Paul: Pheromonal exchange is key, right? Like, human beings looking into each other’s eyes, like —

Rich: That sounded sexual?

Paul: No, it’s not, you’re just sort of like, humans —

Rich: Phero — isn’t that like late-night TV drops you put on your underarm that makes you love other people and people want to love you?

Paul: It’s the key to successful meetings.

Paul: Here’s what we’re talking about, and here’s why — you notice, a conversation about meetings immediately went towards the largest, most complex set of institutional dynamics, right?

Rich: Yeah.

Paul: Meetings are when all of the, like, primitive Darwinian behavior starts to come out.

Paul: You know what a very powerful signal for me is, and this took me years to learn: boredom. If I’m bored because someone is talking at me at a meeting, I have a very low threshold, essentially, for getting interested in something. I like lots of subjects. I like to know how the world works. I like to know how business works. I like to see people do things. If I’m bored, it’s because somebody’s lying to me. If I’m bored it’s because somebody is just full of nonsense.

Rich: Interesting.

Paul: I don’t think I’ve ever — even if somebody’s spewing jargon, if they’re engaged and their brain is moving, I’m gonna pay attention. If someone is just up there taking my time, I die inside.

Rich: Well you and I need to talk, because I can see you drift off a lot of the time when I’m talking to you. We’ll sidebar this —

Paul: I feel this is more because we’ve had the same conversations about 36,000 times.