Business Money Hacks
Episode 5: Controlling the Narrative & Peeing In the Pool with Sir
Spalding O’Henry
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Unknown guest: Due to a court settlement, I’m required to bring the cat in lieu of psychiatric evaluation. So I was able to get out of an entire portion of my probation, which would have been 90 days of psychological evaluation, and in turn have to permanently bring around this cat for the duration of his life. So that if ever I feel like doing something which could otherwise have a negative impact, I have to remember- because I don't believe in god. So the idea of god watching is not really in question, but the idea that my cat is watching is a fact.
Bridge: That's powerful. It's powerful. Welcome to Business Money Hacks. I’m Bridge Stewart
Dustin: And I’m Dustin Taylor Hahn.
Bridge: And today we're going to be breaching the subject of information, and specifically how to control that information, and how you can control your own information. Confusing information can have a huge impact.
Dustin: If anybody has anything on you, deny. Deny in the face of atrocity in the face of-
Bridge: I like to think of it as a big fire hydrant. As a public figure, information is constantly just spewing out about you, about your work, about things you're doing behind the scenes, and to be able to clamp down on that, build almost like a structure around that fire hydrant of spilling information, I think is a very great thing to do.
Dustin: There's something called diffusion of responsibility, which is what I like to use in work that I do. Somebody comes to me and says, “This was clearly your responsibility”, I push this off to on somebody else. This is why I hire several different secretaries who have no family and nobody connected to them. So you have them on retainer-
Bridge: It's like a blank slate.
Dustin: Yeah
Bridge: Almost like it seems like a robot or something working for you. Just no background, no past, none of that heavy history just, yeah that's great. I think this segues great into our guest. His name is Spalding O’Henry. Sir Spalding!
Sir Spalding O’Henry: Absolutely, I was about to say “Don't you forget there, Bridge.”
Bridge: Uh, that was my bad I’m sorry.
Sir Spalding: I’ve earned it, damn it!
Bridge: That's a “sir” yeah
Sir Spalding: Yes it is. Yes it is.
Bridge: Sir Spalding O’Henry
Sir Spalding: People always- yeah, that's something that often gets dropped honestly. So I really am glad you remembered it, because I would have otherwise been quite put off.
Dustin: Is every British person a “sir”? Is that how that works? ‘Cause any British person that I’ve met has a “sir” in front.
Sir Spalding: That's a common misconception, right. Only Brits who have established themselves as credible members of society, in so much as they are achievers. You likely run in sort of elevated company, and so I suspect that's probably covered somewhat of your perceptions.
Dustin: Is there a name for people who aren't “sirs” in the British community?
Sir Spalding: Yes! Absolutely. Although-
Dustin: Paupers?
Sir Spalding: Close to a pauper. It’s a poorie. If I were to meet, you know, go to my haberdashery, or what have you, go to my tanner, I would refer to him, to his face, as “poorie”. “Poorie Smith”, or “Poorie Hahn” in your case.
Dustin: And that derives from the word…
Sir Spalding: “Poor”, to not have any money, absolutely.
Dustin: So you can say that those, the individuals that come into my compound who have no name, who have no past who have no future, I could call them “poories”, instead of “a blank slated human”. Because they don't want to hear that.
Bridge: That might improve morale: just calling these people poor.
Sir Spalding: Because you are identifying them still as a group, and it's obviously an understanding, implicit that they're still subject to your whim, right?
Bridge: Yeah
Sir Spalding: But I think it does give you the option- It gives you the ability to connect, and so absolutely. I think if you're getting those blank states into the coliseum to do whatever it is you're going to do to them, I think it's very important to give them a sense of cohesion before you then pull them apart, right.
Dustin: I do have this like flashing light that plays at night when they're sleeping that-
Bridge: I’m sure that helps.
Dustin: It begins to erode their…
Bridge: Sense of self, yeah
Sir Spalding: Oh that's brilliant. We end up going to a lot of veterans homes and finding some have particularly bad shell shock, and to have no recollection of who they are where they're from, and that's-
Dustin: “Shell shock” is the term, the PC term that we're supposed to be using.
Sir Spalding: Yes I believe that's what the correct term for what was formerly called- I think it was- I think-
Bridge: I think it was called “war shakes”
Sir Spalding: Yeah, I think it was the [laughs] yeah I believe that's right, is the war shakes.
