You Are A Badass
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Can you believe we're approaching like two years since The Secret? I can't even believe we're approaching two years of doing this show. We're past two years of doing this show. We've almost produced like 15 episodes. It's like a British sitcom. We'll see you in four years and we'll produce a Christmas special for some reason. No, if I keep doing books like this, my output's going to be crazy. You just read this yesterday, didn't you? We're just talking about it. I woke up early this morning and did it.

All right. Let's do this. Let's do this. Do you have a zinger? I literally don't even know the book. I don't even know what book we're doing. How could I zing? You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. I've literally never heard of this book and you have not told me anything. You're like, all you've said is that we're doing a dumb book. This is like the biggest sort of one book thing we've done so far. Oh, okay. You could literally say, I know nothing about this book. I know nothing except it's stupid. You just promised me that it was going to be the dumbest book we've done so far. Okay. Let's do it. Okay. Michael. Michael.

What do you know about You Are a Badass? This is the first time I'm hearing about the name of this book, but I was hoping it was called The Secret Atomic Rich Dad Workweek.

So my promise to you and myself and our listeners was that after the 2024 election, we would do some lighter work. Yes. No more politics, no more discussions about fascism or whatever. No. I'm going to read the dumbest looking book I can find and then tell you about it. Just like the United States of America, we are getting dumber every single day. So the book is You Are a Badass.

How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life. Can't imagine what would be problematic that we, the points we've made in every previous episode. I can't believe we would return to any of those previous points. This came out in 2013, written by Jen Sincero. I've been very impressed

Very popular in self-help circles. It spawned some spinoffs, including You Are a Badass at Making Money, which I also read. You are a badass for teens. You are a badass dad. So the author, Jen Sincero...

wasn't really a known entity. Like many of our authors just sort of came out of nowhere. She was a musician for a bit. She was in like a punk band in the 90s, started to become an author and then made it big with this book. So just some lady. Yeah, not to be rude, but yeah, it's some lady. Usually it's a dude saying stuff. So this is a diversity hire on the show. This is us giving into DEI mandates. We've talked about one book theory. Many of our books have overlap with one another. Like

leading me to my tongue-in-cheek theory that we were converging upon a single book. But reading this, it felt like we were going beyond that and more into something like copyright infringement, more into something that feels illegal. So fully just like you fed all these books into ChatGPT and then it spit out this book. Right.

This is another book where the central theme is the law of attraction, the idea that you can attract positive things into your life through positive thinking. And if you recall, that was the central premise of The Secret. And that was one of like the first books that we did that truly caught me off guard with how unhinged it was, because I went into it thinking like, oh, the power of positive thinking. Yeah. Vision boards.

Yeah. But then it ends up being about how you can literally attune yourself to the universe. Yeah. The universe will deliver you the things that you want, not in some metaphorical way, but like scientifically. These all converge into like you can think your cancer away.

Yes. Your kid has measles. Like, believe better. Do better brain. This book has another similarity to The Secret, which is that it's full of just random quotes of famous people. Yeah. If you try to Google them, the only sources are on those like quote aggregator websites. Right. It's like quote sprout. Right. Right. You can never find out if they're real. There's like a Tesla quote in one of the early chapters that says like, if you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Oh. I looked into it and as far as I can tell, it traces back to like something an acquaintance of his claimed that he said back in like the 40s. Right. I'm not trying to do a gotcha. I just find it interesting how these books try to present the idea of the law of attraction as if it is like a secret of the Illuminati. Right. Right. Like, interesting.

Until now, only the world's smartest and wealthiest and most powerful people knew about this. And now you do too. And the only way they've been trying to get the word out is in every airport bestseller for the last 30 years. Right. This is the secret knowledge. It's being leaked to you. Ha ha ha.

In every book. I'm going to send you like an introduction to the concept here. She says, the universe is made up of source energy. You are vibrating at a certain frequency and everything you desire or do not desire is also vibrating at a certain frequency. And vibration attracts like vibration. We're all attracting energy to ourselves all the time, whether we realize it or not.

This is very scientific. I think she's correct here. I'm sure you've emailed numerous physicists. Yeah, everybody clapped when I brought this up at a physics lecture. Yeah.

In her other book, You're a Badass at Making Money, she says this about it. Just like electricity and gravity, two things that impact our everyday lives and we don't actually see that few of us understand and that, hello, everyone believes in anyway, universal intelligence and the power of our thoughts are real and affecting our lives every single moment. You may not understand the intricacies of how it all works, but still, you're totally down with following the rules.

So she's saying just because you can't see something doesn't mean it's not real. And that's true. And like, it's also true that most of us don't understand how gravity works or electricity works or whatever. But like...

There are people who do. You understand that, right? You can't Google this. There are people who know the equations and stuff. She's conflating some things you can't see are real with everything you can't see is real, right? Because I also can't see werewolves. I mean, I agree with you. But also, did you say werewolf? Yeah, werewolves. Werewolves. Werewolves? Werewolf. Oh, let's not do vowels. We're not doing vowel pronunciation. Chime in. Get in the comments, folks.

You're just looking for tiny pronunciation errors. It's not just that. It's not just that. It's if one of us mispronounces something and the other lets it go, that also becomes a problem for people. I can't believe that Peter didn't say anything. When Mike said werewolf? Yeah.

So Jen Sincero says that you have this subconscious ego that is essentially trying to sabotage you at all times. The universe is picking up these negative thoughts, right? And then it's delivering you negative results. And this is like a common theme in self-help, which she acknowledges. She says that in self-help,

This is referred to as the ego uppercase, which I guess is like a sort of bastardization of Freud's ego. Okay. She says that she will refer to it as the big snooze. Okay. Which she says is appropriate because, quote, the leading cause of sucking...

Staying broke, dating morons, uncontrollably crying in public because we hate our lives, is that we haven't yet woken up to how truly powerful we are or to how massively abundant our universe is. So before right-wingers started saying you can't do anything because of woke, Jen was saying you can't do anything because of sleep? Yeah. Yeah.

