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Conversation Lesson

AC, what’s happening, my brother?

Hey, how are you doing, Dan?

Doing all right.

Yeah, yeah?

Doing all right. Feeling yappy today.

Are you feeling yappy, huh?

The yaps, the Island of Yaps. That was a new one for me.

I, before this story, I had never heard-

I know.

… of this.

I know, it sounded hard to believe.

It’s pretty far out.

Apparently, it’s next to Palau.

So this is a South Pacific…?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

The only thing I know about Palau is supposed to be great diving and amazing beaches for super rich people.

Oh, okay, right, like a lot of those islands down there. They’re kind of hard to get to. They’re quite remote, yeah.

Yeah, but the Island of Yap, I think they call them Yapanese, which doesn’t sound right. I had to really check that.

Yapanese, are you sure about that? That sounds like a joke.

I saw it. That’s what the internet says, so I believe it.

Interesting, interesting, okay. Yeah, if it says it on the internet, it must be true.

Yeah, the Yapanese, they discovered this limestone in the neighboring island, which is not that close, of Palau.

Now they didn’t have this type of stone on their own island?

No, and I think that’s what made it-

That’s what made it valuable.

Right, it’s rare, didn’t, you know.

Yeah, it’s rare. I would imagine it’s quite hard to get back over to their own island, especially in those days.

I know, bamboo boats. They’re carrying these 8,000 pound stones.

Wow, sounds quite dangerous actually.

Yeah, so apparently sometime in the early 20th century, I think there was an American who somehow was over in the South Pacific, and you know, he probably had access to mining gear and better ships.

Oh, I see.

He was able to get loads of this limestone over to Yap. He was probably getting something worth way more than limestone in exchange. I can’t remember, but that sunk the market in …

Yeah, that would make sense.

Actually, what they did was, they started valuing the pre-American limestone money over-

More.

Yeah, they were like, “This is the stuff that that guy brought over.”

That’s not as quite as-

Yeah, there’s no sweat in that.

… as valuable, interesting. What gets me about this story is it’s like how … It’s not something you can actually pick up and give to someone in exchange. You have to keep track of it all in your head.

Right.

That would seem to be pretty difficult. I mean, a lot of people can’t even keep track of the money they have in their pocket, much less.

This is so big. It’s almost like trading a house or a property. It’s like, okay, everybody knows that-

This is all for like big ticket items basically.

Yeah, everybody knows that the king owns this land over here. I think of it as something like that.

I see.

I mean, I wonder if regular Yapanese, if they own this stone money, or if it was just the rich guys that had the giant stones.

I wonder if their language is called Yapanese.

Yapanese, yeah.

Because it rhymes with Japanese and stuff. I mean, there’s probably a lot of …

That’s right. That’s why it sounds fake, but it’s not fake, people.

We read it on the internet.

This the real deal. Yeah, but the best part is the story about the Yapanese sailors that lost one of these massive stones.

Oh right, it sunk to the bottom.

They go back, and everybody says, “Well, you know, we believe you. So why can’t we use that as money? We just, okay, you own it. You can sell it to-“

That’s the one at the bottom of the ocean, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that’s pretty much how we use money these days, or not, you know-

Yeah, it’s not a whole lot different is it?

I mean, yeah, we still use cash, but more and more, cash is going away.

Right.

It’s all just ones and zeros, it’s just credit. You know, numbers moving from bank account to bank account. It’s not like these banks are actually, “Okay, let’s fill this suitcase and send the cash over.”

Right, right, yeah, it’s not a physical thing anymore.

Yeah, the way the Yaps … It sounds wrong calling them Yaps. I feel like I’m denigrating (them) somehow. But yeah, the way they thought of it as something so abstract, that at the same time, it was this massive concrete or stone, to be accurate stone thing.

Right. Yeah, well they pegged it to these large objects, valuable.

Yeah, so apparently they don’t use them for transactions anymore, but people still own them to this day.

