The Beauty of Simplicity: Unpacking Complexity in Music, Design, and Business

Jeff Madoff: This is Jeffrey Madoff, and welcome to our podcast called “Anything and Everything” with my partner, Dan Sullivan.
 
Dan Sullivan: Hi everybody. This is Dan Sullivan. And I’m here with Jeff Madoff. And we’re having our next episode of “Anything and Everything”.
 
I found something, I don’t know why. I was wandering on the Internet and I came across this man, Rick Beato, who I’ve seen before, and he explains the structure and process of music. And he’s a producer and he’s a musician. And he said, “I’m going to talk to you about the most complex song that’s ever been written in pop music.” He said, “I came across at about 1982, so 40 years ago. It just blew my mind because,” he said, “I was a pickup artist at that time and you know, you have to just be able to show up and get the chord structures and off you’re running.”
 
And the organizer said to him, “I think you better do a chart on this one.”
 
And he said, “Well, you know, we know chords and everything else. We know keys. We know chords. So I mean, what’s the problem?” And then he says, “I started into it,” and he says, “Whoa! What did he just do?”
 
I came to look at the song. I knew Sérgio Mendes, because it was Sérgio Mendes, “66”, that became very, very famous. I listened to it and I said, “Wow, what a surprising song. It just keeps surprising you.” And then I went through Rick Beato’s—I think it was about 20 minutes. I mean, I didn’t really know what he was talking about, mostly because I’ve never taken musical, reading music or anything like that. And he would just do it on his guitar.
 
He says, “First he did this and then he did this and then watch. And you’re expecting this, but then he hits you with this, and yet it works, you know?” And I showed it to Babs, and she says, “Now I won’t be able to get that out of my head,” you know?
 
So I sent the Rick Beato thing to you, but I sent the Sergio Mendes. And these are the two original singers. They were with him for, like, 20, 25 years. And it was a Japanese audience video that I showed, but I found it really, really interesting. And what came is something I’ve noticed, and we’ve sort of touched on, but we haven’t gone on directly, Jeff, was that really interesting entertainment seems to be in a simple form, but it’s got a tremendous amount of complexity in it and this seemed to be a good example of that.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, you’re talking about Sergio Mendes in Brazil ‘66, and the song was “Never Gonna Let You Go”.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, well, ‘82 is when this one came out and he didn’t compose it. It was a husband and wife team, and actually Dionne Warwick was the first person who sang it, and it didn’t take off. Sergio Mendes came, he says, “I think you need two singers on this one. You have to have a male-female go back and forth and he had Liza Miller and Joe Pizzulo, or something like that. You know, I saw him right at the beginning in ‘82 on the Johnny Carson show. There was a video, YouTube, and then there was one about 25 years later and they were still in top form 25 years later. They only knew one song, but they had.
 
But what did you think about it? The whole thing about complexity in, well, let’s just stick to entertainment. That’s where a lot is packed in—because your new place seems to have a lot of complexity in it and it’s surprising, you know, I’ve seen it four times through, full play, and it surprises me. It surprises me.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, it’s interesting. I mean, the whole idea of packing complexity into simplicity, and the song “Never Gonna Let You Go”, I never thought of it in that way at all. Honestly, never really thought about the song when I heard it, there was always of an era and I liked it, but I never thought deeply about it.
 
But then when you brought up the idea, these as examples of the complexity into simplicity. I think in so many things, and certainly in entertainment, but in so many things, that simplicity is what the audience should see. I don’t think an audience should ever see the work.
 
I was invited—this is back in like 1990 or something—to a special screening of Nureyev and Margot Fontaine. This film had not been seen for something like 25 years or something like that. And Holston, who was a good friend of Nureyev, held a special screening of this footage that they found in an archive. And sitting in the audience and watching both of them, but Nureyev starts doing these jettes, which are these amazing jumps.
 
Dan Sullivan: That men aren’t supposed to be able to do.
 
Jeff Madoff: That no human is supposed to be able to do. That’s right.
 
And you see him and he does like, I don’t know, 15 in a row, circling her and first thing you look at it’s, you know, it’s beautiful. Then you realize he’s doing a split in mid-air and he’s lifted himself about seven feet off the ground, then hits and goes back up again and you realize the phenomenal athleticism, the artistry, and technique. But when you’re watching it, you know, it’s just beautiful and you don’t think about what he did is just about near impossible, you know, because he made it look so simple. And the complexity that’s packed into that is years of training. And that training, which manifests in making something that’s really complicated look simple.
 