It's very funny that like the basic advice here is always just like, yeah, be optimistic, you know, whenever you can, it's useful to be optimistic. But like,

That's two sentences and you need 200 pages. And so here we are. You're like, we're going to need some Tesla quotes. One of the recurring themes of the book is the idea that when you do improve your life by positively vibrating with the universe, some of like your family and friends will turn into jealous haters. Right, really? So I'm going to send you this. One of the first things you might have to deal with when you decide to wake up from the big snooze and make massive positive changes in your life is...

is disapproval from other people who are snoring away, especially the people closest to you. Lame as this may sound, they may express their discomfort in all sorts of ways. Anger, hurt, bafflement, criticism, snorting every time you talk about your new business or your new friends, constant remarks about how you're not the way you used to be, brow furrowing, worrying, teasing, blocking you from all social media outlets.

I don't know. It sounds like what she's doing is getting you mentally prepared to be an asshole. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a weird cult thing of like everyone's going to hate you. But like if all you're doing is like, I don't know, trying to get more done at work and like use duolingo or something, your friends should not be like blocking you. They're just mad at you because you're good at business now. Like that's what she wants you to think.

Has she given any specifics yet? I feel like this is much easier to talk about if it's like, okay, you just start waking up early and going jogging or like whatever advice she's going to give. It just seems like in general, she's like, you should be better. And then you'll face all this resistance. But like, it kind of depends on what be better means. It takes a while for her to give any practical advice. And there's not a ton in this book. There's a little bit more in the making money one where she's like,

make lists. And so you're like, yeah, cool. Yeah. I don't think my friends are gonna be blocking me on social media for that. Which is why you know that she's getting you ready to just cut off your friends and family when they're like, hey, you need to stop with this MLM. And you're like, Jen warned me about you. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And she goes a step further. She says that as you try to change your life, the big snooze, your evil subconscious will actively try to undermine you. I mean,

This is a very big part of the book. She says, the big snooze will do everything it can to stop you from changing and growing, especially since you're attempting to obliterate the very identity that you and everyone else has come to know as you. But also, she seems to believe that it has supernatural powers. I'm going to send you something. This is her...

Talking about how the big snooze reacts when you try to wake up and improve your life. She says, it's a detox of such staggering proportions that sometimes it can feel like the universe is conspiring against us. Trees fall on our cars. Our computers crash. We find our significant others in bed with our best friends. We get our identities stolen. We get the flu. Our roofs cave in. We sit and gum. When in reality, the big snooze is creating chaos in an attempt to self-sabotage and keep everything as is.

Instead of moving forward into unknown yet desperately wanted new territory. These sentences. Every successful person knows this and has been through this. I sat in gum because I'm making lists. Every successful person knows that your evil subconscious can fell a tree. Just ask Jeff Bezos. She's got she's also got we get the flu on here, too, because these books always converge on not believing in the germ theory of disease.

I'm tracking my sleep and that's why I got gonorrhea. All right. I just sent you another bit. She says, I have a client who decided to quit his ho-hum yet high-paying job to start his dream company from scratch. He

He had no idea where to start, what he wanted to do, or how he was going to pull it off. And regardless of the fact that he had a family that was counting on him, no guarantees and even fewer leads, he quit his secure job and went for it because he was determined to create a life he loved. That's when the BS hit the fan. By the way, when she says BS, she means big snooze, not bullshit. An incredibly confusing thing that reiterates throughout the book.

That's when the BS hit the fan. He got not one, but two flat tires after leaving a coaching session with me. His babysitter ran into his wife's car while driving his car. The water main under his kitchen exploded. And right before his first big deal went through, he got hit by a freaking bus. I'm pleased to report he's fine. Again, I just want to sit in this for a moment. She's claiming that when you try to change your life, your subconscious...

will alter the physical world in ways that include but are not limited to possibly controlling the weather, but also disease. Your subconscious will get behind the wheel of a bus. Yeah, this is what might happen, by the way, which I just want to be clear, makes this immediately not worth it. Like if this were true, yes, your subconscious is going to try to actually kill you with a bus. Yeah.

But at the end of this, you will be running your own small business. Yeah, I could just not make the lists. I don't have to make lists. This is one of those books where like I've encountered people and seen them online saying like, oh, what's so bad about this book? It had some good advice. And I'm immediately like, I know you didn't read it.

Because what the book actually says is that your subconscious will manipulate the physical world to try to kill you if you leave your job. There's also a lot of stalling here. It reminds me of when I was researching the Rich Dad Poor Dad episode and I was looking into like online financial grifters. There was this one guy with like a super local restaurant ass website.

that was like the secrets of finance. And then he's like listing like, these are the people who know these secrets. And then he lists a bunch of famous people. And when you finally like scroll your ass down, you get, there's like a two hour long fucking YouTube video. You finally get to the advice and it's like, you should buy gold. Yeah.

He was just procrastinating, telling me the actual thing. I almost wonder whether the point of this is to like get you to buy in. Like she spends so much time telling you how powerful and dangerous this knowledge is that like by the time she's actually giving you advice, you're fully invested in a way that you wouldn't be if you just opened the book and it was like.

Try to be nice to people. Maintain an air of positivity about you. You'd put it down immediately. Yeah, yeah. But if it's like, God will try to kill you if you listen to this.

Do not read the rest of this book unless you're ready to die. People are like, oh, shit, this is hot. It's got to be partly sunk cost fallacy because you're like, look, I spent 20 bucks on this book and then I spent six hours reading it by the time I got to the actual content of it. She also does that grifter thing where she basically like shit talks people who don't like the book. She says like, if you try getting through this book and decide it's a bunch of crap, you can go back to your sucky life. Yeah.

