US vs The UK: What Are The Biggest Differences?

Chris and George Mack discuss the biggest differences between the US & the UK. What surprised George Mack the most about the US? What is George Mack’s biggest takeaways from being in America as a Brit? Does George Mack think Brits and Americans are more similar than different?

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we’ve been talking a lot about differences between the UK and the USA what have you come to believe about that so I my biggest takeaway from being in America as a Brit is it’s like finding out my dad had a kid with another woman that I never met and we meet for the first time and I’m like you’re kind of me but you’re not me it’s like he spent a bit more money on you he he made you believe in yourself your mom was clearly much nicer or Kinder and you go oh Americans like we’re kind of the same but it’s like Brits with self-belief Brits with self-belief is what Americans are is is one of the different there there’s lots of pros and there’s lots of cons for both but that was my overwhelming overwhelming takeaway the second biggest takeaway I have is that Brits don’t really truly realize how impactful the British accent is until you leave Britain and the metaphor I came up with for describing the British accent to Brits is Imagine everywhere else in the world there’s a salmon famine right and the British accent is like selling salmon and the only place in the world where there’s an abundance of salmon is in the UK so if you’re there using that it basically gets you nothing in the UK but you suddenly leave or go outwhere anywhere else and they think you’re smarter they think you’re more attractive um yeah Americans often ask me when they talk about that and I do think it’s true that uh Brits have an unfair advantage in America of being seen as more learned uh everyone presumes that we’re part of the aristocracy or something um and they often ask me well what do you think of American accents in the UK that was a really interesting question I was like I actually don’t know I think it’s like certainly for me on girls it’s like kind of sexy it feel that that feels exotic in some way uh definitely energetic overly enthusiastic and excitable uh especially when you’ve got one American in a bunch of Brits when you’re the Brit in a bunch of Americans oh you know everyone’s just sort of excitable and first line Cocaine Energy but when you drop one American in a a like Newcastle or something oh my God who is that it’s a nuclear warhead surrounded by a bunch of Swords um yeah I think since being here you know it’s made me reflect on the UK I I hate being disparaging about the UK like it’s the country that gave me and you a start we both went to University there we both had our first jobs there we both built businesses there uh I think we’re both in one form or another still registered you’ll be on company’s house and some vestigal old [ __ ] thing I hate I really wish that I didn’t sort of talk badly about it but you sent me a tweet last week and I’ve been watching bald and bankrupt Awesome YouTube channel um I invited him on the show he replied he said he’d love to but he’s actually trying to actively wind down his uh public exposure so he said he keeps getting asked for too many selfie photos in Tesco uh and he does strike me as the kind of man that probably doesn’t want to be Overexposed you know he was doing for the people that don’t know this guy who does kind of like dark tour stuff he got trafficked across the border into Mexico he was detained in a Russian jail for a while and then he decided he was going to take on the final boss of dangerous places which was Seaside towns of the UK and um he just travels around sort of looking at all of these these bad places and um you sent me that tweet last week which I think Nails it which is the UK has the sixth largest economy in the world but people are confused the UK doesn’t have the sixth largest economy in the world London has the sixth largest economy in the world it just has a really poor country attached to a very rich city yeah and then there was another one which was us universities um so I think in the top 10 universities in the world the UK has three and the US has three yet the US outputs five times those us universities F output five times the number of entrepreneurs that those UK universities do so in theory these people are as intelligent as one another mhm um across I think it’s Oxford Cambridge and another University maybe yeah and um what’s interesting when you go across Global university rankings and outputs of entrepreneurs in the study that was shared the UK University that which was Oxford so that’s the number one for entrepreneurial output was 50th across the whole world despite the fact we rank so high in education yet actually transforming that into entrepreneurship doesn’t seem to happen and I wonder again whether that’s the self-belief thing you also see this weirdly and I could be mistaken here I have this bias that I think Brits are fundamentally more funny and than Americans however way more great standup comedians that are American than British like we have Ricky jaas we have Jimmy Carr and then in terms of global appeal outside of that there’s not a huge amount more and my theory behind that is so why do you have the funniest people yet not the the biggest standard comedians out of those names there and I think the same CR crabs in a bucket mentality that makes people so funny because we can shoot people down and shoot ourselves down is the same thing that makes it ABS absurd as a concept to go and get on stage and say I want to be a funny person like that in the UK so I think the funniest guy in the world right now is probably in a Gregs in Wigan or he is in a pub in Portsmouth and because of that crabs in a booket mentality Americans are way more likely to get on stage and go I want to be a funny person because that’s part of the American deal meanwhile the Brits who I think are actually funnier don’t end up doing as much entrepreneurial as well as entrepreneurial yeah but you know even within that that sort of self-belief it’s one and the same I think it’s agency it’s the preparedness to go against the grain uh and you know this I’m we’re going to talk about uh subprime audiences later on um but you know this audience is like I would guess I would say like it’s full of like A’s and doublea’s of people especially the ones from the UK and I think the reason that this resonates I’m not saying it to disparage the UK I don’t think either of us are but to kind of reassure the people for whom they feel a little bit like uh square peg in a round country sat in the UK you know some normal Town you’re in [ __ ] Wakefield or Carlile or middesboro Rochdale wherever you are uh and you think God you know this is the sort of conversations I really love to have this is the kind of thoughts that I think about and I really want to have Big Dreams for myself and then I I just really struggle to resonate with the people around me I really really failed to do that and I think I wish that I’d had when I was younger more reassurance that I wasn’t the problem you know there’s no value judgment people that have big dreams people that don’t have big dreams but there’s nothing inherently wrong with you having those dreams and there’s no reason that you should be castigated or have the piss taken out of you because you want to do something different because you don’t intend being born living working and dying within the same 20 M radius of of you know where your parents grow up yes but even at a walking around level you see this so if you