Can AI Learn To Care? Minter Dial On Empathy, Business & The Future Of Tech
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius podcast. My guest today is Minter Dial. He's an international professional speaker, elevator, and multiple award-winning author. He's had a career of 16 years as a top executive at L'Oreal, where he was on the executive committee worldwide of the professional products division. He wrote and produced a World War II

documentary film for BBS, The Last Ring Home. He's authored six other business books, three of which are award-winning, Future Proof, You Lead, and Artificial Empathy. So we may be focusing on the most recent one, Artificial Empathy, putting heart into business and artificial intelligence. So we'll see where this goes. So welcome, Minter. Thanks for coming. Hey, my pleasure, Rich. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Well, let's start with artificial empathy. What does that mean? It's a play on words, like artificial empathy. Is this talking about making AI...

appear to have empathy and human qualities or what's the basis of the book? Well, it started off about, well, I wrote the first version about five years ago and it

And it became apparent that we were looking at ways to use AI to help run business. But so often, the AI was sort of automated and felt automated, felt superficial. And it struck me that it would be useful to consider if businesses are to use AI, how to make it more effective without, of course, being deceitful. And that's how it sort of began.

And the second thing that caught my eye was that they were beginning to talk about things like AI therapists. And there was this rising crisis of mental health. And on the other side, a lack of sufficient therapists to meet the demand. Yeah, I've heard there's a big lack of therapists right now. Yeah.

It's really bad. Exactly. And this is true actually in many countries, not just the US, but in Canada, the UK, France, Australia, at least where I have information and research. And so there were a bunch of people who were thinking about, well, why don't we just make some AI therapists? And that sort of looked like, well, a solution, but how was it going to happen? Who was behind it? What was the business model? And so I put my nose into all of that and

and really looked at ways and thought about ways that could be with some ethical oversight, with some knowledge or understanding of how to make it successful from a business standpoint, how to make AI more humane. And that was sort of, that opened up a whole Pandora's box. And I ended up meeting some incredible people working on this topic.

Okay. So, I mean, what interesting things have you seen in terms of empathy coming from AI or more human-like interaction? Right. So, what I've seen is that it raises all sorts of eyebrows, provokes all sorts of reactions, and many people sort of rebuke it. Well, how can we possibly want to do that? I mean, it's really scary making a...

AI to be more sort of human. Maybe it's going to be more deceptive. It's just a machine and it can't possibly feel feelings. And all of that is okay. I can hear all of that. Yet, what I discovered was that human beings sometimes are desperately lacking in empathy. There's all sorts of material that shows that college kids self-identify as having less empathy than the equivalent college kids from back in the 80s. And there's all sorts of...

notions about how in society, human beings, our society is less empathic. Part of that is, I think, a facet of not having enough time to be listening to other people. Part of it is a heightened form of narcissism where it's just all about me and I don't really give a rat's ass as to what anyone else is feeling or thinking. And then we've got the interruptions of

the internet and digital. So there's a whole concoction of things that made human beings not quite as available to listen and feel into others. Yeah, like with my teenagers and I'll say to my son, hey, do you want XYZ?

And he'll say, I'm good. And I'll say, why don't you say, thanks, Dad, I appreciate it, but not right now. I'm good is just centered on you. It's selfish to say that, you know? And so I try to say that to him, but you're right. Yeah, it's become, I don't know, a lot of people are not very courteous, it seems. Well, and we've got a divisive... We're empathetic.

environment in so many areas. And so, in this context, the fact is that a machine has infinitely more time than human beings seem to spare to listen to other people. And at the heart of empathy is really understanding what the other person is thinking, feeling,

or experiencing in terms of their context. So this is typically more about cognitive understanding. And the thing that a machine isn't able to do is actually feel the feelings. However, A,

A, they are able to recognize the feelings and two, they have the time to lean in, ask questions and they don't, if they're well-programmed, won't circle back on you. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, Rich, but you're sitting at a dinner, hanging out with nice friends and someone says, oh, you know, last night I had an accident. Oh, really? What happened? Well, I ran into somebody.

oh, well, you tell me about that. The other day, someone, I ran in, they ran into me and it got me so upset. And then they run on and tell you about their story three months ago. They make it about them. Oh my gosh. I mean, fine, stories beget stories, but can't you just stay with this one? The person had the accident last night and we just failed to dial in to...