Relax. If you don't like this podcast, you're a dumb loser. That's fine. Go back to reading The Atlantic, I guess. It's just like, relax. You don't need to do this. It's also funny because it's her first book. So it's not even like this is a tried and tested approach. It's like, I'm just saying stuff and like people are going to try to stop you. The middle portions of this book are pretty inoffensive. There's some reasonably good advice on like self-love. There's some advice.

advice on meditating, very common advice about positivity. All good. I'm skipping over it because this is a bad faith episode.

That's now you're talking about our haters. Our haters are correct about this show. The one star reviews are right. So another thing that this has in common with the secret is that they talk about having the ability to like harness the power of the universe to give you whatever you want. But then the advice is always just like, and we will use that power to start a small business. Whenever she is reaching for an example of what you might want to accomplish, it's either making money or like finding a boyfriend.

That's another thing it always leads to. It's like how to get thin and get rich. There's no solving child poverty chapter or anything. It is funny because like the thing that is like most correlated with happiness is like meaningful relationships, like ability to form intimacy. I feel like these books don't really do that. She's already telling you to shed your friends. Yeah, but the number two thing is being your own boss.

Have you ever thought about that? So one of the big problems that this belief system runs into very quickly, and you sort of flagged early on, is victim blaming. Because the belief here is that your thoughts are responsible for whatever happens to you. So the bad things that happen to you are sort of your fault, even if they appear to be out of your control. She says that if someone does something awful to you, one of the questions you need to ask is, how did I attract this to myself? Yeah.

Probably the worst example of this is when she starts to talk about depression. Have you tried cheering up? Vibrate in a happy way. The way she frames this...

is that everyone tells themselves a story about their life and that that manifests in reality. So here's one part. Let's say, for example, that your story is that you're depressed. Chances are pretty good that even though it feels awful, when you feel awful, you don't have to work hard or do the laundry or go to the gym. It also feels very familiar and cozy and comfortable. It gets you attention. People come in and check on you and sometimes bring food. It gives you something to talk about.

It allows you to not try too hard or move forward and face possible failure. It lets you drink beer for breakfast. The problem with depression is that it rules so much. That's what she seems to be saying. Everyone's taking care of you. You get so much positive attention. Yeah. It's like she heard just like a couple of facts about depression where someone was like, yeah, people sleep in and they stop doing their chores. And she was like, sick. They must be doing that on purpose because that sounds phenomenal.

Here's a little bit more. If you were once depressed but have decided to let it go, stop listening to melancholy music. Stop talking about how lousy you feel. Stop pretending that putting on your bathrobe counts as getting dressed, etc. False. Instead, focus on the good and do the things you love to do. Make an effort instead of collapsing into the familiar feeling of being depressed. These people are always such pieces of shit. Absolute scumbags. It's so rare that somebody writes a book where it's like,

Their heart's in the right place, but maybe the execution is off. This is just like you're a bad person if you think this. All right. Here's a little bit more. We don't realize it, but we're making the perks we get from perpetuating our stories more important than getting the things we really want because it's familiar territory. It's what we're comfy with and we're scared to let it go. If we've been depressed or victimized or whatever. Oh, yeah.

If we've been depressed or victimized or whatever since childhood, we trick ourselves into believing that it's really who we are as adults in order to continue reaping the rewards. And the rewards is in quotes, which feels like she doesn't know how quote marks work.

Because we would put rewards in quotes to make fun of her for saying that there are rewards for being depressed. I feel like as she wrote it, she knew that this was kind of an incredibly awful thing to say. And so she just put it in quotes to make it sort of unclear whether or not she was being literal here. I also love if you've been depressed or victimized or whatever. Or whatever. No editor was like, eh.

Maybe think of a third thing, or maybe you can just say depressed or victimized. This is good tips for our listeners who I imagine are disproportionately depressed. Yeah, who's not depressed? Snap out of it, folks. Turn off Joy Division. Play Hey Ya by Outkast over and over again.

There is like a tiny element of truth in that like it's pretty well established that trying to push yourself to do things is in fact beneficial for people who are experiencing depression. But that's the hard part. Because that's kind of a – it's like that's a symptom of depression is finding it really difficult to go out and do things. And she's like, you should go out and do things. The idea that people are doing it on purpose is – Right. Come on.

And also for all the rewards, like you're so popular with your friends when you talk about your mental health problems. You know, this is the heart of the book and the heart of a lot of self-help books, right? In order for self-help to work, the reader's problems need to be entirely internal because...

If they're not, if they're structural problems or if they're really about the actions of other people or institutions or medical condition, then there's like only so much advice the author can give. Yeah. So they have to reframe everything as a mindset problem because that's a problem that they can pretend to solve. Yeah. So they peddle this idea that like.

Optimism isn't just helpful, it's magic. Well, that's what's so frustrating about it is because whenever you criticize these books, they can hide behind, oh, you don't think it's good to have a positive attitude? Right. Sure, to the extent that that affects things. Like, yeah, you should try to have a positive attitude. You shouldn't like overly focus on negative things. But on the other hand, that doesn't solve everything. And also, you're entitled to have a bad day. The final section of this book, and don't worry, we are not almost done this episode.

The final section of this book is titled How to Kick Some Ass. Okay. And it starts off with...

Probably the worst anecdote I've ever heard. Nice. Written in the most irritating style that you could possibly imagine. She is a terrible writer from the excerpts. It is awful. I thought that you would perhaps learn this as you went. And you have. You immediately clocked that she is an awful writer. It's so bad. Now, I want you to recalibrate your brain because...

The quality of writing is about to go to a place that my guess is you didn't really believe was possible. Remember Rich Dad Poor Dad who was like a fool and his money are one big party. I don't know if anything can top that.

Where at like 20 million copies sold, no one was like, that's a very common idiom that you're fucking up. Oh my God. That is so fucking, I forgot about that. God, Robert Kiyosaki's worth like $50 million. I think about that all the time. It's insane. I know. All right. I've sent you a long story. She says, the story goes that when Henry Ford first came up with the idea for his V8 motor, he wanted the engine to have all eight cylinders cast in one block. I have no idea what that means, but apparently it was a tall order because his team of engineers was like, bitch, you crazy. Yeah.

