Susan Cain (on the power of introverts and bittersweetness)

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dax, Randall Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Monica Lily Padman.

[3] Hi.

[4] How are you?

[5] I'm doing fantastic.

[6] Yeah, you look real sporty.

[7] More in the fact check for a full breakdown of the outfit.

[8] That's right.

[9] You look seven.

[10] Just, that's an Easter egg.

[11] Okay, I don't know how I feel about that.

[12] You have the whitest little sneakers on?

[13] You think that reads seven?

[14] Yeah, a little kid.

[15] I tried to, I used a rubber.

[16] What's it called?

[17] Prophylactic?

[18] condom, a magnum.

[19] I used a eraser.

[20] A magic eraser?

[21] Thank you.

[22] To what, keep them white?

[23] Yeah.

[24] Oh, that's Gerard Carmichael.

[25] That's a nod to Gerard.

[26] That's right.

[27] Oh, God.

[28] It rhymes.

[29] New podcasts this fall, nod to Gerard.

[30] Today we have Susan Kane on.

[31] Susan Kane is a best -selling author and lecture.

[32] Her TED talks have been viewed over 40 million times.

[33] And as we talk about the fact check, one of her books, Quiet was a Bill Gates recommend.

[34] So, yes, she has quiet, the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking.

[35] Quiet power, the secret strengths of introverts.

[36] And now her newest book, which we're going to talk about at length, Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

[37] This was a really lovely episode.

[38] I enjoyed it a lot.

[39] It was.

[40] I think it would be really comforting to people that feel like they're the only people on the planet that are having these feelings.

[41] Yeah.

[42] Please enjoy Susan Kane.

[43] And please enjoy a reading of Taylor's, Webb's commencement speech in the fact check.

[44] Yep, block out some time, get comfortable, and get ready to hear it.

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[48] Hi, Monica.

[49] Hi, Susan.

[50] How are you?

[51] I think I'm better than you from what Rob told me. Are you okay?

[52] Yeah, I just feel like I got hit with it pretty bad.

[53] I mean, obviously not horrible, like no hospitalizations or anything, but just like legit flu.

[54] Shoot, why are you doing?

[55] I mean, I'm thrilled for my own sake to get to see you, but why are you doing this?

[56] You should be resting.

[57] I try to show up if I can.

[58] And, you know, I'm on Zoom and I don't have to be in the attic.

[59] So why not?

[60] I'll probably be quieter than normal, but I'd like to be here if I can.

[61] And I really find your work really interesting.

[62] Well, thank you for doing this.

[63] And if you have to, like, leave and get tea or whatever we need to do in the middle, we'll carry on.

[64] Were you just bringing Susan up to speed on your ailment?

[65] Yeah, rub and formature.

[66] Oh, my God, your voice sounds cute.

[67] Listen to this.

[68] You have a whole new voice.

[69] Yeah, you've got that nice rasp.

[70] I love the rasp.

[71] That's always the great thing about being sick.

[72] Exactly.

[73] I have to lean into it while I can.

[74] Very to me more.

[75] Ooh.

[76] Susan, how are you?

[77] I'm doing better than Monica.

[78] But I was saying to Monica, I just had my.

[79] booster like two days ago.

[80] So I basically had flu for a day.

[81] So I'm like full of extra empathy for her because I just experienced it.

[82] That kind of circles into your book a little bit.

[83] Like you're kind of cashing in on your own suffering right now to extend some compassion.

[84] This is too convenient.

[85] It'll feel suspicious to the listener.

[86] My first thought is like being aware of your earlier work with quiet, which I want to talk about.

[87] I know we're here to talk about bittersweet.

[88] We can talk about anything.

[89] As a self -proclaimed introvert, doing press cycles, how are they for you?

[90] like out of 10.

[91] 10 is you'd rather die.

[92] Zero's, it's euphoric.

[93] Oh, that's so funny.

[94] I would have done it exactly the opposite.

[95] I know.

[96] I would have normally, too.

[97] Yeah, like zero and euphoria doesn't feel right.

[98] Can we just turn that around?

[99] But it kind of feels in concert with your book, but yes, let's turn it around.

[100] Okay, but I'm not saying in my book that I love feeling down in the dumps.

[101] Like, that's not my thing.

[102] Yeah, yeah.

[103] How is it for me?

[104] It's actually like a long, complicated answer.

[105] So I'm going to try to just give you a number seven or something.

[106] Okay.

[107] On the good side.

[108] The complicated answer is that really, with both quiet and now again with bittersweet in a lesser way, I went through this pattern of like the first week or so.

[109] I was truly suffering.

[110] It was just like the transition from being in my sanctuary space inside my own head, writing my book, and then suddenly having to articulate it to the world that was really hard.

[111] And then as soon as I get used to it, I'm totally fine and I'm able to enjoy the good sides of it.

[112] And like I really enjoy the connecting of it.

[113] This could be one of either two things or a combination.

[114] One is, I think our fear of things is always worse than the thing itself.

[115] So much.

[116] I find that I've never been as miserable walking through a bad scenario as I have been thinking about a future bad scenario.

[117] The anticipation is the worst.

[118] But the other thing I would imagine is like you go from a zone of complete control.

[119] It's you in your room, as you say.

[120] And then you pretty much just like send it to kindergarten.

[121] And now everyone gets to be a part of the process.

[122] Is that some of it as well?

[123] Exactly.

[124] And it's like a baby.

[125] and so you really care about its progress through the world.

[126] So it's not just like the one day in kindergarten.

[127] It's like, well, they have a happy marriage when they're 50.

[128] So it's all those things.

[129] Also, like a kind of footnote on your anticipatory anxiety thing.

[130] I've also noticed this other thing that when anyone's in the throes of anticipatory anxiety, like the worst thing you can do at that moment is think about something else that's bothering you.

[131] That normally you'd be able to take in stride.

[132] But if it hits your brain at that moment, it feels catastrophic.

[133] I think some of us, myself included, I proceed through life thinking I have this pretty sturdy foundation of being of my overall temperament.

[134] And I tend to ignore that I too have protracted periods of bad chemistry.

[135] And so all this information that would otherwise not bother me now is insufferable and that I'm just rising and falling with the tide as a human does.

[136] And nothing's really that objective.

[137] It's just like, what is my perception today based on my current state of chemistry, everything?

[138] Yeah, and learning to know your own and how it rolls so that you can adapt to it.

[139] Yeah.

[140] What I'm tempted to say about your work, and it's kind of my favorite.

[141] It seems to me that the theme of your work thus far is, well, hold on, I don't fit this model everyone's kind of agreed with.

[142] I know personally that that's not how I am.

[143] And I want to just see, am I alone in that?

[144] I'm an outlier?

[145] Am I unique?

[146] Or, oh, my goodness, no. A bunch of people feel this way, and no one's anything about it.

[147] Is that fair to say?

[148] Yeah.

[149] And in fact, like, when I started working on Quiet, which was a really long time ago, I was also working on a bunch of other stuff, and I had no idea that Quiet was going to be the thing that was going to take off.

[150] Endorsed by Bill Gates, we should say.

[151] He's a friend.

[152] We love him.

[153] That's a big feather in your cap.

[154] Thank you.

[155] So when I first started working on it, I really did feel like I was describing this really idiosyncratic thing that I knew I felt.

[156] I knew there were a few people who felt it, but I remember going to dinner parties during the time I was writing the book before it was actually out and had had the reaction that it did.

