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​NEW Premium Notes​

​René Girard, Mimesis, and Conflict | Cynthia Haven on EconTalk with Russ Roberts​

If you're looking for a great introduction into the profound and controversial mind of René Girard, then these Premium Podcast Notes are for you. Expect to be briefed on how his mimetic theory claims that complete authenticity is impossible, why the scapegoat mechanism is so powerful in both societal and religious contexts, and why we all have self-love of the wrong kind.

​Pattern Breakers: How to Find a Breakthrough Startup Idea | Mike Maples, Jr. (Partner at Floodgate)​

Mike Maples, Jr. is a trainspotter for startups. In this episode, he discusses what he’s found separates startups and founders that break through and change the world from those that don’t.

​How Stuttering Works​ ​​

Learn all you ever wanted to know and more about Stuttering. What it is, how common, what causes it, how to treat, and tips for parents of kids who stutter, and more.

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Top Takeaways Of The Week

​René Girard, Mimesis, and Conflict ​

​Mimesis: “All desire is a desire for being”– René Girard

• Envy is our desire to be someone else, not just to imitate them

​Pick a Religion, Or This Happens: “If you do not have a real religion, you end up with a more dreadful one” – René Girard

• Example: If you don’t have religion, you may make politics your religion

​The Role of the Scapegoat: “It’s a way of not taking it out on your people, but taking it out on a third party that can be exiled, expelled, or killed” – Cynthia Haven

• Religion provides a sacred framework to justify action against the scapegoat

​Do Scapegoats Last? Nothing has changed in regards to the actual societal tension, so the sense of unity against the third party only lasts so long until everyone is back at each other’s throats (i.e. 9/11)

​How Not to be a Scapegoat: “The best way not to be crucified is to do as everyone else and join in the crucifixion” – Cynthia Haven

​A Common Enemy, But Why? Why can’t we be kind to each other in peacetime? Why must we have an external enemy to unite?

​We Are All Persecutors: “We’re all guilty of stuff. We’re all guilty of bending the truth. We’re all guilty of rewriting the story to favor our innocence. But, when you see that yourself, you’re not that different, then it helps you forgive other people. Why should I get a free pass and they don’t?” – Cynthia Haven

• “We bond by joining the persecutors, it’s hard to be an orphan” – Cynthia Have

​Rationalization: “Self-love of the wrong kind”– Cynthia Haven. We exonerate ourselves daily, telling ourselves something is not as bad when we do it
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​Pattern Breakers: How to Find a Breakthrough Startup Idea ​

​“Better” Doesn’t Matter: Better is an extension of the present, assuming the future is slightly different from now

• Startups win by being radically different, avoiding the comparison trap

​Forcing a Choice, Not a Comparison:​

• Startup success comes from avoiding direct comparisons
• They need to propose something completely different to change the subject

​Startup vs. Corporate Capitalists:​

• Corporate capitalists make money by compounding, extending advantages, and maintaining moats
• Startups have none of those advantages
• Startups win by denying the premise of the existing rules and creating something new

​3 Elements of a Breakthrough Startup: Inflections, insights, and what Mike calls founder future fit (or “is this from the future?”)

​Future Fit: “There need to be underlying forces in the idea to give it power to escape the gravitational pull of the present.” – Mike Maples, Jr.

• We want observable powers that make pursuing the idea worthwhile
• William Gibson was right: “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”

​Insights That Matter: An insight is a non-obvious truth about how one or more inflections can change behavior

• Great insights leverage inflections and need to be non-consensus and right

​Can't Go It Alone: “Great start-ups happen when a subset of people in this world buy into the founder’s insight and then move with them to co-create that future.” – Mike Maples, Jr.

​Experiments That Succeed Are Not The Goal: “If all you do is experiment that validates what you think, you didn’t really learn anything, you just doubled down on your existing understanding or opinion.” – Mike Maples, Jr.

​Contrarian Is NOT Enough: “Being contrarian is another form of conformity because it’s still relative to somebody else.”– Mike Maples, Jr.

​Find Desperate Customers: Target customers who are desperate for a solution

• Force a choice, not a comparison
• Tesla Cybertruck – people either love or hate it, but no one is neutral
• Desperate customers will overlook early flaws

​Mike's Top Book Recommendations:​

• ​“The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Bronnie Ware. She was a hospice nurse and shared insights from people in their last 90 days about what they wished they had done differently
• ​“Chase, Chance, and Creativity” by James Austin. Talks about how certain people attract luck and how luck can be created
• Clay Christensen’s books
• ​“The Laws of Human Nature” by Robert Greene
• ​“Resonate” by Nancy Duarte

​Rich Guy Product Recommendation: Vintage fountain pens, especially a Montblanc 149 first-generation celluloid pen from right after WWII

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​How Stuttering Works ​

​More than 10% Disfluency: Disfluency is a common part of communication, involving interruptions like pauses during speech. Less than 10% of such speech patterns is normal; anything more tends to fall within the spectrum of stuttering or stammering.