the situations of others. And I'm not saying you need to dial into everybody's situations. There are plenty of counter examples where that works, but that shouldn't be the case. But the thing is, machines have, if you're well coded,

have the ability to dial in and say, hey, oh, so you had an accident last night? Tell me about it. What happened? Oh, that sounds like you must have had a situation. You must have been upset. Did anyone get injured? I mean, and you follow in and you follow into that story, that person's story, and you get a feeling of what happened to them. And so the point here is that we tend to hold AI.

up to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. I think it's already happening a bit. Like in ChatGPT, I've asked it various things and sometimes it was very complimentary in its response. It's like, oh, that's a good question and it deserves a thoughtful answer. And here's the answer. And I realized if AI gets this right, it'll be unfortunately like for a lot of people, a proxy for real relationships because it'll never tire of giving empathy.

It'll never try to really impose its own agenda on somebody. It'll be a very good listener. And I think people, if you train them the right way, people, unfortunately, will love it. Well, unfortunately, that characterization in today's world, the fact is that some people are just missing love, the idea of having a commitment for a long time. So I'm not quite as cynical.

if you will, about what a machine can provide in terms of relationship. What I'm cynical about

is why we criticize it when we don't actually do the hard work ourselves. And that's the real issue. We're very hypocritical about it. Whereas really, if you're upset about that or you don't like it, well, what are you going to do about it yourself in your world with your children, your friends, your colleagues, whatever? And that's sort of what stimulated me to write the book was to make it a call to action for humanity to...

pick it up. I mean, in the context of the mental health story, the issue is a lot of people suffer from mental health. Yes, partly because we've got a heightened awareness that it exists. And, you know, it was back in the days, it was stiff upper lip and we don't talk about these things. Yes, great. So we're talking about it. However, no one's really listening. And so...

as a society, we should be thinking, why is it that we have so much mental health disorder everywhere, at home, at work, and so on? And then what are we going to do about it? And so I don't raise an eyebrow so high as to say that an AI, a therapeutic AI, can't provide an appropriate solution for a teenager who's in distress at 2am, because who else is going to pick up the phone at 2am? I don't know about you, Rich, but

I put my phone on silence mode when I go to sleep. However, it turns out that a lot of people suffer crises, you know, and anxiety in the middle of the night. Who's going to call? Yeah, that's true. No, you're right. I think part of it is the personalization of everything and the availability of, you know, smartphones for everybody. Everything's become, you know, serving size, self-service, just kind of, you know, this little unique package of amazing things just for you. That's what the smartphone seems like. So maybe that's what

made people more selfish and more self-absorbed because they can be. They have their own little everything they need, you know? So I'm going to, I don't know. Well, I'm going to add a little bit more to this, Rich, because obviously it's a topic I've been talking about for a while. And one of the funny things is that people tend to criticize cell phones and mobile phones for everything that's happening and the heightened narcissism. Well, there was a book written about the age of narcissism in 1978, well before the cell phone came around.

And there are many trends that are systemic that have caused our society not to wish to have the time to listen to others. I mean, there's sort of a socio-demographic element to this. There's the fact that both...

mother and father now have to work because that's just the way it works. And so, who's there to listen to the kids? And kids are deprived of attention. They focus on getting hits and likes through the Instagrams of the world because that's the only thing that's available to them. And nowadays, people don't like the messiness of life. It's got to be convenient, fast,

efficient, productive, all these types of terms that come from work. And the fact is that so many people prefer to break up with a text message rather than feel the heat and deal with the real issues and talk it through and be much more humane about the way they do their mission. Are there stats on that?

like the percentage of breakups that happen over text versus verbal. Yeah, but I can't quote them, but I know that there are. I mean, I've something like over half of breakups, and some I don't quote, unfortunately, the exact source, but maybe that's something I have to go and find for you afterwards.

