, now you don't wanna be that blunt about yes, no. But you should also, it's not enough to just ask a question, you know, you should, you should try and frame it in an either or sort of solution, okay. So rather than somebody sending something that you've edited and say, here are my, here's my edit,

[00:42:15] Sam George: what do you think? You say, here's my edit, do you agree or disagree? You'll get 'em or, you know, this is how you get a response. Things become more focused to, the question is central to, to an email or text. You must ask a question to get a response. If you don't ask a question, why would anybody respond? This happens a lot with text messages with people.

[00:42:39] Sam George: Hey dude, Hey, how are you doing? You know, great, great, great, you know. You know, a typical situation, we'll use a woman, okay, or a guy, right? A woman and a guy go on, gonna date and, and, uh, uh, on a date. And, uh, you know, let's say that, I'll use the sexist version, so basically let's say the, uh, the, uh, you know, the woman says at, you know, 10 o'clock, she says, thank you so much,

[00:43:05] Sam George: I had a great dinner, you know. Oh, by three o'clock she's flipping out, she's decided that this is not gonna work out, you know what I mean? Because even though she didn't ask for a response, she, her brain wants a response, you see? So you know, this is the real problem with text not being responded is that people just say, B, bullshit.

[00:43:28] Sam George: And so I tell people, be very deliberate in these texts, do not send random texts, um, otherwise it will cause you pain. And one of the key things about text conversations is, be very clear when you hang up. A lot of anxieties around, you're not sure, all of a sudden you're in the middle, midstream of, you know, it's kind of like a conversation, all of a sudden, boom, the other person's gone.

[00:43:53] Sam George: Is it something I said?

[00:43:55] Ed Watters: Yeah.

[00:43:55] Sam George: Did I do something?

[00:43:56] Ed Watters: Well, context. You know, I, I'm guilty of this context. For me, sometimes I lack giving contextual value to my text and actually,

[00:44:09] Sam George: It's very important.

[00:44:09] Ed Watters: this Moose leader, this leadership sign came out of the same sort of thing, I gave no contextual value to a statement that I made. And

[00:44:21] Ed Watters: let the person's mind,

[00:44:23] Sam George: You think

[00:44:24] Sam George: abstractly, Ed, okay. You, you're, you know, you're, you think you have a theoretical mind, you think abstractly, I do it the best. Uh, my, my wife is, uh, Chinese although she speaks English. And I constantly say, well, you know, I, I don't, I constantly forget to contextualize. And so yes, you should, you should address,

[00:44:43] Sam George: but like I said, in contextualizing that's where a question is so important to quickly get, it forces you to contextualize, right? It's, even in a text message, let's say the scenario of the, of the [00:45:00] date. So the, the woman sends a text message at, at 10 o'clock saying, Hey, thank you so much. You know, the pasta was really good,

[00:45:08] Sam George: um, do you think it's handmade? You see, something like that. At least you've asked a question, your probability of getting a response is much higher. So you can always ask a question and it doesn't matter how innocuous or frivolous the question is, always ask a question is what I'm saying. You know, with emails,

[00:45:29] Ed Watters: Yeah, I like that.

[00:45:30] Sam George: Yeah, with emails, it's very, you know, emails are more of a, they're more of a composition, right? Texts are more of a, statements, you know, like a chat. Um, when you design an email, you're composing it. People don't typically come, you know, they, so with a, you can easily construct a question into the, but let me tell you, we're always thinking about these emails and texts, you know, it's always in the back of our minds. Even when we don't have one of those episodes where we go into the syndrome, uh, we still are stressed.

[00:46:03] Sam George: Did they understand what I meant? That's the big thing, you know, did they get what I'm just trying to say? Did I offend? This stuff's going on in the background all the time. This didn't used to happen, we created this. And then there's, one last thing is, within 24 hours always follow up. My polling shows that 70% of the people, uh, welcome, welcome, follow up.

[00:46:26] Sam George: And, but people are kind of squeamish about that. They feel, oh,

[00:46:29] Ed Watters: Even on a cold, even on a cold email?

[00:46:33] Sam George: Oh, cold emails we send, we send, listen, we send one every day.