Dustin: The war shakes
Bridge: War shakes
Sir Spalding: And so now but now the term is “shell shocked” is that-
Dustin: That's the PC…
Sir Spalding: That's the PC-
Bridge: I preferred “war shakes”
Dustin: Yeah, yeah
Sir Spalding: Well, I thought war shakes was more accurate, but in any case
Dustin: I think in World War II they called it “war shakes”
Bridge: Yeah
Sir Spalding: Oh absolutely
Dustin: Not World War II, the World War II that is in conventional textbooks, but the-
Sir Spalding: the real-
Dustin: the secret- the real-
Sir Spalding: Absolutely
Dustin: Well, we should talk about that as well, because I do want to get into history.
Sir Spalding: Absolutely, for those that don't know, I work for a smaller publishing company called Scrub N Sub Publishing,
Dustin: Mmhmm Scrub N Sub
Sir Spalding: Old Scrub N Sub, so that was actually my grandfather's Jewish name prior to [laughs]
Dustin: What was his first name?
Sir Spalding: His first name was Emilio
Dustin: Emilio
Sir Spalding: Emilio ScrubNSub [breaks character] that’s a terrible name.
[all laugh]
Bridge: Wow, I mean he probably had a couple problems when he came to Britain.
Sir Spalding: Oh absolutely
Bridge: With a name like that
Dustin: Yeah because in Britain they didn't like Italians either. Was he Jewish and Italian?
Sir Spalding: He was Jewish Italian,
Bridge: God
Sir Spalding: Absolutely, exactly
Bridge: Double whammy in Britain
Dustin: Emilio ScrubNSub
Sir Spalding: Exactly, so obviously I feel a lot of pride about how far my family's come.
Dustin: So you said you had a small publishing company, but I see it everywhere.
Sir Spalding: I was being sort of hyperbolically humble. It’s obviously a major-
Dustin: You were acting like a real pourer.
Bridge: That classic British wit from, from Sir Spalding, over here.
Sir Spalding: Ahh, you know I’m ju- what can I say? No, so yeah, it's actually a pretty major media conglomerate, and we own a number of important news channels and newspapers, but I’m the youngest of three brothers. So it wasn't, sort of, me who was going to ascend to the throne initially, and I was sort of pushed, relegated to the side in publishing, but that's where I really honed the skills that would eventually allow me to take complete control of the company.
Bridge: Yeah so I'd imagine with three brothers, there's probably a lot of, you know, fighting, and sort of joshing, and clawing.
Sir Spalding: Ultimately it's all in the family. So, you know, like when I killed Tim's wife, that was something that was like “damn it, you, Spalding, you son of a bitch how-” you know, that sort of like- it's a tit-for-tat sort of relationship, but-
Bridge: Yeah
Sir Spalding: I think when I took ultimate control of the company by, well, let's just say by making sure my brothers were, uh, rightfully prosecuted for some, uh, certain fraudulent crimes that they certainly committed if you understand my meaning?
Bridge: Yes, legally speaking yes
Sir Spalding: Legally speaking
Bridge: So this obviously ties into our concept of information, and you are a man who controls information, how we’re received by the media… You run the media!
Sir Spalding: Yeah
Dustin: Especially in third world countries, I’ve seen Scrub N Sub newspapers all over the floors
Sir Spalding: Oh absolutely
Dustin: And used as toilet paper.
Sir Spalding: I think that's where we do some of our best work honestly, because thestate-run news in those countries is incredibly easy to take control of. You know they have very little in way of anti-corruption regulation in place. So it's exceptionally easy to take command of sort of a bureaucratic system, because information absolutely is the foundation of business. I mean, if you don't have all the information, then you have to make it up, and you have to be sure to make up information that the people you're selling to will find compelling, right? So I think that's it's a big challenge. It's a big challenge
Bridge: That's such a great way to approach media. I feel like everybody these days is getting so wrapped up. I mean I, don't want to say “fake news”, but yeah. People keep talking about fake news. People keep talking about what is reality, what is fiction, what is truth, what is fact. We're all just telling stories at the end of the day. The details: who cares? People want the story.
