Ever wondered how a crab boil dinner could bring to light the intricate layers of trust in our lives? We did too, and that's why in this week's episode, we've peeled back the layers of trust, just like those crustaceans, to bring you an in-depth exploration of a concept we often take for granted. We've all had those instances where we've placed our faith in someone or something only to be let down – it's the price we pay for being human, but it's also a catalyst for growth and self-discovery.
As we journey through the complexities of trust, we consider its many forms – from the casual trust we place on a barista to get our order right, to the more profound trust we place in our relationships and in ourselves. We take a philosophical approach, connecting trust, truth, and faith and sharing our thoughts on how our tendencies to either trust too much or not enough can be a reflection of our strengths.
In this episode, we also share a rather humorous memory of a crab boil experience during a recent vacation. The process of eating crab, the unique restaurant atmosphere, and the unforgettable beverages from a candy store all weave into our discussion on trust in unexpected ways. We cannot promise that you will master the art of eating crab by the end of this episode, but we guarantee a thought-provoking conversation about trust that might just change the way you approach relationships and life itself. Tune in!
Ever wondered how a crab boil dinner could bring to light the intricate layers of trust in our lives? We did too, and that's why in this week's episode, we've peeled back the layers of trust, just like those crustaceans, to bring you an in-depth exploration of a concept we often take for granted. We've all had those instances where we've placed our faith in someone or something only to be let down – it's the price we pay for being human, but it's also a catalyst for growth and self-discovery.
As we journey through the complexities of trust, we consider its many forms – from the casual trust we place on a barista to get our order right, to the more profound trust we place in our relationships and in ourselves. We take a philosophical approach, connecting trust, truth, and faith and sharing our thoughts on how our tendencies to either trust too much or not enough can be a reflection of our strengths.
In this episode, we also share a rather humorous memory of a crab boil experience during a recent vacation. The process of eating crab, the unique restaurant atmosphere, and the unforgettable beverages from a candy store all weave into our discussion on trust in unexpected ways. We cannot promise that you will master the art of eating crab by the end of this episode, but we guarantee a thought-provoking conversation about trust that might just change the way you approach relationships and life itself. Tune in!
Welcome to Help Yourself. Food and Philosophy with Brian and Nick. I'm Nick and I'm Brian. Thank you, brian. The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. Thanks, ernest Hemingway. What's?
Speaker 2:eating. Brian, that's a little bit. That's hazardous. I feel like that's a hazardous way to go about.
Speaker 1:Life is risky, brother, Every time you open your eyes as you're rolling the dice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, and that's I would be good with snake eyes.
Speaker 1:What do you mean?
Speaker 2:Well, what am I eating? So I'm fresh off vacation so I actually had a few food experiences that I wanted to talk about, the first one being a I hadn't had crab for a long time. We went to a place that has seafood, so down on the Gulf of Mexico, and there was a lot of places that serve seafood and I rarely will get lobster or crab, and the reason why is just because it's so pricey. But I was on vacation and I'm like you know what, I'm gonna splurge a little. I'm gonna get myself some snow crab legs it was like a crab boil, you know and came with like eight crab legs and corn and potatoes and you know side. I think it had like a side of something else as well, and so I can say that I was a little bit disappointed. So I forgot.
Speaker 2:It's the thing is, I forgot how much work it was to eat crab, like I'm so used to, like getting like a crab roll or a crab cake or something like that. That's just like no, you pull the crab out of the crab for me and I'll eat the crab. And this they just bring like one of those plastic nets you know. They have like those plastic nets that hold it all together so that while you're boiling your stuff you know it doesn't all like fly all over the place and they, you know so they give it to you on the plate with butter and with, like other, you know, the accoutre-mol, if you will. Wow, wow.
Speaker 1:That was crazy. Yeah, multi-lingual vocabulary here, geez.
Speaker 2:Everyone's why I like to drop a bomb like that on this podcast, you know. Man, I am baffled Anyway, so I had all the stuff with it. See how I downgraded that to just stuff.
Speaker 2:And it's just stuff, stuff that comes with it, related stuff. So they gave me all the tools, they gave me like the cracker thing and they gave me this like little tiny mini fork with two prongs on it. That was plastic, so you could like poke the stuff out and pull the stuff out and all this stuff and it was for like my whole family was done eating completely. And they're like are you ever going to finish? I'm like dude, I'm barely starting. This. This is like takes me forever. And then you crack open the stuff and it's like sometimes very disappointing for all the work. You like crack it open, you get the leg open and you're like, wow, there's like one bite of meat in here, like mm, that was good and okay. Now I got to crack something else, you know.
Speaker 1:And that had to be terrible for you as a peacemaker. Like everyone's just watching you eat Like are you done yet? Well, I would say the rest of the I can just take it home.
Speaker 2:I can just throw it away.
Speaker 1:It's okay, I don't need to eat.
Speaker 2:I mean I will say that the restaurant we went to was crazy anyway, because it was like picture, an open warehouse style restaurant with, like, if you've seen those gigantic fans, like if you've ever been to Costco or one, or like sometimes they haven't been Home Depot or Lowe's, you know the big, huge. Actually there's a brand name like called Big Ass Fans. That is and that wasn't a cuss, because it's the actual brand name. That's like these gigantic fans that they put into these places. Right, I've seen them in gyms and things. Hey, it's Dory, look at that. Hey, good to see you. Dory, she can't hear me because she's here in your.
