The Warrior Poet

Are you the 'angel of nuance' in your organization? Sri uses this loved and detested character from the Dan Le Batard Show on ESPN to inform the leader's approach to communicating strategy and solving complex problems.


notes

• Angel of Nuance highlights (Youtube)

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_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

Sri questions whether you could be living a skinny-fat life. How would you know?

Val Kilmer helps us think about cheat days.

PS. "Skinny fat" is weakness masquerading as fitness.


***

notes

Thanks to guitarguy1985 for the great EKG sounds. 

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

Do you have trouble making sense of the Matrix? What if you approached everyone around you as if they were a computer player in the video game of life? Sri and System of a Down illuminate this and other subjects.

***

show notes

• Mea culpa: I attributed a quote in the episode to Michael Jordan that actually belongs to Wayne Gretzky. 
  
  
• Toxicity by System of a Down (Spotify)
  • Edo Notarloberti: classical cover #1 (piano heard in episode fill) (Youtube)
  • Benete Silva: classical cover #2 (strings heard in episode fill) (Youtube)
• Threw It On the Ground by The Lonely Island (starring Andy Samberg) (Youtube)
  
  
• Don't Hate the Playa by Ice T (Youtube)

Video game-esque alarm fill courtesy of ifartinurgeneraldirection ("nuclear alarm" via freesound.org). 

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

Humans respond to imperfectly humanlike creations with varying degrees of horror, with an "uncanny valley" of human acceptance (i.e. a low point) in the middle of the spectrum of humanness. Roboticists and game designers are well acquainted with the concept, but many leaders are not (as witnessed by their uncanny behavior in the workplace).

Sri and Judge Rheinhold teach leaders to be more human and less robotic. Plus, lessons on keeping it real through Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise.

***

show notes 

• This episode follows from thoughts shared in show #6: Screenwriting.  
• Must-see chart of the uncanny valley from a really great Medium post that explains the concept. (The chart is an updated version from Mori's original below.) 
• Hilarious video: Everything Wrong With Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (Youtube)
  (Is this the same narrator as the Martian audiobook? Audible: An incredible read btw)
• Masahiro Mori’s originally proposed graph depicting the uncanny valley (with illustrative examples): see Figure 1 in this NCBI paper 
• On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck by Nick Riggle (Amazon) 
• Gangsta's Paradise music video (Youtube) 
• https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/tv/coolio-and-his-kids-put-the-real-in-reality-tv/ 
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eubulides#Paradoxes_of_Eubulides 
• Mixed accents: 
  • https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-have-mixed-accent-such-as-British-and-American-accents
  • Not quite what I mean but related -- slightly different concept of being "bi-accented," using Gillian Anderson as example: http://dialectblog.com/2011/04/26/can-you-be-bi-accented/

Fills courtesy of YellowTree, CarlosCarty, and Xserra. Many thanks. 

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

You know you do it. You think about what you would've told that person who cut you off. That coworker who showed you up at that meeting. The thousand ways to craft the argument that will vanquish the disbelievers of your light of truth. 

Sri and Nicolas Cage discuss this unproductive behavior, which Sri calls "screenwriting," and how to avoid it. 

***

• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (Amazon) 
• "Mechanism of acute tryptophan depletion: is it only serotonin?" (Nature magazine)
• https://time.com/4580001/thanksgiving-turkey-tryptophan/
• The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (Amazon): Not necessarily an endorsement, as Sri has not read the book. But 4/5 stars on Amazon. 
• Keen listeners will notice how Nicolas Cage's character's behavior in the film Adaptation resembles hypergraphia, which was covered so much in show #7 that we had to name the episode after it. 
• This show also references themes in the following episodes: 
  • #4: Local H
  • #5: Bizarro 

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

In this second part of Sri's interview with Jay Hack, the two dive deeper on leadership lessons: 

• Dealing with leadership anxiety
• Tips for new leaders
• More on finding mentors 
• When someone is not onboard with your vision
• Being a fish out of water (e.g. new industry, different culture, etc)
• Plus, a detailed manual for screwing up an employee-of-the-month award

Check out Part 1 of the interview here.

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

Sri interviews West Point graduate and Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Jay Hack about leadership based on Jay's four years leading Norwegian industrial workforces. (Jay is also a graduate of Harvard Business School.) 

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

Do you have hypergraphia? Sri explores this mental disorder and related states with help from Amazon, Truman Capote, and "the Ballmer number." 

***

• Tower of Silence article on Wikipedia (Zoroastrian disposal of human remains)  
• Interesting commentary and history of Zoroastrianism (The Guardian)  
• The Guardian account of hypergraphia referenced in the episode
• Ballmer number (err, "peak"): https://observer.com/2012/04/bottoms-up-the-ballmer-peak-is-real-study-says/

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

Sri tries to invent a new word and viddies a bourbon. His "Bizarro Method" helps you get out of a rut.


***

notes: 

• Sri’s article on Medium: Intermittent Fasting and the Placebo Effect 
• Origins of Bizarro (Youtube)
• Superman Meets Bizarro (Youtube)  
• Seinfeld clips referenced: 
  • Jerry and Elaine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcjSDZNbOs0
  • The two worlds collide:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc_f-0DCGI0
• Authors/bloggers to check out: James Clear and Charles Duhigg 
• "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson (unabridged audiobook - Audible / Amazon)    
• “Influence” by Robert Cialdini (“click, whirr”) (Amazon) 
• “Quiet" by Susan Cain (Amazon) 

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.

Sri helps you get the most out of your people, applying Friedrich Hayek's concept of "local knowledge" to companies with the help of "that 'copacetic' song." The movie 'American Psycho' is discussed in the same breath as an articulation of why corporate promotions are a confidence game.

Coincidence? Perhaps not.

***

Select songs and music videos by Local H: 

• "Bound for the Floor" (“that ‘copacetic’ song”): Youtube
• "Eddie Vedder" ("as good as dead"): Spotify, Youtube
• Cover of David Bowie's “Heroes” (Spotify)
• Cover of Lorde's "Team": Spotify, Youtube  
• High-Fiving MF (EXPLICIT) -- Not mentioned in the episode but still worth a listen: Spotify

Hayek: The Use of Knowledge in Society  

David Henderson’s article on Hayek’s seminal article in EconLib 

Ronald Coase: “Nature of the Firm”: Wikipedia 

📌 Want to crush 2026? Book a free clarity call with Sri to get your priorities in order and start getting unstuck. 

📩 Get free elite performance tools weekly through the Warrior Poet newsletter 👉 join ✅

_____

Follow Sri for elite leadership tips: 
➡️  LinkedIn.com/in/andrewsridhar

Connect on Instagram: @andrewsridhar  + @sri_actually 

Intro and/or outro music in most episodes is by Paul Sridhar. 🎧

Disclaimer: Any audio clips are included with every intent and steps taken to abide by Fair Use and serve the purpose(s) of illustration, education, augmentation, or promotion of source content.