Dustin: Something salacious, something you know…
Sir Spalding: Sexy, you want it to be sexy.
Dustin: Sexy
Bridge: Sexy, bloody
Sir Spalding: Bloody, you know that's exactly it, right?
Dustin: Nobody wants to hear somebody raised a lot of money to fix some sort of some sort of a [mocking tone] problem with people's tinnitus or you know whatever the new thing is.
Sir Spalding: No absolutely no you want to spin it so it's the things that are exciting, right, so I remember-
Dustin: And that's how you control governments.
Sir Spalding: Oh absolutely. I think to control a government you have to be sexier than your opponent, right? And your opponent is just real governance so it's not that hard, you know, to be sexier than that.
Dustin: Yeah
Sir Spalding: Right?
Dustin: Yeah, keeping things in order, who needs order when you can have chaos? Mass chaos.
Bridge: Yeah there's nothing sexier than a bunch of chaos.Yeah, that's hot.
Sir Spalding: I know, honestly, when I think about that sort of stuff, about how tumultuous a situation is, that's what really gets me going, you know. And that's why I think stories are a great way to really just upend the table in your favor.
Dustin: Something you mentioned earlier: so you don't believe in--I think this was before--you don't believe in god.
Sir Spalding: No
Dustin: No
Sir Spalding: No I do not.
Dustin: I like to believe that there is a god who wants to create chaos on this planet, because it's fun to watch people fight each other and get sick. And when I’m looking at my coliseum I say “this sick kid with one leg, how's he gonna win? How is he gonna win this situation?” Nine times out of ten, he gets run over by a wheel.
Bridge: Yeah
Sir Spalding: I wish I could believe in a god like that. When you say that and describe that, I think there's a part of me that would love to believe that that god of chaos was out there, really guiding us into the chaotic abyss, but I just don't see a lot of evidence for it, unfortunately. So I think ultimately, we as human beings, though… I think I sort of have a humanist perspective that it's up to us to engender the chaos that we so desire. I think it's up to us. Believe me, I wish I could.
Dustin: Yeah
Sir Spalding: I just think that kind of god of chaos is a crutch, honestly
Dustin: We're built in god's image: a god of chaos, a god who creates strife and destruction. These are the feelings that I have every day, every moment of every day. So I want to prove to that god, I will become a god myself
Sir Spalding: And that's beautiful. I mean that's beautiful
Bridge: Yeah, that is an interesting subject, because me, I am a deeply religious Lutheran, and I follow the way of Jesus Christ to the fullest, to an extreme I would say. I believe the resurrection is coming very soon. I think it's through that chaos that Jesus Christ will be reborn through, I believe, a technological way: a rebirth of humanity. I call him silicon Jesus. This rising tide of a techno-Babylonia, if you will, that will encompass the earth, and the sinners will be washed away, and I think that will be coming very, very soon.
Sir Spalding: Right here you see so many interpretations of truth, and to me that just speaks to the way in which we can all control the narrative. That's something that's up to all of us. I can't tell you how many- When I was younger I would take on, as an editor, a lot of the biographies we would be working on at the publishing house, and I can't tell you how many of these I would just really dive into, and alter, and change. I mean details that people wouldn't even think are relevant, right? At one point, I remember I was doing Henry Kissinger's biography, and he mentioned a childhood crush of his named Abigail, and I thought “No, the girl's name was Tonya.” and I changed it, and it's those little details
Dustin: Those little details
Bridge: That’s great.
Sir Spalding: People think, oh, it's all these big episodes, and that's true, but it's also just these little- “that's not her name. It's not Abigail. It's Tonya.” And now, in that way, you are becoming a god, right? Abigail is gone. She never was, and in her place is Tonya
Bridge: You took it away, and you've added to the story. You're telling your story, the way you wanted to tell it
Sir Spalding: Exactly because I fucked a tonya when I was in ninth grade, and that-
Dustin: That's personal to you, and now it's personal to the rest of the world.