[157] Seven years on the New York Times bestseller list, like hugely successful, resonating with obviously millions of people.

[158] So my husband's much more extroverted.

[159] We'd be at a dinner party and he'd be like, this is what she's working on.

[160] And like he would talk about it in a sales pitch type of way in a way that I could never do.

[161] And I would feel kind of vaguely embarrassed as the topic would get started.

[162] But then what kept happening, reliably is that everyone at the table would light up and want to talk about their own stories of feeling that way or their wife who feels that way or their child.

[163] So you start to realize.

[164] But I do think you're right about this theme in my work, which I wouldn't have known going into my writing career that that was going to be my thing.

[165] But it just turned out that way.

[166] Right what you know, they say.

[167] Quiet is about the power of introverts.

[168] And you have this great TED talk with 10 million views.

[169] The power of introverts, I have to say that I remember reading this book on why we sleep or how we sleep.

[170] And I learned that a very significant percentage of the population are night owls, which I am.

[171] But we are forced to live in a world completely designed for early birds.

[172] And it's significant.

[173] And in your TED talk, you say that 30 to perhaps 50 % of the population are introverts.

[174] Was that shocking to learn?

[175] Yeah.

[176] When you first come across that statistic and then you start hearing the other variations of it, like that there are so many introverts in military leadership or among CEOs or like all these places where you're conditioned not to expect it.

[177] I would say that the one thing that's different about introverts being out of step with the cultural norm versus night owls is that night owls might feel like a vague sense of like, yeah, I feel some cultural pressure to be up and at them early.

[178] But it's not really like at your core.

[179] It's not at the core of your being.

[180] Whereas for introverts and extroverts, like that aspect of our temperaments is what psychologists call the north and south of human nature.

[181] It governs so much of who we are.

[182] So if you feel like an introvert out of step with the way you're, quote, supposed to be, it's something that can make you feel badly about yourself.

[183] And you start, like, doubting your own preferences of how you want to spend your own time.

[184] Extroversion is highly incentivized, both in school and in work.

[185] And you talk about how institutions are really set up to support and celebrate extroverts.

[186] But is that American?

[187] or is that international?

[188] It's decidedly American, but it's international too.

[189] Psychologists look and compare how this maps across different countries and cultures, and it varies, you know, like countries like Finland or less so or Confucian belt countries like Japan and Korea and China also less so.

[190] But there's also increasingly this kind of global culture where all people feel that they're supposed to be extroverted.

[191] So it's really interesting if you go to these Confucian Belt countries, there's a kind of double consciousness where on the one hand, people are trying to be kind of out there and extroverted because they think that's what they're supposed to do.

[192] And on the other hand, they've inherited a deep cultural legacy that prizes the idea of like there's an aphorism of the wind howls, but the mountain remains still.

[193] So quiet is the source of strength.

[194] So there's a kind of straddling that goes on.

[195] You kind of walk through the interesting history of that.

[196] So we also, just as a country, evolved between 19th and 20th century.

[197] There was this amazing study that was done by this guy, Warren Cessalon.

[198] who compared the self -health books that people read in the U .S. in the 19th century versus the 20th century.

[199] He literally looked at the words that appeared most frequently in these books.

[200] And in the 19th century, which historians call the culture of character, the words were like honor, dignity, inner strength, character.

[201] Then you get to the 20th century, and suddenly the self -help books are all about magnetism, ability, salesmanship.

[202] Dale Carnegie.

[203] Yeah, so we really went through this cultural shift.

[204] And it makes sense, and you point out that we were largely an agricultural -based economy.

[205] Most of us were living rurally, where everyone's starting to move to cities.

[206] You have city -type jobs, whereas introversion on a farm would be lovely.

[207] You hope you're an introvert, I imagine, as you're working a field by yourself.

[208] Yeah, and even if you're not by yourself, you know, if you're living in a small town with people who you've known all your life, What matters much more is, like, how do you show up over time, you know, and what's, like, the inner character?

[209] Because people have to really rely on each other.

[210] Once your work life becomes about first impressions, then it becomes more like, how do you show up with someone who's never met you before?

[211] I really recommend you read and maybe you already have this great book by Joseph Henrik.

[212] I've never heard of this.

[213] Tell me, tell me. He's an incredible anthropologist at Harvard, and he basically charts our evolution from very family -based, trust only your kin.

[214] And then increasingly, what makes Westerners weird is they're Western, they're educated, individualistic.

[215] Yes.

[216] Can I actually remember what the R is?

[217] Rich.

[218] Right.

[219] And democratic.

[220] So this notion that we over time have learned to trust strangers, we buy food from strangers.

[221] The whole evolution, which of course kind of incentivize extroversion, because now it's like just first impressions.

[222] You don't have to have any history with anybody.

[223] And you can see how it kind of slowly gets rewarded.

[224] During the early years of tech and the internet, it felt to me like things were evening out a little bit because first of all, you had all these introverted tech gurus, you know, creating companies in their garages.

[225] At the end of the day, we are a culture that most of all reward success.

[226] So these were the people who were finding the new success.

[227] So that was like a new model.

[228] And then also even just in terms of how we showed up on the internet, so much of it was about you could be anybody typing something in.

[229] And so that was like a way of communicating with lots of people while not ever leaving your house.

[230] So that was a really introvert -friendly new way.

[231] But I feel like now we're getting away from that again because social media is much more about influencing and self -presentation and so on.

[232] When you bring it up, I'm like, oh, that's both my daughters who are in elementary school.

[233] This is the prevailing wisdom, which is what you call the new group thinks.

[234] So like everybody should learn in pods and then you should go work in pods.

[235] like, tell us A, how that came about, and then B, what is that experience for an introvert?

[236] I see this in my kid's school also.

[237] I mean, it's everywhere.

[238] Ironically, it actually came about partly because with the rise of the internet, we started seeing all these kinds of open source software and that kind of thing, which were the result of these gigantic collaborations of people from all over the place.

[239] And so we got the idea then that collaboration is the answer to all creative challenges.

[240] But what got left aside, from that analysis was the fact that the people who were creating the open source, it was often individual here and here and here and they were getting together on the internet, which is incredibly different from taking a bunch of fourth graders and saying to them, the way you're going to learn to solve this math problem is by talking to the three kids next to you.

[241] Like that's completely different.

[242] It's become a kind of religion in schools that this is what creativity is.

[243] And yet there are all these studies that find that collaboration is an important element of creativity, but solitude is also, there's crucial ingredient.

[244] When psychologists look at who have been many of the most creative people in fields like art and science and business, they often find people who are introverted enough to be able to tolerate the solitude that deep thought and focus requires.

[245] So I sometimes worry more about our extroverted kids in the schooling that you're talking about because they need someone showing them how to be able to sit down and get into that amazing state of solitary flow, and they're not getting that practice at school.

[246] What's it like for your kids?

[247] Well, one that's ideal for her.

[248] The other probably is more like me. You introduce me to the term an ambivert.

[249] I'm extroverted, and I am a writer, so I can sit in a room by myself for eternity.

[250] I enjoy both.

[251] You're like my husband, like he's a very large personality.

[252] But then if you look at how he spends a lot of his time, he can spend a lot of time by himself, hanging out and man cave stuff oh yeah my utopia is driving by myself in a car across the country like i could do that indefinitely you know it's funny we talk about so many topics on this show and then ultimately it seems like a common enemy to every topic on the planet is just this binary approach so it's like either its group think that works or it's isolated like you could just quickly look at tarentino and the cohen brothers both win the argument one solitary and sits by himself and is brilliant these two think together so what we know is both things can yield brilliant results.