You're making me read this. Mm-hmm. He told them to do it anyway, and off they grumbled to toil away at it, only to come back and inform him that it was impossible. Upon hearing this news, Ford told them to keep at it no matter how long it took. He was all, I don't want to see your faces until you bring me what I want. And they were all, we just proved it can't be done. And he was all, it can be done and it will be done. And they were all, can not. And he was all, can so. Mm-hmm.

And they were all, no way. And he was all, way. So off they went again, this time for a whole year and nothing. So they go back to Ford. Peter.

Like half the listeners just tuned out at how long that was. Yeah, but you need it all for it to really hit your brain. To just really accept that this is real. So they go back to Ford and there's lots of tears and finger pointing and hair pulling and Ford sends them off again and tells them it will be done again. And then in the lab, somewhere between folding origami swans out of their notes,

and making fart noises every time someone mentions the word Ford, his engineers do the impossible. That was one sentence. That's right. They discover how to make the eight-cylinder engine block. This is what it means to make a decision for reals. When you make a no-nonsense decision, you sign up fully and keep moving toward your goal, regardless of what's flung in your path. God, the premise of the story was so long ago that I've forgotten what the point is.

Henry Ford did literally nothing over the course of this anecdote. Yeah, it's not an attitude story. She's like, this is about perseverance. This is about making a decision for reals. He's literally just yelling at his employees over the span of like two years until they do it. I don't know.

It doesn't illustrate her point at all. It's just like, be mean to your underlings. There's genuinely nothing to learn from this anecdote. I honestly don't like, I don't know what you could take away from this other than like something about unionizing maybe like,

The world is so full of these anecdotes. There's so many. And she just chooses one that's Henry Ford yelling at his employees. She's just assuming that you also have employees and you're not mean enough to them. So like 80% of the way into the book, she finally has a chapter dedicated to making money. Okay. This is what I've been waiting for. I've been hyped on this.

Okay. Because we've cured our depression. I'm out of bed. Nobody's bringing me casseroles. Jen believes, of course, that the primary obstacle to making money is that you subconsciously don't want to make money. Have you tried wanting money? All right. Sent you a bit. One of the biggest obstacles to making lots of money is not a lack of good ideas or opportunities or time or that we're too slovenly or stupid. It's that we refuse to give ourselves permission to become rich. This is something me and Aubrey come across a lot too in like diet books.

They're like, you don't think you have permission to be thin or whatever. And it's like, no, just becoming thin is hard. Excuse me, sir. I believe I deserve to be hot more than anything in the world. So let's move on to the next part of your advice. It's a, I think, kind of like sophisticated way of reframing something that isn't your fault into something that is your fault. They need it to be your fault so that they can solve the

problem. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, your face isn't structured like Timothee Chalamet's. That's because of God. What else do you have for me in that situation? Right. I did. I've been in L.A. for like three days and I saw Timothee Chalamet at Trader Joe's, by which I mean I was at Trader Joe's. My friend said, wouldn't it be weird if we saw Timothee Chalamet? That's basically the same. I like that. I was about to reveal myself as a little pop culture freak by being like, but isn't he on a media tour? Yeah.

Isn't he in con? I've got my fingers on the twink pulse, Mike. So don't try to fool me. Okay, here's her following follow-up excerpt. Let's say your story is that you can't make money. By staying broke, you get to be right. You get to be a victim, which makes you dependent on other people and gets you attention. Other people will offer to pay. You don't have to take responsibility.

you get to give up before you start and avoid possible failure. If things in your life fall far below the mediocre scale, you get to blame other people and circumstances instead of taking risks to change it because you can't afford to take risks. Being poor is so good. Being poor, that's why people are poor. It's like so good to be poor. People are so nice to you when

important. Doesn't that tell you the kind of circle she runs in where she's like, yeah, it's great to be broke because other people will offer to pay. It's like, no, that's not, I don't think you've been broke. People are going to think I'm being sarcastic or like kind of overdoing it or being snarky, but I do believe that she should go to jail for writing the paragraph. I'm sending you one more piece. We choose to stay in our stories because we get what I call false benefits from them. We get to keep our identities as a broke person.

We get to blame our brokenness on things outside ourselves. I don't have time. I have seven kids. The economy sucks. I can't find a pen to write down my to-do list with.

We don't have to push ourselves outside our comfort zones and risk failing, looking like an idiot, losing money, changing and becoming different from our family and friends. The list goes on and on, and it all comes down to this. You have to want your dreams more than you want your drama. This is what I've always said to people who have seven children in a bad economy. You have to want your dreams more than you want your drama.

She says that she overcame this mindset when she realized that her dad showed his love by giving her money. And so she was subconsciously avoiding getting rich because it would be as though she was rejecting her father's love. Wait, she just like admits that like my dad gave me money? Yeah. Why are we listening to these people about anything? Your excuse for being poor is that you have seven kids. Mine was that my dad gave me too much money when I was younger. Yeah.

But also, yeah, I don't think that most people are subconsciously avoiding getting rich for bizarrely elaborate psychological reasons. When I lived in London, I made 16,000 pounds per year, which is like $24,000. And like I would just run out of money on like the 27th of every month. And then I would just like eat what I had in the cupboard and I would like walk everywhere. Well, wasn't it nice that other people were paying for you? Yeah.

And people, I never told anybody because it would have been too easy. I wanted to play life on hard mode. Yeah. At least with the depression thing, there's like some element, there's some plausible scenario to like, you can cheer your way out of depression. But this is like straight up like objective facts of like how much money do people have in their bank accounts? I have a story from this book that I have that absolutely does not fit here, but I just want to tell it. She says that at one point she was stupid.

staying on a farm for free. The only thing that she had to do was watch after the horse and two goats that they had at that farm. And one day she goes out shopping and she comes back five hours later and the goats have gotten into the house and wrecked the place.

