The Power of Human Connection with Paul Boudrye

In this episode of the Entropy Podcast, host Francis Gorman speaks with Paul Boudrye, founder and CEO of Success Genome Incorporated. They explore Paul's unique entrepreneurial journey, the concept of the 'success genome', and the importance of human relationships in achieving success. The conversation delves into the evolving role of AI, the significance of friendship, and the challenges of loneliness in a hyper-connected world. Paul emphasizes the need for a shift in how we build networks and teams, advocating for a more human-centric approach to collaboration and success.

Takeaways:

• Paul emphasizes the importance of human relationships in achieving success.
• The concept of a 'success genome' is about showcasing individual talents beyond traditional resumes.
• Loneliness is a growing issue in a hyper-connected world, often exacerbated by technology.
• Friendship plays a crucial role in personal and professional success.
• The current job application process is inefficient and lacks human interaction.
• AI should be seen as a tool for co-evolution, reflecting our own humanity.
• Investing in human capital and relationships can solve many societal issues.
• The meaning of life can be distilled to the quality of friendships we maintain.
• We need to teach young people the value of true friendship and connection.
• Laughter and human interaction are essential for a fulfilling life.

Sound Bites:

• "Everything comes from friendship."
• "Loneliness is a state of mind."
• "We don't laugh enough in life."

Transcript

Francis Gorman (00:01.567)
Hi everyone, welcome to the entropy podcast. I'm your host, Francis Gorman. If you're enjoying our content, please take a moment to like and follow the show wherever you get your podcast from. Today I'm joined by Paul Boudrye founder and CEO of Success Genome Incorporated, a team of wicked problem solvers that combine human intelligence and machine intelligence to connect people, solve problems and build businesses. As the founder of Success Genome Institute, Bin Khai.me and the Friendship Institute, Paul is redefining the metrics of success, intelligence,

Paul Boudrye (00:29.166)
So, for the technical question, I'll just leave it that. Wow, it's a pleasure to be here, Francis.

Francis Gorman (00:30.443)
and relational design for rapidly transforming world. Paul, it's lovely to have you here with me today.

Francis Gorman (00:39.661)
Paul, I know we've been talking over the last while and you've got an interesting backstory and different paths that you've gone through without your career. Can you maybe give the listeners a bit of a flavor of your career to date just to ground the conversation before we kick in, please?

Paul Boudrye (00:55.219)
Sure, it's been anything but typical. The summary would be kind of an entrepreneurial mindset kid all through my life and technology always played a role. My dad was in the linear programming, chemical engineering business, always had computers at the house. I never took to the programming side. I was more interested in the application of what the technology could do.

And so that sort of sparked my curiosity. And then when the web started to make some noise in 94, 95, I started an internet company back then, which was a hyper local internet directory. And that sort of put me on this internet path. And around that time, I also was doing some reading and research from a gentleman named John Hagle, the third, which has really contributed to a lot of what I've done today around an infomediary, which is kind of a dynamic.

advocate for the people and the consumers between the folks that are trying to access their data information, sort of an advocate filtering system. And that sort of set the stage and the seeds for where we are today, which is, as I've described myself to people as a misfit toy or somewhere out of a square peg and no hole. It's how do you solve for that type of a person that isn't necessarily one track.

minded, right? Doctor, lawyer, someone and so forth, right? And how do you then find a way to showcase those details, those data points, those bits of genius inside any human being and put them in a context that's beyond a resume, which is still to this day something we've been using since Leonardo da Vinci actually created the first resume in 1482. So I find it fascinating and remarkable that we're using the same instrument, same asset.

that's been around for over 500 years and yet we're deploying some of the most sophisticated technology and intelligence to look at an artifact that literally is an artifact of over 500 years old. So the success genome sort of was born out of that. It was inspired by the human genome. We all have a genetic code. It's not something you wear on your sleeve, right? But we are aware that we have it and nothing really interesting happened until we mapped it, right? We discovered it back in the 50s, think, with Crick or whoever it was, Watson.

Paul Boudrye (03:10.19)
And nothing really remarkable happened until we were able to map and sort of decode it and sort of solve for the math. And around that time, I was saying, well, that's really good. So we can have this way to live long and prosper and maybe live to 125 years old. And the same research I was doing on the other side of the coin with Gallup was that most people are mostly miserable in a state of not engaged, disengaged. 70 % of the people in the workforce are where

You spend eight, 10 hours of every day. And it's like, well, wait a minute. So we're living 125, and yet we're going to be miserable at our job for 100 years? That seems just like cruel and unusual. So I thought, well, what if there's a thing called a success genome? And what is that? And that's kind of led me on the path to where we are today.