Oh, really. Are they worth something to this day, I wonder?

Well, I think they’re worth something in museums, and they’ve made it illegal to send them out of the country because I think so many museums and collectors have bought them up, and that’s their heritage.

Interesting. Yeah, I’d to see a picture of one.

Just check out the cover of Fast Fluency Formula.

There we go, Core Audio.

March, yeah. The other story, the starter story this month, was about the new five-pound note.

Right, it had trances of animal fat in it, was it animal fat?

Yeah, but the reason why, some people say that this is actually a great new invention is that it doesn’t use any paper.

Right, I know yeah, right.

You don’t have to cut down any trees.

Yeah, so it’s better for the environment.

It’s are really durable. Apparently, you can put it through a washing machine, and it’ll be fine.

It doesn’t ruin it, right.

A lot of cash gets involved in the drug business, and it picks up drugs. Apparently, this kind of synthetic paper doesn’t. The inventor was saying, “You know, this is crazy to focus on this minuscule amount of animal product in it, when we have this great new thing that’s so much better.”

Right, but if you’re an animal lover who really cares about animals, it’s not so trivial is it?

Yeah, you know I care about animals, but I don’t know. Got to look at the big picture.

Yeah, I mean, I’m in the same boat as you but, it just-

The Yap boat?

Yeah, we’re in a boat, Dan. Haven’t you realized? A very large boat floating through the universe.

Planet Earth.

That’s right. No, I mean, I can see how some people, you know, they have very strict moral principles, and something like this might set them off.

Right, you know I thought was it was kind of funny, the people saying, “You know, it’s not like you got to eat the money.” They did have a good point when they brought in the religious aspect. I can see how that could bother people for sure.

Sure.

You know, we don’t think about … You know, because sometimes people have this image of the UK being lily white, but you know-

Right. It’s very multicultural.

… there’s a lot of, yeah.

Yeah, especially nowadays after the EU.

Yeah, and there’s big Hindu population. That’s the one thing I loved about going to England, was the great Indian food.

Oh, all the food, all the Indian food, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the British food, yuck.

These days, British food is quite good.

Oh, come on.

Yeah, no it is. It’s changing.

Name one good thing.

It’s changing. You go to like a pub these days.

What fish and chips, come on.

No, that’s not, that’s like traditional. I mean, but nowadays they have these gastro pubs, where the food … You know, when we go to a Japanese Izakaya, there’s all kinds of little like tasty things that we can order. There’s a whole wide range of stuff. It’s the same in British pubs these days. That’s what my British friends tell me, but I may try to go there this year, and I’ll let you know about it, okay.

All right.

So don’t knock British food.

All right, all right. Just when you’re not around.

But there’s also a growing Muslim population in-

Yeah, that’s true.

… especially in like Northern England and certain-

Right, right, huge Pakistani population.

That’s right, yeah.

I think in London.

I bet that’s altered the food landscape a bit there.

Right, right.

I bet it’s a great place to go to eat.

Right, expensive though. I think you need a lot more than five pounds-

To have a meal.

Would that even buy you a beer in England?

I don’t know.

Probably not.

Yeah, I don’t know, yeah.

Yeah, so we talked about vegans and vegetarians, and the Yapanese. Then we talked about how money can correlate to happiness, but only to a certain point.

Only to a certain point, right. Actually, they’ve correlated income with reported levels of happiness. This is not like someone externally measuring your happiness. They’re asking you how happy you are on a scale of whatever the scale is. That went up with income, correlated up until about $75,000 per year income. After that point, there no longer was a correlation. People did not report higher levels of happiness beyond that dollar amount.

That matches up with the experiences of a lot of lottery winners. I mean some do, but a lot of them don’t report being any happier.

No, there’s an initial period of excitement, and then that turns to stress and then yeah, it just invites problems, trouble-

Right, people are after their money

… with relationships. Sure, absolutely.

Gold diggers.