Sir Spalding: And now it’s Henry Kissinger's story, and it's everyone's story, exactly
Dustin: Is there a lot more of you in the Henry Kissinger story? Did you add more
Sir Spalding: I think there's bits of me in all of the stories I’ve worked on, yeah. All the biographies and the fictions. I think I come through
Dustin: Hmm
Sir Spalding: In all of them, for example, the character of Boris Bumbridge in the acclaimed children's novel, Over Red Riding Hill, was entirely based on me. I wanted to make sure that the story had a character that reflected my view of the world rather than the author’s, which was explicitly optimistic, and explicitly about the power of friendship. I was like “That's interesting, great, children-”
Bridge: That's interesting, but kind of a snore-fest
Sir Spalding: But let's throw in a powerful, playboy character by the name of Bumbridge who really dominates the story
Dustin: Sexes it up, a nihilist
Sir Spalding: Exactly, and lives just right across from Red Riding Hill, and therefore has this big impact on the story, and people don't realize that one of the most beloved characters from the story, it was actually something I just added in
Bridge: Wow
Dustin: And now that's becoming a future film.
Sir Spalding: A feature film absolutely.
Dustin: A series of films
Bridge: That’s great.
Sir Spalding: Exactly it's a feature film. It was very exciting. I believe right now we have Eric Bana attached to play my role, which I’m not too thrilled with, but-
Dustin: Maybe you get Sean Bean
Bridge: He’s great
Sir Spalding: That's what I thought as well, yeah no. Well, you know, Sean Bean, do you know, I don't know if- maybe you don't is that he actually-
Dustin: His name is spelled S-E-A-N B-E-A-N.
Sir Spalding: Exactly, yeah, people don't realize this. They assume it’s S-H-A-U-N…
Dustin: B-H-A--U-N
Sir Spalding: And it's the E-A vowel connection for both words
Bridge: Yeah, it's very strange. I think his family is actually connected to the bean industry.
Sir Spalding: Is that true?
Bridge: They sort of just altered their name so that they could be associated with their product, and again a great way to control information, control your legacy.
Sir Spalding: And a name is so important because it's all you have, and so you need to be able to make sure that you have complete power over it, how to take it, and own it, and have it become what you want it to be versus whatever it is.
Bridge: Well, one thing that I happen to think gets a little too reported on is issues regarding legality. With publicly traded companies, I think it's a lot of information out there
Sir Spalding: Right
Bridge: And it just seems to always get reported on in the Wall Street Journal, and “Oh, okay, we have this much money.” or “We've lost this much money.” It just seems like that's a little too much information
Sir Spalding: Absolutely
Bridge: That shouldn't even be out there. Who cares!
Sir Spalding: Exactly, that's personal information: what my publicly traded company is worth. That's not something for everyone to know, obviously.
Bridge: They have no right.
Sir Spalding: They have no right to that. What I found is most effective in those scenarios is just to make up numbers, honestly. For our conglomerate, we make up whatever numbers we want
Bridge: You to make them up.
Sir Spalding: We make them up, honestly
Dustin: No one's gonna look into it.
Sir Spalding: Well that's the thing. If they do look into it, then we make up more numbers, and we make up more numbers.
Dustin: Throw numbers at them.
Sir Spalding: We keep throwing numbers
Dustin: What number would you- like if I said “Hey, I heard your family work with Nazis.”
Sir Spalding: Absolutely 40.
Dustin: I don't know what to say now.
Bridge: I just
Sir Spalding: 67, 88, 33, and you show them on charts. You have paperwork ready for that, and you look-
Bridge: They're just numbers
Sir Spalding: And the numbers
Dustin: It’s just numbers and charts
Sir Spalding: And then you look at the charts, and eventually it all becomes obscured, and it's not really clear. It's like, “Well, look at this. Is it? Did I understand this correctly? Maybe I was off with the Nazi money, who knows?” And suddenly it becomes a big pool
Bridge: “You were funneling money through the Cayman Islands?” “Seven. Seven.”
Sir Spalding: Exactly, and they're sitting there thinking “what don’t I know. Oh god. It means something, and I don't know what.” right? So they're panicking. Suddenly you'll see the sweat start dripping down their faces. You throw out numbers, “What are we talking about? I’m supposed to know, aren't I? because he's just throwing out the numbers like I’m supposed to know. So clearly he has a retort that I don't totally understand.”