[253] So it's more about, like, can we make space for everything?

[254] That seems to be, like, the bigger hurdle.

[255] Like, is there space for multiple approaches at all times?

[256] Do we just not have the resources?

[257] Like, that does seem to be a part of the solution.

[258] I could not agree more.

[259] Like, I want to jump up and down.

[260] Yes, like, we really need both.

[261] It's true for all of us as individuals.

[262] Like, even for me, let's say, I lean much more to the introverted.

[263] So that's how I get a lot of my best ideas, you know, like by sitting with a cup of coffee and just generating stuff.

[264] But I also really need the extroverted moments of talking to friends who are in the field or like going out and talking to you guys or, you know, whatever it is.

[265] So for each individual, we need to have both sides.

[266] But then there's also, as you're saying, like as a culture, we need to be honoring both types and making space for both as opposed to what ends up happening.

[267] You know, like in the school system, it gets communicated by the teachers to the quiet students that there is something wrong with their approach.

[268] I get these letters all the time.

[269] I just got one just the other day.

[270] It was amazing.

[271] It was the student whose class I had gone and spoken to 10 years ago when she was in high school.

[272] So she's now in her 20s, you know, long graduated.

[273] She said, I wish I could have come and talked to you that day that you came to talk to us, but I felt too shy to do it.

[274] So I waited 10 years.

[275] She said, in her school, which I think was actually really trying, she was constantly given the impression from her teachers that because she was quiet and not speaking up, that she was never going to succeed.

[276] And sometimes they would do these things of like they would take the whole class.

[277] It would be like a seminar.

[278] And they would literally map out for everyone to see who had spoken at what moments of the discussion and how often.

[279] And the idea was theoretically to teach the kids how a discussion flows.

[280] But what happened in her case was that everyone could see that she spoke zero to one times.

[281] And she said she would go home from school, like crying in the car with her mom because she kept getting this message over and over that there was something wrong.

[282] And I hear those stories a lot.

[283] The good news is I hear also all the time from educators in schools who really get it and are trying to address all this.

[284] I think we can get there eventually.

[285] I feel like there's a misconception that if you're not talking, you're not thinking.

[286] Yes.

[287] It's so wrong.

[288] I think it's what's got us into this binary world we live in where it's like, I got to share my opinion.

[289] Sometimes you can just think and it doesn't have to be stated.

[290] Absolutely.

[291] And introverts by their nature want to think about things before they articulate it.

[292] out loud, whereas extroverts part of the way that they're thinking.

[293] They want to work it out.

[294] Yeah, it's by working it out vocally.

[295] Yeah.

[296] I do want you to define the difference because I don't want anyone to be confused.

[297] There is a difference between introversion and shyness.

[298] Could you tell us that distinction?

[299] So it's like where do you get your energy?

[300] Introverts tend to feel at their most energized and alive and switched on and happy when they're in sort of more mellow environments, when there are fewer sources of stimulation coming at them all at once.

[301] whereas extroverts need more to feel more alive.

[302] So it's really just this preference of how do you spend your time, how mellow is it versus how chaotic is it?

[303] You could think of it that way.

[304] And shyness is more about the fear of social judgment.

[305] For shy people, it could show up maybe at a job interview or giving a speech or going on a date or whatever.

[306] But like anytime you feel like you're being evaluated socially, we all react to that, but a shy person will feel it much more intensely.

[307] Not having met him personally, but I'm just going to label him.

[308] And this is George Washington.

[309] I'm reading this incredible George Washington biography by Ron Chernow.

[310] It's funny.

[311] I was waiting to hear who it was that you hadn't yet met personally.

[312] But, okay, that makes sense.

[313] It's George Washington.

[314] We've been trying to get him on the show for years.

[315] We will.

[316] We haven't heard anything back.

[317] It can be a superpower.

[318] So I think George Washington was very much introverted.

[319] But he had this very prototypical leader exterior.

[320] It's very, very strong.

[321] He was very big.

[322] He was handsome.

[323] He was self -assured.

[324] But because he didn't speak and he, He was surrounded in the Continental Congress with the loudest mouse of the day, right?

[325] Like Alexander Hamilton and Jefferson and everybody there is a genius.

[326] They're all screaming their opinions, ad nauseum.

[327] And George Washington never really spoke.

[328] If they asked him something, he'd respond.

[329] But it became a superpower for the extroverts because it was like, who's this guy who's so confident that he doesn't need to jump into this fray?

[330] He must actually know more than us.

[331] It had this counterintuitive outcome and property to it, and it just was so helpful to him.

[332] And I've been reading this book thinking, like, man, I should shut the fuck up a little more.

[333] It could actually be more persuasive.

[334] I'm just curious what you think of the unintended power sometimes having solemn conviction.

[335] Okay, so I don't feel like the takeaway is that you should be doing that.

[336] No, it's really like I feel like we all have our own versions of how we're powerful in the world.

[337] And yours is different from what you just described.

[338] So that's great.

[339] I might suffer from Dunning Kruger, though, but continue.

[340] So if you think of lots of different kinds of powers, there's lightsabers, there's wizard hats, there's all these different versions of it.

[341] And you can think of introversion as like a lightsaber that is buried in the dust and people walk past it and they think it's just a stick because they have no idea.

[342] So that's just one of the powers that's on offer that George Washington happened to have.

[343] The power of underestimation.

[344] Yeah, it's underestimation, but it's also, you actually use the word yourself, the word conviction.

[345] I tell people this all the time.

[346] You could be totally quiet, but if you're speaking from a place of true inner conviction, that will communicate itself.

[347] People will know it.

[348] We're evolved to be on an intuitive, unconscious level, picking up the cues from everyone around us.

[349] We don't even know how we're doing it.

[350] But if conviction is what you're feeling, that'll get transmitted.

[351] Okay, so Dunning Kruger effect.

[352] It's this principle.

[353] Generally, the person speaking the most is the person that knows the least about the topic.

[354] They find this is an effect that happens.

[355] Maybe you know a better definition than I do, but you must be somewhat joyously interested in the Dunning Krueger.

[356] I actually don't recall that.

[357] Oh, okay.

[358] I think of it more as there being no correlation between who's speaking the most and who has the best ideas.

[359] Paring that with the fact that the Kellogg School said that in your typical meeting, like a large meeting of people, you have three people doing 70 % of the talking.

[360] That's disastrous if you figure that everybody on average has the same number of good ideas.

[361] There's zero correlation between the best talker and having the best idea.

[362] There's just no correlation whatsoever.

[363] And think about that next time you find yourself in an all -hands meeting because it's not going to feel that way.

[364] It's going to feel like there's three or four people in there who are talking the most.

[365] And maybe some of that is because of seniority, but put that aside.

[366] Assume it's all people of an equal level.

[367] Some of them are going to be really dominant and they don't necessarily have the right answer.

[368] Did I hear you say that you would quickly gander to guess that it would be a gendered division, but it's actually more introvert, extrovert division?

[369] I mean, in terms of talking and how much do we speak and how forcefully, there are all kinds of gendered forces that are going on there.

[370] What you might have heard me say, that that's not the only explanation.

[371] And I first started thinking about this because very improbably, I used to be a corporate lawyer before I became a writer.

