256: Uncommon Sense by William Brody

Bookworm

The hosts review William R. Brody's book 'Uncommon Sense,' which explores various mental models derived from his teaching experiences at Joh

Key takeaways

• William R. Brody's book is based on principles from his classes at Johns Hopkins University.
• The 'survivorship bias' principle warns against only observing successful outcomes, such as a doctor claiming to cure cancer in Greece.

Main topics

• Mental models
• Survivorship bias

Notable quotes

If you see a turtle on fence posts, it didn't get there by itself.

Conclusion

The episode offers a thoughtful critique of mental models, providing l

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Okay, Mike, we're back and we're going to talk about uncommon sense today. But before we do that, we need to talk about follow-up, which I don't have any, which is great. So I don't have to talk about my follow-up because I had none follow-up from the last book. Mike, feel free to tell us about yours. Are you standing out in any way? Speaker 2 (0:23) So mine... Mine are a little bit tough. Yeah, you mentioned, you kind of alluded to the first one was how can I stand out? And this is from a book on saving money. So this was a weird one for me, kind of where it came up. And I think the thing that I've landed on with this is that my competitive advantage per se, when it comes to my personal branding is video. So I am hoping to do much more video across all the different things. So that means my YouTube channel has slowed down a little bit. Well, the primary YouTube channel, which is the one where I usually talk about Obsidian, but I've been talking a little bit about Creativity Flywheels and stuff like that. So I want to get into a more regular cadence with that. I would love to produce a... a show every single week that feels like a bit of a stretch right now um but that's where we're going to try to get to the other thing though is like all the other video i'm recognizing there's so many opportunities i have for turning video that i record into some additional assets so i've been rebuilding things inside of the library my online pkm community And I'm sort of revamping things there and I'm building out all these individual sales pages for my individual courses. So the library is just going to be its own separate community subscription. It's going to be much less than the thing I was trying to do, which was you get all the cohorts and things, just let people join the community. And then if they want to buy the courses, cohorts a la carte, they can, they can do that. So circles the background for all this. or the infrastructure for all this and circle, you need to have like separate pages for all those individual courses. I'm building all of those out and I'm recognizing that I have all this material, right? And the bottleneck is I need to sit down and I need to rerecord it. Then I need to edit all that, put it all up there. I need to record like promo videos for all those courses. And so I have a video editor that I've been working with on my secondary channel, which is like the 15 minute book review videos that point people to the bookworm episodes that we talk about some of these books. And he's doing a great job and has capacity and is like, Hey, I could help with this, that. The other thing is like, you mentioned a cohort, like I could take your cohort videos and break them apart. You can have like a self-paced version. And I was like, that all sounds fantastic. So starting in September, I'm going to be up in the stuff that I throw at him a little bit, and we're just going to create so many video assets. I'm going to start doing a little bit more in terms of shorts and the social media stuff. Just today, by the way, long-term follow-up, I started working with an assistant. We scheduled out a week's worth of social media posts. I'm posting three times per day across different platforms and it feels amazing. We've got the whole week scheduled out. Are you auto Speaker 1 (3:37) posting those or are you like manually posting those every time you're doing it? Speaker 2 (3:41) Oh no, we're scheduling them in typefully. Wonderful. I'm probably going to dip into the specific platforms and, you know, people comment or engage, you know, that way, but I don't know exactly what that's going to look like. I'm not just going to. turn on the notifications on my my phone so i can get them all the time i gotta figure that part out yet Speaker 1 (4:00) but Speaker 2 (4:00) step Speaker 1 (4:01) one post consistently seems to be working yeah Speaker 2 (4:05) so i think videos is one of the videos the big way that i uh i stand out and i want to do more of that but other than that i don't have anything super specific I still would consider that to be a completed action item though. So I don't think it necessarily was, I'm going to talk about this or I'm going to use this angle or that sort of thing. I really think that one's done in my perspective. The other one is save more. Well, we're moving. That's not happening. You're Speaker 1 (4:34) buying a house. Yeah. Speaker 2 (4:37) And Speaker 1 (4:38) moving and selling a house and stuff. Speaker 2 (4:40) Yeah. So I will, I do think we've made, progress on this one too though because what that has basically done is reset everything and so we've kind of gone back to the the basics with budgeting and looking at expenses and do we do this do we not do that all that kind of stuff so we're reconsidering everything and cutting a few things so i think that will translate into saving more but there's just not a specific savings account that we're going to see ticking up just yet. Yeah. Speaker 1 (5:16) Good. Good, good, good. Well, that's great. I mean, I think the video move is like the chopping it up and getting it out and more and more in different places. The hard part, that's a moving target, right? Like, you know, you can do certain things and then they change things