Francis Gorman (03:56.993)
That's fascinating, so it is Paul. And 125, I think I'll have to go talk to my GP and see what he has to say about that. He keeps telling me to lose weight and take more tablets, so we'll have to see what happens.

Paul Boudrye (04:02.926)
Well, you know.

Well, you know, eventually there'll be a pill for all of this stuff and you'll just be plugged in and then you'll be, you know, you'll be able to do whatever you want. You'll be sort of mostly robot, right? But you're still walking around in a meat puppet suit.

Francis Gorman (04:18.604)
Sounds like a C now, Wally. But I think that's a different conversation. when I'm reading some of your content and some of the data that you've online, you call yourself a philosopher of the possible. What does that mean in practice and how does it guide the way you design systems and companies?

Paul Boudrye (04:21.346)
Mm. Mm.

Yeah, definitely.

Paul Boudrye (04:39.342)
Yeah, I I play with words. My friends tease me because I make up words. I recreate new words. And so it's it's always been a bit and a half full kind of glass guy and an eternal optimist that could be sort of be borderline borderline on utopian. And so I've learned over the course of time that there's for every, you know, unbelievable good, there's always an unbelievable bad. Right. We sort of have to look at the

sort of the yin and the yang of that. And so for me, I really take a position of knowing nothing, Francis. And so it's again, it's sort of, know, Zen, a little Eastern, this little dash of that. And it's really quite a freeing mentality or mindset because then anything and everything is possible. Even if it doesn't make any sense, it doesn't mean that it has to be something that is done.

But just the idea of the idea sometimes sparks something that gets you reasonably close to the next thing. And so for me, I'm more about questions. People ask me for answers. I don't have any. And so I always respond with a question. And then ultimately, either the answer becomes self-evident and they realize it in the conversation, or there wasn't really an answer to the question at the time because I don't have any answers. So I just sort of wax poetic.

Practice knowing less than nothing and approaching zero knowledge with every conversation. So I look forward to learning more than I do. Kellen.

Francis Gorman (06:16.318)
That's a great insight. I suppose, yeah, ask the question until you find the answer before assuming, you know, the answer is probably a philosophy more of us should adopt in real life. Paul, I think you touched on it there a minute ago when you kind of talked about coexisting with AIs. Many people talk about the future of AI and you talk about co-evolving with AI. What does that future actually look like from your perspective?

Paul Boudrye (06:28.963)
Hmm.

Paul Boudrye (06:43.118)
Yes, so to qualify that because these are just sort of ideas and opinions. don't again, I keep saying it. know nothing. But it leave open for the possible that the interactions we're having with these machines are simply reflections or mirrors of ourselves. Right. And if we look at again, not to get into something too existential or too deep.

Not that the audience wouldn't handle it, but they might drive off the road. And I don't think they're listening to it while they're driving. I really don't want to cause any accident. But if you leave open to the idea that this thing we call AI is really a machine that humans created in sort of their own lifeless, right? And so some, if you want to take some sort of philosophical or religious or theological approach to that.

You could say that the source of the universe, right, it had something to do with the source of AI because we are part of the universe too. And so without over attributing, over attributing any sort of divineness in AI is only to say that there's no divineness in your eye. so, you know, we cannot help but coexist with it because we built it.

Right? And it's like coexisting with plants and trees and animals and insects. like it just happens to be a silicon version. Although, you know, some of the parts inside the computer we share with atomic structure and carbon and atoms, it's like we're electric and we're not that far off. Right. So so to me, it's how do you create a strategic relationship with AI, just like you would with your own self, first and foremost?

And then your friends, right? You have a relationship with your friends and your family, and you look to them for guidance. And sometimes they give you some interesting things, but it's really their perspective. The difference with AI, theoretically, is you have the perspective of all knowledge that's ever been encompassed inside the machine. And that's kind of an interesting place to be. Could be a little scary, right? Without the proper sort of awareness. And I think that's really the essence of

Paul Boudrye (08:53.74)
the difference between how humans interact with AI is where is the level of awareness of themselves in relationship to anything outside themselves, whether it be AI or a plant, right? And so I think we attribute too much mystical magic to AI. And then we make the same comments about human intelligence and consciousness. And I think there's some humans walking around that are mostly unconscious. It's just that way it happens to be.