[00:46:39] Ed Watters: Okay.

[00:46:39] Sam George: No, I'm talking about with, with your people, with your colleagues, with your friends, with people.

[00:46:43] Ed Watters: Okay.

[00:46:44] Sam George: Okay.

[00:46:44] Ed Watters: Good enough.

[00:46:45] Sam George: These, everything that I've talked to you about is about regular email,

[00:46:50] Sam George: you know what I mean? They're tactics that, you know, that I'm translating into, to everyday lives. So instead of asking some, you know, like explosive, uh, Dead America, uh, subject line, you said, just say mountains, you know, trying to make it real simple. You know, just always address the person by their first name. Use it in the middle when you're, you're asking them the question and then, uh, close with it,

[00:47:14] Sam George: thanks, you know, say, thanks, Paul, whatever. You know, it doesn't, you don't have to compliment them, you know, just use their name three times. This will keep them tuned in, I guarantee it. And then, you know, always follow up, you know. Besides, you always follow up, this is a big mistake people make, they'll go for days, weeks, you know what I mean?

[00:47:34] Sam George: Hitting themselves up, going through this psychological, you know, cuz it forms a negative loop, this catastrophizing. You know, it's a, it's a miniature form of ghosting, right? So, so, you know, temporarily you're in a ghosting boat. So, you know, someone has denied you, you know, rejected you. So what I tell people is very simple, edit, copy, paste. Send the exact same email, put a different subject line like rivers,

[00:48:02] Sam George: okay, and send it off. Do that twice, exact same. It's because they haven't, like I said, we've just said that, I know from the data, the reason why people don't respond or they respond late to emails is either they lose them or they didn't read them, okay. So sending another email, there's no need to rewrite it,

[00:48:26] Sam George: they never read it, okay. Uh, you know, I mean, so, so you just send 'em the same email, you don't wanna put 'em on the spot. You know, one of the reasons people are squeamish, they wanna put, you know, oh, you know, they send 'em another email, they think I deleted it. No, they didn't see it, so you don't have to worry about that.

[00:48:42] Sam George: What you don't wanna do is forward them the email and say, Hey, did you, you miss this? Or, you know, that kind of thing. Cause that does put them on the spot, um, you know. And so you just send the same email as if, don't reference the previous one, as if you never sent, same is true for text messages, that's it.

[00:49:01] Ed Watters: That's fascinating. Uh, and all of this is outlined in your book?

[00:49:06] Sam George: Oh, much more

[00:49:07] Sam George: so, I've got all kinds of things. Don't put attachments, don't put links.

[00:49:11] Ed Watters: I don't doubt it,

[00:49:12] Ed Watters: it's good.

[00:49:13] Sam George: Yeah. I mean, it goes on and on and on, you know. Be, be very, uh, like one of the things is, what you say, is when you're in text, be very specific,

[00:49:21] Sam George: detailed, not broad, you know. Provide, you know, be very clear, the more, you know, you do not want to be vague in a text message. You wanna be as empirical, as clear, as complex as possible. Ironically, you wanna be more complex, not less complex. I know,

[00:49:41] Ed Watters: So, tell me Sam, what, what got you into this battle of discommunication and why, why pick this

[00:49:51] Ed Watters: battle?

[00:49:52] Sam George: Well, you know what? I had this background in digital communication, this experience has bothered me my whole life. And what's even [00:50:00] bothered me most is that nobody, because what, I talked to, oh, probably, I don't know, I did some interviews, professional interviews at one point. Nobody, nobody has ever talked to me

[00:50:10] Sam George: and I don't believe that anybody has ever talked to you when you hear about this. Sure you experienced, but the first time you thought about it as a thing, right? So, so this is, this is a real, you know, this is a major source of discomfort. Um, you know, it ranks right up there. We've polled it with the, with, with, the news in terms of the anxiety,

[00:50:33] Sam George: it claims persons on a daily basis. This whole setup, this whole digital setup is just very, very insecure. You know, we used to communicate like this. I'm not gonna feel insecure or not clear when I leave this conversation. And, you know, it's also the reason why we have so many emails. We've so many emails cuz you can't, you constantly, like, like I said, this would be 10,000, this would be at least 7,000 emails.