And by the way, having facts on the tips of your tongue, that's a lost art too, because everyone just sort of relies on your Googles of the world or your chat GPTs. I happen to use Plexity the most to get all the facts. But having facts, reading, remembering them, bringing them up in conversation on time,

on cue and being accurate about them and their sources, this is also a very lost art. And of course, the AI is extremely capable of doing that, of course, with hallucinations. But far more, you know, if you program it well, and if you think about the idea of humanizing your AI, make sure to quote the source, double verify that the source is accurate, that the link works, you just tell the AI to do this. Well, we human beings say, "Oh,

don't have time for that. And we'd rather spout off our feelings rather than the facts. Well, I don't know. I can't help but feel that the news tells me what to do and what to think and what to feel. I thought that for decades. And I was thinking now as you were talking about, you know, the news saying there's misinformation and disinformation and all this crap. And I never heard that until, I don't know, maybe five to six years ago, maybe seven years ago. And I think that that's also gotten into people's heads. So there's a lack of trust and

and any data too. And at the same time, people are just putting forth stuff that could be speculation, true, not true, who knows? I guess it's the paradox of information availability. There's so much available that there's good and bad available and that it becomes a new job now to sort through it, see what's right and what's not. Indeed. Any data scientist will tell you, you can make the numbers say what you want when you can manipulate numbers to say what you want, facts that are according to what your story is.

But I think the idea of discussion with elements of facts is a lost art and in lieu of bringing facts and I mean, basically, this is my criticism of postmodernism, as I'm sure you're aware of, where we would rather undercut and deconstruct everything that's been told in the past, because that's just a facet of the power of knowledge and that then therefore programs everything that follows.

So it is a tricky topic but we - I think - anyway, my point is make sure to bring facts into your conversation as opposed to what I feel because sure, your feelings are wonderful and useful but we shouldn't forget hard facts. Yeah, I mean another phenomenon maybe I can

contribute maybe you thought of this or not but I don't use social media but I'll go on YouTube and I'll you know listen to videos I don't watch them I usually listen but I guess my impatience causes me to listen to them at 1.25 or one and a half speed and I wondered in conversation if it's making me a lot more impatient listening to people because I'm used to listening to stuff being sped up

and they're not sped up. So I wonder if, you know, how our technology is shaping us and shaping our ability to have empathy and all that as well. You know, I'm not, again, you said people will blame cell phones, but it does contribute. I could feel like my attention is fragmented more than it used to be. And again, all this information or whatever you want to call it coming at you, it kind of blocks out other inputs you might get, let's say from face-to-face conversation. So I don't know. I think these things do contribute and they're shaping us big time.

I don't disagree. My way I look at this is I'd rather not blame the technology because these are just tools that are in our hands and we have the choice of whether we will or will not listen to 1.25 times, which I will actually put...

I sometimes listen to the news at 0.9 and I breathe into it. I just relax, let it be slow time. And as a part of my way of reframing, rewiring the way I work, and not that I'm a very keen person on time, and I think that there's a cultural element to this where certain

societies and cultures are far more attentive to every second and other cultures are a little bit more relaxed. There's this famous term of Caribbean time or African time, but the fact is time is rare and it's difficult. So I think

I certainly don't mean to say we all should be listening to everybody all the time, but I do feel that we need to be more intentional about when we apply our listening ear to other people. So that might mean turning off notifications because we can do that. We have the power to just eliminate, like I say, like my telephone, I don't have any notifications come onto my telephone. So if I'm having conversation, I don't even need to address the beep, beep, something, you know, someone...

sent me a text message. It's always off. And so I can always be on if I want to, or at least without the distractions. Afterwards, I have to then be focused on being present with you, Rich, in the moment, and then desire to listen to what you're saying and follow into what you are doing. And then, so that means to have time. And the issue is a lot of times we are very time constrained. I'm

I only have 20 minutes to talk with you. Well, for sure, when you have a constraint like that, then what that provokes means you're going to get to the topic right away and you're going to put in your narrative right away because you don't know if you'll have time later to cover it. Whatever your demand is. And there's no sort of sloppy sort of

messy, long chats. And the idea of sitting down with somebody, a la Joe Rogan, not that I'm always listening to him, but it's interesting, this idea of having three, four hour conversations. There's an Indian guy called Amit Varma who does, I call him the Joe Rogan of India. And he has these three hour conversations and by gum, they get into stuff. It's fascinating the way they listen to one another.

And we should have more role models like that as opposed to screening matches on televisions. No one's listening to anybody. And it's just about eyeballs, you know. Right. Soundbites, eyeballs, crap. Yeah. Well, I know the YouTube shorts or Instagram shorts or TikTok or things like that. Things have been carved up into shorter and shorter segments and sped up. And I remember my son showed me TikTok and I'll probably sound like an old guy, but we watched this one video where someone was cooking something and it was sped up.