walk around America there’s Flags everywhere there’s kind of pride in the nation if you walk around the UK and you see a flag you go oh [ __ ] edl me they might be a Nazi which is C unless there’s a football tournament then everybody does it that’s the weird Paradox of the UK yeah so it’s even at that level you see this kind of Pride at the nation level and at the UK it’s almost like this weird autoimmune condition do you have any idea why the British football team uses Three Lions rather than the St George’s cross don’t know isn’t that interesting because I don’t think Scotland does and I don’t think Ireland does and I don’t think Wales do and I can’t think of any other team actually the uh England cricket guy will do the same thing there must be a reason someone will be correcting me in the comments as we speak um but that’s yet for the Americans that are listening British national pride like BNP British national pride and it’s not that but like it’s just it doesn’t exist and then you come over here and it it is nice it’s nice to hear that people have got have got pride in their country so the the probably the critique people have of us right now is that we’re critiquing Britain way more than we are critiquing America but I’d also point out that’s part of being British you’re way more naturally to critique yourself and to critique other people and I do love that side of being British because you’re way more self analytical um I think in ter in terms of other differences between the UK and the US that I’ve noticed in terms of benefits for Brits is because Brits like take the piss out of one another on average way more um it means that you do have maybe that lowering self-belief but you’re almost a bit more anti fragile so if people do say a remark you’ve already cracked a joke worse than that in the past or your friends have particularly and I think the more Northern in the country you go the more it is the further away from London that you get the more piss you have taken out of you exactly whereas in America I think people are a lot more could be more fragile to comments like that whereas the Brits the same way I always say another difference there’s two big differences that I think explain the differenes between Americans and Brits so one is simple AB test of when you meet an American and they’re super enthusiastic and excited and the Brits aren’t if you actually go historically back there was a simple AB test which is when the boats came and said hey Do’s this Promised Land far far away we can’t show you a video because videos don’t exist yet you may die on the boat do you want to come and visit this crazy land the Brits were the ones who were like what a ridiculous idea that is I’m going to stay here I’m staying in SK and the Americans were the ones who were like yeah bring it on and that AB test fundamentally explains it as well as when you think about it um historically Americans have apart from Pearl Harbor and that was quite far away from America let’s be honest have never had an attack on their Homeland in recent history 911 not count um the 911 yeah yeah there you go that’s one example but comparing that to the bombing like World War one and World War II like the whole cities completely destroyed um so there’s definitely more like art issue built up that makes Brits I think a little bit more grittier in some regards than Americans as well yeah I don’t know man I’m pessimistic yeah I can tell it’s for certain people I had this discussion with pi Morgan Pi was like I like I like people bringing me back down to to Earth I like the the the mockery and stuff I’m like Pi that’s great for you it doesn’t seem to work too well for me like my desperate requirement for validation and reassurance from the world like wasn’t being very satiated in Stockton yeah right or Newcastle uh and then you come over here one of the best things and this is something that anybody anywhere on the planet should do and this is one of the coolest life hacks I’ve taken since being in America and you’ve seen me do it to you and you’ve like toe C at a bunch of parties which is when in America at least in my group of friends you are the new person in a group your friend that knows you and knows the group will introduce you and tends to do it in the best 30-second show real of you that anybody could give you know got this amazing marketing agency he’s a phenomenal writer and he’s pivoting he’s kind of champagne homeless at the moment he does all of these things and like that’s a really lovely gesture it’s your friend it’s an opportunity for them to do something nice for you it gives you the best impression on the group and it reminds you about what your friend kind of says about you behind your back when you’re not there and it’s like it inflates you a little bit and makes you feel good and warm and stuff what would the equivalent be if you were a British friend being introduced to British Friends by a British friend it would be your worst ever story correct certainly the nor again this is the nor thing this this is George [ __ ] himself last week like you know still has wet dreams like you know um yeah it is like the introduction side how we introduce one another I’ve definitely found Americans are much better at selling themselves immediately whereas I think Brits often downplay themselves immediately there’s a big difference there in terms of like ever so slight cultural differences one of the reasons why I think America has been so successful so far and one thing Britain could improve upon is if you look at human beings I think what makes human beings if you put one human being in a jungle um it’s that classic phrase that you put one human being in a jungle and meet you’ve just introduced prey into the environment but if you put a thousand human beings into the jungle you’ve just introduced a apex predator of which the world’s never seen before so the only thing that really makes special if you look at us we don’t hear that well compared to our animals we’re not that fast we’re not that strong we’re pretty [ __ ] across the board but our ability to cooperate is what makes us unique it’s the classic Steve Jobs thing of if you looked at um I think it’s Energy Efficiency in movement humans are so far down the rankings like there’s so many animals ahead of us in terms of to do a mile how much energy they need to burn but if you look at a human being on a bicycle human beings have just Blown Blown through the charts and he has this great quote which is the computer is the bicycle of the mind and if you then go back to well ultimately the only thing that makes us unique human beings because we’re [ __ ] about everything compared to our animals is our ability to cooperate if you have a more enthusiastic society that supports one another more you can cooperate more which means that you’ll then have way more economic output because in a certain country that’s more optimistic that goes I’ve got this idea a lot of naive Americans are like great idea let’s do it tomorrow whereas PE a culture that’s more maybe cynical um means that those ideas don’t happen which I think explains why across these universities we have essentially the same IQ levels the same intelligence levels better accents better accents more salmon but 5x the number of entrepreneurs in America in other news this episode is brought to you by momentus they make the highest quality supplements on the planet I’ve fallen in love with their way isolate protein powder which you’ll see actually doesn’t even have the seal on it because this is my one from home if you’ve been 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