There are five monkeys, there's a pole, or maybe a ladder, and at the top a banana.

And of course there's a powerful spray of water.

One of the monkeys starts climbing up the ladder, it gets hit by the water spray.

Another monkey starts climbing up the ladder, it gets hit by the water spray.

Very soon the other monkeys, every time they see a monkey getting ready to climb up the

ladder, will tackle him, keep him from climbing the ladder.

And then one by one the monkeys are replaced.

Now the new monkey, the naive monkey, starts trying to climb the ladder and it gets tackled.

One by one the monkeys are replaced until none of the original wet monkeys, until not one

monkey, that was present in the face of the bizarre experiment with the water gun, is in

the room.

And yet still the monkeys will keep each other from climbing the ladder.

Konichiwa, it's Nick in Fukuoka, Japan, and this is a special archived episode of Akimbo.

Is Akimbo.

That story is not true.

Even scientists who work with primates aren't quite twisted enough to actually have performed

that experiment, but it was in a bestseller called competing for the future, which came

out in 1996 by Gary Hamel and CK Pralod.

The thing is they sort of made it up.

It was based on an earlier actual experiment that happened in the 1970s.

The core takeaway that we're supposed to remember is this, that's the way we do things around

here.

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