[00:51:00] Sam George: So, so to provide content, you know, so this is the reason for all of it. You know, I, my experience is that there's no going back. And that, uh, eventually some things will change. One, I think that people, we are illiterate, we've never been taught how to talk. We've never been taught how to write an email, how to write a text.

[00:51:21] Sam George: Nobody knows what the heck's going on. Uh, and we have no knowledge, we're just a bunch of idiots out there. We really have not, I mean, our dominant form of communication, we all have any kind of education, um, on how to do that. Uh, you know, it's just a state of, uh, you know, it's not Dead America, but it's dead communication.

[00:51:43] Sam George: This is not communication, it does more harm than good. You think it does good, you know. Okay, I can still, you know, talk to my friend in, you know, in, in, in Tolosa. Well, I can think about my mom in Indiana and I have very positive, you know, I don't need to talk, text her, you know what I mean? I have very positive feelings, you know, comes into my mind,

[00:52:07] Sam George: I seemed engaged through my imagination. And, you know, I mean, I, I just don't, there's nothing. Uh, I, I don't, uh, I, there's been no evidence that people are more productive. Oh my God, in an area that doesn't really apply to my book, but it shows the mess is communication in another form, try and get into a corporation or technical support,

[00:52:31] Sam George: oh my God, it's impossible. The first thing you'll get, I mean like, you will, okay. First to find help, okay, is a big problem. When you find help, you will get a succession of Q and A's. Then you ask for a chat person, then you'll get a chat person to give you more Q, it's almost impossible to get to

[00:52:49] Sam George: somebody.

[00:52:49] Ed Watters: That's a loop.

[00:52:51] Sam George: Oh, it's one nasty,

[00:52:52] Ed Watters: That is a loop.

[00:52:53] Sam George: I mean, you know, we spend hours, you know what I'm saying? And, and, and, you know, and even chats, they're like text messages, you know, you can't really, they don't really emulate, what am I directed at, you know? It's very hard, you know, to, to, to chat back and forth about content. Emails simply cannot,

[00:53:12] Sam George: if you're dealing with complex, like when I deal with the CRM, the company that deals, sends out my emails, it's very complex. When I try and explain something, it's very difficult to, to put this in an email. So we've lost touch there, you know, in that human context, very important too. Because even though they're strangers, to call someone at the bank and say, how can I help you,

[00:53:34] Sam George: these kinds of things, to be able to reach someone. I will tell you, unless it's a major institution, many corporations and services will not allow you to talk to them, okay, they will not. Your only option is to send an email, quite a few, okay, that's it.

[00:53:53] Ed Watters: That's crazy.

[00:53:54] Sam George: That's true. So this is the world we live in.

[00:53:57] Sam George: Um, I would say that with all that's going wrong in politics, this is a much greater threat. Cause it, it, it causes such great stress. It, it, it so badly impairs our, our communication and finally, Our quality of life. All these conversations we grow from, happy, laugh, you know what I'm saying, we laugh. You know, I mean, this piece of human experience is disappearing and that's the greatest,

[00:54:25] Ed Watters: Yes.

[00:54:26] Sam George: That's the greatest loss. And so I don't know, I, I, my book has a partial explanation. I don't know what's, what's after that, I, I don't know, I don't know. But, but, uh, you know, you know,

[00:54:39] Ed Watters: It's hard to say Sam, we, we have a world that is kind of in this changing pattern right now and I just,

[00:54:49] Sam George: That's

[00:54:49] Sam George: okay, it's always in change.

[00:54:50] Sam George: You know, the, the great thing about,

[00:54:52] Ed Watters: That's true.

[00:54:53] Sam George: The great thing about the process of reality is it always moves forward. Now the bad news is you [00:55:00] can't go back, we can't go back to the presidency, the way it was with Obama and Kennedy and all that after Trump, there's no going back. And look at poor Joe Biden, you know, on the firing squad, you know, to illustrate what's going on.