Speaker 1:Yeah, say hi Hello. Hello, dory, very hot, then we'll be home. We are recording.
Speaker 2:Dory's delivering the food. Yeah, so this picture like an open warehouse style thing with like industrial style tables, metal chairs, but these tables were like built for gigantic parties, so like there were tables next to us that could hold 12 people, you know easily. And so there were these huge family parties because this is an area where people are on vacation with their extended family, there's going to be larger parties and it was a very like. You know, at one end it was like the whole end of it was a gigantic bar and it wasn't busy when we were there, but it was just. But then here's the other crazy thing about it.
Speaker 2:The reason why I said it was crazy is not just that that sounds like a pretty standard, like hey, it's a crab boil kind of restaurant, but every hour someone came out on a microphone and the whole staff came out and like did a dance and like they said anybody who has birthdays in the next two months, you need to point that person out for us. And then they told those people to stand on their table, on top of their table. So like these people are standing on top of the tables and they're like, hey, we got to wish them a happy birthday. It was the craziest restaurant I've ever been to.
Speaker 2:I went to the bathroom and I came out and there was somebody with a microphone and people were standing on the tables. I was like what is happening right now? I have no idea what's going on here.
Speaker 1:That doesn't sound very sanitary.
Speaker 2:I was. That's exactly the question I asked. I was like, how did they get this around the sanitation laws? This is crazy. Like people with their, did you?
Speaker 1:Do you look at the health food score on the way in? Was it like a 72? No, to be honest, they did not.
Speaker 2:I did not. I just ate the food and had a good time, and yeah, and then, yeah, so anyway. So I had this, I had the crab boil. It took me forever. I didn't get very much meat out, even though it was like a one pound. It says it was a one pound crab boil. I feel like maybe there was four or five ounces of meat in that. It was so.
Speaker 2:That's including the shells and the butter, the shell and everything else exactly, and so I was saying I was a little bit. I would have much rather have had like peel and eat shrimp, because at least those I know they're easier to peel. You know how much meat's gonna be coming out of them, because there's a thin, thin skin on them and they usually are pretty big and hefty and I should have gotten that. But anyway, overall I mean, the flavor was good, everything was good with it. It was. There was nothing wrong with it. It's just I forgot how hard it was to deal with that and also, if there's nobody else at your table eating that, then you're gonna be the last one eating, for sure. There's no way. So anyway, that was my experience with the crab. I probably won't be getting crab anytime soon, unless it's a crab cake or a crab roll and somebody else has done the heavy lifting for me.
Speaker 1:So I think together we need to invent the crab shake. The crab shake, you know, it's so convenient. You don't even have to do anything, you just suck through a straw.
Speaker 2:That does not sound appetizing at all. So okay, so that Brian's beverage corner. What am I drinking, too? I've got my shaker bottle here.
Speaker 1:I'm not shaker bottle.
Speaker 2:I've got my Fahrenheit bottle here with some Agua water in it I've got. I also have a protein bottle, a shaker with a protein coffee drink in it that I've been drinking, the thing that has weaned me off of my Starbucks for a little while. I only have Starbucks as a treat now and then this and a few more episodes too. I'm sure I'm going to be talking about this. We went to a candy store that was like Brian's beverage corner dream, because it had like the weirdest. It had like weird beverage after weird beverage, after weird beverage after weird beverage and I was like I'm getting a bunch of these. So the first one is I've never tried it before, but have you ever heard of a drink called Balls? Yeah, b-a-w-l-s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's like Wow.
Speaker 2:It's been around for a long time, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's what 20, 30 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been around a while, I've just never tried one before 25 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's probably like the OG energy drink, because it's been around forever and it was Guarana is the source for the caffeine or whatever, and that was before everybody was doing Guarana in their drinks. But I bought a orange soda Balls. That is really cool. Actually I'm drinking on it right now, so that's given me the energy to push through. It's a. I just taste like an orange soda. I didn't get the original flavor so I'd be interested to see what the original flavor is. But interesting, like I said, the OG it is a little bit. This one is like the full sugar version, so it's like 120 calories for this bottle. But I was like, yeah, I'm gonna give it a shot and see, but it tastes good and you can let me know as we go through this record if you see me amped up. You know, really, I did look it up just to see because I was curious about how much caffeine it has in it and it doesn't have that much.
Speaker 2:They said for this is a 10 ounce bottle and they said for a 10 ounce bottle it's about 65 milligrams of caffeine, which is about half a cup of coffee. So compared to the current day energy drinks, there are like 200 and 300 milligrams of caffeine. It's actually pretty low, so I don't imagine that I'll get a little crazy with it. The coffee protein that I drink does have caffeine in it as well, so I'm sort of doubling up a little bit. But yeah, so that's it. That's Brian's beverage corner. That's my crab adventure, and I was a little crabby about it. You are what you eat. All right, what are you eating?
Speaker 1:Well, it's a hearty man's soup. I don't. I don't know the brand, I just know it's like. I think it's like steak and vegetable soup. Be careful how you say that beef.
Speaker 2:But hearty man. No, just don't say hearty. You know you can't. You gotta put the spaces in there. You can't be a hearty man soup, because then it's a soup man. You have to say a hearty man, hearty man, not hearty man soup, that's man soup.
Speaker 1:When I hear that, I think of like the locker room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's a. The jacuzzi Smell three or four guys, three or four guys in the jacuzzi man soup.