​Stupid Is, as Stupid Does: Stuttering or stammering is not indicative of any disorder, disease, or lack of intelligence nor does it mean the person struggles with thinking of what to say. It merely accounts for an interruption in normal communication, and the attention drawn to it tends to exacerbate the issue, creating a cycle.

​3 Issues: Repetitions at the beginning of words, prolongations (lengthening certain sounds), and blockages (complete stoppages).

​Prevalence: About 1% of adults worldwide suffer from stuttering, with the majority of instances resolving in childhood (Sorry Joe...)

• In the U.S., this constitutes approximately 3 to 3.5 million adults. The condition is more prevalent in men than in women.

​Moses Had a Stutter: “Moses grabbed a hot coal, put it in his mouth. And that’s how he got the stutter.”

​The Demosthenes Treatment: “Demosthenes did his speeches while he was walking uphill to control his breathing. This one might most closely resemble, aside from the mouthful of pebbles, modern treatment for stuttering which is to say, speaking exercises.”

​Other Famous Stutterers: Kendrick Lamar, Nicole Kidman, Albert Einstein, Carly Simon, Winston Churchill, Bruce Willis, Shaquille O’Neal, Tiger Woods, Joe Biden and Charles Darwin

​Tips for Parents: ​

• Give kids plenty of room and time to talk, helping them express themselves without rushing them.
• Avoid drawing attention to stuttering, instead focus on their meaning.
• Stay away from suggesting the child to ‘slow down’ or ‘taking deep breaths’. These might bring even more attention to the fact they’re not speaking ‘correctly’.
• Implement slow-paced habits at home, demonstrating to the child that it’s perfectly okay to take time with tasks and speech.
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​Breast Cancer: How to Catch, Treat, and Survive ​

What's The Risk: An American woman has about a one in eight lifetime risk, or 12% risk, of developing breast cancer.

• Roughly 275,000 cases of breast cancer occur in the U.S. every year, with approximately 38,000 deaths.
• Rates of breast cancer are highest in the most developed societies, believed to be linked to nutrition, pubescent nutrition, number of pregnancies, and duration of nursing.

What Are My Chances: Approximately 80 to 85% of women with breast cancer are cured, but 15 to 18% are still at risk for recurrence and death from the disease.

• Breast cancer risk is not significantly impacted by smoking.
• Obesity is a relatively weak risk factor and is not used to stratify patients for high risk screening or offer reassurance about breast cancer risk.
• Stage 1 breast cancer in the U.S. provides a 10-year cancer-free survival rate, often on the order of 90% or more.

Why Prevalence is Going Up: There has been a rise in the incidence of breast cancer, likely due to early puberty onset, longer menstrual durations, and fewer, shorter-duration pregnancies, attributable to improvements in nutrition and overall health.

Babies Help: Historical cancer epidemiological findings suggest that women who never became pregnant, like nuns, were at greater risk of developing breast cancer.

Three Major Types of Breast Cancer: Estrogen receptor-positive, triple-negative, and HER2 positive. The majority of breast cancers (70-75%) are estrogen receptor-positive. These commonly occur in older women and have the most favorable prognosis.

• The other types, triple-negative and HER2 positive breast cancers, often arise in younger women and are more aggressive. Triple-negative breast cancer is also relatively more common in African American women.

Density, Not Size: Breast size doesn’t increase the risk of cancer, but breast density does, which is not solely due to the difficulty of detection in denser tissues.

How it Starts: Many breast cancers start as ductal carcinoma or lobular carcinoma (Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (DCIS) and Lobular Carcinoma in Situ (LCIS)), especially hormone receptor-positive breast cancers.

• Triple negative breast cancers originate differently, with more of the architectural stromal element of the gland.
• The majority of hormone receptor-positive ER-positive breast cancers emerge from a multi-stage evolution of these pre-cancerous lesions.
• DCIS lesions can be removed via a mastectomy, after which no further treatment is typically needed.

DIY Diagnosis: “Teaching women to find a lump and go see a doctor has in many developing countries actually lowered the fatality rate of breast cancer because it allows early detection.” – Harold Burstein

Lots of Treatments: Anti-estrogen medicines like tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors are often considered for breast tumors that are estrogen receptor positive, regardless of their size.