And after like 20 seconds, I tell him, son, I can't watch this. It's making me feel like my brain is scrambled. He's like, it's fine, dad. I said, are all the videos of TikTok like this? He's like, no, but a lot of them are. I'm like, I couldn't watch this. It's just, it's awful. It was just, you know, it's like watching movies nowadays. The trailers, they have all these cut scenes or in the movie itself, there'll be all these cut scenes. It's just everything is being chopped and turned into smaller and smaller fragments. And so it fragments people's minds. It feels like.

Because like mine is fragmented. I have to push against it all the time. That's it. And we have to be aware. So I guess what you're saying without saying it maybe, I'm probably putting words in your mouth, but cultivate longer periods of time where you're talking to somebody or if you're reading a book or whatever it may be, like deliberately push back against the speed of everything and cultivate slowness or deliberateness in what you do. Yeah.

I'll give you an example, Rich, to be very concrete. Last night, my wife and I invited, we were 10, so we're eight people to come, most of whom didn't know each other. And we

He invited everybody with a theme. And the nature of the theme is that it's a little bit out of left field or out of zone of comfort. And the topic we talked about last night was, what is the single strongest facet of your identity that you have today? And what part of it might have faded over the past? What part of your identity might have faded over the past? That was the theme and everyone had to work on it.

And of course, the conversation would occasionally break down into, you know, splitting off into pairs and threesomes. But for the most part, we all listened to everybody. In other words, one person would have the floor, we have a round table, because that's the best, and someone would speak and everybody listened. And it was just the comments that people had at the end was like, well, that's not so unusual. We don't do this anymore.

and being able to be listened to, to be heard by strangers. It's a very compelling feeling. And as soon as you've had it, then you can generously give your time to listen to somebody else. What did you notice from your guests? Were they happy? Were they exhilarated by the experience? Or did some of them have trouble doing it or paying attention? Like, what did you see? Well, so...

I have to be very intentional as the master of ceremony of the evening to make sure that the quiet person doesn't sort of skulk away in an introverted corner so that everybody has their time to talk about their response. And inevitably, if that's done in a way, well, there has to be enough psychological safety for people to feel that they can say what they really want to say. So one piece of this, how this works is I always have to warm people up. I don't go

plunging into deep, dark conversations right away. I have a method that I bring people in and a little bit of levity. And then I ensure that the conversation is, or at least the person speaking is listened to. And

Inevitably, I mean, we just, you can imagine you're married or at least you have children. But the next day we get messages from these people. And one person said, just from last night, he said, I wish we'd filmed it. It was so delicious. I'd like to live it again. That's cool. Maybe you should do a weekly thing called like shut up and listen or something.

Well, you know what I do, Rich, is I practice it in my daily life. I try to listen to people. I mean, of course, I'm a storyteller and I'm a speaker. So holy smokes, it's sort of the hypocrisy of it all. But I'm always trying to model that behavior. And I'm

It's wonderful. Here's another example, Rich, people listening will possibly relate to this. You go to a dinner and you're sitting, it's a seated dinner and you go in and you're sitting at the seat and you have these person to your right and person to your left and start talking to them and maybe get engrossed in a conversation with one of them.

It's happened to me numerous times. What I'll do is I'll just latch onto my neighbor and start asking them questions about their life, whatever they're doing. And I just follow them down, what they do. I make widgets, what sort of widgets.

I help put widgets for cruise ships. Oh, wow, that's really interesting. Where do the widgets fit? You follow them down, right? At the end of the evening, it is not uncommon that the person would then, at the end, oh, you are such an interesting person, they'll say to me. Because you're interested in them, yeah. They don't even know my name, much less who I am, what I do. And that goes to the complete paucity or lack of understanding

people who are prepared to listen. So anytime you listen, it's a huge gift to somebody else. And by the way, rather than wax on about myself, about what I do, because I know me, or at least I know everything I've done. How boring can it be to talk about me all the time? Far more interesting is to learn about someone else's experiences, their feelings and everything else, and you'll come out richer for it. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, I've done over 4,000 interviews and my wife says to me sometimes, stop asking me questions. I'm not a podcast. You can go too far, but I think I'm similar to you. Yeah, there's people I've had a conversation with and they literally haven't asked me a single thing. I just keep asking them stuff and hopefully in a nice way. But yeah, it's weird. And some people are verbose, some are terse, some are, I don't know. It just depends. There's all kinds I've seen from my interviewing people.