Speaker 1:Oh Okay, back backing away quickly. Yes, so a hearty, hearty man soup, but it's not quite hearty enough, I guess. Okay me, according to Dory. Yeah so not only does that stake in it, she had Some chicken wings that she took the meat off the bones. Oh nice, put in the soup as well and threw in some tater tots. So it's like there's wow and oh, and more potatoes. It's like, yeah, meaty, meaty, potato, potato soup. That's pretty cool. It's such yeah, it's, it's now, it's super hearty.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. It's great for this semi chili whether we're rolling with yeah, I've never heard of that tater tots in a soup.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it's you know. You know, I like, I like my culinary cuisine with tater tots. I've got tachos yeah, I've got. And I've talked about before how I love to put add stuff to soup. Right, the culmination of my culinary delights right in a single cuisine.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. What's the base, though? Is it like broth?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like a beef stew broth base. Yeah, yeah, you know, with vegetables. But you know carrots, peas, little chunks of potato, little chunks of quote steak I mean it's still store-bought canned soup, so it's like. You're probably the bare minimum for it to qualify as steak instead of hamburger. Got it Okay it's still still good. It's got some looks like some onions and there as well Box of carrots.
Speaker 2:She spice the chunks of carrots. Yeah, I had to make it more hearty yeah.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Well, that sounds good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's good and, in terms of beverage, I have lots of water. Needing that hydration is important when you're speaking and I also have, because Starbucks was out of both Nitro cold brew and cold brew. What? Yeah, it was a busy day. That's crazy they. I know that's a big chunk of menu. Yeah they. They made an iced americano for me and charged me for a regular cold brew.
Speaker 2:Oh nice.
Speaker 1:I'm jazzed both in terms of energy and wallet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, they know you over there, there You're a regular, you. They're like oh hey, dory, how you doing, because you're always ordering at a door.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's. There's many of them who know my name too. Like though it's, it's a pleasant little surprise when they call it. You know when, instead of saying Dory, they say Nick, I'll say that's one of the best things.
Speaker 2:It's one of the best things that any Establishment can do and it sounds so narcissistic. But if I go into someplace and I, oh hey, brian, how are you like that? I'm just automatically like, oh, you guys are awesome, I'm tipping you $100, you know like, just like. You know like it's just it's, it is very like, but it there's a some kind of psychology to that, is like them knowing what you're gonna order. In fact, I talked to a guy that a guy that I work with.
Speaker 2:Before he took a job in the financial sector, he was working at a Starbucks and he got to be a store manager here locally, and this was, you know, 20 years ago. But he said, yeah, they're regulars. They would see the regulars walking in from the parking lot. They, they seem, get it out of their car and they would start making their drink Because they're like, oh, jim's coming in, he always takes a this and I'm like that's good, that's like that. You know and I know it's a little presumptuous because you might want to vary your drink every once in a while, but you know, the thing is, I think that people on a Weird, deeper level like that and you know Something like a social contract or something, you know something like you know, Like like a trust in, in your fellow human man or human person, excuse me, that is hey, wow I.
Speaker 2:My faith is, is a, you know, reinvigorated in my fellow human being or whatever. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this. This is definitely one of our nominations for best forced segue.
Speaker 2:What are you talking about? I'm just talking about the barbons.
Speaker 1:Well, you've sprinkled in references to our intended topic so well. I think we should just jump right in yeah, we probably should at this point, that's. Yeah. All right, you want to yeah, we want to explore that just the whole concept of Well, maybe not the whole concept, but all that we presently comprehend yeah or yeah discovered together on the aspect of trust right, and one of the things that was fascinating to me is the, the panel P and and plethora of definitions available to us.
Speaker 1:Yes on trust. Regarding trust, mm-hmm, you, you got the the litany before you, or you will me to rattle things off, or?
Speaker 2:I can do this. You can rattle a couple off. I've got a couple in front of me as well.
Speaker 1:Okay. So there's a assured reliance on the character, ability, strength or truth of Someone or something, or one in which confidence is placed. I don't get that one. Let's pretend I didn't read that.
Speaker 2:All right, you didn't hear that.
Speaker 1:People yeah yeah, we'll take that out in post. Next your turn.
Speaker 2:I have so now, a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something.
Speaker 1:There's reliance on future payment or property such as merchandise delivered. I'm looking at Merriam-Webster, if you're following along at home.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was looking at Oxford, so that's why we're differing. That's good.
Speaker 1:Oxford.
Speaker 2:I mean awkward Well, and this is the next definition is one of my favorites is an arrangement whereby a person in parentheses, a trustee holds property as its nominal owner for the good of the one or more beneficiaries. So, which is what I do all the time, and it's interesting to me that obviously is using the same language trusts and trustees and trustors and stuff like that but at its base level it really does have a. There has to be a trusting relationship there, because you're putting your faith and trust in the person and relying on that person to do what you are asking them to do in the trust document.
Speaker 1:So right, the executor of the trust right Executing the will.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that feels really deep, but I don't know how to talk anymore about that, so let's move on.
Speaker 2:We don't get. We don't get on this podcast. You know, we just go shallow.
Speaker 1:Right, Right Broad and low Right Care or trustee. So there's the idea of a charge or duty imposed in faith or confidence or as a condition of some relationship, and the example is like the child was committed to her trust or committed to you know the same thing being care was committed to her care. I'm getting into like the fourth definitions of these are more and more obscure.