[372] And I was always really interested in gender issues while I was at the firm.

[373] I was like on all those committees and stuff.

[374] And I started feeling like that was all really interesting and important, but it wasn't explaining everything that I was seeing happen in the way people showed up at meetings and negotiations and so on.

[375] That's when I started thinking about that it was really introversion and extroversion that explained so many of the behavioral differences.

[376] And yet no one was talking about it.

[377] It was like there was no language for that.

[378] Boy, yeah, the whole system needs an overhaul and how they're going to evaluate employees and really try to assess or put a metric to their value when it's not just who had the great idea in the meeting when we were all shouting over each other.

[379] The good news is I've seen it on the ground that most companies now are aware of this stuff.

[380] They're trying to fix it.

[381] I think we have a really long way to go, but the awareness is now there where it used not to be.

[382] And everybody knows it's in their interest to figure it out because if you're talking about a third to a half of the population, And if you know, as we do, that the best performing teams are a mix of introvert and extrovert, then you have to figure it out.

[383] Yeah, it sounds like these personality tests that are getting popular are more and more necessary to run a company efficiently.

[384] I know, though I have really mixed feelings about those.

[385] Oh, tell me, tell me. Your buddy Adam Grant has one that's very embraced that he did with Ray Dalio.

[386] Well, I mean, I love personality tests in general.

[387] Like, I love them as individual tools.

[388] And I went through this phase of my life when I first discovered Myers -Briggs when I was in my 20.

[389] where, like, I made all my friends take it, and then we had to talk about it for hours and hours.

[390] Oh, my God, this is the Enneagram situation.

[391] Everyone's so into it.

[392] It's funny that you say that after I wrote Bittersweet, I started getting this whole flood of letters of people being like, you're in Enneagram 4, and you wrote this book for Enneagram 4s.

[393] I hadn't even realized.

[394] Adam Grant hates Myers -Briggs and feels like it's totally invalid.

[395] And maybe he's right scientifically and everything, but I feel like it's really useful.

[396] For Adam, it's horseshit.

[397] And in another version, there's one that's, for Adam.

[398] But again, that's the whole thing.

[399] It's like there isn't a blanket, unfortunately.

[400] It's probably a great personality test for a segment of the population.

[401] My beef with them isn't so much this test or that test.

[402] You know, some are better than others.

[403] It's more like, I'm really skeptical about how they get used in corporations.

[404] Because we know, I mean, well, that's what my books are about.

[405] There's so much bias in favor of one way of being and against another way of being that I don't know that you could ever really trust.

[406] There's so many subtleties the way we show up.

[407] You know, you could be an introvert who's an incredibly effective leader like George Washington.

[408] But George Washington, if he had filled out the Myers -Briggs, somebody might have dismissed him and said he's not leadership material.

[409] Yeah.

[410] Oh, it'll levy that strong of a verdict, like put him on a different path, put her on a different path.

[411] Oh, yeah.

[412] We know from the studies that introverts get passed over for leadership.

[413] They don't get groomed for it in the first place, even though there's also all these other studies that show that introverted leaders deliver really good outcomes, but those two piles of studies don't really match each other.

[414] Yeah.

[415] Okay.

[416] I had to have this thought because I just put everything through the anthropology lens.

[417] So I'm first and foremost, I'm in total agreement with you.

[418] I'm married to an introvert.

[419] I'm energized by interacting with people and she's energized by reading.

[420] And it's so clear to me. And obviously the world needs answers for both types.

[421] So I'm with that.

[422] Monica, how would you describe yourself?

[423] I think I'm in the middle.

[424] I get a lot out of debate and conversation with others, and I get a lot of energy out of that.

[425] But, like, I'm definitely not someone who goes to a party and is like, yay, there's 100 people here.

[426] Like, I hate that.

[427] That's got to be 1 % of the population, by the way.

[428] Yeah, I know.

[429] But then why do we have so many of those parties?

[430] I don't know.

[431] Exactly.

[432] It's a mystery to me. And uncreatively, I can really focus by myself.

[433] I think I get a lot of good work done when I'm alone.

[434] She's a great writer.

[435] I think most writers have a good dose of introversion.

[436] Totally.

[437] And I just have to say it's a funny visual effect because right now you're holding up something that I think is probably like a thermos of chicken soup or something.

[438] Oh, this?

[439] No. Oh, wait.

[440] Oh, no, she's holding the microphone.

[441] It's your microphone.

[442] It's your mic.

[443] Okay.

[444] Sorry.

[445] I can see that.

[446] I just don't have a stand for it, so I'm holding it.

[447] Got it.

[448] She's out in the field.

[449] You've got to cut her some slack.

[450] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[451] What's up, guys, this is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good, and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

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[454] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

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[464] into this anthropological thought.

[465] This is building off of having just interviewed Anna Lemke on dopamine.

[466] Something that's been increasingly occurring to me is that we have never in human history, or at least for 150 ,000 years of our time here, we didn't have privacy.

[467] That is not something that this social primate had.

[468] You didn't live in multi -room homes.

[469] You couldn't wander off for peaceful time in a forest.

[470] It was too dangerous.

[471] You were with people all the time.

[472] And I'm increasingly interested in how many pathologies arise from our isolation and our privacy.

[473] That's where you're seeing your sexual pathologies, your addictions, you're all these things.

[474] When you're not accountable, some great things can happen and also quite a few bad things can happen.

[475] I think it's very interesting to think of, we have all these societal issues we think about under all these different lenses.

[476] Is it income inequality?

[477] Is it education?

[478] Is it this?

[479] Just in general, I think a big, big component people don't talk about is just the fact that we have privacy.

[480] I guess I'm just wondering what your thoughts on that because being an introvert does require that and do we think that could have existed in early humans?

[481] I've thought about this a lot actually because, I mean, I've often wondered, oh my gosh, like if I'd had to live in a tribe where there were just people around all the time, I would have found that really difficult.

[482] And yet, we definitely know that it existed always.

[483] And we know this because it exists in every single animal species, like all the way down to the level of fruit flies.

[484] He basically have some fruit flies that are more exploratory.

[485] and then some fruit flies who will, like, stay more in place.

[486] And you see this as the animals get more complex.

[487] There's introvert, extrovert behaviors, you could say.

[488] So they're basically different strategies of survival.

[489] And we need all of them.

[490] And we need all of them.

[491] But how it would have been, I don't know.

[492] I've sometimes wondered if it's that maybe if you were with your tribe, you were with a lot of other people, but you still didn't feel the need to be on all the time, the way we think of social life as being now.

[493] Like, I'm with my family all the time, and I really like that.

[494] To me, that's actually perfect, because it's company, it's togetherness, it's love, but it's not being on.

[495] Yeah.

[496] So to me, that's the sweet spot.

[497] And you're right.

[498] Definitely when the women were gathering, they're like in a very big group, but they're also covering their own little swath of area.

[499] So they are by themselves even though they're within the group.

[500] So maybe it's not as crazy.

[501] Or they've been talking to people.

[502] They've known all their lives.

[503] Yeah.

[504] So it's much more like the agricultural model we're talking about from the 19th century in the U .S. And then there's this other like phenomenon of, to me and to many other introverts, I'm curious.

[505] how the two of you experienced this.

[506] My ideal life is actually city life.

[507] Like, I love the feeling of being surrounded by tons and tons and tons of people and feeling all that energy, but also having the permission to be anonymous.

[508] I totally agree.

[509] Isn't that an interesting paradox?