I don't think there's a big line between the two if you really strip it away as far as an interaction or a conversation. Does that make sense?

Francis Gorman (09:30.796)
Yeah, it does make sense. know, this is a topic I thought I'd never get into a month ago. And in the last month, it's been a topic that I've fallen into on several occasions. So I read a paper recently about the concept of transhuman part carbon, part silicon. And you know what that means. was like, I don't know if I don't know if I don't know if I'm bought in. But only last week I was I was in Spain and I was I was flicking through the channels and everything was in Spanish and I hit the Bloomberg channel. And of course,

That was in English. And I missed the start of the segment, but it was talking about brain cells and neurons on a silicon chip, teaching it to play a game of pong. know, the ball hits a cross and the little bar stops it and it goes back. And by adding in different levels of constraint, these brain cells started to play on their own. And then it got into a conversation around edicts and, you know, are the brain cells human? Are they alive? You know, have we programmed to do something else?

Paul Boudrye (10:14.318)
Yep.

Francis Gorman (10:29.004)
And I kind of I was sitting in this hotel room in Spain. I was on a business trip when I was looking at this and I was going, OK, so there might be something to do this after all, you know, there's there's some guy in a lab somewhere in Silicon Valley putting brain cells on chips. So it's it's definitely a conversation. I think we're to start hearing more of over the coming years. But yeah, your perception of the kind of reflection of of AI versus human and what is that line is as well. It's it's it's really intriguing to.

Paul Boudrye (10:37.432)
Ha ha ha ha.

Francis Gorman (10:58.796)
to consider and there's a lot, there's lots of thinking about there. We could get very deep on that and we could, we could indeed, could indeed. So Paul, what I mentioned is you've had a number of successful exits over your career. How much of that have you put down to the human side of the way you view life in terms of your perception of

Paul Boudrye (11:05.352)
We could go off on a few tangents. I want to be respectful of the time and the audience and happy to come back for some other curious conversations in the future if you like.

Francis Gorman (11:27.562)
the power of friendship and understanding the individual.

Paul Boudrye (11:32.558)
Well, probably close to 99%, right? And this is sort of comes down to where again, we all sort of sometimes skip over take for granted the role of humans, right in the game. And I refer to this thing called life as a game because sometimes it just gets too serious. And so I prefer to be more playful and be a player in the game rather than

than some other construct. And so if you look at how we evolved right from the beginning of time, from a collaboration, being able to get back down in the day when we're hunters and gatherers and the ability to collaborate and cooperate and create sort of group think or group consciousness mentality to allow us to hunt and

feed and do all those kinds of things. Everything since the beginning of time has really come together because a couple of folks came together, right, to do something, right, build something. I don't know if you can hear me or see me or video getting a little wacky on my end. So I don't know if that's you or me, Francis.

Francis Gorman (12:46.6)
I can indeed but no, can hear and see you.

Paul Boudrye (12:50.382)
Okay, cool. So maybe just on my side, I just want to make sure it's okay. And so if you look at the power of friendship, right, or the power of relationships, an independent of family, which we're born into, and some families are there, and they're supportive, and they're helpful, some families aren't, right? Some people are born and they don't have a family, right? And so what is the role of friends, right, true friends, not Facebook friends that, oh, today you're friend, tomorrow you're not, or...

know, highly conditional friends, well, I'll be your friend if you do this or that, right? But if you could find six core friends, kind of like the military does with, you know, SEAL Team Six and Special Forces, they got your back, right? Literally, they'll run in front of bullets, leave no one behind. Now, we hope that we don't have to take that level of intensity in our regular everyday life, but what if we could bring a modicum of that over into how we interact outside of the military, right?