on you and you can do certain things. But I'm excited to see you putting things out in different places. That's awesome. Speaker 2 (5:38) Yeah, I did this yap challenge not too long ago and that got me doing some different type of types of video right after I started that I got crazy busy with everything else. So I sort of dropped it a little bit. But yeah, I want to do some of those. I want to do these shorts, which tie to the long form book reviews, which tie ultimately to bookworm. So lots of ideas for. video that I want to do. But just the live me on video, I think that is the competitive advantage. Or I don't even know if it's a competitive advantage. It's the most authentic way that I can connect with my ideal customer, my audience per se. The bottleneck to me doing that at a higher level is really a lot of the editing and the publishing. And I'm getting more help with that. Hopefully I'm not the bottleneck pretty soon. Yeah, Speaker 1 (6:37) that's awesome. All right, so let's go ahead and move on and let's talk about today's book. We are covering Uncommon Sense, Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways by William R. Brody with Mike Field. Now, William R. Brody is the main author of this. It came out of a class that he taught at Johns Hopkins University. What's... Interesting about this, Mike, is I actually have in my notebooks before I ever knew anything about this book. So this book was published in April of 2026. Before I ever knew anything about this, I have a class called Not So Common Sense written down in the courses I would like to teach one day. And it would be a university level class. So not to go too deep into this, but I teach engineering here at CCU. The most I get to expand outside of my engineering world. at CCU is every so often I will teach a statistics class for non-science and engineering students. So just the general population of student here, statistics. And then very, very seldom at this point, I teach a science for non-science majors class. But that's like, I mean, that doesn't even happen very often at all. It hasn't happened in like three or four years. So I was like, well, I want to interact with more than just the engineers. I'm going to teach this not so common sense class. I don't care if the university gives me credit for it. I don't care about anything. Like I'll do it. Like, and the challenge of it has been finding a time to do it because the, the best time to do it would be in the evenings. And it would be an evening where they don't have a lot of other stuff, but it's like, I don't want to give up one of my evenings for a class that nobody, you know, is crediting or anything like that. And I'm like, okay, I'm not going to do that yet. But this is why this book struck me is I was like, oh, he's going to do an uncommon sense book. It's like these are just things that you should know if you're going through university. I was like, I have this. And, Mike, I have like 15 different topics written down in my thing because I'm trying to do like, okay, I could do one a week. I could do one topic a week. Speaker 1 (8:38) I really want to do this still. So this is why this book hit me. This is like the background of why I was like, Mike, we got to do this book. This book sounds, sounds awesome. So I assumed you knew nothing about this book, had never seen this book or never like it never even crushed your radar, but I wanted to see how he did it because then it influences if I ever get a chance to do this, how I'm going to do it. Speaker 2 (9:00) Nice. Yeah. Uh, the, the class sounds pretty interesting and, um, So you've basically just been collecting ideas for this, right? You haven't done Speaker 1 (9:09) anything Speaker 2 (9:10) with this yet? Okay. After reading this book, Speaker 1 (9:12) are you more or less likely to do it? Oh, so I'm more likely to do it because I think some of the things he covers in this class are good, but I think they're a little too theoretical and not... tangible enough. And my version of the class is actually much more tangible. It's like, these are common sense things that you will experience when you leave this university, and you must know how to do them. Like you must know how to do this. So an example of this would be, and I do this with my, my seniors in their first semester before they, before they, well, sorry, first semester senior year. So, you know, right before they graduate. we buy a house, like we buy a, we buy a fake house. Right. And I go, okay. And like the way I start them off on it is I say, what do you want in your house? And they all, oh, we want three bedrooms and two bathrooms. And I want this and I want an acre and a half of land. And I want blah, blah, blah. And I say, okay, where do you want to do it? And they tell me where they want to do it. And we go to those markets and we look up, we go to Zillow or Redfin or whatever. And we look up that house and then they immediately go and like their eyes get real big and they're like, well, How on earth does anyone ever afford this thing that I really want? And I go, and we've just reached the point. But like through that, I teach them the idea of like the rent versus buy curve. I teach them primary mortgage insurance and like 20, 80, 20, you know, putting 20 % down versus not putting 20 % down, having to pay PMI. So it's like, there's all these like. common sense things that aren't common sense until you've been through them once because nobody teaches you like, you know, you just get this bill. It's like, what's this extra couple hundred dollars I have to pay every month? It's like, oh, well, that's because you didn't put 20 % down and the bank thinks you're a flight risk. So they are going to cover their own self by having you pay for their insurance policy. And it's like, whoa, like everybody kind of gives you that look. And then we talk about strategies. It's like, okay, if you want to buy that house eventually one day, how do you