They're pretty easy to talk to, which is good. Thank you. I'm not asking you any questions, so Rich, I could turn the tables very quickly. Oh, no, I'm sure you could. I tried to make the focus of the other guest, i.e. you. But just what I was going to ask you next is, so is the book prescriptive?

on what people can do to help themselves to get more empathy into their lives? Or what's the goal of the book for the reader? - Yeah, well, one part of it is forget the AI piece, but just think about empathy and when you can use it in your business, in your life, your spouse, your children, friends.

while I wanted to have the hook of humanizing AI, raising people's eyebrows, the reality is the big picture is let's bring more empathy targeted, intentional into our lives, into our daily lives, because it's an amazing tool and skill to have. Then the second piece is to think about AI and business and what are you doing with it and to try to be meaningful about the business and the way you use AI. Um,

It's always been a big piece of everything I've written about is have more meaningfulness in our lives. And then the third piece is with regard to the mental health. And I have a whole chapter about that. And reality is, I think that as a society, we've become a lot weaker, meeker, and less resilient. And we're putting in place all sorts of ways to protect people, to make it safer, which on the face of it sounds better.

But I posit in my book that we need to find a way to return to a little bit of hard knocks, a little bit more courage and deal with harder situations face on. For example, don't text somebody you're breaking up. Go in and explain, to have the courage to explain to somebody, even if it's messy, it's going to take longer to talk to people. We've lost the art of being more human in our conversation and exchanges. So it's a cry for being

better people, but without being idealistic, because I'm far from idealistic. I am, you know, I've been to the Grateful Dead several hundred times and I've done all sorts of things in my life. So I'm not a goody two shoes person. However, I think that in knowledge of self, recognizing your own challenges and difficulties, we can

become better people. And that's sort of what Heart Official Empathy version two or second edition really is all about. One quick question with the breakups. Are these long-term relationships or these short ones? I mean, how could you break up with someone over text that you've been with for a year or more? I mean, that's crazy. That's like worse than ghosting. Yep.

I mean, all these other techniques that we have around our digital communications are pretty farcical. I mean, we'd rather have emojis than actually write out what we feel. And so we've superficialized a lot of our conversations. I wrote a book, which I didn't publish as a book, but I wrote it, meaning to publish it as a book, but I wrote 3,000 words every Thursday. I published every Thursday at 5 p.m. on the Substack, How to Revive the Art of Conversation. And

Within this, this is understanding the words you use that come out of your mouth, looking at how the mouth, sorry, the person in front of you is speaking, not just the words coming out of their mouth, but their eyes, their expressions, hearing what's happening in their voice. These are eminently human qualities and breaking up with a text. This has happened for, I have a story of a friend whose sister and one son had

with whom he'd been estranged, or they sort of said that they didn't want to have any more communication with him. And I mean, this is a guy who's my age, Rich. And he said, well, I sent my sister a message to try to get back to her. I was like, what did you do? You sent a text message to get back?

back and try to, after three years, that's not how this, you just can't think in that way. Anyway, I tried to steer him correctly. So what do you, I know you've written before about the future. Is the current state of things at all what you thought it would be a few years ago? And where do you see things going? Well,

Well, I'm writing a new book, Rich. And so this sort of informs everything I'm doing right now. And it's called The Avatar Trap. And it's about the way our society acts.

has been developing and it's an attempt to try to rectify some of the accepted practices and norms that I think need to be revisited. So within that, I want to rehabilitate some older fashion values because I'm an old white dude. Perhaps

perhaps, but I also think that we've thrown out the baby with the bathwater in rejecting elements of the past. And so I want us to return to being able to have civil disagreement, have conversations that are rigorous, tough,

And yet we can both learn from as opposed to standing on my hill and shooting down and saying, you're wrong. I'm right. I'm good. You're bad. And come back into some kind of more growth mindset where we can all learn to listen to different people, different voices, and also be more open.