Speaker 2:Well and I'll say that's almost another legal thing is it's talking about guardian. You know somebody who's your guardian and that's obviously a guardian is a very trusted relationship. That person is in charge of another person, another human being, and obviously when you have kids, you're in charge of them, at least until they're 18 under the eyes of the law. You know you're responsible for them, their well being and everything else. And then once they turn 18, then some of the rules slightly change, even though I have an 18 year old at home and he's completely under my care because he doesn't work and has no income and so so he's completely dependent upon us, me and my wife, to take care of him. But you know that relationship is obviously a trusting relationship that has to have a baseline. You know level of hey that you're going to do what it takes to make sure that this person's taken care of.
Speaker 1:I think it's an interesting dichotomy between you know what's legal and what's like actual yes.
Speaker 2:Like that, just sort of highlights one of those examples.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, we were, we actually. I was having a conversation recently about this and it's just an example of what you just said is not necessarily relating to trust, but there is a weird I will call it a red zone around the time that any child turns 18. And the reason why is because some of the rules about, for instance, child pornography and other things, change because now that you are an 18 year old so like as an example, you know two 17 year olds are dating, one of them turns 18. Now, all of a sudden, some type of consensual behavior between the two of them is looked at differently under the eyes of the law, because one is now over 18 years old. So there's this weird that's the only time that that happens in your life. If you're 21 and you're dating a 20 year old, there's no difference.
Speaker 2:If you're a 16, 16 year old and you're dating a 16 year old, there's no difference.
Speaker 1:But if you're 18 year old, dating a 17 year old, then there's a difference under the eyes of the law, right, and while that hard line is drawn, like each person is very different, there's people who are 32 years old, who aren't mature enough for relationships, right, that's right, you know, just to sort of hyperboleize the situation. So, yeah, it's like it's a very gradient sort of thing where every relationship is unique and different. The law has to draw a line and, yeah, that red zone is an interesting way to put it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really one of the only times that we draw right, like legally driving or legally drinking or legally selling alcohol or all the other you know stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, it's one of the only times that your behavior is looked at differently, based on just a number of days you've been on this earth, so you know it's your behavior. Could you be behaving in exactly the same way you behaved before you turned 18, but now it's a crime, whereas three days ago, when you were 17, it was not a crime?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's a weird thing and, like I said, this doesn't have to do with our subject today, but it is an interesting distinction and what you were making. Sure, you know, not like we've never gone on a tangent on this podcast ever before, but and I fully trust that we can move on to.
Speaker 1:Trust is a verb right, like that's another Right, yeah. So what are some verbs of trust?
Speaker 2:I think I have the same, a similar one to you believe in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of. So the quote they have is I should never have trusted her Right. So you know they don't have in there, which is interesting. Maybe we'll get into this in this topic. But like they didn't put faith, they have reliability, truth, ability and strength of, which to me is all like sort of circling around the word have faith in you know, someone else or something you know.
Speaker 1:So anyway, Well, when, just to inject something semi random, because, looking at all these definitions, right, like we're different ways of saying the same thing, because for trust is a verb. I'm seeing seven examples here, before we even get to the more legal stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's all about placing confidence and reliability in that sort of thing and it reminds me like I've got to think, and I'm going to research this to test my theory. But trust has a strong connection with truth.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And like, I feel like this idea of trust and truth are very early in our concepts as humans, developing language and social connections, relationships, tribes and all that stuff. Yeah, and if I remember right, the word truth actually is something that pulls from the idea of tree, which for a long time was our center, right Like everything was relative to a center, to the tree, and you know the place that you came back to, the base, right Like tree, trust, truth. They all sort of not just start with a TR, but it's, it has something to do with our roots to make a stupid pun out of it. Yeah, all right, back to our definitions, while I do some light research on the side here.
Speaker 2:Well, and looking further, when I pulled up the show more, there are actually other definitions that do mention faith. One of them is have faith or confidence. She trusted in the powers of justice, so to have faith or confidence in something else, I guess I feel like all of these are Well, I guess one of the things that we can sort of like go down the path of is sort of different types of trust or trust different type of trust, and one is sort of the it's not the shallower level, but there are different types of relationships we have in our life, so there's different types of trust in my mind for those different types of relationships. So the trust that you have in somebody who you might interact with once you know, every once in a while or a stranger you're in a. You know, as an example, like we were For our vacation, we were on a road trip, so we were going places where we were most likely never going to see those people ever again, the people that we were interacting with, the cashiers, the servers at the restaurants.
Speaker 2:You know, most likely we're never going to see those people again. Maybe if we do, it'd be years and years from now. But we don't have, we're not developing a relationship with that person, but we're interacting with them, and even in those relationships there's a certain level of trust that goes into it. And I think it's one of those types of things that we take for granted a little bit, because it's always there and you don't really even realize it. You just sort of give it because and this is, I guess I already mentioned earlier the social contract, but it's sort of like that it's like we assume that in all of these interactions in our life that people are going to behave in a certain way and that we're going to behave in a certain way, and then as long as everybody sort of keeps that going, then that's the amount of trust that you need to have. It's like, hey, I'm going to, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's like a baseline of trust either, that's, Anyone personally interact with within our culture is going to operate within 80 plus percent of the standards of the culture.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:It's like if you go to McDonald's in Kentucky and you go to McDonald's in Japan, you trust, you have a trust in the brand and the organization of McDonald's to give you roughly the same level of service. It might be a low bar, but you know that that bar is going to be met, give or take a few inches or whatever standard of unit you want to metaphorically use. Well, it's interesting, interesting idea oh go ahead.