[00:55:13] Sam George: Yeah. I mean, when there's no back to the, to the old presidents, our presidents, you know, it's a, so things go forward. And so the idea is you have to adapt. And so as long, you can still do this, like, this is one way of adapting, right? Is to try and write clear communication, quick communication, you know, quick to, to take that broken loop into, try and make it as direct as possible.

[00:55:37] Sam George: But in terms of the human contact, I don't know. I, I, somebody, a host said to me one time, something kind of fascinating, he said to me, and he said to me, what would've happened if we started out with texts and all of a sudden somebody came up with a telephone? I thought to him, I think people would love it.

[00:56:01] Sam George: I mean, I think people would move to it in flocks, they'd go, oh my God, you can actually talk to each other, you know what I mean? That's the funny thing about life. So that's the process of reality, and that's it. I can tell you interactive, uh, zoom and stuff like this is not, has proven to be a failure for two reasons.

[00:56:19] Sam George: Um, you know, it, people don't like it, um, it's alienating. Like right now I'm talking to you and I see a box. Um, one on one it's okay, but when you get into multiple people on a meeting, you're much better off with a conference call. So much distraction, it's glitched, um, but here's the biggest reason. The last 10 years we've been able to call our friends, you know, with our iPhones through FaceTime.

[00:56:46] Sam George: Nobody does it. It's like Alexa, who uses Alexa? Oh, play, uh, Jim Morrison,

[00:56:53] Sam George: I mean,

[00:56:55] Ed Watters: That's, that's interesting too.

[00:56:57] Sam George: Yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to say it's proven and you know, it's a proven failure from a consumer point of view that somehow interconnective technology, cuz we've had it. Put aside the corporate aspects,

[00:57:09] Sam George: Zoom is mostly, the interactive, okay, we've had it for over 10 years through our iPhones and they have similar things and we don't use it. So what does that say? That says that interactive video is not going to be the response that, that, uh, that's not gonna, that's not the next, that's not the next stage in this development.

[00:57:28] Sam George: Um, it's been proven,

[00:57:29] Ed Watters: Interesting.

[00:57:31] Sam George: Proven a failure.

[00:57:31] Ed Watters: It, it, it doesn't shoot as much dopamines in our brain, apparently.

[00:57:36] Sam George: Well, no, we just don't do it. What I'm trying to say is that FaceTime's fine, you know, I mean, just like this is fine, but the point is is that people just don't use it. So when people say to me, well, do you think that, you know, real time video's going to replace this and, you know, cause Zoom is used a lot in business and formal things, but not a lot of people talk to their friends on Zoom.

[00:57:59] Sam George: you know,

[00:58:00] Ed Watters: Well, that's true.

[00:58:00] Sam George: I don't want to talk to a friend on zoom and, and even FaceTime, it's such a hassle, you have to schedule it and all this stuff, you know. But people can spontaneous, they have this ability for 10 years or longer, where they can call on their iPads, or their computers, or their iPhones, instead of calling them in person or texting them. They can

[00:58:20] Sam George: call them through FaceTime and have an immediate, real time conversation like this, that's fine. My point too, is that no one has used it, so that shows

[00:58:31] Ed Watters: Let's start pushing people to use that communication.

[00:58:35] Sam George: the marketplace, it's, it's failed in the marketplace, you know what I mean? And so is, always, so is the audio thing, people don't talk to their stereos and stuff.

[00:58:45] Sam George: I'm embarrassed to say here, Hey, you know, like I'm looking at my iPad, my wife's over there. Hey, Siri, I'm embarrassed to say that.

[00:58:53] Ed Watters: Yeah, kinda,

[00:58:55] Sam George: Oh, shoot,

[00:58:56] Ed Watters: it's different anyway.

[00:58:57] Sam George: Here's Siri, I did search them out. I don't wanna talk to you, Siri. So, so you see they talk to you, it's that people are not talking to Siri,

[00:59:06] Sam George: people are not using their stereos to say, play Led Zeppelin, you know what I mean? The, the, these are proven, I use the analogy cause they've been proven failures in the marketplace. Although people will continue to promote them. But no, internet, so in other words, I, we can rule out, because we have 10 years of reality,

[00:59:26] Sam George: I can't rule out zoom for businesses and stuff like that, but I can rule out for everyday life, for human exchange. We can rule FaceTime, that is real time visual, we can rule it out. We've had it for 10 years and never used it.