start? Then how do you turn that in that equity into the next equity into the next equity until you get up to the house that you want to buy? But it's like this has nothing to do with my engineering world. Like, you know, the closest I can get into my engineering world is this like engineering economics, but it's really not engineering economics. It's just economics. It's just home buying. So like that's an example of why like I love this stuff because it helps the students like really, really helps the students figure out life when they leave here. Speaker 2 (11:40) Yeah, one of the things that Toby had to do last year, I believe, with the classical conversation stuff is they have this cost of living exercise where they go through all that stuff. And it's OK. So where are you going to live? But they go further than like the grocery stuff, the car transportation stuff, you know, the full cost of living once you're out on your own. And I always thought that was a pretty cool exercise. I think that's cool even if it is a little bit later than Toby came to it. I think it is neat that you incorporate that into your curriculum because I think the scenario you described, which is, oh, I never really thought about this before, is probably pretty common. That was probably me back in the day if I had been in that situation too. Speaker 1 (12:31) Good on Speaker 2 (12:31) you for doing that sort of thing. But yeah, interesting because I'm not sure. Is that the type of stuff that he's covering in his uncommon sense class? Because he's, you know, former dean of John Hopkins Hospital. Right. And yeah, a lot of like medical stories and stuff in here, which is not what I was expecting. Speaker 1 (12:55) His are much more like. proverb. Like his are much more like wisdom, like key big idea, which is good. And like, I'm not, I'm not knocking his at all. Mine is just much more tangible, practical, right? Like go out into the world and have common sense. So that's the nature of the book. That's why I wanted to cover the book. So thank you for coming along on this journey with me. This by no means, this book by no means, um, like told me, Oh, somebody has already done it. Like, you know, there's no point in doing it because the other thing is like, There's students everywhere that don't get to go through this guy's class. So, I mean, like everybody needs this stuff. And then there may have Speaker 2 (13:33) been Speaker 1 (13:33) a couple things. Like, for instance, one of the chapters, so chapter four we'll get to is the turtle on the fence post. I think that principle is absolute genius. And I was like, so that's one that I'll be like, okay, I would steal that one. I would bring that one into my class and be like, listen, if you see a turtle on fence posts, it didn't get there by itself. You got to figure out why, you know, why it's there. So, but before we do that. Let's get into the introduction of the book. We kind of talked a little bit about it. He is basically his most recent stint was the former president of Johns Hopkins. He was an MD, got into radiology, I believe, and then started a company dealing with like x-ray technology. What was it like the 90s, Mike? 80s, 90s, something like that. I can't remember exactly when it was. Yeah, I don't I Speaker 2 (14:23) don't know. And I'm not sure it really matters. Some of the stuff that he he describes in the book in terms of like the dating of when these things happened. I get probably why he did it. He's talking about this breakthrough technology in the medical field where people are like, oh, yeah, well, that was a long time ago. But honestly, he could have left out the dates completely and it would have the exact same effect for me. Speaker 1 (14:51) Exactly. I agree completely. The core is I got my MD, I was an entrepreneur through a bunch of craziness. I ended up becoming the president and I got to teach this class and here's my book. And this book comes out of this class. That's the gist of the introduction for me and where this book comes from. Is there anything else that you think is relevant in terms of the introduction? Speaker 2 (15:16) No, I didn't jot down anything from the introduction. I thought it was kind of useless to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (15:23) Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's roll right into chapter one though. So there's 12 chapters in this book. Basically the format of the book is every chapter is around a story and then there's a key learning. about that. And that's the uncommon sense principle he wants to teach you. And then there's stories. So I'm going to probably do, I'm going to do my best to get most of the high level stories, Mike, if I forget one, or if I leave it out just accidentally, help me, help me out with the stories. But chapter one is called Only the Strong Survive. And basically, he is sent to Greece to vet this doctor who has a miracle cure for cancer. And like the people were like, oh, my gosh, like we need to know if this guy is like actually got a cure or what's going on. And he gets there and he starts talking to the individual and he realizes this guy doesn't like he doesn't have anything. It's just a matter of the people who are still around are the ones who are promoting him. Right. The survivors are the ones who are promoting like what he did. He's not going and following up with any of the people who either passed away from cancer or didn't have success. after having seen him. And like, that's the core principle. The core principle is like, you have to look at the entire picture. You can't just look at the positive cases of what you want to do. But so often, marketing and PR and all these other places, they'll just tell us about the positives. They won't tell us about the full the full gamut. So the nature of only the strong survive, at least from my perspective was, hey, look at the whole look at the whole perspective or the whole spectrum, not just the