And she tells a story. It's just like, you know, kind of a funny story of goats tearing up this house. And then at the end of it, she says, in order to become rich, you must connect to your desire for money with the passion of a goat who wants in off the porch. That's the lesson that she took from this story where her only job was to watch these goats.

And she let them into the house while she went shopping for five hours and fucked it all up. And she's like, the lesson here is about the perseverance of goats. Yeah. Goats are just so persistent. Yeah. They really go after what they want. Like, that's the lesson Jen's taking. I really learned something about goats today. This is someone who, like, can't do anything. I would never share that story with anyone. It's humiliating. Exactly. Yeah.

Now, here is another example of how Jen talks about poverty. She was broke years ago and she needed a new car. And here's the story that she tells. She says, the most painful part really was that even though all signs pointed to broke, clueless and stuck, deep down I knew I could be doing so much better. Which is why, even though the sound of crickets could be heard echoing throughout my empty bank account, I wandered into the Audi dealership.

took the brand new Q5 for a spin, and let the sales guy rattle on and on about leather this and premium that. It was about much more than a damn car. It was about no longer being the kind of person who takes what she can get and finally becoming the kind of person who creates exactly what she wants.

Buying the Honda would have been the sensible thing to do. But I knew that adventure, true love, and a whole new way of life awaited me on the other side of my comfort zone. I was brave enough to buy a luxury car. So she buys the considerably more expensive car. And you're sort of reading the book thinking, well, okay, how did this work out? Yeah. And then she tells you. I almost instantly came up with a new way to pay off my Audi. And I'm certain that if I'd bought the Honda, I'd still be struggling to pay for it.

Because I'd still be playing small, I'd still be in the mindset that I can't afford more, and I'm the kind of person who has to struggle to get whatever she can, that I can't break out of the mold and go get something completely out of my reach, etc.,

Just say your dad paid for it. This thing forever. So she says, I almost instantly came up with a way to pay off the Audi, but she does not tell you what it is. Oh, really? She doesn't say it. She doesn't say it. She doesn't even bother? This is sort of a consistent theme where she's like, I got myself in this situation and then I thought of a way to get out of it. And at first I was like furious that she repeatedly did this. Yeah.

But then I realized in her mind, like this is the essence of the law of attraction. Like the actual method that she used to produce the money in the real world is irrelevant. The only relevant thing is her mindset. So she's like, she thinks that telling you how she made the money is superfluous. It's just like the natural output of her vibrating at a high frequency. Only a person with money would think that that's the problem. If you sort of try to boil down,

down her financial advice into one thing.

It's very clearly go into debt because like that will put you in a more aggressive mindset. Oh. The lesson of the Honda Audi thing is like more debt is actually better. Hell yeah. Because it will like propel you forward. You want to be running on adrenaline and credit card debt for your entire 20s and 30s. This also I hate to I mean I know we're like dunking on this dumb fucking book but to me

There's like a real societal corrosion story here. Like it's so fucking corrosive to have these books around. It's such toxic fucking poison. And I think the core thing that like bugs me about this whole outlook is that you've got essentially ruling class people, wealthy people who not only want

to be wealthy and stay wealthy and have a comfortable life they want you to fucking congratulate them for it they want it to be virtue like oh wow you didn't buy the Honda you got the Audi oh because like you're so brave it's really like an act of self-actualization to do this yeah we're surrounded by people that are like part of the ruling class that are constantly gaslighting us about how much money and fucking power they have yeah like you just wanted a nice car so you got a nice car right fine I also found this rude as someone who bought a Honda fairly recently you know

This is targeting you specifically. She's like, well, I guess that's my loser mindset that I was like, oh, this seems like a reliable car. Yeah, why don't you have permission to get an Audi, Peter? You didn't give yourself permission. Next time I'm going to get a Bugatti. It's going to cost me a million dollars. And that will, of course, propel me into a mind space where I can make a million dollars and

pay it off. There's no other way to motivate yourself other than by buying things you can't afford. It's like the Klarna method of self-motivation. Probably the wildest story in this vein comes from her other book, How to Be a Badass at Making Money. She attends a seminar about manifesting money. Oh, it's a seminar grift. At that seminar, she realizes she wants to be a life coach. She's doing the grift.

She's doing it. She's doing the grift. Oh my God. It's an Ouroboros. You went to a seminar and they were like, here's how to be a seminar grifter. And then you turn into a seminar grifter. And this whole fucking book is teaching me how to be a seminar grifter. The guy leading the seminar is selling coaching packages. The top tier package is a year long coaching thing with a bunch of one-on-one FaceTime with the guy. And it costs...

$85,000. Dude, you are getting scammed. You are getting scammed. She says that when she saw that price tag, she switched her thinking from no way to there must be a way. Hell yeah. And she starts to believe that she can manifest the $85,000. Incredible. Here's how she does it. Remember that $85,000 I told you I manifested to pay for my big fat coaching package?

Well, I'ma tell you how I did it because it was right up there with one of the scariest, most uncomfortable things I've ever done. Once I decided to get coached at that level for reals, instead of running and hiding like I did the first time around, I acted on an idea that came into my mind the moment it arrived. I got the idea of someone I could maybe borrow that money from. Ha ha ha!

Yeah.

bought a plane ticket to fly to her house the moment the terrifying thought took over my brain and arrived on her doorstep, surprising the hell out of her. I risked being vulnerable to this person. I risked her thinking I was out of my mind, irresponsible, very possibly in a cult. And I will never forget the pained face she made when I told her how much I needed. But after much uncomfortable discussion, she forked it over. This is her mom, right? No, this is just a random friend as far as I can tell. Who has $85,000? Yeah, that's

Because Jen manifested. She'd never met this friend before. She made up the friend on the flight. So she manifested this money by getting an $85,000 loan. And this is basically, according to her, when her career takes off. So she is ultimately able to pay it back.