Gold diggers, they’re out there, Dan. They’re out there, yeah.

I wonder. You know, they say $75,000. I wonder what part of the US they were talking about because-

Yeah, because it makes a big difference. Right, if you’re a big city like San Francisco, or New York City, or Washington, DC, or …

I mean, if you’re in Iowa, you probably need a lot less than $75,000 to be happy. You probably live pretty well on 40.

Yeah, yeah, but 75,000 in New York City or-

San Francisco.

… San Francisco, man, you’re struggling.

I read an article a couple days ago about all of these Facebook employees making $160,000. They’re saying they can’t afford to buy a house in the area. It’s the most expensive real estate in the US. Though I imagine they’re pretty bad at managing their money. If you’re complaining, and you’re making $160,000.

Well, a lot of its relative, you know. Your scale of comparison is just skewed by your perspective, you know, yeah.

You just get used to whatever you have.

You get used to it, that’s right.

That’s the problem. I remember when I bought this TV here. I remember looking at all the different specs and wanting to get the best, most technologically advanced thing. It didn’t really matter. I mean, it was nice the first couple days, then it’s just my regular TV.

Then it’s just a TV. You get used to it.

Yeah, that bit about the Harvard research looking into people’s reported happiness from buying things, I totally get that. It just becomes your new normal, your new set-point. Have you ever bought anything that really made a different in your happiness levels?

No.

Well, you didn’t even think about it.

Well, I have thought about that before. I just know I just don’t equate that with happiness. For me, happiness is internal. It’s just your outlook on life.

What about those hamsters?

Those hamsters. Now, some things might bring me unhappiness…

Actually, let’s just imagine that the hamsters were the love of your life.

They weren’t hamsters, Dan. They were guinea pigs.

Oh come on, it’s the same thing.

No, it’s not the same thing.

Stop trying to trick the people.

It is absolutely not the same thing.

It’s a myth.

The guinea pig is a much larger cousin-

They’re both delicious. They’re both delicious, and that’s what counts.

Oh, come on.

I was thinking about that. It gets a little tricky when you try to distinguish. I mean, some purchases do become experiences. That was the two trade-off.

Well, yes, okay.

Experiences create memories, and they create connections between the people you share the experiences. Those make you happier than buying objects. Some objects, of course, turn into … Like, you know, even something very materialistic like some sports car. You know, I don’t think that would make me that happy, but I think for some people like our friend, John. He loves buying these flashy cars. I think he enjoys that on a daily basis. He likes showing off and everybody sees, “Oh, there’s flashy John.”

Sure, and it’s something to talk about, and it’s a feeling that he gets, yeah. I mean, I suppose.

Or a house. I mean, that’s a place where you are having constant experiences with your family and-

Yeah, and that would probably be my answer then. I bought a house. Actually, the thing that has added a lot of value to my happiness levels over the past 10 years or so, is something that is free.

What’s that?

Skype.

Skype.

The reason I say Skype, is you can download it and you can talk to people, you know video conversations, for free. As someone living outside their country, as an expatriate, I don’t get to talk to my family that often. I don’t get to see my family. Now that I have kids, my children can speak with their grandparents anytime. I’ve been able to carry on a relationship with my parents, face-to-face every week we talk. That’s added a great deal of value because we live so far apart.

I don’t know how my life would be different without that tool. I would have paid quite a bit of money for that service, had they charged money for that.

But it’s free.

It’s always been free.

Which means it has no value, if you can’t peg it to a dollar, or a Yapanese stone.

Oh, no, it is a very valuable tool.

Yeah, but some people do peg their happiness to numbers, to money, to dollars.

Yeah, yeah, true, true.

I remember a friend, Barbara, was telling me once about her niece’s father-in-law. She’s talking to this guy from Long Island. They’re talking about success. She says to him, “Well, I mean, it depends on how you gauge success, what success means.” He looked at her like she was crazy. He was like, “Well, of course, whoever has the most money, that’s what success is.”