[510] You're so right.

[511] So, like, if I'm in my small rural town I grew up in and I'm walking on the street, I can't be by myself.

[512] People are going to say hi to me. They know me. I'm going to stop at a store.

[513] People are more friendly.

[514] Yet when I'm in New York, to your point, I'm like, oh, I could on fire and no one will look at me. If you have someone for directions, they sprint away from you.

[515] Yet there's all these people so you get all the energy bump from the people, but also, yeah, you're kind of anonymous.

[516] It is a paradox.

[517] Or like cafes.

[518] Like I rode all of quiet in the most magical, amazing cafe in Greenwich Village called DOMA, which no longer exists.

[519] Sadly, I'd be there, you know, like hunched over my laptop in my own space, but also surrounded by all these other people doing their creative thing, and you feel it.

[520] It's completely different from working by yourself.

[521] Okay, so now let's transition into Bittersweet because, yes, I think your previous book Quiet really shines a light on, hey, there's a good chunk of us are dealing with things this way, and I want some recognition.

[522] I want us to move towards embracing and supporting folks that are like me. Bittersweet, I would imagine, wasn't motivated out of a pushback to what could be seen as kind of a toxic positivity, like a pervasive positivity.

[523] And if one's not feeling, positive and happy all the time, then one should feel, I guess, shame that they're doing something wrong because everyone on Instagram and in every toilet paper commercial, people with diarrhea are happy.

[524] Like any commercial, they're thrilled.

[525] They have diarrhea.

[526] And then go out on a boat now.

[527] Now they're boating with diarrhea.

[528] For real.

[529] Good for them.

[530] It's like, I have diarrhea, but it's not going to stop me from boating.

[531] Well, it should.

[532] Just hygiene speaking.

[533] Were you feeling that?

[534] Were you feeling like, oh, my goodness, they're telling us we're supposed to.

[535] to be gleeful at all times.

[536] Honestly, no. I mean, I think that the book ended up doing what you just said and being a counterargument or a counterweight to the culture of that guy in the boat.

[537] Yeah.

[538] I'm having the best day of his life with diarrhea.

[539] That wasn't really what motivated me so much.

[540] What motivated me was more kind of like a quest.

[541] It was like all my life, I have been having this semi -transcendant experience in reaction to bittersweet minor key music.

[542] You know, and I love Leonard Cohen.

[543] I dedicated the book to him, but it's not just him.

[544] You know, I love that music in general.

[545] When I saw that, my first thought was it was dedicated to that lawyer Cohen in New York, the famous lawyer.

[546] What was his name?

[547] Oh, gosh.

[548] He was a monster.

[549] There's a great documentary on him.

[550] I ended up feeling sad for him because he was closeted gay, and that was part of the explanation.

[551] Oh, wait, wait, wait, gosh.

[552] When I first saw the book was dedicated, I was like, wait a minute, this is very counterintuitive.

[553] That's hilarious.

[554] You were probably like, maybe we should rebook this podcast and a different guest.

[555] I totally got confused for half a second.

[556] And then I remember who he was.

[557] But anyways, yeah, there was, I just wanted to share that with you.

[558] I was like, what a bizarre dedication.

[559] Roy Cohen, go get him.

[560] I'm like, he must have bailed her out of a tough contract.

[561] Leonard Cohen or just, it could be Moonlight Sonata.

[562] It doesn't matter what it is.

[563] There's just this feeling that would come from it that was so connected to creativity, to transcendence, feeling.

[564] connected to other people.

[565] And it's so deep and it's so profound that I just felt like I had to understand what the heck that was.

[566] So at first, it wasn't even going to be a book.

[567] I just wanted to understand the answer to that question.

[568] Where do you start?

[569] Well, I guess I started looking at sad music in general.

[570] I mean, there's been a lot of research as to why people like sad so much.

[571] Oh, there has.

[572] Yeah.

[573] So it turns out people whose favorite songs are happy, let's say, will listen to them 175 times in their playlist.

[574] But the people whose favorite songs are sad, listen 800 times.

[575] Oh, my.

[576] God.

[577] And it's the sad songs that give us goosebumps and chills.

[578] That is my experience.

[579] I had a spell this year.

[580] And I rediscovered how important music was to me. And the thing that I think I came to, I was like, the reason I'm drawn to that is as a kid, I would have these feelings, these melancholy feelings, or this sadness or a malaise, whatever it was.

[581] And I couldn't find anyone around me that seemed to be having that feeling to connect with or to feel some unity with.

[582] And then I would stumble upon these songs that I don't know how, but musically they were the exact feeling I had.

[583] And so I would listen to them repetitively so that I had some community.

[584] Like I really think those songs provided me community in a weird way.

[585] It's not weird at all.

[586] I think that's part of what musicians are doing with those songs.

[587] They're like transforming the pain that all humans have felt at one time or another.

[588] They're turning it into something beautiful.

[589] They're telling you that other people have felt this way too, even though it appears not to be the case on the surface, but don't listen to what the commercials are saying, listen to me, listen to the music because you're reacting this intensely for a reason.

[590] And that the best thing that we can do in general, whether we're musicians or not, is transform pain into beauty.

[591] Like, you know, instead of taking it out on ourselves or taking it out on somebody else, which is what we do if it goes unacknowledged, to instead live with it and understand it and know that we're not alone in it.

[592] And now what can we do with it to turn it into something higher the way they do?

[593] One great thing about your book, Quiet Accomplish the same thing, is I'm really, really prone to judge myself, right?

[594] So if I'm not feeling the way I think I'm supposed to be feeling, my first kind of reaction is to get really hard on myself.

[595] Like, what are you doing wrong?

[596] What didn't you do?

[597] Did you not eat right?

[598] Did you not exercise enough.

[599] Did you not this?

[600] Did you not that?

[601] And so to take off the judgment lens and to be able to experience and walk through emotions and feelings without this nagging voice in my head of like, get out of this, snap out of it, that's a message that needs to be promoted currently.

[602] Do you think we all kind of suffer from that?

[603] I think we all suffer from that.

[604] Yeah, because there's a kind of collective fear of any of the emotions that resemble in any way, anything having to do with loss, sorrow, failure, whatever it is, like that whole side of the ledger.

[605] We're such a culture of winners and losers.

[606] Like, that's how we're made to think of each other and ourselves.

[607] So if the last thing you want to be as a loser, then the last thing you want is to have truck with any of those emotions.

[608] I wrote this book for many reasons, but one was to speak to the field of psychology specifically because we do not have right now in psychology a way of distinguishing between this kind of happy melancholy that music teaches us versus.

[609] is clinical depression.

[610] And they're actually really different states.

[611] You know, in clinical depression, it's despair and it's numbness and worthlessness.

[612] It's not creative.

[613] It's not connected.

[614] It's just an emotional black hole.

[615] And it may be that the kind of happy melancholy that I'm talking about, it may be that it's only a difference in degree from depression as opposed to a difference in kind, but the difference in degree is so meaningful.

[616] Those are completely different lives that you're living.

[617] That state of productive melancholy gives rise to creativity.

[618] and connection and wonder.

[619] Yeah.

[620] It's one of our greatest states that we have.

[621] So this is why I want to write this book.

[622] I was like, oh my gosh.

[623] Like this state is what people are talking about when they talk about God.

[624] It's like a secular version of it.

[625] And we don't shine a light on it.

[626] I'm glad you said that though, because I do think there's a thought that like in order to be successful in a creative realm, you have to be depressed.