But again, she never actually details what exactly she did to start making more money. I also want to know so bad what the life coaching advice was that she paid $85,000 for. The life coach was become a life coach. That's what I was just about to say. Like the advice has to be like become a self-help grifter, right? Dude, imagine how hyped that guy was when the first person ever bought an $85,000 package.

Like, you know that that's just there to dangle an extra high price sort of option in front of people so that they pay for like the $5,000 option and think that it's like a good deal. He just wanted to get her out of his hair. He's like, I'm just going to tell her $85,000 so she stops bugging me. And then she's like, I'll do it. Oh, fuck. Oh.

So again, it seems pretty clear that she is telling people to go into debt in order to shift themselves into a money-making mindset so that they can pay it off. I love that you have to read between the lines of these books to find out what the advice is. She says, in order to transform your life, you may have to spend the money you do have, get a loan, sell something, borrow from a friend, put it on your credit card, or manifest it in some other way. That's the thing with all these people. They're just like, spend money you don't have.

Also, she's providing five specific examples of what you can do to transform your life here. And three of them are just different ways of going into debt. Right. Right.

Just get a loan, borrow from a friend, put it on your credit card. Right. Get a loan, get a loan, or get a loan. Do you have any actual advice here? Yeah. So once again, we're left with this idea that any problem you have is just the result of your lack of a desire to fix it. If you don't have something, it's only because you didn't want it enough, right? There's no structural inequity. There's no generational poverty or anything like that. There aren't even...

individual barriers to getting money. Everything is literally vibes. Yeah. Every chapter in You Are a Badass at Making Money ends with a mantra that you are meant to repeat to yourself to get rich. I'm going to share with you all of the money mantras so that our listeners can repeat these to themselves and get rich. Okay. I love money because I love myself.

I love money and money loves me. I love money because it's the root of so much awesome. I love money because money is always here for me. I love money because I love living an awesome life. I love money because it comes when I call. I love money and am grateful every day that it's surrounding me with its glorious awesomeness. I love money because I am a fearless, badass, money-making machine. I love money because it makes me more of who I truly am.

I love money because it gives me freedom and options, and that's how I love living my life. A whole lot of freedom and options. I love money because it lets me be the most me I can be. I love money and will not give up until I am surrounded by all the wealth I desire. Oh, my God. I love money more than I love any single human life. I made that last one up, but the rest of them are real.

I can feel like I can see my vision growing redder as this goes on that it's basically a rich person being like it's like so good to be rich I'm just gonna tell you all the ways it's gonna be rich it's good to like eat good food it's good to like live in like a super big house you guys know about this each of these mantras is accompanied by like

but are basically thought exercises to get you thinking about money the right way. These people already believe this because otherwise they wouldn't have bought the book, Jen. I already think money is good, which is why I'm buying a self-help book about getting more money. Well, hold on. But here's some practical things you can do.

Oh my god. Oh my fucking god.

Remind yourself how abundant it is. Make it like an Easter egg hunt. That's also great. I love that these books also just have straight up bad advice. Just little piles of ones. This reminds me of my college roommate who used to get wasted and then around Easter he would hide, when he was drunk, Cadbury eggs around the apartment. And then when he was sober, he would open a drawer and be like, oh, Cadbury eggs.

Oh, wait. Also, here's one of the practical tips. Go on the internet and do a search for the following text. Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson. What? Print it out, tape it to your refrigerator, and read it as often as possible. Oh, my God. Me and Aubrey talked about this on the show. It's a poem by Marianne. Yeah. This is her whole thing about how you're afraid of being like...

thin and hot and rich. Yeah. All you're doing is you're selling people on the premise of the book while still fucking wasting time not giving them tips. It's basically reasons you should buy this book. What do you mean? Those are tips. Write down all the reasons that you deserve money. You're changing the mindset. Tips exist in the real world and the real world is fake. Ha ha ha.

What's real is your vibrations. And she's telling you how to vibrate, Michael. Oh my God. This is like my biggest pet peeve where like you go on YouTube to like learn something specific and you're like, how to iron a shirt or whatever. And then you click on a video and it's like,

Don't you hate it when shirts get wrinkled? Having a wrinkled shirt is the worst. We hate it. You're like, yes, I'm on the video. You're telling me reasons I should be interested in this video, but I'm already here. When I am frantically YouTubing how to tie a bow tie, I'm in...

a hotel room and I need to be at a wedding. I don't have time for you to explain the history of bow ties. Please move forward. The first word of your video should just be like one. So at one point, Jen says, my first experience with the power of mastering your mindset happened when I was working with my very first private coach, the one who helped me start my online business, helping writers complete their book proposals called writeyourdamnbook.com. So she's pitching her website in the middle of this. Yeah.

And who was also helping me hone my chops as a life coach. At the time, I'd worked with a couple of private coaching clients of my own here and there and had basically tripled my annual income with writeyourdamnbook.com. Oh, so it is the grift. To be clear, at this point, Jen has written one not very successful book, which we'll talk about shortly, and is admittedly broke. And she is selling her coaching. Yeah, and she's selling advice.

Someone who's failed at the thing she's giving you advice on. Jen wants you to buy expensive coaching packages so that you can eventually sell expensive coaching packages. Like these people have...

Nothing material to contribute to society. They can't even tell you how to make money except as part of like this circular economy where everyone is both scamming and being scammed at all times. There's repeating the scam to you that they fell for. Now, that would have been basically the whole episode, except I found something scrupulous.

So unhinged that it changed the arc of what I was doing. Okay. Like I have sort of referenced in 2005, Jen Sincero wrote another book. I'm going to share with you a screenshot of the cover. Okay.