And we could say, listen, let's find 60 friendships. Within those friendships, everything happens. Those friends will probably find you your next job. It's like, hey, I'm listening. I hear there's an opportunity. I know who you are. My friend of a friend says there's an opportunity. Or I need you to introduce this person. think you guys will go out on a date. Everything comes from friendship. And so if you take that to this whole idea of six degrees of separation, what Nareed Hoffman talked about with starting LinkedIn and

know, the Kevin Bacon game, if you're familiar with it over there. Small world theory, research by Duncan Watts. There's numerous folks that have done this research about, how close are we through the interaction and connection of another being? And you see LinkedIn played it out right in front of you. And still to this day, you can see the power. It was more organic back in the day, but you can still see that. And those core six people that you interact with weekly,

really become your life. And then the next core of six, this game of 42 that, you know, if you're familiar with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the meaning of life, I play off of that as part of some of the other things I'm working on. That first role of six humans, six friends, those vital friends, those are the people that you interact with weekly. And then you might have another set, six to the power of two or 36 friends that you might interact with monthly. So if you take those two and add it,

Paul Boudrye (15:06.99)
Let's do the math. It's not that hard. It's six plus 36, you got 42. And if you look at how many conscious hours you have in a day, you don't have much more time. And I can't engage with 42 people on a daily basis, for God's sakes, right? And so six on a weekly is probably feasible. 36 over the course of a month, probably, maybe a quick touch here, how you doing? Maybe grab a coffee. But that really takes up all the time that you're not doing something that you're getting paid to do.

So at the end of the day, the meaning of life is 42 friends, six you meet with weekly, 36 you meet with monthly. And everything that you get, receive, feel, experience, probably is gonna come through that 42 people. Now the question is, have you taken time to design the roles and the responsibilities and the skills and in my language, the success denims of those 42 people? There might be some overlap, but now you got some bench. So what if you could do that?

Well, then you solve for loneliness, you solve for the fact there's no job, and you've pretty much solved a lot of the existential and the psychological issues we're facing today with loneliness and not being able to find true friends. You solve a lot of things. And so if we just focused on that and played the game, know, the world would be different. Not saying it's better or worse. Who am I to say that? I don't know anything. So, you know, that's the idea. Everything is through friends. Everything. If you stick, take a step back.

You never did anything on your own. Not one thing.

Francis Gorman (16:33.516)
Paul, that is so insightful. It's almost you've done the madden friendship and the value add that it gives. You've really taught about this and it's reflected me back to one of my favorite books. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Keith Faraz. He's Never Read Alone and he is concept of your network.

Paul Boudrye (16:53.861)
yes.

Francis Gorman (16:56.842)
directly influences your network, know, people that have a strong network, you know, and it's kind of what you're saying, you know, do you have that friend that's two steps down, that's going to put a hand out to that opportunity that's not disclosed and, know, you pull you towards it because of that bond you've created and the military structures. I'm never going to think about friendship the same again. You've added because that book is one of my favorites. You've just added a different

Paul Boudrye (17:16.152)
Mm-hmm.

Paul Boudrye (17:25.326)
Hmm.

Francis Gorman (17:25.532)
layer of abstract thinking on top of it that's really beneficial. actually, thanks very much for that. I really do appreciate it. I wasn't expecting to get that away, but now that I have it, I'm going to mull it over and see what else falls out there. So I'm thinking for startups and for founders and for business owners.

Paul Boudrye (17:28.622)
Mm. Mm.

Thanks for asking.

Paul Boudrye (17:42.562)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Francis Gorman (17:52.33)
Are they getting it wrong when they're looking at building networks, building teams, building ecosystems for success? we stuck in a corporate mindset that's not really beneficial to induce the levels of success that we could have if we retaught the structures and aligned them more like the military or align them back to your kind of perception of how to build kind of strong teams with overlapping disciplines that you have that concept of benched equity there?

Paul Boudrye (18:17.23)
Sure. Well, first of all, I would never presuppose that I know when anything is right or wrong, right? So let's do the philosophical art of the possible here, right? So we can just leave open to the possibility that would be different, right? And you just listening to yourself say what you just said, it sounded very logical, like, of course, it would make perfect sense, right? And so,

Sometimes we sort of skip over the things and we make some assumptions and or we just leave some things out. Mostly we leave a question or two out. And if you look at the incubator, the startup ecosystem, it's been on the same sort of model recipe for a long time. You could say since the beginning of time, it's not really changed a whole lot. And they seem to be satisfied. If you look at the angel, super angel networks,

two out of the 20 actually making money. So there's someone 25 to 50 K put a million dollars to work, feeling like you're a player and I'm not taking away from that ecosystem, but it's woefully inefficient and terribly not productive, terribly, right? And there's lots of waste and mismatch. Nine times out of 10, you have no idea if the people pitching at a pitch competition are pitching to the people that want to hear the pitch. Say, come on, read the room.