Dustin: Confusing i-
Sir Spalding: I call it peeing in the pool. Peeing in the pool,
Dustin: Peeing in the pool
Sir Spalding: Because when you pee in the pool, there's so much else in there…
Dustin: Yeah
Sir Spalding: It's immediately defused. No one knows
Bridge: So the pool is information
Sir Spalding: Is information, and you have to make sure all of your pee is going into the pool. You don't want it going into a little cup where someone can look at that, look at your pee. You have to go right in the pool, and it's gone.
Dustin: So I want to go back to controlling history, or telling history, telling your stories. You create textbooks for children all around the world, especially in America, and a lot of people are angry about the textbooks that you're producing, and that are being taught in schools right now. First of all, there's numbers all over the book, but there's a lot of information that I used to believe was true, and now I find out-
Sir Spalding: Yeah, now we've got these truthies coming out here, trying to debunk what we've been printing for a while now.
Bridge: Disgusting
Sir Spalding: Honestly, that's probably been one of the biggest challenges we've faced is this push back we've received. Up until very recently, it wasn't possible for someone to fact-check us on the existence or non-existence of the Dakotas. So now people realize it's not states. Those states don't exist. That space on the map is
Dustin: It’s not
Sir Spalding: not a real space right exactly, and no one has, exactly. Because they're not real, but we'd insisted that they were, and so in the digital age, people have been able to push back in that regard
Dustin: I want to know more about the real World War II.
Sir Spalding: And that's the biggest- that’s
Dustin: Because World War II conventionally is World War III, and we're looking forward to a World War IV.
Sir Spalding: No, exactly, a lot of people don't realize that there have been more World Wars than people were initially aware of, obviously. Number Wwo is in fact the Third, right. So that big Three that you're looking forward to would, in fact, be the Fourth. Most of it was actually fought in the area around what would today be Mongolia, is actually where the majority of the war was actually conducted.
Dustin: The Germans weren't involved in-
Sir Spalding: Not involved at all actually. The general-
Bridge: I assume the Mongols were involved
Sir Spalding: Exactly, no, it was a continuation of a thousand years of Mongol terror, and a lot of people don't realize that that’s sort of been flipped on its head a little bit, and made to implicate the Germans and the Japanese, who were both completely innocent…. So do you guys see what I’ve just done there? Did you catch what I just did?
Dustin: Wha-
Bridge: Sir Spalding?
Sir Spalding: Exactly none of that was necessarily true, right?
Dustin: Ohhh
Sir Spalding: Did you see? Did you catch what I just did there?
Bridge: I remember-
Sir Spalding: But the two of you believed it, right
Dustin: When you print it…
Sir Spalding: That would become fact. If that's what we had printed in the history books, that's what would now be being disputed, right? And so that’s sort of the game.
Bridge: It's the game right there. You just made up a war.
Sir Spalding: Exactly, and it was the mongol-
Bridge: And you said the Germans and the Japanese were faultless
Sir Spalding: And suddenly that would have been history.
Bridge: I don't know what to believe
Sir Spalding: Right there, exactly, and that's ultimately our goal, right? It's not about getting them to believe one thing or eating them to believe another. It's about confusing, obscuring the whole process to the point where
Bridge: It's great
Sir Spalding: “I don't know what to believe anymore. Well, I guess I'll just eat my Cheerios and shut the hell up.” You know?
[Bridge and Dustin laugh]
Sir Spalding: Exactly, and now you're catching on.
Bridge: I don’t know if anything you’ve said today has any shred of honesty, and I love it.
Sir Spalding: Yeah, so
Dustin: is that even real, are you British?
Bridge: Did you just break in here? Are you just some guy off the street?
Sir Spalding: 14, 88, 6, 33, and that's peeing in the pool right there.
Bridge: I’m covered in urine right now, and I feel great about it.
Sir Spalding: Well, and it's such a pleasure to piss all over you guys, I mean, for me, I think people don't understand the significance of a lot of these topics. I think the necessity for controlling information in business, once you understand that then you can begin to control and craft your own story, whether you're what you're doing is legal, illegal, these are the things that proper story control really allows you to manage.
Bridge: Well, Sir Spalding, thank you. Thank you so much for
Dustin: Pissing all over us.
Bridge: You really pissed all over us today.
Sir Spalding: My pleasure. My pleasure.
Dustin: I would love to get a sample of your urine
Bridge: Yeah
Dustin: Just to have, yeah.
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