Wait, what? It says The Straight Girl's Guide to Sleeping with Chicks. So this is her first book. It's a book about, well, let's be clear. This is exactly what it appears to be. The Straight Girl's Guide to Sleeping with Chicks. This is an entire book dedicated to pretending that bisexuality is not real. That is what this is. Hell yeah. And I realize it was 2005, but

But my God, little shout out here to a YouTube channel, Savvy Writes Books. Oh, yeah, Savvy. She had a good video on this book and the other Jen Sincero books, which unfortunately I found her videos for those after I was almost done the episode. And then I cried because I could have saved a lot of time. Yeah. She's a good follow. Yeah. I'm going to touch on some of the greatest hits from this book. A lot of it is just...

Tips for lesbian sex. There are pictures of posed Barbie dolls with like little strap-ons for visual aid. That's why it took you so long to research this episode, Peter. I will not be weighing in on this content, Mike.

You're like, unfortunately, I just have to read more. I have to do more research for this episode. There are no two people less qualified to weigh in on this content. There's only one acceptable type of gay sex, and that's male on male. That's why we're working together on the straight guy's guide to sleeping with dudes. I want to be clear about some things up front here. If you identify as straight, but then like,

hook up with someone of the same gender and then you're like, well, that wasn't for me or that's not my main thing. Yeah, whatever. You still consider yourself straight. That's fine. I'm not going to nitpick the labels that people apply to themselves. And I have some sympathy for someone who's scared to identify as bisexual at a time when it wasn't as accepted, right? You know, those are sort of my caveats going into this. I think you are

wildly overthinking this, Peter. I think she was trying to sell a book. Oh, I agree. I always love finding like the previous grift attempts by these grifters where like they just couldn't really make it work. Like I guess she was vibrating wrong, but like she was shopping around like this is like a little persona. And she actually basically says in the book that the title is clickbait. Like she basically says that. Yeah.

I'm being very careful because you can't get canceled for this. You can say whatever you want. I can literally do anything right now. About lesbians and bisexuals. In fact, lesbians and gay men hate each other. That's not even true. It's true. That's like a weird thing that people say, but it's not actually true. No, that was an episode of Modern Family. I remember it quite well.

So with all those caveats about how I'm not biphobic or anything like that, I'm not problematic about this stuff. She literally says, quote, it's not at all uncommon for straight women to get into committed monogamous relationships with other women. What? No.

It's not uncommon for vegetarians to eat meat. That's the thing. She does this whole, like, labels. Who needs them? Sexuality is fluid thing throughout the book. Which, like, sure. But there's a difference between saying, hey, I'm not into labeling my sexuality and being like, oh, I'm straight, but I'm in a committed sexual and romantic relationship with someone of the same sex. Because that's not what straight needs. No. You're not doing...

sexual liberation. You're just ignoring established human language. You're getting into sexual dolezal territory if you keep insisting you're straight. I also do not think that this should be a problematic take. I think that if you were like in a committed relationship with someone of the same sex, you don't get to do this thing where I'm like, I'm straight. It's like,

Words mean something. She talks about moving in with a woman that you're in a relationship with. She says, quote, if you live with your girlfriend but still call yourself straight, people get up your ass even more than they do if you're just dating. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'll bet. If by like up your ass, you mean they're like, Jen, can you please just stop calling yourself straight?

It's getting disingenuous, Jen. It's one thing to like not want to deal with labels. It's another to just identify as straight while you're fully in a relationship with another woman, which like, by the way, what does she think of the fact that you identify as straight in this scenario? On my wedding day, the guy I'm marrying is like, so as a straight guy, I do take Mike. It's very, it's very annoying when someone's like labels. I hate labels. I am straight though. Do not call me a fucking bisexual. Yeah.

So she has various tips throughout the book. Some of them are just completely off the wall, unhinged, and some of them are quite normal. One of them is lesbians are into women. If you're just experimenting, don't be a dickhead and use her for sex when you can tell she has feelings for you. Zero Pinocchios. I'm going to send you. Oh, my God.

All right. I'm starting to sweat. I'm going to send you. You're so nervous for people yelling at you. I'm on your side with this. It's not that. It's not that. This one, it's just that it's getting, it's going to get increasingly unhinged. I felt like in the beginning I needed to give these qualifiers because it seems like maybe this is going to be a situation where the title seems problematic, but then the content is like, well, whatever. But it's actually a situation where the title seems fine compared to the content of

Oh my God. So it's like a little graphic with like little icons of ladies. And it says, famous straight women who've dabbled. Madonna, Britney Spears, Anne Heche, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Zina, not a real person. Allie Sheedy, Ione Sky, Janice Dickerson, Sinead O'Connor, Frida Kahlo, Allie McBeal, Kim Cattrall, Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie, Lisa Marie Presley, Margaret Cho, and Cynthia Nixon. These are bisexuals.

Or just like straight up lesbians in some cases. So a couple of these are fully fictional characters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Xena, warrior princess. I was like, is this a joke? Yeah. So first of all, Xena, as far as I can recall, doesn't like actually like hook up with or date a lady on screen. She's just sort of a lesbian icon because a lot of people thought it was pretty heavily implied or whatever. She's literally just a strong woman. And this author thinks that she's like dabbled. Right.

And also again not not a real person yeah Janice Dickerson I believe she means Janice Dickinson oh Yeah Just fucks the name up. I didn't Eleanor Roosevelt come on I mean some of these people are either bi or lesbian like Margaret Cho is just openly queer Frida Kahlo is just openly queer and

Cynthia Nixon, I think, was not openly queer when this book came out. So I will forgive her for that one. But several of these people are just actually bisexual. So like when we talk about bisexual erasure, it's not just in like the abstract sense. She's literally just being like, Margaret chose straight. Also, I love doing like straight men who've dabbled. Neil Patrick Harris, Elton John, just like...

Just like list them as like openly gay men. Liberace. Oh, God. Also, like some of these are like when you say Britney Spears, are you talking? I don't think. When she leads off with Britney Spears and Madonna, is she just talking about them making out on stage at like the VMAs? Yeah.

