hrase cognitive dissonance? What do you think is happening to that? Well, it turns out that the searches for that term have been increasing every year for I don't know 10 or 12 years. But around the election of Trump and then around the next election, the search terms peaked and it's still going up.

So here's my question. Did I have anything to do with that? Because a lot of you heard the term or at least heard it in common use about politics from me, I think. But I saw just there's a video of Rose McGowan. Apparently she just appeared on Fox News and people give her a hard time for it. And she's she said in response to that that she sparked cognitive dissonance.

Now, when you hear somebody who's in the entertainment field using a phrase like that, do you say to yourself, huh, this has now entered the mainstream? Cognitive dissonance is a term that most of the world didn't understand 10 years ago. But I would say at the moment a celebrity can use that term in public and expect enough people to understand it that it doesn't sound weird, right? So I think I told you before that Trump entering politics back in 2015, I famously said that he was going to change more than politics. I said he was going to change how we understand reality itself. Do you remember that prediction? That Trump would change how you understand reality itself? And this is it.

This is the signal that somebody in the entertainment industry, not a psychologist, not a scientist, can use the term cognitive dissonance properly. And by the way, she used it properly, used it in exactly the right way in the right exact context. And that it's just normal conversation now. It's a big deal. That's a really big deal.

Somebody says there's no cognitive dissonance. But that's sarcasm.

All right, now here's a real question. So this morning somebody accused me of having cognitive dissonance about I don't know Bill Gates or something. And I ask you this question. If you think I have cognitive dissonance on a topic but you hear me say I think you have it, how can you sort that out? If two people, let's say it's not you and it's not me, it's just two people, and one says you have cognitive dissonance and that's why you're seeing this wrong, and the other says no, you're the one with cognitive dissonance. If you are the objective observer, how can you sort it out? Well, the one thing you couldn't do is say, well, which one do I agree with? Because you might have the cognitive dissonance too. So you can't just say which one is smarter or which one I agree with. That doesn't work. And you can't ask them because they both think it's the other one. And the way cognitive dissonance works is when you have it, you don't know that's what it is. You don't know.

So here is what I would suggest. Number one, look for the trigger. There's no cognitive dissonance unless there's a trigger. And the trigger is very specific. It has to be something that you thought was true that is proven to be untrue, but you couldn't accept the new truth. And so you created a weird world where you patched together some ill logic to make it all hold together. That's cognitive dissonance.

So if you don't see a trigger for one person but the other person's trigger is obvious, let's say some new information came out, that would be a strong indication that the one with the new information that violated their prior beliefs probably has it. Not proof. Somebody's saying the prediction. Yeah, whoever can predict better is likely to be the more accurate worldview. But that takes a while, right? You have to wait for the predictions. So that, yes. So prediction would be one of them and finding the trigger would be the other.

But I'd like to introduce a third one today, which is the breadth of your talent stack. So let's say you have two people. One is a poet and the other is a scientist with an MBA and lots of economics and business and quantitative stuff. And the two of them disagree. One has a talent stack in poetry and the other has a talent stack in all kinds of quantitative things, statistics, economics. But they disagree. Which one has the cognitive dissonance? Can't tell, right? You really can't tell. But it's more likely that the person who can see a topic from more angles has a better view, right? It doesn't guarantee that the more educated person doesn't have it. But if you're going to try to guess from the outside, I would usually give a little more weight to the person who has at least enough experience.

And you see this with the Bill Gates stuff. I have an experience that is rare, and my experience is going from not rich to rich. If you haven't done that journey, there's something missing in your experience that I have. And what I have is that once you get a certain amount of money, everybody's different, right, but a certain amount of money, your motivation changes. And I felt it in myself. Now, if you haven't experienced that, where you just don't need more money, so you start looking outward. You say, okay, well, what can I do? I made my money. What can I do for somebody else? Bill Gates is the ultimate example that he made his money. It's not going anywhere. He has more than he could ever spend. He's trying to give it away, right? His motivation is very unlikely making more money. Very unlikely. And I know that because I just have exposure to this very unique situation of going from poor and knowing that all I wanted was more money to going to rich where suddenly your motivation changes.

So look for the talent stack or the experience.

I guess the Governor Newsom recall is on. Got enough signatures for that. So he will be in a recall race. And one person running against him will be Caitlyn Jenner as a Republican. How much do you love the fact that Caitlyn Jenner will be running as a Republican in California? I love everything about this story. Now, I don't think Caitlyn Jenner will win, but I love that this is going to be part of our context.

And I got to