I thought of that when I got your e-mail because I thought that is a very interesting thing, because you don’t want people to see the work, you know? It’s not a compliment, say, “Oh a lot of work went into it.” No, you’re supposed to have been moved emotionally. So I’ll buy it, and those seams shouldn’t have been showing, and I think that’s true in so many things.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, yeah.
 
But it was really interesting because then I started going after, “Well, do other people think that there’s more”—just using the word ‘complex’ as my search word—you know in pop music and everything else. And I was given, you know, three or four other examples. And I listened to them and I said, “That doesn’t have as many surprises. You know, it’s more predictable. It’s more predictable.”
 
But being unpredictable can be a good thing or a bad thing, OK? There’s a lot of people who can put stuff together in very unpredictable ways, but it’s unpleasant to, you know? It’s a novelty for novelty’s sake. But what I like about it is that what Rick Beato said, the explainer of the structure was that you say, “How can you possibly do that?” And then you realize that it works and then it works. I mean, and you’re coming at it from someone who’s inside music, you know, looking at his world. I just played it for Babs, and she remembered it, and she said, “Wow, wow, I didn’t realize it.” She said, “I think I’ve heard other people sing this,” and I’m sure there’s been many who sang it. But there’s something that happens between those two singers that really makes it work, too. And I think Sergio Mendes’s orchestras, because he’s got two synthesizers.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, yeah. They cut away to that. Yeah.
 
When you’re talking about this, so you know, when I think about complications. And ‘complications’ is a term that’s particularly used in very expensive watch-making. And the more expensive the watch, the more the complications, and that’s the term that’s used, arer built into the watch, which I thought was kind of interesting. I mean, ultimately, you know, it’s 4:51. You know, how much how much confusion you need to know that, you know? But there, complications are highly prized.
 
I look at Frank Lloyd Wright and, you know, having gone to College in Wisconsin, I saw Taliesen. I saw the cantilevered homes that he built—complicated things that nobody ever did before, like a tree growing right up through the living room, right?
 
Dan Sullivan: A waterfall coming down through a house.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes, exactly.
 
So on one hand, the way that he did it relates to the watch-making, the complications, but he enclosed it in such a way that somehow cantilever homes and the waterfall and the tree worked. And the overall wasn’t “Wow, this is so complicated.” The overall was that he presented something that was just beautiful and hadn’t been done before. So there was a lot of complexity. But the first hit that you get is, “Wow, that’s beautiful,” which I think is fascinating.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, I think that the 1930s was the culmination great design decade of the 20th Century. And it was in all fields, but it was in design, and it was wardrobe, and it was movies, and it was architecture, and it was product design, and it was automobiles, it was airplanes. And there was this culmination of a long, long period, you know, of various different art, what I would say, periods, where Art Deco seem to build on a lot of previous stuff. I think the Chrysler Building is the great masterpiece in the world.
 
Jeff Madoff: I love it. Love that building.
 
Dan Sullivan: The greatest, and it’s both outside and inside. I mean outside, if I’m in a New York hotel and I’ve got some choice of floors, I say I want to be on the first floor and I want to be on the side where I can see the Chrysler Building in daylight, and I want to see it at night time when it’s all lit up. But if you go into the inside, the murals and the elevators and the the details and that, there’s an enormous amount of complexity packed into what seems fairly simple design.
 
The other thing is, sometimes when we’re in New York, I want Margaret and you and Babs and me to go, and it’s an abandoned subway station, and it’s the City Hall subway station down near City Hall. It’s down near the Brooklyn Bridge, and they have tours through it because it’s so spectacular. But it didn’t make any sense, you know from a traffic standpoint, or they abandoned it, but it’s not run down. It’s maintained because they get so many tours going through that, and you go in there and you say, “Wow, this is just an amazing thing.” And they’re not even using it, you know?
 
Jeff Madoff: In the launch of the New York subway system. The very wealthy people were very dressed up to ride the subway—whole different kind of experience, which is amazing when you think about it, because you think of it as a real kind of populist transit system, which isn’t really how that started off.
 