[627] Right.

[628] And I'm so against that.

[629] I think it's an excuse really, ultimately to not help yourself, I guess.

[630] So it's good to make that distinction that they're not the same.

[631] No, they're really not.

[632] There's one study where they primed people to be feeling a bunch of different emotions.

[633] One was straight up happy, one was straight up sad, and one was this kind of bittersweet mix of happy sad that I'm talking about.

[634] And the way they did this was they had people watch the movie, Father of the Bride.

[635] Oh my gosh.

[636] Yeah, you know, so like the moment of your daughter's going to be married.

[637] Like that's the ultimate and bittersweetness.

[638] And they found that the people who had watched that movie were the most creative in different tasks that they gave them.

[639] Okay, great.

[640] So the aforementioned period I had where I was enjoying the music, I also was like motivated beyond belief to write.

[641] I wrote so much in like two months.

[642] And now on the other side of it, I'm like, I don't miss the feeling per se or the strain it caused on all my relationships.

[643] But I'm like, fuck, I miss the call to writing the way I had.

[644] The kind of impassioned had to do it for survival.

[645] I want that part.

[646] Yeah, that's one of the tricky things.

[647] When you were in that state, would you say you were depressed?

[648] Yes.

[649] Monica's saying yes.

[650] I think so, yeah.

[651] To your point, it's like I was not numb.

[652] I wasn't fatigued.

[653] I wasn't not motivated.

[654] I wasn't pessimistic.

[655] It's interesting.

[656] So, like, sure, I think it was definitely dancing on a real depression, but I also didn't have some of the symptoms I would imagine.

[657] By the way, I'm talking to a psychologist the whole time, and he's not saying I need to take any kind of pharmacological.

[658] approach to it.

[659] No, but you were trying to work through a thing.

[660] Yeah.

[661] Right?

[662] It wasn't just a feeling.

[663] It was something you needed to work through.

[664] So there was struggle.

[665] So yeah, maybe depressed is probably not the word, but it was a time of struggle.

[666] Yeah.

[667] That's a really important distinction.

[668] It sounds like you hadn't fallen into the black hole.

[669] As you say, you might have been like dancing around it, dancing with some angel at the side of it, but you hadn't fallen in.

[670] We're skirting around the issue.

[671] You know, I killed somebody on vacation.

[672] And I just, I felt pretty bad about it.

[673] and I'm just trying to come to peace with that.

[674] So not to make anyone worry.

[675] There's so many studies that show people doing some of their best creative work when they're in those states.

[676] There was this one economist at MIT who tracked Mozart, List, and Beethoven.

[677] He tracked the letters that they wrote to friends and family over the course of their lives and careers.

[678] And he looked for words that indicated more happy or sad emotions.

[679] The times that they were writing the letters with more words with the sad emotions were when they also produced.

[680] their greatest and most profound music.

[681] There's just so many studies like this.

[682] So probably the best answer to that is, you know, when we find ourselves in those moments to, like, ride the creativity of that, doesn't mean we want to live there all the time.

[683] Yeah.

[684] Monica and I had many debates during this period.

[685] I think there's a way for Monica, for you and I, with the help of Susan, to land on the middle ground, which is life is all the things.

[686] So Farrell should write happy because there's days we want to blow the roof off the motherfucker.

[687] And then Adele should write, hello.

[688] And no one should live in a state of depression, yet also it's fine to embrace the period you're in and try to express it as loudly as you can because it will be of comfort to other people doing the thing at that same time.

[689] Yeah.

[690] And also that there are going to be some people who tend towards one state versus another, even though for most of us, you know, life gives us all the different states.

[691] But we have our tendencies.

[692] And if you are one of the people whose tendency takes you more in the bittersweet direction, or the darker direction to understand the intensely wondrous value of that.

[693] I think the hack or the marching order that could be helpful is like when you feel these moments as we all do coming on, instead of thinking about it as like, oh my God, I'm getting this black cloud now for however long until it passes, maybe this is me being toxicly positive.

[694] But learning to maybe have some enthusiasm about it of like, oh, I'm going to enjoy working in my wood shop more this month.

[695] I'm going to enjoy working on my car more this month.

[696] I'm going to enjoy writing more this month.

[697] Like, one of the best things I ever wrote was in the wake of my dad dying and me, like, processing that whole thing.

[698] And it's like, I liked that outcome.

[699] I hope that when I have those situations that are inevitable, that I can always focus on like, oh, but something expressive will come out of this, which is also important.

[700] I lost my father with COVID.

[701] Oh, my God.

[702] I'm so sorry.

[703] From COVID?

[704] From COVID, my father and my brother, both.

[705] Oh, my gosh.

[706] I'm so sorry.

[707] Yeah, I'm so sorry.

[708] Thank you.

[709] Your brother couldn't have been old.

[710] No. He was 11 years older than I. was, but still, I mean, not old, but he was a doctor in a hospital.

[711] It happened like right at the beginning.

[712] But I'm sorry, I didn't mean to derail us.

[713] No, we need to hear that, honestly, because it's like, you read a million people, but it's like, well, it must have been a million people in nursing homes.

[714] And it's like, no, it wasn't.

[715] No. My brother had married later in life and had met truly the love of his life, who he had been with for seven years, and they got married six months before that.

[716] Oh.

[717] So, like in terms of bringing it home for people.

[718] But I remember.

[719] After my father died, being in the kind of state you're talking about.

[720] And I was actually, I was sitting right over there.

[721] And I was writing about it and about the legacy of his life, which ended up actually making its way into bittersweet.

[722] As I was writing, I remember having this moment of thinking, well, I'm not totally sure I'm in the mood to be writing right now.

[723] But on the other hand, I knew, like, the emotions and the perceptions and everything that I was experiencing at that moment.

[724] It was completely singular to that moment.

[725] And it would never come again.

[726] And I had to like get it out at that moment in time.

[727] I will say the value in it is I just had sent the thing I wrote to a friend whose dad was dying.

[728] And I read it and I was like, oh my God, thank God I wrote that then because I've already forgotten all these sweet parts.

[729] Like I have this narrative about my dad and my narrative about my life and it really can erase reality.

[730] So like to me is just like an archaeological document I created I'm grateful for because it forces me to remember how sweet the experience was.

[731] I'd like to go back because I didn't get to say anything about it.

[732] No, it's okay.

[733] Just to give a teeny bit of context, you had a creative outputting, and it scared me because it was so intense.

[734] Let's tell Susan, I danced publicly to this song that I couldn't stop listening to.

[735] And when you say danced publicly, like where?

[736] On Instagram, on Instagram.

[737] Okay, okay.

[738] I was imagining you like at a fountain in a plaza.

[739] Yeah, yeah, in front of an RV's parking lot.

[740] That wouldn't have scared me, to be honest.

[741] But it was during this time, I was like, I think there's some mania.

[742] That's what I really thought and expressed.

[743] And that's my fear that I carry from my past stuff that I did place onto Dax.

[744] And I shouldn't have it.

[745] And I'm glad that he's really proud of it and should be.

[746] And there's no reason for me to bring that down.

[747] In addition to that, though, I will say that you also, Dax, really don't like it when people in your life are low.

[748] Oh, yeah.

[749] Like, it bothers you.

[750] Totally.

[751] Very hypocritical.

[752] It scares me like it scared you.

[753] Yeah.

[754] Yeah.