It means money.

I was listening to this Tony Robbins interview earlier today. He was talking about this German guy who was worth like $9 billion, had all different kinds of companies from pharmaceuticals to different industries. He was shorting some other company, so he was betting against some other company. That company turned out to do really well. He had some like incredible amount of money, like $9 billion, but he didn’t have the money liquid. He wasn’t able to cover this bet that he had placed against this other company. It just meant he was going to have lose some of his companies. I think his wealth went from nine billion to like four billion, so he was still-

Still a billionaire.

… very, very rich.

But not as much of a billionaire as he was before, right.

He committed suicide.

That just seems crazy, doesn’t it?

Yeah, totally crazy. At that time, he apparently was the richest man in Germany, or the second richest man in Germany. Then he went to being the seventh richest man in Germany. That wasn’t good enough for him.

Wow, how sad.

Yeah, very sad.

Geez.

Yeah, you know, when I was researching some of these stories, lottery winners, some of them were just so depressing.

Oh, right.

You know, some of them, I just couldn’t write about them because it was just such a downer. But let me tell you about one.

Now that we’re at it, go ahead.

There’s this one guy, Jack Whittaker. He was already a millionaire, but you know.

He was already a millionaire?

He was a minor millionaire. He had like a construction business, and he was worth like two or three million. He was living somewhere like a really poor part of the US, like West Virginia maybe. He had a successful construction business. He won this, you know, multi-state powerball that was, I think, he won over $100 million.

Whoa.

He went from having like three million to like 150 million.

Wow, overnight.

Yeah. He immediately gave 10% of it to three churches. He set up all these foundations and charities. He did all the stuff that this research says, you know, should make you happy. But not with all of it. The light of his life was his granddaughter, who was a 15 year old girl. He just started showering her with money. He would give her five grand in cash-

Oh, no, that’s not good.

… every day.

Oh, no.

Apparently, her car was just littered with like 20s and 10s and all the small money that she just couldn’t bother with, just all over her floor. His granddaughter stated getting involved in drugs, and started attracting all these kids that were after her money.

Oh, no.

You know, fast forward two years later, she dies of a drug overdose. He loses his wife. He’s robbed multiple times. He’s still super rich, but obviously-

It didn’t bring him any happiness.

… he’s very, very unhappy. It’s a very common thing hearing lottery winners saying they wished they never won, which was the case with that silly story of Jane Parks.

Oh right, she tried to sue the …

Well, she’s considered suing.

Considering suing.

I think she got such a backlash in Britain that she backed off.

Yeah, that seems quite insane to me.

You know, she’s like 21 now. I think she won when she was 17.

Oh, I see, okay.

She says that 17 year olds aren’t mature. I mean, obviously 21 year olds aren’t either.

Yeah, right, right. Well, when it comes to large sums of money, I mean, how many people really can handle that kind of drastic change. I mean, if I were to win the lottery, I mean, it would seem to me that the smartest thing to do is not tell a soul about it. Stay totally quiet about it.

Just like take baths in it, and just take showers in money in secret.

You know.

That’s a good idea.

I mean, what would you do with it? I mean, keep quiet for like five years, and then slowly start using it.

Why would you do that.

I don’t know. I don’t know what I would do. I don’t know what I would do if that. Because yeah, it would change people’s relationship toward you.

Well, apparently, a lot of lottery winners, at least in the US, they don’t quit their jobs.

Yeah, they keep working, most of them.

They keep working, which might not be what I’d do, but I can see how it’s probably good for you.

Yeah, you maintain some normalcy. You can continue being part of a group of people that are doing things, and yeah, that seems pretty healthy.

Right. I’d like to keep Deep English going.

Oh yeah, sure.

I just would like to have somebody else doing a little more of the work instead of us. But on that note, folks, we have lots to do. Lots more lessons to create.

That we do.

Let’s wrap this up.

Let’s wrap it up. We’ll see you next month.

All right. See you.