Speaker 2:No, go ahead. I interrupted you.
Speaker 1:Well I'm just coming back to. I did do that light research. Oh yeah, and the etymology of trust does go to words that start with D-E-R-U and D-R, such and such and various languages like Nordic, germanic, indo-european. All of it talk about being firm, solid, with specialized senses towards wood or tree, oak and even the shaft of a spear. It's very much when you think about when an arrow flies, true, or the kinds of when they put their trust in tools and weapons to give them sources of food, like all of those early days of language.
Speaker 1:those things are all connected. I think it's interesting, though, that trust is something that's very abstract for something that started out very concrete or solid, I should say, as wood and tree. So anyway, there's that. Well, I think the truce is part of that too.
Speaker 2:Sorry, go on. That makes sense. Well, I guess I was just the point that I was sort of trying to go down the path of. Is the that type of, like I said, the trust that you need to give to people on an everyday basis that you really don't? And we're not talking about people who you interact with everyday Work relationships? You're significant others, you're extended family Although extended family sometimes you only see them at family reunions and other things like that. So maybe it is a lower level that you need to.
Speaker 2:You're like hey I only need to trust this person for a certain amount of time. The other thing that I think I'll bring up is For small talk. Right, exactly, trust them for small talk, yes, and there are some people who I see very rarely that I do not trust for small talk because I know what we're going to talk about and I don't want to talk about those subjects. And I know that we're going to talk about those subjects because that's that person's nature.
Speaker 1:So you know, it's like how do you know if someone's an atheist, vegan or yes, crossfit, or does CrossFit? Yeah, it's like, don't worry, they'll tell you. Yeah, don't worry.
Speaker 2:Wait a second, they'll tell you. Or, in my case, how do you know if somebody does their own podcast? It's Not really, I mean, I don't really go around saying it all the time, but everyone wants to mention it Anyway. No, but I feel like there's a connection here to how much do I need to rely on this person? Right, like how much? And that can be a short-term relationship like, for instance, an auto mechanic or something like that. You're like man, I'm placing a luck Because this person does something wrong. It could end in my death. I mean, say, worst case scenario, right, the wheel falls off your car and you crash and die.
Speaker 2:Or multiple deaths, yeah, right, so you're placing a lot of trust that I think a lot of people, at least me, like. I take that for granted a little bit. I think my I just assume, which I think is different than that's a good question, I don't know. Do you think that assuming something is a level of trust? Like I assume that my mechanic, when I say fix this, this and this, that they're gonna, how do I know if they changed my oil? I don't know that. I don't open the oil and look at it and smell it and taste it and do whatever you know. So I just assume, if I ask you to change my oil and pay you $100, that my oil's changed right, right. So is that the same as trusting? You're right, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they wave a little wand over it.
Speaker 2:So I'm gonna hurry potter stuff and my oil has now changed Vehicle fixium or whatever. I don't know what the spell would be. Well, it opens for a. But basically, you know, is that the same as trust? I don't know. I mean, like I said, it's just, it's in my mind because I'm thinking. I don't even consider that trust, I just consider that an assumption. But I guess it is trust. I don't know. What do you think?
Speaker 1:I like it. I think that's a solid connection. I want to think on more and it does create for me, like one of my favorite phrases. One of my favorite things to do is challenge assumptions, right, and I always thought that is kind of a skeptical thing. But with the kind of connection you're making, I realized that in a way, it is maybe a slightly healthy representation of anxiety, right, or a way to address anxiety or a lack of trust. Yeah, I think that's a good question. So, yeah, like I think I definitely think there's something there. Um, I guess, I guess I'll just say you're right, yeah, Wow, that's a bet.
Speaker 1:That's right, brian, but he's that you're right or he's that I admitted you're right. You said anything to add?
Speaker 2:I'm kind of like you, kind of pated me to a corner right.
Speaker 1:It's like I'm just saying I'm talking about trust and, yeah, if I don't, if I don't assume you're right, then I'm not trusting you.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's the best name tag ever by the way, Nick is taking his jacket off and he's got the best name tag ever on. Forgot I did that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's he put Starbucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's my Starbucks sticker For those of you out in the audience. He took his Starbucks sticker off of the coffee and put it on his left chest you know area on his shirt and it looks like it's in the name tag goes. Yeah, but it says like door. I'm sure it says Dory and it probably says americano or whatever you got.
Speaker 1:Well, they yeah grande.
Speaker 2:Oh they were, they were real sweet cream. Yeah yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:And you're in grande Well, so like I said, you are what you drink American grand, grand, grand.
Speaker 1:Some people call me trained, you know but yeah, I get what you're saying about, like they're sort of like a baseline amount of trust that we give people, and I think it does fly in the face of that phrase I don't know if everyone in the audience has heard it or not but trust is earned, not given. Yeah, it's like, actually, I think there is kind of a benefit of the doubt, you know, that we give to people. We at least trust that they're human. Yeah, at least trust that they have some morals. We just don't know which particular flavor of morality they adhere to, or what what rules they take as suggestions and vice versa. Yeah, you know their unique blend of trustworthiness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think one of the one of the connections we can make here too is you've already sort of touched on a little bit and we have just in our conversation back and forth If we can call this conversation or banter whatever the fact that there are certain people who have different attitudes about you know, some people approach things as, hey, I'm going to not trust anything until I'm given a reason to trust it. And there are other people who and I, find myself on the other end of the spectrum. I think I trust actually a little bit too much. I think I'm slightly. I could probably be conned, I could probably be. You know, I'm slightly gullible in that, because I'm very trusting of people and and you know, who knows, I may have been taken advantage of a few times in my life because of that. So I think that's interesting and making it, you know, as we always do, trying to make ties to subjects we've previously talked about, I think that ties into personality types. You know me being a nine and being a peacekeeper, is you?