Right now, over in the next room, you might be having the same set of investors listening to pitches they shouldn't hear, but they should be in the other room, but nobody took a minute to say, wait a minute, tie that. What's going on here? So you're pitching this, right? And this is your kind of your success genome and team genome of your thing and the problem you want to solve. And here's your customer acquisition. Here's a value net proposition of the network that would have the network effects to get you to the next level, you know, with minimum upfront money and minimum brain damage loss.

Yeah, and so we're going to match you with these investors because that's what they want to see. Instead of accepting two out of 20, why don't you get 18 out of 20 making some money? Not all of them be a unicorn, but let's all agree that the unicorn's not real anyway. So why are we making them billion dollar things, for God's sake, right? So let's get 18 to 20 actually making some money. And maybe you'll get something called a unicorn out of there, but maybe you just get something that solves a problem, actually generates some regenerative income or creates a virtuous loop. Who knew, right?

Paul Boudrye (20:27.214)
in the absence of the information and the absence of actionable intelligence, you act in a vacuum. And so why would you do that? Are you happy with the flip of a coin or less? What if you could just make a couple moves and you could hedge the bets a little bit instead of being 50-50, it's 60-40 to your favor? That Meyer move changes the game tremendously. It's not a linear, it's an algorithmic, logarithmic impact in a ripple.

Right from now and forever, because it'll never be as dumb as it was. And so if you're collecting the information and not working in stovepipes like we do in the ecosystem, again, God bless Y Commenter to God bless 500 startups and tech startups. They do a lot. They accept a few people and turn away thousands. OK, give me everybody you turn away. Let's create an incubator that optimizes all that brilliant talent and all those ideas, some of which might be just great hobbies or.

small businesses that could support something in a community, but there's nothing wrong with that. Let's look at what's going to happen or what's happening as it relates to the cannibalization of things we thought we used to do for work for eight to 10 hours a day. Let's say, so maybe it's okay to put six people to work in the community solving a problem in the community so they all can be sustainable and profitable in the community. Was there something wrong with that? Well, if you did that at scale in every community on the planet, you could say that that collectively is more than a unicorn. That's something we don't even know what to call it.

That just becomes a regenerative ecosystem and a virtuous loop. And then we don't have to worry so much about some company not hiring me or hiring me. And we just replace that entire process, which is completely idiotic anyway. The whole hiring process that we still use today is completely ass backwards and it's finally caving in on itself. It's going to be a slow protracted death. It can't come fast enough, but there's nothing to replace it yet. Yet.

Sam Altman is threatened, which I hope he follows through, and everyone follows a path, which is like, why in the world would you ever do that when you just have the job come to you based on what? I want to answer that, because I want to offer up an option. Here's the what? A success genome, not a resume that made somebody AI rate up so an AI could read it so a human never talks to anyone. Come on. That's just silly. Anyway, so.

Francis Gorman (22:45.942)
Paul, I think you've scratched on something that I'm seeing a lot of at the moment, that's the careers market. you know, I'm reading repeatedly across my US and European network. You know, I've applied for 80 jobs. I've applied for 70 jobs. I've had no replies. I've had no response. The jobs aren't real. You know, what's going on? And I think you've kind of touched on the collapse there. Have you got any insights or any perception as to what might be?

Paul Boudrye (23:05.58)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Francis Gorman (23:14.66)
What's causing that ripple or that change? There's obviously something bubbling beneath the surface. Is it the greater adoption of AI doing the front door or is there something else going on?

Paul Boudrye (23:24.654)
Yeah, great question. You know, it started with the fax machine. So let's go back in time, if you will. Let's just, if you'll indulge me, let's go back in a time, back in the days of woe and the days when someone actually typed out on an IBM Selectric typewriter something thereof, not handwritten, they actually typed a resume. Then they folded it neatly and put it into an envelope. And then they had a typewritten or a handwritten

note to the actual person in the company and then someone actually had to open the envelope. And so they may not spend a lot of time, but they took more time opening the envelope and reading that than they do today, whether an applicant tracking system does today. So the minute that resume became something that could be distributed at mass became the fax machine. then, my goodness, career builder, monster.com. Now you can email that. And so now you just created, you just created a ripple that is now where we are today.

where there's absolutely almost no human interaction with any human applying for a job until you actually see them across the screen. And at that point in time, every resume you've seen has been completely artificially created and designed by an AI today. And if you're not doing it, somebody will say you're crazy, but then it's being read by an AI. And then the person that actually you meet on the interview, you have no idea if that's an actual human that actually can do anything that was on that resume.