[00:59:41] Ed Watters: Yeah, yeah. I, I kind of see that.

[00:59:43] Sam George: Well, I mean, in other words, we have no place to go.

[00:59:46] Sam George: I mean, maybe in the Metaverse. I would say that, oh, the Metaverse has some possibility.

[00:59:53] Ed Watters: That's coming soon, you know.

[00:59:56] Sam George: I would say that your best chance of having, I [01:00:00] don't think it'll be on a mass level, but I, I think I, I have, I, I have a, a headset just because I want to explore it. I don't play games and,

[01:00:09] Sam George: oh, yeah, it's, it's, uh, you know, your ability to sit down, you know, like with your son, watch a, you know, movie and interact. And, you know, you'll be able to develop icons of just like, I, I, I don't, I'm not saying that this will replace, this, this is not the answer to the digital communication divide. But if anything has any promise in terms of raising the, the level of communication, you know, and raising the level, not answering this question, you know, it, it really will raise the level of communication that's available to people.

[01:00:44] Sam George: I don't think it will do it on a mass level, but I don't know, I don't know.

[01:00:48] Ed Watters: The biggest question of this interview, Sam, what are we going to do if it all breaks and we have to go back to meeting face to face?

[01:01:03] Sam George: If it all breaks?

[01:01:05] Ed Watters: Yep, no more internet.

[01:01:07] Sam George: You know, some hypothetical, you know, I said earlier about hypothetical, about what happens if we didn't have it. You know, ultimately with hypotheticals, they're just hypotheticals, you can't really say one way or the other. I had, on that particular one, all I can say is, we'd figure it out,

[01:01:22] Sam George: okay, we'd figure it out. Because before the telephone, we did it, okay. So we figured it out,

[01:01:29] Ed Watters: That's right.

[01:01:29] Sam George: right? You know, so

[01:01:31] Ed Watters: I like that response.

[01:01:32] Sam George: Yeah. Since I don't know the development, you know, like we would figure it out. For, for, I, I believe the telephone, so up until 1900, we were fine, okay. There's no reports of, uh,

[01:01:43] Sam George: you know, mass suicides or anything. So in other words, for millions of years, up until 1900, we were able to do that. Everything broke because there was nothing, you know? And that's, that's about around the time, nineteen fifteen, twenty, the telephone was created. So yeah, we'd be fine, we were fine back then and

[01:02:05] Sam George: we would be fine without it. And we would be happier.

[01:02:08] Ed Watters: I believe that.

[01:02:09] Sam George: We would be happier in a world without email, we would be happier without texts, we would be happier.

[01:02:14] Ed Watters: Yeah. It's interesting what you've come up with, this is a fantastic topic to talk about. How can people find the book, Sam?

[01:02:25] Sam George: Um,

[01:02:26] Sam George: people can find it by going to my website, which is dyscommunication. Like, think about dysfunctional relationships, D Y S, dyscommunication.com, DYS.

[01:02:38] Sam George: Or if you wanna find the summary on Amazon, just put, um, I'll Get Back To You, which is a common phrase that people, hey, I'll get back to you. And just put George, like you, do you remember, did you, in your, Curious George, do you remember Curious George?

[01:02:53] Ed Watters: Yes, yes, I love him.

[01:02:55] Sam George: Just put George in, as in Curious George, see, I'm giving you things.

[01:02:58] Sam George: So just put George as in Curious George, you put, I'll Get Back To You, cuz people always say it, and you'll find my book

[01:03:05] Ed Watters: Yeah,

[01:03:05] Sam George: on the Amazon site.

[01:03:06] Ed Watters: That's great. So what is coming out next with Sam?

[01:03:14] Sam George: Well, you know, I'll continue to work on this. I wrote a book about The Great Divide in 19 in, in 2004, that it turned out to be a self fulfilling prophecy, um, because it was just political back then it wasn't a war. But, you know, I named it Metro Versus Retro America. You know, I'm eclectic, I'll come up with something different.