Speaker 2:know, I'm going to. I'm going to assume that other people are coming at the world the same way, like your worldview is, hey, I assume that most people are like me, and so I'm going to go ahead and that's how I'm going to approach everything else. Unfortunately, not everyone's a nine, some people are eights and they're hey, I want to win, if I want to win, and I want to make you lose, right and so so, like I said, and your, your personality type is much different in the way and the way that you you know you approach things is much more questioning, and I know when I first, I mean as a reminder I am, I am also a peacemaker, but sure.
Speaker 2:I also have strong, strong analytical or investigator type, exactly, and we can go back to strengths, strengths finders to see that because I'm more personal, I'm a more personality. Three out of my five is personality, but yours are all analytical. You know behind the scenes kind of or not all but most are not personality based, and so that's the difference between us in terms of the nines that we are, but it always it gets me. I'm it when I first started even just doing like when I met you and when I first started doing this podcast with you. It always gets me. When it's like, I'm always like why are you questioning this? Why, why? Why do you keep asking questions? Why don't you just like trust this? You know? Why don't you just like trust what I'm saying, like, and you can to me? I felt like very distrusting of me, but that was my own thing of like taking something personally, you know. But the thing is it can feel like that, I'm sure. I'm sure I don't know.
Speaker 2:You tell me, do you think people at your work are always like dude? Why is Nick always have to like? Why do you always have to like ask questions about stuff? Why don't you just like be like yeah, let's go with that, you know, and you're like well, let's talk, even if and it's like with you, it's even if you something, you're all. Yeah, I totally agree with that 100%, but let's ask 50 questions about it first before we go forward with it, you know so, yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, people don't like being asked why. Because it has put them on the defense right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's. I don't know. There's different attitudes you can have when you're questioning. There could be, like that, skepticism of the person or skepticism of the impression, the way the evidence was gathered or the conclusions drawn from the evidence.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:But it's also just like there's a curiosity to. It's like hey, I'm, that's a really compelling conclusion. How did you get there? Like maybe I could develop compelling conclusions of my own from with different material altogether right, like I could just be interested in the thought process in general.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's what I'll follow it up with is, like you know, even though my first impression was that for a while, I've come to learn that it's to me. Now I view it as more of you wanting to be completely thorough in analyzing really anything, and it doesn't matter whether it's the coffee you're ordering or whether it's the program that you're putting in place for your work, or whether it's something with Toastmasters or whether anything else. It's like. You just want to make sure that the questions get asked, and many times people don't ask the question, so it's a valuable resource to have that. You're like hey, let's just kick the tires. I mean, I'm not saying anything's wrong with it, but let me kick the tires, let's just make sure, let's verify.
Speaker 2:Well, let's just make sure we're all seeing the same thing here, Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and honestly, brian, I used to be a very trusting person until one day I went to a Chinese buffet and I didn't check the health score until after I had five plates.
Speaker 2:Oh no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that made me just that. That was the beginning, that was the trigger point for my downward spiral into questioning everything I had about as many unpleasant bowel movements as I had plates, and I learned valuable lessons in trusting but verifying, and maybe verifying before trusting right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because, like hey, is the health food score 76? Maybe don't eat there or have one plate and yeah, eat a lot of good food.
Speaker 2:At least know what you're getting into.
Speaker 1:Exactly and then what you're going to be doing afterwards, right, you can carve out the time in your schedule If it's right to you, that would.
Speaker 2:Well, I just, like I said, I feel like I feel like there's a point to be made in in those, the levels of trust that we're talking about. Like I said, not the longer term relationships we have in our life or the people we interact with all the time. But you know, there's that social contract and another concept that we have talked about in the past on this podcast that we, as I said to you before, we were recording like we didn't know that these were called this, but I've been reading a lot of things about intrusive thoughts. So, you know thoughts of, hey, what if I just? You know it's usually negative.
Speaker 2:It's like, you know, you're walking by somebody that's looking off the edge of a cliff and you're like, hey, if I just pushed that person, they would fall to their death. You know that kind of thought. It's an intrusive thought. That's really not something to be acted upon, unless you have some other kind of mental problem, right. But the normal person has those thoughts and then goes, yeah, that's stupid, why would you that? No, you don't kill other people, you don't push people off cliffs, right? But that's the kind of trust that we're talking about here, and I know it's extreme. It's extreme what we're talking about, but there's so many interactions we have every day that could result in our death. This man this sounds like I'm, that sounds like I'm just turning into like the total negative.
Speaker 2:Yeah you're not showing Like we could die every day, every time you wake up out of bed, you could die. You get out of bed, you could die. You take a shower, you could die. Like I don't know why I'm in this kind of death mood, anyway, no, but my I guess my boy's spiral Exactly so.
