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Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin

The great pretender (E)

Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin

Midroll Media

Society & Culture

4.81.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are you an imposter?


Akimbo is a weekly podcast created by Seth Godin. He's the bestselling author of 20 books and a long-time entrepreneur, freelancer and teacher.

You can find out more about Seth by reading his daily blog at seths.blog and about the podcast at akimbo.link.

To submit a question and to see the show notes, please visit akimbo.link and press the appropriate button.





Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

About 25 years ago in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, MacArthur Wheeler came up with a plan.

0:07.8

He knew a lot about secret messages and he realized that if you used lemon juice to write a note you could make invisible ink that could

0:16.2

only be seen if you heated it up.

0:18.9

So he realized if he put lemon juice all over his face, he would become invisible.

0:25.9

He was very careful.

0:26.9

He checked himself by taking a picture of himself with a Polaroid.

0:30.4

The picture came out blank, so off he went.

0:33.0

He robbed not one but two banks that day,

0:37.0

and was astonished and upset to discover that he wasn't in fact invisible.

0:44.0

Hey it's Kevin Beach and this is a special archived episode of Akembo.

0:50.0

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender.

0:55.0

Ironically, there are no photos of MacArthur Wheeler on my show notes page,

1:01.0

but there are plenty of links you might want to check out.

1:03.3

MacArthur Wheeler who then went to jail of course suffered from what's called

1:08.7

the Dunning-Kruger effect which is a syndrome in which people who know the least, often act like they know the most.

1:20.0

It's easy to laugh at his plight.

1:23.2

Of course, in case you were wondering,

1:25.6

lemon juice doesn't make you invisible.

1:28.1

I am now an expert on this topic.

1:30.9

However, there's some part of us that wants to believe, that wants to be afraid, that wants to be sure

1:39.2

that if we get a little bit too uppity. We too will go to jail for doing something really stupid.

1:48.0

Consider the case of a friend of the family. He acted all through high school. He was really good at it. He got to college and applied for the improv

...

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