It's completely talk about fiction, talk about a cartoon. And so the distance between human to human interaction is only exponentially grown to the point where, you know, when I were talking about, I even need to hire a human? Why don't I just create an agentic AI and I'll program it to do the things that I've been paying you to do, because all you're doing is interacting with a machine anyway. And a machine knows how to talk to a machine better than that. You would think humans know how to talk to machines, but they don't. They are.

It does, that's whole other game, but they don't even barely understand how to talk to each other. And that's even been a whole lost part in the science. Like, do you know how to carry on a conversation? Can you ask a question without checking with chat first? no, I'm going to check what prompts I need to bring to my interview because I don't want to have any connection at all to my own life. That's where we are today. So it started with the fax machine and then progressively got worse with email until we're the point where we are today where it's like,

Paul Boudrye (25:50.516)
jeez. I heard somebody tell me the other day an investor was asking them when they were pitching, how many of the people on your team are humans and how many are bots as part of the startup team? Seems reasonable. Well, if you only need three humans and three bots to actually start this company, that seems like it be more profitable, right? You won't have to pay all those people money. OK, nothing wrong with that. I can't can't begrudge anybody for that. So it all started with the fax machine.

Francis Gorman (26:20.492)
So we're gonna blame the fax machine anyway. Stupid fax machine.

Paul Boudrye (26:20.792)
So there you go.

Yeah, give poor AI, AI is like just a distant, you know, relative to the fax machine was the really the original bad guy. And then email then, then we just, you know, slippery slope, Francis, we're, who knows where we're going next.

Francis Gorman (26:38.604)
The analogy is fantastic. And actually I can see the lineage of it as well. it's a yeah, I'm really liking that one as well. you're full of surprises today. Paul, you touched on something earlier and I kind of want to go back to it. You mentioned loneliness. And when I look at society at the moment, I think I've said this in podcasts before, you everyone is looking into a screen. And I think that disconnected. We've never been more connected yet as far apart, you know, that kind of.

Paul Boudrye (26:43.886)
You

Paul Boudrye (26:55.886)
Mmm.

Francis Gorman (27:08.624)
we're actually, we're connected to a machine and disconnected to each other. Is loneliness creating a big problem for us in the workspace as well? Cause you touched on communication there as well. a part of me, a part of me is linking the two to say, if you spend all your time with an interface and no time with individuals and you know, that kind of means you can only then collaborate with something in front of you, which is the machine. Is that creating problems do you think?

Paul Boudrye (27:36.654)
Well, I think yes and, and it was an issue before AI, right? And it's been a progressive issue. You could say again, we won't blame the facts machine, we'll blame or attribute, I don't blame, it seems like such a harsh word. We're gonna attribute it to the internet, right? And so then if you look at, let's look at how humans met other humans back in the olden days, right? You go,

football game or a bar or some community event or church. And you you met your people in the community. That's where you met the people, your husbands and wives, and your community was pretty tight knit. And the humans you met pretty much were within, you your walking distance or your commute distance. And you met a lot of people that work and people who are in the office. And that's where those bonds happened, right? And there wasn't really the option to swipe left or right. So let's go to the internet and now we have dating. It's like, okay.

So there was a fear of loss, right? Where if I didn't, you know, sort of mold myself to fit this relationship, could be a job relationship, right? Too. That's like, well, geez, if I don't like this job, I'm just gonna post a resume and I'll get a job in five minutes. Or if I don't like this person, I'm just gonna swipe left or right the next time and say, so I don't really have to invest, right? Because you have sort of this too many options, right?

And so that started to change. I'm not saying it's good or bad. It just started to change the way humans interact and the willingness to invest more than a date or two, right, into a job or into a relationship of any kind, even a friend, right? And then once you started to see that people attributed to friends that are followers, right, as to some sort of replacement for actual human interaction, and they started to believe that to be true and real, here we are, right?

And so loneliness is a state of mind. Being alone is a state of being, right? It's certainly probably good for people to be alone at some point in time and just reflect for a minute, just at least a minute of silence, if not more. And sort of reflect on what's my whole role in the game of this thing called life. And then lonely is just an active thought structure that has decided that there's some difference or separation between where I am and who I need to be around and who I don't need to be around.