[755] Just to welcome you into the fold, Susan.

[756] So we both have loved ones who have had suicide attempts.

[757] So I think often for us, when we see what seems like signals that, oh, my God, if this goes further to the left, is a suicide on the table.

[758] So I think we both are pretty scarred by that.

[759] Yeah.

[760] Rightfully so, it sounds like.

[761] Maybe the great art here, trick here, whatever is the right word, is figuring out, like, if you think of it as a spectrum, how do you identify where the person is, where your loved one is on that line?

[762] That's maybe the great question to ask or to ask oneself when you're going through it.

[763] And also maybe, I mean, I hate this, but this is what I've been trying to work on is like maybe it's not for me to decide, unfortunately.

[764] I want to always be evaluating, like, where are they on that spectrum?

[765] But what's that going to get me really?

[766] Like, I can't control anyone, unfortunately.

[767] But you could ask them without controlling.

[768] Yeah.

[769] Or create the environment where they would want to be telling you.

[770] True.

[771] True.

[772] Yeah.

[773] Well, act that out for her.

[774] Ask me how I'm doing.

[775] Hey, how are you doing?

[776] But out of it.

[777] Okay.

[778] No, I wouldn't say, okay.

[779] I'd be like, what do you mean?

[780] I'm, no, I care.

[781] I'm allowed to care.

[782] That would then spiral into a much different.

[783] When we talk about transforming pain into something beautiful or productive or whatever, there's a thousand manifestations of that, a thousand ways to express that.

[784] You know, it might be baking a cake or planting a flour or whatever.

[785] In the wake of the pandemic, we have more people applying now to medical school and nursing school.

[786] After 9 -11, we had more people signing up as firefighters and teachers.

[787] So there's a very deep human instinct to respond to trouble and pain.

[788] by creating meaning.

[789] And that's really what we're talking about.

[790] We happen to be talking about writing because we're like writers.

[791] So that comes up for us.

[792] But that's just one example.

[793] Could be anything.

[794] I love that.

[795] You have this C .S. Lewis quote where he talks about the state of mind as the inconsolable longing for we know not what.

[796] That's a complicated sentence.

[797] I had to really read it like five times, maybe because we know not what is difficult.

[798] But tell me the power of that for you.

[799] When I first started on this whole quest that originated with minor key music, what I'm feeling most acutely is like this extremely sweet sense of longing.

[800] It's not a longing for anything in particular.

[801] It's like a longing for a state that I call for me, I call it the perfect and beautiful world.

[802] It's this feeling that there exists somewhere a more perfect and beautiful world than the one that we currently know.

[803] And there's something about the longing for that state.

[804] that is sweet and that brings you a little bit closer to that which you long for.

[805] And in the book, I give so many examples of this from all over the world, but you can see this in all our religious traditions.

[806] There's the longing for the Garden of Eden and the longing for Mecca and the longing for Zion.

[807] The Sufis, who are the mystical version of Islam, they call it the longing for the beloved of the soul.

[808] And the understanding is that the act of longing for that divine beloved is what brings you to union with the divine.

[809] But you see this in secular versions, there's Dorothy and she's longing for somewhere over the rainbow.

[810] And there's Harry Potter who enters the story at the precise moment that he has been turned into an orphan.

[811] And same thing with Odysseus and Homer's, the Odyssey, which we think of, oh, that's just a story of an adventure.

[812] But Odysseus, the adventurer, he enters the story at the moment that he is weeping on a beach out of homesickness because he hasn't been home in whatever it is, 17 years.

[813] And he needs to get there.

[814] So there's this sense that's deep in humanity of like a longing for home.

[815] You know what I like about it?

[816] I said this to my daughter recently.

[817] It reminds you that you care, which is a great feeling to have.

[818] My daughter had a nightmare that we got divorced.

[819] She was telling me about it.

[820] And I said, well, first, let's just say that what your nightmare showed you is what you cared about, which is lovely.

[821] Like you want us to stay married and that's beautiful.

[822] Oh my gosh.

[823] I love that.

[824] It's like you unwittingly co -invented this whole branch of therapy.

[825] It's called acceptance.

[826] in commitment therapy by this guy named Stephen Hayes.

[827] And he basically says, when you're really upset about something, first to go through the acceptance part of like, okay, I get it, I'm upset.

[828] But then to go through the part of asking yourself, well, if I'm upset that someone just betrayed me, you know, my lover just betrayed me or something, why am I so upset about it?

[829] It's because connections and bonds and trust matter so much to me. So now I just got this incredible life lesson of this is what matters.

[830] How do I lean into that?

[831] So I love that.

[832] I think that was such a great answer to your daughter.

[833] Oh, thank you so much.

[834] That's why I told you that one and not the 10 terrible answers I've given her.

[835] We've all done it.

[836] Your fears, if you work through them, can be kind of signposts to what you care about.

[837] Like a lot of people, I think, struggle with, like, follow your purpose.

[838] What the hell is my purpose?

[839] Well, you can kind of reverse engineer what your purpose is from the things, as you're saying, that you're afraid of losing or you're afraid of not having.

[840] There's a lot of info in there.

[841] Paying attention to what you envy is also an incredible signpost.

[842] like if you envy somebody that's telling you where you want to be totally yeah i'll go further whoever you gossip the most about has something you want and figure out what they have and just go get it and then you can stop gossiping about them this is a quote from you the sadness from which compassion springs is a pro social emotion an agent of connection and love and you kind of walk us through what the physiological mechanism for that is can you tell us how it works in our body this has to do with Darwin.

[843] And if I say to you, Darwin, the first thing you might think is survival of the fittest.

[844] And there's validity to that for sure.

[845] But what Darwin noticed 150 years ago is that humans but also mammals in general react in a visceral kind of way when they see a fellow being in distress.

[846] It's visceral and it's pre -conscious and they react like before they have time to think about it.

[847] And so he concluded from that that there's something in us that is just biologically structured for survival reasons to do this.

[848] And then, like, 150 years later, was amazing psychologist of Berkeley, Dacher Keltner, who you would love, by the way.

[849] He comes along, and he does this whole line of research that he calls survival of the kindest.

[850] He's starting from the premise that because human babies have such big brains, they have to be born before the brains are too big or we wouldn't be able to fit out of the birth canal.

[851] Yeah, we come out premature.

[852] Yeah, so we basically come out premature and, like, intensely vulnerable.

[853] And what this means is that the whole species can't survive unless the rest of us are all like sitting around acutely ready to respond to the slightest cry or hiccup of this vulnerable being.

[854] We actually know, and this is one of the things DACR showed, that we have a vagus nerve, which is the biggest bundle of nerves in our bodies.

[855] It's so fundamental.

[856] It regulates our breathing and our digestion.

[857] But also the vagus nerve, when we see somebody who's in distress, we're primed to react to it.

[858] Our vagus nerve becomes activated.

[859] So the whole human survival mechanism is based on our ability to respond to compassion.

[860] And the whole word compassion means with suffering, like that you're suffering with somebody else.

[861] It's kind of weird that we live in this culture that's telling us not really to do that or that compassion is sort of a Sunday school emotion.

[862] And, you know, we shouldn't really be talking about these things so much.

[863] It's kind of unseemly and a little bit distasteful.

[864] But that actually goes against a lot of the way we are wired.

[865] It's most generally labeled as a weakness.

[866] To your point, Everyone's seen a natural geographic film where a gazelle comes out of its mother and then about 30 seconds later successfully runs away from a predator.