I live on the Upper West Side, as you know, you’ve been here. And that’s where the subway system really created all of its access points, was on that. And so the homes on Riverside Drive and West End were very expensive homes and they had easy transport to other parts of the city, and and so again, you’re talking about—and it really is under the surface, you know, ‘cause it seems kind of simple. But it’s not. Not at all.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah and Sergio Mendes, I had it on Pandora. And yeah, I just created a Sergio Mendes station and I got a lot of his. Stuff. But this one song—well, first of all, he didn’t compose it and he didn’t write the lyrics. OK? But it’s easily the most amazing piece of work that he ever did. I mean, he’s famous and he’s gone around. But something happened with this one song that’s really kind of remarkable. It’s almost like the elements all clicked at one time, just as an outside observer. I know you’re you’re deep inside of your own project, but when I first—well, first of all I got the script before you even did the readings. I got the script from you and I said, “This has got a lot packed into it, you know? There’s just a lot of different stuff—historical stuff, political stuff, sociological stuff, psychological stuff, cultural stuff. And I think it’s because it was a critical moment in American popular culture.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yeah, I think you’re right.
 
Dan Sullivan: Like way more complicated than Jersey Boys. I mean, there’s been other—you know, Motown was interesting, but I found the second-half, you know, I was about 10-15 minutes in the second-half and I said, “Oh, you should have stayed in Detroit.” You know, because he’s got this split-off, you know that they became this amazing Detroit-based thing, and then he went to Hollywood. And it was a Detroit thing, and Detroit doesn’t play well in Hollywood.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, Motown was a real smoothing out of some, actually music I really loved, which is very edgy R&B. Barry Gordy actually contacted Lloyd. He wanted Lloyd to be involved in Motown, which Lloyd didn’t take up the invitation to do that because he had a great contract with ABC Paramount and a lot of freedom and a lot of money and just wasn’t interested in doing that. But Barry had the insight into, you know, “If we make this music not quite so rough, it’s going to, you know, appeal to everybody and cross over in a big way.” Which it did, which Lloyd had done 20 years earlier, in terms of, you know, crossing over like that.
 
But all of the different aspects of the play that you spoke about, the the politics, the-
 
Dan Sullivan: The geopolitics, because the Korean War was on.
 
Jeff Madoff: Right, right. And it’s the civil rights aspects and so on. But what was interesting about it is that, you know Jersey Boys, which is a wonderful entertainment was about the music of The Four Seasons. Lloyd’s play, Personality, is about the music and the times. And there’s a big difference, because when I wrote this, it was important to me to write a compelling book—which is what a script is called in the theatre—and so I did not indicate where any of the music went at first. I wanted to tell a meaningful story, which I hope I did, and honor Lloyd through the truth-telling. Lloyd had a saying” The truth needs no defense,” and I love that. I love that saying.
 
Dan Sullivan: But it does need bodyguards.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes, that’s true, too, unfortunately. And so the thing is with Lloyd’s play, I wanted to make sure that there was a story that had significant substance to it and said something.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, that’s it. And you know, we went to see the, yeah, they were a husband and wife team, and he was a mean guy-
 
Jeff Madoff: Tina. Ike and Tina Turner.
 
Dan Sullivan: Tina. But it was a series of segues between her songs that had no script to it whatsoever. You know, it was a “Woe is me,” you know? And “Where’s Ike today because I’m getting back at him.” You know? This is two hours of getting back. It was Tina’s Revenge Tour.
 
I mean, the singer, she was superb. You know the staging is always good and everything else, but it was predictable. If you got 15, 20 minutes into it, you kind of knew what it was gonna be like after two hours. You know the same thing.
 
Yours is shocking because, first of all, the Fifties and the Sixties packed together had an amazing amount of history in them. Gear shifts. I mean real amazing gear shifts. You know, you had three major assassinations in the Sixties. You know, everybody was living under the threat of the nuclear attack in the Fifties.
 
So I was just saying that it’s not that you intentionally tried to create complexity, but if you have a 360-degree feel for what’s going on in the world then, you can bring a lot of different elements in that are very congruent, because those things were all happening at the same time.
 
Jeff Madoff: And those elements that you’re saying, to me, is what provides something that I think. Is so missing in so many situations, and that is context. The context of the times that Lloyd’s career launched—his childhood, what he grew up with, then his career and how that launched and his whole path, placing it in the context of the times gives it meaning, in that, on one hand, if you’re aware of history at all, the complexity that you’re talking about.
 