I think the avatar trap also speaks a lot to how we've gotten lost as a society because we no longer wish to entertain reality. We'd farther rather the convenience, the likability, the superficiality of an Instagram post than

the reality of my situation where we have disease, we have illness, we have death, we have risk, we have loss, we have pain. And this is part of life. And the beauty of life is the ability to go through and the journey that isn't comfortable, isn't delicious and perfect.

And rather than shun all these other negatives or imperfections, embrace them and move into reality. Because the idea of exterminating death as if it's an illness is about as cockamamie as any society has ever been. I mean, the idea of immortality has been a topic of conversation for millennia. However, just because you can seek, it doesn't mean you ought to try to be seeking immortality. Do you think you understand how immortality

things have gotten to this point? Or is it you feel like, you know, you could speculate here, there and everywhere, but you don't really know? Well, I certainly would not wish to portray myself as an all-knowing individual. I do. I mean, the first section of my book is how we got here. And the reality is, it began a long time ago.

And little by little, things happened without necessarily being bad intention, but you move to another place because of what's happened before. And little by little, a little bit more sand, a little bit more issues, it just piles up. And we end up in this new situation that

needs to be wound back, at least in some portions. You can't ever go back to normal or back to what we were. But I think if we could have a good conversation about, for example, the idea of freedom or the idea of progress, which are obviously two beautiful words. However, that isn't what it's all about. Being free, well, it comes at a price. I did my film about the Second World War in

And the film in the book is about my grandfather who was killed as an officer and a prisoner of the Japanese. And freedom comes at a price. And right now, I don't think that we are paying heed to the price of freedom. It feels like an obvious thing, freedom. Freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom of action, freedom of belief.

You can't be willy-nilly about this. And so I think we've got to this position through an awkward series of events that have happened over the last 60 years, I mean, that have been my life as well, as it turns out.

So I tried to understand how we got to where we got to. It wasn't like I could point a finger and say, "You are the silly people who made us get here. We're all where we are." And parents are trying to do what they can. Obviously, both of them are working and they love their children. Yet, should a child be encouraged to face risk and scuff their knee and

and maybe break an arm. Of course, we don't wish that on them, but we need to be creating an environment where they are brought up to live life as opposed to protected from all the anything that could be negative. So it's not very polite to say what I'm saying, but I think we need to re-engage with risk, pain, imperfection, and even death and understand that it is part of life. And if I told you I followed the Grateful Dead and the folk tale,

that began the name of the band was all about being aware of the notion of death. And as soon as you know that you die, you really integrate that thought. You are far more grateful for the life that you have and the breath that you're taking today. That's true. That's true. Any, I don't know, besides exposing...

you know, what it is and what people have become. It sounds like you're giving some ideas for people to be able to help themselves. And I don't see you packaging it into a course or a checklist or anything, but I don't know, what encouragement do you give to people to get back to this, you know, more alive state of living? You know, go to host and hold dinners like you did, or like what else can people do? Just for some practical tips, let's say. Yeah. Well, talk to a stranger. You're on the bus or...

on a plane, hey, who are you? Listen to what they have to say and just dial into the practice, the art of empathy, because empathy is a muscle and it takes some intentionality to start practicing it. So that's one idea. You can talk to a stranger. You could also talk to somebody you don't like. It's much harder to do. You know, I know we, you and I have had some disagreements, but I'd like to sit down. Would you mind? Let's have a beer. We can talk. There's going to be suspicion. There'll be some who say, I don't want to do that with you because you know, you, but it's

It's very difficult to talk to people that you have got issues with in the past. But if we don't learn how to do this, it's going to be awfully difficult. I mean, another one is, I mean, with your own family, oftentimes you come back from your day and, oh, how was your day? Oh, it was good. Oh, yeah, me too. Yeah, good. No. So get back into, well, try to carve out some time. Say, it was good. What happened that was good? Instead of saying, me too, it was good. And

and find time with people. There's a thing called close communication bias, Rich, where the people you're closest to, you end up creating a bias because you think you know what they're going to say. So how did they go today at work? Oh, it was a real pain in the ass. Oh, I can figure that. You know, I'm sure it was a pain in the ass. It was Peter, right? And you cut off, you inject, you overlay all your thoughts. And the person who's actually trying to say, no, no, it wasn't about Peter, it was about Michael. And, and, uh,

My situation is that he made me cry. But too often, we kind of counterpunch into these stories and we don't allow for that real revelation to happen. There's also the problem of being a man and wanting to fix things. I'm sure you've had that conversation like, "I'm trying to fix it, just listen." And as a guy, I'm like, "Ah, how could you just listen?"