[01:03:36] Sam George: Um, one of the things I'm working right now is the, uh, is a philosophical concept called, um, you know, so I'm working on a philosophical book because, um, that's of interest to me. I, I am a philosopher, if you can't tell, armchair philosopher, no, actually an academic philosopher. But, uh, yeah, I'll be working on a philosophy book. But I have a very eclectic, you know, the idea is to bring into, to view new ideas, new concessions, just like a David Potter, you know, like to make people think in new ways, to bring new ideas. And what my ability to theoretically, because of my training in philosophy,

[01:04:13] Sam George: to really, and partly because I'm very abstract, I'm an abstract thinker. I can twist things and see relationships. I'm a, I'm a extremely abstract thinker, so I can jump here and there. You know, people who are abstract thinkers, and I think you are one, can go up here and look down. Many, many people don't have that function

[01:04:34] Sam George: and, uh, so they can't. So that's what allows me to see this, I was writing a book on fear, that's how I got here, you know? And, uh, uh, I, I thought that fear was just this, I thought it was bullshit that all fear was back to fight or flight and then I proved that it's not. That a lot of our fear doesn't have to do with anything, but just the way our brains develope.

[01:04:58] Sam George: And so, I don't know, I'm [01:05:00] writing a philosophy book for my own edification. Um, uh, it, uh, it combines philosophy and, and, and, and, and, and Christianity, I, I think it will be of interest. But I'm, it's not something, it's, it's, uh, it's, there is, there is one word that unifies all existence. So I don't think it'll be on this podcast.

[01:05:22] Sam George: There is one word that unifies all, everything, and that word is L O G O S, logos. That is the foundation of everything, with Christian, philosophical, throughout the tradition. Today, we call logos like, you know, logos on my company, my, my company has a logo, like apple has itself. But that's, that's what it is,

[01:05:43] Sam George: I mean essentially, with one symbol, it explains it all. So this book is, uh, uh, a book and I, I, you know, I don't expect, uh, you know, but really for those that are interested in this stuff, it's a more, it, it will give them a different understanding of, of how they look at philosophy and religion. They will see that philosophy and religion are really the same thing.

[01:06:09] Ed Watters: Interesting, I can't wait for that. You know, that, that's kind of what we do here, we push what we think we already know. We, we never put people in boxes because we're already there, we've gotta climb out of those boxes. Let people be who they are and the world is always exciting. And like you just stated, always try to push new thought, new experiences.

[01:06:40] Ed Watters: I love it.

[01:06:41] Sam George: Here's the thing to remind too, is that, you know, we talk about, oh, America, things are bad, blah, blah, blah. Every generation throughout history, I mean, this is in all the historians without exception, would look back at the younger generation and say, like my generation, my kid was using, you know, iPhones and shit.

[01:06:59] Sam George: You know, he, you know, I said, all they cared about is playing games. I'm like how in the world are these people going to, you know, what's gonna happen? They don't even write, they can't even run. Well, these people now are running our companies like, Tesla and they're training for that. So, so, what I'm trying to say is that reality's dynamic.

[01:07:20] Sam George: And so people are complaining about the millennials,

[01:07:22] Ed Watters: That's a good point.

[01:07:23] Sam George: don't complain about the millennials, believe me, they will bring new things, and new ideas, and they will help. Reality, you know? I mean, it's, it's generally progressive. I mean, overall, have the good guys lost?

[01:07:42] Ed Watters: No, no, I don't think anybody's lost.

[01:07:45] Sam George: I mean, there's a, there's a progressive tilt to history, okay. I mean, you know, we're not going back to, so there's a progressive tilt to this thing. So I always have faith, I always have faith. And even with the, you know, this digital, you know, this thing, I always have faith that people will adapt,

[01:08:02] Sam George: they will accommodate, and they will come up with new ways, maybe it is the metaverse in this particular issue. There are new ways,

[01:08:08] Ed Watters: That's what we do.