You know, I tried to put myself in the position of a Black kid who’s making $26.28 digging trenches for septic tanks, a job that he hated, but it helped his father. And upon release of “Lawdie, Miss Claudy”, within two or three months, he’s making $8000 a week.
 
And you know, the fact that he didn’t lose his marbles, it is amazing in and of itself that Lloyd was sufficiently grounded. And you know, his parents stayed together. They had eleven kids, but the fame didn’t go to his head in the way it often does. You know, he was an amazing guy.
 
And I think that context informs everything. When something is devoid of context, you don’t know what it means. In order to know what something means, you need to understand the context.
 
Dan Sullivan: There’s a kind of “presentism” that’s going on, it’s informing all commentary now, that you’re judging something that happened, in this case, 50 years ago by the current favorite standards of the time, and you’re going back and doing it, and that that play doesn’t do it at all. It just simply deals with things as they were experienced at the time, by everybody. This was a great moment. As your teaser says, right up front, it was Rock’n’Roll that gave the jet-fuel for integration.
 
Jeff Madoff: Which takes us to something else, which I think is really simple and really complex, and that is when I’m looking now at commercials on television, you see, biracial couples, and the husband’s mopping the floor with the whatever it is, and there’s the same kind of typical dial on.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, the man’s always going to be an idiot.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, actually, in these it’s just like you’re supposedly having a window into this couple, as opposed to the… Remember, we grew up with sitcoms like “Father Knows Best”. But it didn’t transition to “father being an idiot” ‘til later. No, initially it was, you know, the father knows best, and you know, I never knew what Ward, Cleaver, Beaver’s father, did for a living. All I knew was that he wore a suit and left the house. I don’t know what he—do you know what he did for a living?
 
Dan Sullivan: I do not.
 
Jeff Madoff: You know? And “Ozzie and Harriet”, right, you know, what did Ozzie do? He wore a cardigan and I guess got paid for that. But you know, I don’t-
 
Dan Sullivan: I think “The Honeymooners” pretty well established what they were doing for a living.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes, you’re right. But that was like—and the other thing that was interesting at that time is some of the other sitcoms like Danny Thomas playing a nightclub entertainer, which is what he was, you know, was almost meta and the most meta of those shows was George Burns and Gracie Allen, you know when he would break the fourth wall and talk to the audience. And my favorite part was when he would be upstairs in an attic or, I don’t know what it was, looking at the show that was being performed and commenting on it. That is really, that’s so wacky that it’s cool.
 
Dan Sullivan: No, it’s Shakespearean.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes, absolutely.
 
Dan Sullivan: Well, Freud said that Shakespeare was the greatest understander of human nature of anybody who has ever written anything. And he said that every time he would think he was on a new road to understanding the human psyche, he’d be walking down this road and he’d see a figure in the distance coming toward him and it was Shakespeare. He had been there and he was coming back and he says, “Not as promising as you think.” And he come by, he just marveled at how Shakespeare would create these instant three-dimensional characters, and we just move them in and out.
 
And then we saw Jude Law as Hamlet in New York. And he’s on the stage 60% of the time alone, just sharing his thoughts with you. And actually talking to you, actually talking to you and saying, you know, ”Whether it’s better to…” Yeah. And he’s going back and forth, you know, and, you know, it’s not going to end well. I mean, the one thing that’s predictable about that play, you know, it’s not going to end well.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, and so much is the dynamic either between a couple or a person and their father. You know, I mean, the dynamics of these things, although Freud codified these things and Shakespeare was a few hundred years before, but it’s really interesting because you look at the issues that are in Shakespearean drama and they’re quite interesting in how prescient they were about certain aspects of what became even psychotherapy.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. Yeah.
 
The other thing is that he probably created the most interesting evil characters in any form. Iago is a really, really interesting person. You know the Macbeths are really, really interesting people. You get all these, but he’s got so many interesting people that are just uniquely interesting in their own right.
 
Jeff Madoff: Yes.
 
But you know, going back to the idea of simplicity, the presentation and the complexity that’s kind of the turducken, if you will inside of that simplicity is you can give the quick summary of a play, you know, “Two lovers from opposite sides of the track,” which then becomes West Side Story a few hundred years later.
 