You got to do something. 100%. I mean, the women are from Venus and men are from Mars. Or the book that actually preceded that was by a woman called Dr. Deborah Tannen. You just don't understand men and women in conversation. That was actually the book that was foundational for me in this regard.

But the other, Rich, to finish off on another element that's concrete or at least specific, is to take the time to find out more about who you really are. And the wake-up call here is that basically most of us go around thinking that we know who we are when we only really have an understanding of it.

80%, maybe even less of who we are. And the final 20% we prefer not to talk about. And that's going to be things like happened in my childhood or things I'm not proud about or parts of me I don't like. And we shovel them down. And what the problem is with that is that they end up like a chip on the shoulder reappearing in the

middle of an unexpected moment. And this is how you end up with these shit for bosses who haven't done that work and it comes out of them in moments of stress or just naturally because they haven't done the work of really getting to know who

they are. And in this knowledge, the hardest part of it is to come to grips with and accept the things that are less perfect. And one of those will include your mortality. But without getting woo-woo, at least figure out what are your imperfections? What are the things you're not proud about? How could they be crowding or impacting who you are as an individual? And afterwards, I'm not saying come clean and tell everybody that you are an axe murderer. However,

at least recognize it within you and then start doing that work. And for that, the advice is carve out the time and be intentional. And if you need help, find somebody, a coach or a close friend with whom you can talk about it. It's not something that happens overnight. For me, I did this work starting when I was 37 years old. And it

It took me about two years to come to grips with pieces of me and my past and ended up with a statement that was the person into whom I wanted to live. In other words, be this person in light of who I was, but not because I was overloaded with my baggage. I just took so

stock of my past and I created with intentionality this idea of who I wanted to be, created my own little personal mission statement and then have ever since been living into that, which doesn't mean that life is perfect and or that I am perfect, but it's such an energy boost.

to know why I'm on this planet. Well, that's really cool. Would you mind sharing what you've decided your mission is on this planet? I will gladly do so. And frankly, the funny thing is I got a coach when I was 37, a guy called Clément, and French is my first language. And I asked Clément and we did this work together and I ended up with the first statement being French, and then I translated into English. And over the years, I've made

minor tweaks to it, and that's okay. It should not be statutory or some sort of institutional piece. But basically mine is this, Rich, to elegantly elevate the debate by connecting dots, people, and ideas for more meaningful existence. Okay. And that's what you did with the dinner, which is very cool. Exactly. Are you going to make this a regular thing, by the way? It could be a lab, I guess, a psychology lab where you...

try different things, not in a bad way, but to see how people react. I want it to be an experience as opposed to an experiment. But I've been doing this, my wife and I, since our time in New York back in the 90s. And so we've done, I can't exactly count, but something between 200 and 300 of these dinner parties. We do one about once a month. And

We especially look for the people who we're going to invite. We want them to be meeting new people. So it's not just like the regular gang. So last night we had a couple in the 30s and we also had a couple that were over their 80s. And so intergenerational, different cultures. Anyway, so we've been doing this and it's a glorious thing to do. It's only one night a month, but it does last a while because Baha'i, the

Well, first of all, it takes time to prepare the meal, think about who you're going to go. So it occupies a piece of our time. And then afterwards, I'm always keen to hear what people thought and hope that they will, these people who didn't know themselves the night before coming, want to get in touch with it.

"Oh, I heard you say that. Let's go and have coffee. Let's go have tea. Let's go have a beer." And so begetting those types of new relationships is highly energizing for myself and my wife. So we keep on doing that. And then, as I say, I've been doing podcasting for 15 years and I haven't had as many as you, Rich. I have to say that is one heck of a lot.

more than I've done. Well, I went crazy with it for a while. It was just like drinking from a fire hose of information. And how was that for you, Rich? It was exhilarating for a long time. It was overwhelming, but it was just, you know, I'd see articles about something and, you know, you only get the surface layer. So I would have my scheduler contact that person and, you know, try to get him for an interview. I mean, I could do it. I could...

talk to you for a long time on this. It'd probably be a whole thing if you want it. But yeah, it was a great experience. I've made a lot of friends through it. I've found products and advice and all that that's improved my life a lot. I love it. I went into it with no idea on where it would go and it's taken me all kinds of places. So I really enjoyed it and I continue doing it.