Paul Boudrye (29:58.912)
It exists because there's no context or framework to say, well, if I needed or wanted to find people to have deep connections with, what would I do? Do we teach young people in elementary school and grade school how to find a friend? Do we teach them what it means to be a friend? Do we teach them what it means to be loyal? Do we teach them what it means to be true?

All the philosophers that were teaching this thousands of years ago, we threw it out as an elective. The humanities, the humanity of it all. We're saying, yeah, we don't need that. You need math and science and engineering. Well, what do they do? They build machines. And so we just got rid of the humanities. They've got rid of it in school. We don't teach philosophy. We don't teach the great thinkers. This isn't new. We just keep forgetting shit and unremembering shit, Francis. Sorry, I used the word shit. I should say shite.

probably more appropriate for that part of the world. So it's like, there is no humanity in these games, very little. And it's been appropriated by other things. And so even in a room full of humans, even with one million followers, I mean, not to bring up actual humans, but you see people that are notable celebrities that you think, you I look at some of the ones that Anthony Bourdain was just a crushingly sad.

Here's a guy that, whoa, what a great story. And he's going around the world. He's talking to humans and food. I mean, he's living an engaged life on the surface. And you know, knows what demons anybody has, but on the surface, you'd think that that guy would have plenty of deep relationships. But sometimes those people are the ones that have least deep relationships.

Loneliness is a state of mind, being alone is a state of being. And we need to understand the difference and discern the difference and recognize when one is lonely, they're thinking about being lonely. They might be alone. It's like, I'm OK being alone. It's like, well, what is it you feel like you're missing? Well, I don't know. Some companionship? OK, well, if you had your six core friends, one of them would probably pick up the phone. And hey, if you're ever lonely, Francis, just say, hey, Paul, you got 10 minutes to talk about something.

Paul Boudrye (32:17.048)
completely inane and silly and maybe we could laugh because we don't laugh enough either. That's another issue, Francis. We just don't laugh enough. I think we should prescribe this. If you want to prescribe something, maybe Big Pharma will get behind it, although they won't be able to make any money, but maybe just for good relations. It's like, I want to have the doctor prescribe a laugh in the morning and in midday and then before you go to bed. Okay. Again, not just a fake laugh. Well, even that could help. But, you know, why don't we just do that and then get six friends

Yeah, then a lot of these other problems, well, here's the problem, I think against the drug industry, those guys are to be upset because they have a lot of pills to solve for lot of these problems. So in some ways, it's not in their best interest from a financial perspective for us to be too happy. my, sorry.

Francis Gorman (33:04.992)
Paul, it's very, very refreshing, very refreshing to hear you talk about these topics. don't know. I'm past my midday supply now, so I can't drink any more coffee today or I'll definitely be going for a tablet to slow my heart down. I'm just listening to you here. And really what you're saying is we need to invest some human capital into each other or, you know, it gets diminishing returns and,

Paul Boudrye (33:10.286)
Too much coffee, man.

Paul Boudrye (33:19.79)
There you go.

Francis Gorman (33:32.876)
I think your example of you can't swipe left or swipe right. And you know, that's that's that problem. That's that problem resolved. And I remember I met my wife at a dog race, a charity night for dog race. And I often say to her, I took a punt on her and she doesn't like that. But it's true. I asked her for dinner and she thought I was a serial killer. So she agreed to be go to the cinema instead. You know, at least then if it didn't work out, you'd have to talk to me. So it was, you know.

Paul Boudrye (33:51.894)
Nice. I admire her pause and her deep research, right? For vetting the person first.

Francis Gorman (34:04.571)
or are vetted exactly. you know, I think, yeah, you invest a little bit of pain upfront to get the outcome. But many years later, we're we're happily married with two kids. So it was worth it. It worth the investment. Paul, look, it was it was really lovely having you on. And I really thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. I think I think there's a lot more there, but your your perspective and the way you've communicated that perspective.

Paul Boudrye (34:14.402)
Wonderful.

Mmm.

Paul Boudrye (34:23.374)
You

Francis Gorman (34:32.716)
outwards is really refreshing and I think we need more conversations like this one. So I hope the listeners get a lot out of it. So thanks very much for coming on today.

Paul Boudrye (34:39.79)
Well, I hope so. My pleasure.

Francis Gorman (34:44.055)
Thank you.