It’s really amazing, and I think that the the complexity is what an artist needs to create something, and the knowledge of what that is, somewhere in their psyche. And that the simplicity is you’re seeing either paint on a canvas, the song being sung, the play being presented, the sculpture, whatever it is. But all that went into that. All the complexity that went into that and all the moving parts. It’s really fascinating, and what it’s actually kind of fascinating that anything gets done, you know? Because it’s just, iIt takes so much to get things done.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah. The only thing you never get from any of that is “Who did all the work?” You know, who cleaned up, you know? You know, I mean, it was like watching the Lord of the Rings, you know? And “Game of Thrones”. Who cleaned, you know? Did anybody cook? I mean-
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, I actually also used to wonder in movies, did anybody ever go to the bathroom? And it wasn’t until I saw European films that I realized that sometimes you know that was in there and the guy would be the one bare-assed walking into the bathroom. Yeah, because it just portrayed real life the way that I kind of recognized it, you know?
 
But I was going to Ralph Lauren’s home. There was a celebration honoring 35 years for one of his key people, and Ralph asked me if I would speak. He said, “Right when we finished dessert, you know, I’d like you to start off speaking.” This is about this woman, Buffy Birrittella, who is his right-hand person.
 
So that was, you know, 15 minutes away, no warning that I’m going to speak in front of about 200 people or so. And I said, “You know, Ralph was kind enough to invite me to this,” and as I was coming up the two miles of driveway through the woods and then the beautiful, manicured lawn in the mansion I see here, the first thought that went through my mind was. “Who shovels this driveway? Who mows the lawn? How does this all get done?” You know? And I guess I’ve always found, and Ralph doubled over.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, it’s like an experience we’ve had, and I’ve had it in many other places we went to Newport, and all the mansions in Newport, you know, they were either surrounding the park in New York or they were in Newport, and it’s the same people.
 
To use the “Upstairs, Downstairs” analogy here, the upstairs was always incredibly dated and boring and static, and lifeless, but downstairs where the kitchens were, they were up to date. So where real work happens, it doesn’t get old, where people who don’t work and benefit of the work where they live, their surroundings are always really lifeless.
 
Jeff Madoff: Interesting.
 
Dan Sullivan: Because you can feel the dynamism. I wouldn’t mind hanging out down in the kitchen, but you wouldn’t want to hang out in the 60-by-80-foot ballroom on the top floor, you know, it’s just dead, you know, it’s totally impractical and nothing. But the kitchens are neat, so I think actual work, people just putting in the hours to earn their living and to live their life, I think it leaves a more time with impact than people who are privileged and free of work.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, I agree with you. And again, going back to context. When you are in a situation, and as the saying goes, “born on third base”, you don’t realize what it takes to get there. So the disconnect that often happens, and I think that using a term that’s being overused now, but I think it’s true, when you have a certain empathy for people who work and an understanding that that kind of keeps the whole facade propped up too, you know?
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, but your case and my case, are sort of similar because you were city 1940s Ohio and I was country. But I always relate to farmers, when I meet farmers, because I grew up in a farm community and then we moved into a larger town, Norwalk, which was about 10,000, but it was all blue-collar, actually the world’s largest independent truck line in 1950 was out of Norwalk, Ohio. They had 800 trucks, you know, they covered the east coast of the United States, the northern states, Boston, New York, Newark, you know, Buffalo, and everything like that. But it was all people who work on trucks. You know, the docks, the drivers, the mechanics and everything else. You know, you use the word ‘empathy’, but I just feel totally connected to people who are at that level, you know?
 
Jeff Madoff: Well that connection I think creates that because you have a sense of what they do.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, and one of the things is just hard work. They just left an impression of hard work. Now I work as hard as my father did, OK? But it’s a different kind of work, right? And you work as hard as your father ever did. And it’s a different kind of work.
 
Jeff Madoff: No, that’s right. And I guess then you know what goes along with that, and there’s been some kind of reassessment of that. There certainly was, you know, when COVID was much more present, which is how do you value the work? You know, all of a sudden, people who kept shelves stocked in the grocery stores, people who were front-line medical workers, people who delivered things to your home, all of those things, all of a sudden, there is a value recognition that I don’t think necessarily ever went on before.
 
Dan Sullivan: And I think when you get disconnected from that, almost any kind of foolish thinking can fill your head.
 
Jeff Madoff: And it does. No, you’re absolutely right. Because life is something that’s full of complexity that we try to simplify.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, to bring it back to Lloyd Price, you said, you know, he went from a few dollars a day to $8000 a week in six months. But I never got any sense that he had an attitude about where he came from.
 