She was brainstorming. That's the first thing that came up. Where have I seen two ladies fooling around? Ah, yes. So this gets quite problematic quite quickly. There are, again, a ton of like little standalone tips and stuff throughout the book. One of them is labeled sleeping with chicks tip number one. And it's,

I'm roofying women, but in a straight way. I'm going to send you... This gets rough. The very funny thing about the dynamic on the show is that you are more offended by homophobia than me. I feel like because I'm just more used to it. I'm like, yeah, give me the problematic shit. Yeah, well, I have to fake it. Because when...

The minute the microphones turn off. When I read this, I was like, she's spitting truths. She says, I'd like to point out a special bonus prize that the straight girl population might not be aware of. Because you're a chick dealing with other chicks, you have the Curious Straight Girls All Access Backstage Pass. You automatically gain entry to saunas, group showers, dressing rooms, and a host of other intimate settings where women are not only off their guard, but naked. And you can also get a free pass at the end of the day.

You have a coveted VIP pass. Don't waste it. This is like some Andrew Tate shit. Are you kidding me? This is really bad. This is vile. It's just like, yeah, women don't suspect you. Yeah, I'm just like ogling them. Use their trust in order to see them naked in semi-public settings. That's the hot topic.

tip here. You knew this was going to be so homophobic. The straight guy, straight girl's guide to sleeping with chicks. You knew it was going to be so homophobic so fast. I mean, is it homophobic or are we really talking about the problematic actions of this lesbian? You know what I mean? She continues, think about all these situations you could get yourself into that would make sleeping with a chick a snap. And then she probably

Provides a list.

Five, hire a female stripper at your next bachelorette party. Six, play truth or dare with your friends in a hot tub. Seven, ask for help unzipping your dress in the locker room. Eight, get a bikini wax from a hot chick. I don't know.

about that. Oh my God. I want her face to be very close to my butthole when I propose let's get a coffee. Nine, instigate a game of spin the bottle at your next girl's night out. Okay, Peter, I have a theory. Okay. This is a dude writing under the name Jen whatever.

To try to make this sound progressive because these are all like rapey ass Andrew Tate tips Wow the misandry coming out of you right now dude. This is fucking wild several of these are just like create situations where you can Low-key grope someone yeah, get a game of twister going one of them is like apparently try to fuck the bride at a bridal shower

I love that this is so problematic that you're like, this can't be a woman. It's also so wild that like just as a society, this is also the societal corrosiveness thing, that like just as a society, like 95% of tips for getting women are just like non-consensual flirting with them. It's never just like go to a thing where you both have the same interest and introduce yourself. Go to a lesbian bar. Yeah.

Jesus Christ. I can't believe this shit. This is like, how is this in new editions of your book? Oh, wait. So they're republishing this now that her subsequent book blew up. Not only is this republished, there's like a foreword from 2016 where she defends the book. Oh, no way. She's like, they called me homophobic. They called me... Just for saying bisexuals don't exist and lesbians are straight women who dabble. If I'm her and I'm rich as hell off of...

You are a badass and like whatever bullshit coaching stuff I'm selling. I'm talking to Simon and Schuster and I'm like, under no circumstances do you let people know about this book. You gotta bury this book, man. Take it off of like IMDB and shit. I wanted to end on a lighter note

So the last thing I will mention is that this book also has little inserts purporting to teach you lesbian vocabulary. Oh, no. I am 80 to 90% positive that she is making these up. Is one of them body tea? One of them is daikon, which she says is a famous woman revered by lesbians. Oh. So it's a combination of dike and...

It's also a kind of radish. That's where they get the name. Not the only time in the book she drops the D-bomb. Yeah. And sorry, Jen, I know this might sound weird coming from me, but I don't think you can say that. I don't...

If you're going to spend the whole book insisting that you're straight, you don't still get to say it. That's not how this works. The benefit of being poor is that people give you money. And the benefit of being gay is you get to use slurs. There is one clear benefit to being any marginalized minority. You get to drop the slur if you want to.

Many of the vocabulary things are just wildly vulgar. And another one of them is puddle jumping, which is switching between fingering your partner and yourself. And then there's carpooling, which is using the same dildo at once. What? And then she says she calls dental dams veggie wraps. What?

She says that a one night stand with a lesbian is called a lickety split. I know that our listenership contains many dedicated lesbians, so I am calling upon you. You need...

You need to tell us whether these are real. If any of you have heard any of these, please reach out. I remember when I studied abroad in Australia as like part of the welcome package, they gave us this little like pamphlet about like Australian slang. Like these are the words you should know to live here. And one of them was instead of sad, they say happy as a bastard on Father's Day. Yeah.

Which I never heard anybody say. I think someone was just doing like improv comedy. Yeah, yeah. And she's like put it in there. I think that's like what she's doing. This whole book sounds like she's like doing a bit. She's obviously trying to do forced humor.

At many points. So like you're sitting there trying to figure out if she thinks that Xena is a good example or a joke. It's also kind of indicative of how these books come about where it's like, it's not really funny enough to be a comedy book. You can package almost anything. If you write an advice book, you can basically write a memoir, but like pretend that it's advice. Or you can write like a standup comedy book that just like, isn't that funny. I feel like

almost any mediocre writer and mediocre idea can be repackaged as advice and then sold. I think a lot of that is like the function of these books because like she just couldn't really make it as anything else. And oh God, like the way that the Henry Ford anecdote is written where it's like he was like this and they were like this. Yeah. Is that supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be charming and endearing in some way? Like she always says for reals. I know.

Am I supposed to like smile at this or is it supposed to just like make me feel like she's relatable or something? Right. I honestly don't know because she's not funny. She's not funny. It's not well written. It's not really advice. It's not really humor. It's not really insight. Yeah.

It's an advice book. I do think Daikon is better than Feminonmonon or whatever that one is. Feminonmonon? Feminonmonon. Got bold move, Peter, to spend 15 minutes defending lesbians and then go after Chapel Roan right as people can hear the theme music coming back. Yeah. So anyway, that's the book. Again, I'm not going to, I'm sure that the sex tips are great. We're not going to go into it. I would not know.