survivors. Speaker 2 (17:00) Yeah, the stories, to be honest, like they were interesting, but the significance of them, I feel, was completely wasted on me because I have zero medical background. Me too. Speaker 1 (17:12) Me too. I'm the same way. Yeah. Speaker 2 (17:14) So most of my notes here are regarding the big ideas from the different chapters. So a couple of things I jotted down in this first one. The first is the infinite monkey theorem. Speaker 1 (17:27) Do you remember what this is? Yep, go ahead. Speaker 2 (17:30) Which is basically any sequence of events will eventually occur if the event has a non-zero probability of happening and we are provided with an infinite amount of time. It's the infinite time scale argument. Yep, exactly. From ATP. And then there's the survivorship bias. I would argue that's probably the bigger idea from this chapter because... we tend to think that because somebody or something survived that it was better or stronger and we discount the role of luck. Americans in general significantly discount the role of luck. I guess the term for that would be like the individualism, right? We think it's based on our ability or our smarts. A lot of times it's just we're in the right place at the right time. And he mentions that good luck is hard to detect. It looks like something that you've earned, which just feeds into that American ideal of, well, you know, this happened to me because I deserved it because I did these things prior. And that's, you know, the reason. Speaker 1 (18:31) And Speaker 2 (18:32) I, I know that I am susceptible to this and I fall into this, but I also like, don't really know what to do with this. I've had conversations with people about this before. It's like, yeah, you're probably right. But what do I, what am I supposed to do? Just stop trying? Speaker 1 (18:52) Well, so a couple of things came out of this for me is this is like where you see that person who is incredibly successful. They leave the company to go start their own company and it's absolutely a miserable failure. And it's like, it's not necessarily that they're a failure. You know, it's a matter of like. Listen, sometimes things work out and sometimes they don't. Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time and sometimes you're not. You know, sometimes you walk into the room and there's four people in there who, you know, lift your sails in a way that like just have you take off. The second one was I love the the 70s study that he references here where they they followed these families. It's a 20 year study that follows these families. And basically there were two characteristics. That separated successful from unsuccessful. The first one was that you were competent at your job. And the second one was that you were lucky. And it's like it had nothing to do with the right schools, high IQ, strong college test results, good grades, or even choosing. It was like, one, are you competent at what you do? And two, are you lucky? And I was like, man, what are we going to do? Like, holy cow. So but I still think like the points coming out of this chapter are. are valid, you know, like watch survivorship bias and then think about how luck factors into, into a lot of stuff. Speaker 2 (20:09) Yeah. I think the big takeaway with the conversation around luck is really just realizing that you're not as great as maybe you think you are because you, you, you tend to look backward based on the success that you've had and think that you built that you did that. Right. And Maybe there's a little bit of that, but being grateful for the opportunity, regardless of how big a role you had in bringing it about. And likewise, if things haven't gone your way, don't feel like you're a victim and life is unfair. Really just keep trying because at some point your luck will change. Yeah, Speaker 1 (20:54) exactly. Exactly. All right. Ready to move to chapter two? Yeah, Speaker 2 (20:59) let's do it. Speaker 1 (20:59) Okay, so chapter two is one that I think many of us have heard before. It's perfect is the enemy of good. And basically, it's the idea that you're not always going to be able to do the perfect work or you're not always going to be able to put the time into it. The story here is basically he had a radiologist friend who went to Germany and had this whole warehouse full of scans. Speaker 1 (21:27) what would they be? Photographs? I don't know what they are. X-ray photographs. And he had to look through them. And he basically just drew a line in the middle of the room and he said, those ones are too old. We're not even going to care about those. Like either people have moved on or they've gone and gotten another one or whatever it is. And we're just going to take those. And in a perfect world, I would look at all of these. In this world, I can only look at so many of them. So I'm just going to draw a line and I'm going to cut it over. And Mike, what's interesting about this to me. is I think about this with your, what you just said from your follow-up in terms of making more video content. And I say, Mike is perfect. The enemy of good here, right? Like you on camera telling people information, that's the win. Is it you on camera telling them information with perfectly edited stuff or, you know, like this kind of thing and this kind of thing? I don't know if it is. It's not. Now, granted, I'm not telling you. I'm not telling you to make poor quality stuff. By no means am I telling you to make poor quality stuff. But I know that your baseline, having been friends with you and done this show with you, your baseline is 10 times better than half of the stuff that's on YouTube right now. Which is Speaker 2 (22:39) why I have to delegate it because then it's good enough. I didn't do any of it. And it's not worth trying to tweak the last 10 % because it's going to take forever. Speaker 1 (22:50) So, I mean, that's the general gist of what we're talking about here is basically, hey, get to –