• Anti-estrogen medicines are often advised for estrogen receptor positive tumors, which account for over 80% of cases, despite the side effects related to estrogen deprivation.
• Trastuzumab, a drug that targets HER2 is recommended for tumors that are more than half a centimeter in size.
• Chemotherapy is often considered for very small triple negative breast cancers.
• Radiations are used post surgery to sterilize the chest and breast area.
• Immune therapy with the use of checkpoint inhibitors like Pembrolizumab is a new and active treatment in triple negative breast cancers.
• Herceptin and Pertuzumab are effective treatments for HER2 positive breast cancer and have reversed the outcome trend for this kind of breast cancer from being the most feared type to one of the most successfully treated.
• Neo-adjuvant treatment involves giving drug therapy prior to surgery in order to shrink the tumor. This often results in the need for less surgery which leads to less morbidity and a better cosmetic result.

Genetics: “Family history is obviously a powerful marker for greater risk of breast cancer recurrence. If you look at large populations, roughly 8% to 10% of all breast cancer diagnoses are related to a specific hereditary gene mutation.” – Harold Burstein

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​The Art Of Mastering Your Emotions ​

The Golden Algorithm of emotional mastery:

• 1. Name an unwanted emotion in your life
• 2. List the ways that you try to avoid it
• 3. Notice that every way you try to avoid it, you actually create it

Cognitive Superpositioning: Holding multiple, often contradictory, perspectives simultaneously without feeling the need to resolve them into a single viewpoint

Self Hatred: “Self-hatred is a potent, but toxic fuel, especially if you use it for too long.” – Chris Williamson

• “You are not going to get to where you want to go by being a really sh*tty boss to yourself.” – Joe Hudson

Special Snowflakes: “The desire to be special can only exist if you don’t know who you are.” – Joe Hudson

• Commonly, the thing that drives a person’s desire to be special is that they were not loved as kids in a way that was deeply attuned

Keys for fostering a long-term, healthy and successful relationship:

• Be transparent about the trauma that each of you have experienced
• Learn from the trauma that the other person has experienced
• Commit to working through that trauma

You Have to Say NO: “If you can’t say no easily, then you can’t be trusted.” – Joe Hudson

• “If you can’t say no, then you can’t find your ‘yes’”. – Joe Hudson
• Resentment tends to follow a relationship in which one of the persons in it lost themself
• “Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.” – Neil Strauss

Reverse Charisma: Being genuinely interested in the other person

The Five-Star Meeting Framework: Following every meeting, rank it on a scale of one to five stars based on how much energy it gave you

• After a month of recording this, your goal for the next month should be to make all of your meetings five-star meetings
• This will reduce the quantity of meetings that do not add value, and increase the effectiveness of the meeting that actually do create value

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​Running Legend Steve Prefontaine ​

Nike's First Influencer: “No matter how hard you train, somebody will train harder… I am that somebody.” - Prefontaine

• First man to break the 4 minute mile
• “Intensity is the strategy. Winners don’t have a better strategy. They do the obvious things with more intensity.” – Shaan Puri

Excellence: “Excellence is often just the capacity for taking pain, the ability to experience it, go through it, and keep going.” – Isadore Sharp

Foolproof hack for extreme charisma: Maintain eye contact and stare a person in the eyes

Something about his gaze— Steve gave the impression that you were the most important person in his life at that instant and that the things he was telling you were known by few others

Don’t let others or your own beliefs dictate what you cannot do: “If you listen to other people and what they say you can’t do, or you listen to your own fears, then you’re never going to push yourself enough to find those limits.”– Ben Wilson

Is impatience a good thing? According to Ben, great achievers have monstrous impatience. “They want to move faster and accomplish things faster.”

Died Too Young: On May 29, 1975, after a meet in Eugene, Pre partied, then died in a car crash early the next morning at age 24

• One of the reasons that he’s such a legend is because he never declined and died while he was great

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​ALL THE NOTES:

• ​René Girard, Mimesis, and Conflict | Cynthia Haven on EconTalk with Russ Roberts​
• ​Pattern Breakers: How to Find a Breakthrough Startup Idea | Mike Maples, Jr. (Partner at Floodgate) on Lenny’s Podcast with Lenny Rachitsky​
• ​How Stuttering Works​​
• ​278 ‒ Breast cancer: how to catch, treat, and survive breast cancer | Harold Burstein, M.D., Ph.D. – The Drive with Peter Attia​
• ​The Art Of Mastering Your Emotions | Joe Hudson on Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson Ep. 813​​
• ​Running Legend Steve Prefontaine | How to Take Over the World with Ben Wilson​​​

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