Speaker 2:No, but like this is the kind of trust we're talking about, of your, that I think again, I feel like we take this for granted is when you're driving down the street it's a two lane street and all that's separating you from the oncoming traffic is a yellow line we're trusting that that person is not falling asleep, is not inebriated, is also not just going to jerk the wheel and run into the front of our car. And and that's a that's an interesting concept to me it's the. It's a lot of trust to give, like when you at first, when I thought about it, I thought well, these are short term. When you have a short term interaction with someone, the level of trust is very low. But when you start to think about it, the way that I'm thinking about it, all of a sudden now you're like well, actually I'm trust.
Speaker 2:This is all. That's a lot of trust to give to other people that I have. No, I don't know what their name is, I don't know where they live, I don't know what their circumstances are. I don't know anything about this person and I'm just giving the level of trust that, hey, just don't do this so that you don't injure, maim or kill me. So I thought it was just interesting, because it was Like I said, the interactions. You would just automatically think it's a low level of trust, but to me it can actually be a higher level of trust.
Speaker 1:We trust that people have similar survival instincts as we do. They have just as much interest in staying on their side of the road as we do. It's just that very small percentage of population who are unhinged or highly depressive or depressed or whatever. I think the other thing I wanted to bring up in this conversation is the marshmallow test. Oh yeah, for those in the audience who may have heard of it, you might be thinking why am I bringing up delayed gratification in our conversation with trust, if you're not familiar with the marshmallow test? Very briefly, it was just an experiment, a social experiment done in the 1960s, popularized in the 90s, where kids were put in a room. A proctor or a scientist, somebody in a lab coat, said hey, here's a marshmallow on a plate. You can eat it now, but I'm going to go away and come back If the marshmallow is still there. When I come back in about 15 minutes, I'll give you a second marshmallow and you can eat both of them. Then they just watched the kid for those 15 minutes before the person came back. There were kids who did and there were kids who didn't. It was all this interesting to everybody about what tactics they used to imagine that the marshmallow wasn't real, or turn away or whatever to delay gratification. Then they followed those kids 15 years later, 25 years later, and compared them against the control group. Lo and behold, those who waited for the second marshmallow were more likely to graduate college, more likely to make more money, more likely to have long-term relationships that last and were happy, so on and so forth. The whole lesson, the whole takeaway was hey, those who learned delayed gratification early win over the long period. It's a great story.
Speaker 1:Except the experiment hasn't been proven out in repeatable experiments. What they've since learned is that what it really tests is whether how much the child trusts adults, trusts strangers, kids. What they found is that kids who grew up in impoverished homes or youths of homes are much less likely to trust the experiment person who says I'll be back in about 15 minutes. And not surprisingly, kids who grew up in those sorts of environments have fewer advantages, have fewer opportunities to take advantage of, and so fewer roles at the dice mean fewer chances for success and therefore less likely to go to college, less likely to have great careers and less likely to have long-term relationships.
Speaker 1:And I list those three things separately. I'm a firm believer that one does not need college to have a fulfilling career I'm myself and proof and one does not. Yeah, all that stuff. There are three distinct things that hopefully correlate in each person's life, and so that's. The thing, though, is that when our daily experience and daily interaction with people whether it's authority figures or friends or family, or all the above prove that people are generally untrustworthy, that bleeds out into faith in society, faith in the system or lack thereof, and that betrayal of trust, I don't know gets reinforced right. There's the confirmation bias, too. That makes that a downward spiral, or an upward spiral, depending on the situation. So, yeah, I just I don't know. I think that's a valuable consideration and takeaway from the Marshmallow Test.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Though the Marshmallow Test doesn't prove the benefits of delayed gratification, I do still believe in the benefits of delayed gratification Sure. I just want to make sure that the tests match the conclusions you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, rant over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's your chance.
Speaker 1:Brian.
Speaker 2:No, I was just going to say I just comment on it.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that I mean it's logical, which I say that in a certain way because you know a lot of things that are logical doesn't necessarily mean they're right. It's just how we talk about confirmation bias you already mentioned, like there's a lot of people who go by logic and you're like no logic doesn't necessarily track here in the sciences it's. It's what can we prove? What's been proven? What's the science say Right, even the, even the soft sciences, the social sciences. You know, there there are experiments just like that. One is a social science experiment and but I think that it's interesting that you know.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I that goes through my mind is that is is the assumptions that are made by the kid, that not necessarily made consciously, but the assumptions that are made by the kid that is in that experiment is that the system works completely the way that it's supposed to work. So when somebody says to you, don't eat this marshmallow, you're going to get two marshmallows, your brain has to say, okay, I and I'm going to drop the bomb of this word I'm going to trust that that's going to happen, that when that person in the white lab coat comes back in I'm actually going to get two. And if that works, then in your head you say, well, yeah, it is delayed gratification, it is everything else. But in what? If your head says, yeah, but that person could also come back in the room and say you know what things have changed while I was out of the room? Actually, you're not going to get the marshmallow that you had before and you're going to get no marshmallows.
Speaker 2:So if you have that in your brain, you know, or your brain subconsciously maybe, even leaps to that conclusion, then having the one marshmallow now is the better option. If there's a potential that you will get zero marshmallows at least, then you get one right, and so I feel like that's a. It's something that again goes back to the personality type or the experiences that that person's had. I know that some of the articles that I read about basic levels of trust are they talked a lot about behaviors. So you doing behaviors that make you trustworthy, but also other people behaving in a way that allows you to understand that they are trustworthy, and in that case you've got children who are trying to learn how the world works, and their only way to learn how the world works is their experiences of it. And if their experiences of it are, hey, you might get dinner, you might not, then that's that's what they're going to filter everything through whether that's known to them at the time.