[01:08:09] Sam George: new ideas. I mean, the metaverse is very possible. A very, they can make the headsets not weigh three pounds, but, you know, they're working at it. I mean, you know, Zuckerberg made a trillion dollars.

[01:08:20] Sam George: So I, I always believe in that there's, there's always hope and, uh, Dead America.

[01:08:25] Ed Watters: Well,

[01:08:27] Sam George: There's hope for Dead America.

[01:08:30] Ed Watters: there's always hope, never lose hope.

[01:08:32] Sam George: No, I mean, change, these changes are good changes. I mean, Donald Trump brought a lot of bad changes, but he also brought some good changes, you know, he deconstructed politics, right?

[01:08:44] Ed Watters: I, I see, I see that in every president we've had. You know, there's, there's challenges that we have to face. And like you said, each generation will step up when it's time.

[01:08:58] Sam George: Yes and we'll grow and so don't ever, its like,

[01:09:01] Ed Watters: That's right.

[01:09:02] Sam George: You know, if you look back and say, uh, oh, you know, that's why people always say, well, a bad thing was a good thing.

[01:09:12] Sam George: something bad happened, I lost my lottery ticket, but I met my wife and I lost a trillion dollars. But I love my wife, I love my kids, we live in a trailer, you know, but I'm happy. I mean,

[01:09:23] Ed Watters: Perception always fills in the gap.

[01:09:25] Sam George: some could say that's a rationalization. And maybe it is, but the bottom line is, that's how we process reality.

[01:09:33] Sam George: You have to move forward, if you do not move forward, if you get stuck over some lady you broke up with, as long, or some situation or past thing, you are stuck there. You are a prisoner of that moment unless you let go. If you let go, you don't have to do anything cuz the process of reality or what a macroscale history,

[01:09:54] Sam George: we move forward and it always is better. I [01:10:00] don't think that anybody can say that the world is not better today than it was in 1940 or, or 1772, it's just more fucked. You know, it's better, but it's fucked up. Excuse my language, but anyway,

[01:10:14] Ed Watters: Keep living the dream, there is the Dead America podcast.

[01:10:17] Sam George: There is great hope and there's exciting possibilities, always around the corner.

[01:10:23] Ed Watters: So keep dreaming and live life to its fullest, no matter who or where you are.

[01:10:29] Sam George: Well, yeah, I would, yeah, keep dreaming, but try and execute those dreams. You know what I mean?

[01:10:33] Ed Watters: Yes, yes.

[01:10:34] Sam George: It's, the key thing is that, so, what do we do, right? Is this change and you have to find new ways to adapt, right? New ways to take the values of the old and adapt them into the new, One Way is my book,

[01:10:50] Sam George: it's a, you know, we had this situation, now how do we get, okay, well, we can't do that, so here's some techniques and some technologies to try and better create more of a reciprocal communication. That's a small thing, but an important one, you know what I mean? And, uh, I believe that more education and more people will, you know, I'll continue to, to make this case, you know. And, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, But they're, you know, in terms of Russia, Ukraine, these things have happened throughout history,

[01:11:23] Sam George: it's not the end of the world.

[01:11:24] Ed Watters: That's right.

[01:11:25] Sam George: You know what I mean? We thought, why do we do this? Because when we can't fill in the blanks, we go worse case scenario, right? So remember that.

[01:11:34] Ed Watters: That's right.

[01:11:35] Sam George: So, uh, so yeah,

[01:11:35] Ed Watters: That's right.

[01:11:35] Sam George: You know, uh, you know, life will go on, people will adapt and will survive.

[01:11:40] Ed Watters: That's right.

[01:11:41] Sam George: And then I, I don't know, we just, our life changes, new things come up.

[01:11:46] Ed Watters: That's right. Sam, I wanna say, thank you very much for being a part of the Dead America podcast.

[01:11:52] Sam George: I really, uh, really, it was really a pleasure, you're so thoughtful. And I, I, I think you've asked the right things.

[01:12:00] Ed Watters: Thank you for being part of it.

[01:12:06] Ed Watters: Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of Dead America podcast. I'm Ed Watters your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you

[01:12:28] Ed Watters: may be.

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