Not at the pace I did before. Sounds like trust the process. Yeah. In this case, I decided, let's just see what happens. Yeah. I don't do that with everything, but with this I did. I figured once again, it hurt me to talk to people and learn stuff. So...

hurt you to learn stuff. Yeah, I figured why not? There are two things that I talk a lot about when I'm doing my work with clients. One of them is capped curiosity. You know, make sure to have curiosity because it's one of the two things that children always have. But be aware of the infinite rabbit hole that information can be. And

And so be more intentional about what you're curious about. And then the second thing is to play, to remember to play. Inject pieces of moments of play in your life. So whether that's getting the old guitar out and strumming some songs, singing at the top of your voice in your shower, getting on the ground playing Lego with your kids, or

goofing around a little bit. Play is a gorgeous facet of our lives. And I think it's absolutely essential to have play in your couple. It's obviously important as a child, but I also think it's a wonderful thing to have in the workspace, which doesn't necessarily mean roughhousing or...

nasty jokes on people. But find ways to inject more playfulness in your work and you'll find that you'll develop greater trust in one another because you're allowing yourselves to move into a little bit more of a childlike, wonder-like

And that in a world where we're all about efficiencies and productivity, it's good to have a little play. I mean, you know, I've probably taken psychedelics, I don't know, three or 400 times in my life. So I can say I played, I continue to play. I continue to have fun. And by the way, it's one of the seven things. I mean, I,

I'm resolving to promote as part of our solution pack, if you will, for the Avatar Trap is to invite people to well people, to think about psychedelics as a way to make well people better, not just the pathology of depression or anxiety or fear of death or whatever else the doctors are coming up with, but just for us to think about rewiring a brain, think about how little we are and unimportant in this whole world we all are.

and then relishing that unimportance and then putting perspective on what we think is important and then living life in a more intentional, maybe circumscribed part where you're not trying to fix the entire world and

and promoting how good you are on Instagram to the rest of the world. But within your mind, within your community, be a better person. Very good. Well, Minter, we're out of time, unfortunately. It's great fun talking to you. What do you want to give to people that are listening so they can follow up? Meaning, should they now go get your newest book? Or if they have an interest in what you're saying, hopefully they do.

Where can they go to find more about you and see your writings and learn your thoughts? So the small, I have this weird name, Minter Dial, and that makes me very Google friendly. So my site is MinterDial.com. I have a French one in .org.

RFR and podcasts and materials. So if someone's curious and they actually are going to put down the earphones and go type at it, go for it. The thing that I'd like to leave with maybe is that I've been doing a project is matching my passion, a long-term passion with my business acumen. So I've been playing a sport called paddle tennis. I don't know if you've ever come across it, but it's different from, or in America, they call it a dowel.

It's different from pickleball, it's different from platform paddle tennis or hot California tennis. It's a sport that is played in a glass 20 by 10 meter container and is taking off everywhere around the world. Anyway, what I've been doing is I've been taking out executive teams and I've been having them explore, meet, sweat, laugh,

try and have fun on a paddle court. And then I use the experience, the lived experience on the paddle court to develop new ideas, counterintuitive ways to improve the business. So I call it the joy of paddle for business. And I did a session in Miami a couple of weeks ago. And by gum, I got an NPS rating. They actually did NPS 8.6 for my session. So

What I'm trying to do is use play, sports, health, and all the while thinking about how to make business a stronger, better, more missionary type of experience. And I think that's... Very cool. Yeah, that's what I'd like to leave with the Joy of Paddle for business. That's thejoyofpaddle.com. Okay.

Well, Mitu, thanks so much for coming. It's been a great time speaking with you and keep doing what you're doing. I appreciate it. Thank you, Rich. Well, of course, this is not on video, but you didn't get to see I finished an entire 1664. That's a French beer. If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on iTunes. You've been listening to the Finding Genius Podcast with Richard Jacobs.

If you like what you hear, be sure to review and subscribe to the Finding Genius Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. And want to be smarter than everybody else? Become a premium member at FindingGeniusPodcast.com. This podcast is for information only. No advice of any kind is being given. Any action you take or don't take as a result of listening is your sole responsibility. Consult professionals when advice is needed.