Speaker 1:How hungry how hungry was the kid when he walked into the experiment, you know like do you have breakfast or not? Like you, bet, he's going to eat that marshmallow now.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right. Or she, you know, or even I mean even go the other direction is like a kid that believes that he'll get two marshmallows but doesn't like marshmallows. So then you're like you know, like you know what, I'll delay the gratification to two, but I don't really even want the one, you know so.
Speaker 1:Like I guess I'll eat it now so I don't have to eat two.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, yeah, I was like no, I already ate it, you don't need to give me another one. I'm fine, I'm good. Thank you. Do you have any apples back there? I'll take an apple, it's hilarious.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, so so the only other thing I'll say in this, like in this sort of you know section of the you know our episodes that we're doing, of you know talking about sort of more individualized or smaller level relationships, is the correlation between self-esteem, which I this is something that was a surprise to me is a correlation of self-esteem and trust, and people with higher self-esteem versus lower self-esteem, and whether or not they were more likely to trust or distrust people, and I'm always into this. This is a big episode. If you have the bingo card, you've already won, because I've dropped like every possible thing out there. So the you know the Nathaniel Brandon book, which is the one that I always go back to.
Speaker 1:The.
Speaker 2:Deficient of Self-Esteem. Right, and I pulled it up the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of self or, excuse me, being worthy of happiness, so that the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life is trust in yourself, like I trust that I have the resources and the brain power and the everything else to deal with the basic challenges that I will incur throughout my lifetime. And so do you trust that? Do you trust yourself? Do you trust that you've been given the tools to deal with the things that come up in life, the things that everyone's going to, everyone's going to experience in life at some point? You know, and the really the correlation that they've come up with, is that people with lower self-esteem are less likely to trust others. And this is me just trying to connect the dots is, if you don't trust yourself, then how are you going to trust others? Right?
Speaker 2:So, again going back to the. If you don't feel like you're, you feel like the rest of the world is acting the way that you act, or has the same, is looking at the world through the same glasses. You're looking through the world at in with. So I just feel like that's a I don't know. I feel like it's an interesting, interesting thing about self-trust versus trusting others.
Speaker 1:It's a bit of that projection game, right, like if I'm trustworthy, I kind of assume other people are trustworthy too, if I can count on myself now. I'm a person. Hey, you're a person, I can probably count on you too.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:I think there's almost like this reverse projection that can go on too. I feel like I have this intuition that if someone doesn't find me trustworthy, I also don't trust them as much, because you can't con a con artist, you can't fake a faker. If they're probably projecting. If they themselves aren't trustworthy, they probably don't trust other people, right? I'm looking at them and reading their own projection. If they can't trust others, they're probably operating from the assumption that hey, I'm not trustworthy, so I don't trust people.
Speaker 2:There's got to be a bias. That's regard to that. I don't know if we covered it or not, but I feel like the natural tendency for most people is to assume other people. So again, you can't con a con artist. If you're somebody who cons people, you're going to assume everyone in the world is trying to con you, right?
Speaker 1:Right, everybody's got a gimmick or a game, right, what's your angle? What's their angle? Angle, that's it, thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're basically your trust levels are really low because you are trying to find people that have high levels of trust so that you can con them, right, and you're trying to develop that trust, but you also have a guard up because you're saying, yeah, this is not how the world works. If you will, well, and so, yeah, the only other thing that we haven't mentioned and I think I meant to mention it back when we were talking about we were earlier in this episode, I can't remember what we were talking about but is and this is again another name drop but Steven Covey, as I name drop in every episode, talks about the emotional bank account. Right, and that's in essence in having trusting relationships is, every time you do something, you do a behavior that makes you trustworthy or that makes the other person trust you more, you're making a small deposit into this emotional bank account right.
Speaker 1:I think let's go in deep on that in the next episode, okay, but I do think it plays into sort of like whenever you meet a total random person, it's almost like they start with a standard balance of that emotional bank account.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe if I'm not a trusting person, then the total stranger starts with a negative balance.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:They start in debt Like they've got to. They got to prove they're trustworthy. Yeah, Things assumed there.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Or more, like most people, people start with the base level of trust. If they've got a barista apron on, I trust you start with a base balance of difficult barista, you know, or a base balance of decent person. So yeah, but I think when we talk about personal relationships there's a lot more depth to that emotional bank concept.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that was the only and that was really the only thing I wanted to mention is that that you're a person, you're more on the individual level, your personality, in those smaller relationships or their smaller interactions, plays into. Where does that and my like as an example, mine I'm, I think, too trusting. So I think most people for me start with a positive you know, a positive level of trust, and that's probably too trusting for strangers because I have the ability to. You know, potentially somebody could use that assumption or use that thing that I'm making that trust balance or that emotional bank balance in order to take advantage of me, whereas somebody who starts as a skeptic, in a negative or a zero balance, like, hey, you got to earn my trust. That they're, you know they're gonna, they're protecting themselves a little bit more, they're not going to be hurt as much or potentially swindled.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and I think that goes back to their opening quote right, the best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
Speaker 2:Dude, that is crazy. We did full circle in exactly an hour right back to the, the opening quote. We've never done that. That's amazing. Oh, hashtag, pro, pro for life, all right. Well, so yeah, in the next episode I think we'll talk about some, some of the other other types of relationships, different levels of trust and more about the emotional bank account and other things like that. But, all right, I think that's the best closing we can do next time. Agreed, all right, I trust you Brian.