Jeff Madoff: He didn’t. He didn’t. And as you know, he and I became very close friends. We talked about a lot, you know? I was in the hospital with him. And unfortunately, the last time that I saw him, which was in Mount Sinai, he came in for surgery. When he returned to the facility he was at there could be no visitors ‘cause of COVID. And this was right before COVID really hit that I was with him at Mount Sinai.
 
Dan Sullivan: I think it was April.
 
Jeff Madoff: You know, he died in May of ‘21. Never got COVID. He never got COVID. But anyhow, the thing is, I mentioned that because I knew him from, he was still performing when we met. We’d go bowling together. We got to know each other, and I never, ever got an indication-
 
Dan Sullivan: You ate his Cajun food that he manufactured.
 
Jeff Madoff: I never had the sweet potato cookies. Those were done. Yeah, I was selling those to Walmart, and those were done, unfortunately.
 
But I never did get an indication—he just saw himself as a person and when he and I met, and when I did the documentary about him and we talked afterwards and I said, “I want to tell your story,” and I wrote the first couple scenes. He loved what I wrote and I said to him, “Lloyd, you need to know, though, that I think your story is bigger than you are. And we need to agree on that at the beginning so we don’t run into problems down the road, because I think the story is incredible, and I think it’s important.”
 
And he said to me, “Jeff, I’ve been waiting years for somebody to say that and not blow smoke up my ass.” And by the way, I used that conversation we have in the his closing monologue.
 
Dan Sullivan: Ohh no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
It really strikes me that that’s always the sign of context that has integrity. And what I mean by that is where the human connects the audience with the story and doesn’t get in the way of the audience connecting with the story. And what I noticed more and more recently that the whole point is that the story is to connect the audience with the entertainer. You know?
 
I just see that in all areas. Business, politics, music, everything. It’s about who you are as an individual and the story is a prop. The story is a prop to connect the public with your story. And I think the reason why it does it is that things are in the realm of expendable fashion these days and not timeless style.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, and the term being “fast fashion”.
 
Dan Sullivan: Fast fashion, yeah.
 
Jeff Madoff: Well, that raises up a whole other issue, but we also see, though—it’s interesting, I just thought of this, that yes, it’s fast fashion, which tries to get you the trendiest things right at the moment as much as possible so you’ll engage and purchase it. And that’s kind of what TikTok is, isn’t it?
 
Dan Sullivan: It’s commoditization, yeah. And actually, I think that Steven and Mark Lachance, who’s the overall person who puts the whole TikTok thing together, I think they’ve pulled off something remarkable with him, because I’ve looked at some of the other ones and they have no impact on me. But Steven Palter, they’ve got it pulled off something, and I think Mark feels that, he says, “We’ve never done anything like this before, where we had somebody who just has all the credentials in the world and is incredibly articulate and who understands technology and who knows where the center of the context is and can deliver it in 40 seconds and have 150,000 people want to see every episode.” He said, “I don’t think we’ve ever pulled this before.”
 
And I said yeah, “Yeah, I watched TikTok just to see what it’s like.” And I said, “You know something? This is why I suspect the worst out of the Communist Chinese.” Yeah, this is like the game in Star Trek. You know, they get everybody… Oh, Data, the android, is the only one who’s not susceptible to the game that’s a thing that humans just get preoccupied with, you know? It’s a vast intergalactic conspiracy.
 
Anyway, we can talk… I’ve come to my timing end.
 
Anyway, but going back to just the theme, I’ll put some consistency here, I’ll actually ask you about the subject of the podcast today that things that really stay with you for a long time seem very, very simple, but they have a great deal of complexity in them.
 
Jeff Madoff: I think that’s a great note to end it on, because I think that you’re right. And remember, in order to understand that complexity, you always have to look at context. Because otherwise that simplicity is a product of a simple mind.
 
Dan Sullivan: Yeah, yeah.
 
Jeff Madoff: And that simplicity that we’re talking about is the product of a ton of work.
 
Dan Sullivan: Or somebody who didn’t really have a plot but had a lot of money?
 
Jeff Madoff: That too, yeah.
 
Well, once again, Dan, anything and everything, true to the promise.
 
Thanks for joining us today on our show, “Anything and Everything”. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend.
 
For more about me and my work, visit acreativecareer.com and madoffproductions.com. To learn more about Dan and Strategic Coach, visit strategiccoach.com.