[867] Like that's how most animals are born.

[868] They pop out, they can run, they're on their own, they just need milk.

[869] That ain't happening with little baby humans.

[870] They need so much care and attention to make it to the point where they could even run away from something.

[871] They need so much care.

[872] And we tend to think, oh, well, maybe that just comes from the mother.

[873] and that giving instinct is only directed towards our own particular vulnerable infants.

[874] But there's something about that care impulse that has the ability to radiate outward to other infants, to other beings, to people not related to us.

[875] And we don't get that right a lot of the time, but we have that capacity.

[876] Yeah, it's like a broad spectrum pharmaceutical.

[877] It's not lasered into just your child.

[878] It's pretty rudimentary.

[879] It just makes you feel compassion.

[880] You have a quiz on your website that we're going to take during the fact check.

[881] Oh, cool.

[882] Finding yourself on this bittersweet continuum.

[883] I do.

[884] So I have a quiz.

[885] It's in the book and it's also on my website and it takes like one or two minutes, super quick.

[886] I'll give you a sense of some of the questions that are on there.

[887] And two of you can tell me how you will answer these and then we'll tell you what it all means.

[888] A funny thing that happens in all these quizzes is we end up answering for each other because we think we know each other better.

[889] We're not objective enough.

[890] So quite often we end up answering these questions for each other.

[891] And then how often do you end up bickering about the answer?

[892] We're getting better.

[893] Okay.

[894] Do you draw comfort or inspiration from a rainy day?

[895] No, I hate rain.

[896] Rainy days are my favorite.

[897] I feel romantic.

[898] I feel energized.

[899] I feel creative.

[900] I want to listen to music.

[901] I want to smoke cigarettes, which I haven't done in 17 years.

[902] Yeah, I'm on fire for a rainy day.

[903] But I also have seasonal effective disorder, self -diagnosed, but still.

[904] I see.

[905] Okay.

[906] Well, that probably influences you.

[907] For you, that might be, you know, like a muddy question.

[908] Okay.

[909] Do you experience goosebumps several times a day?

[910] Several times a day?

[911] Several times a day, no, but I do get them a lot.

[912] No, and I want to add, I feel like they've gone down as of age.

[913] I don't know if like part of my body's dying or something.

[914] I feel like I used to get goosebumps a lot more often than I do now.

[915] Oh, that's interesting.

[916] What does that tell us?

[917] Well, I don't know.

[918] I mean, I wonder, do you feel like you've become less reactive to stimulation of all kinds?

[919] Yeah, for sure.

[920] So it probably goes along with that.

[921] How cute.

[922] Do you have a blanket over your legs to keep your lower extremities warm?

[923] Yeah.

[924] Monica and my wife are never more than three feet from a blanket at any time.

[925] I am so cold right now.

[926] But you're dying.

[927] That's not fair.

[928] Well, yeah, that's true.

[929] We've got to throw that data set out.

[930] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[931] Okay, so another one.

[932] Do you react intensely to music, art, or nature?

[933] I think we got to give Monica out a 10 on this one.

[934] Yeah, exactly.

[935] I want to give you a five.

[936] What are you thinking?

[937] I think six.

[938] Six and a half, seven.

[939] And what about you, Dax?

[940] I'm a 10 on that, yeah.

[941] Okay.

[942] So there's more questions like that.

[943] I would have known on your previous book that this would maybe tell you whether you're an introvert or extrovert.

[944] So what is this telling us this quiz?

[945] What kind of does it point to?

[946] Okay.

[947] Yeah, this one's a little more complex.

[948] And I did this quiz with the psychologist David Yaden at Johns Hopkins and Scott Barry Kaufman.

[949] Oh, and I should also say, this is my inner Adam Grant speaking.

[950] This quiz is in very preliminary form.

[951] So we did studies, but preliminary studies.

[952] The quiz is basically measuring how prone you are to these bittersweet states of being, you know, these states where you're like acutely aware of the joy and sorrow of everything and the impermanence and the beauty of everything.

[953] And the implications of it are really interesting.

[954] We found all these fascinating correlations like people who score high on the quiz also score high on Elaine Aaron's measure of high sensitivity.

[955] It's basically like measuring how reactive are you in general to what life presents you.

[956] Do you react really intensely when you see the beauty of the Grand Canyon?

[957] Do you find it like incredibly noxious when there's a construction zone outside your window?

[958] People like that would be more highly sensitive.

[959] But we also found people who score high on bitter sweetness score high on this state called absorption, which predicts creativity.

[960] And they score high -end measures of awe and wonder and spirituality.

[961] So that was really interesting.

[962] And then this won't surprise you now.

[963] There was a mild correlation with anxiety and depression.

[964] I was just going to say, I feel like there has to be some overlap with ACE scores.

[965] Yeah, trauma has to come into this somehow.

[966] I think that's right, because if you are more receptive to the joys but also the sorrows, you're going to be that much more receptive to everything that predisposes you to anxiety or depression.

[967] And the question is, you know, kind of where do you take that and how far does it go?

[968] And do you stay in the zone that's more productive and happier, you could say?

[969] Or are you getting into a dangerous version of it, dangerous for your own well -being?

[970] So this is more subtle, I guess you could say, than straight up.

[971] Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

[972] There's a lot more to it.

[973] Well, you know what's interesting is I'm thinking of my best friend, Aaron Weekly.

[974] He and I are both, like, high achievers on the ACE score, and we're very similar.

[975] And we get like elated's not the word, ecstatic, not the word.

[976] Like, if he and I are in a field of green grass and the wind's blowing just right, he and I'll be like, oh, my gosh!

[977] It's like, we have talked hours of our lives about this one time we woke up in a field in Kansas and the wind was blowing right and this and that.

[978] So he and I were just down to Miami and we're on the water.

[979] And like, he and I are just at a 15 with the sensory of it.

[980] And other people, and it seems to be just lining up really nicely with their trauma scores being lower.

[981] They're enjoying it.

[982] Conversely, he'll cry for three days straight, call me and be like, I wonder if friendships pair up this way.

[983] Monica, do you and Cali have similar appreciations of nature, similar appreciations of music?

[984] That's probably pretty correlated, yeah.

[985] Huh, this is curious.

[986] Maybe there could be a part two to this endeavor.

[987] I wonder if people pair up a little bit on your test.

[988] Yeah, okay, wait, I'm going to answer that question in one sec, but I just want to tell you to what you just said, that one of the questions on the quiz is, do you feel the ecstatic is close at hand?

[989] And you just used that word ecstatic.

[990] So I just wanted to tell you that that really is part of this whole.

[991] profile.

[992] Is there any addiction correlation?

[993] I mean, there's addiction trauma correlation already, if not more than correlation, I guess, because addicts are used to extremes.

[994] So there is ecstasy, literally and figuratively close at hand a lot.

[995] Like they've felt it and want it and seek it out.

[996] I don't know the answer to that question.

[997] And it would be a really interesting next study for us to do.

[998] I will say that, you know how I was telling you about that amazing Keff where I wrote Olive Quiet in Greenwich Village.

[999] And this was this cafe where creative people would come from all over the city and travelers would come there.

[1000] And so it just had this magical energy.

[1001] But I used to notice there would be like two nights a week because I hung out there all the time that this group of people would come in.

[1002] I didn't know who they were, where they were from.

[1003] But I noticed they had this really intense, creative, almost magical energy to them.

[1004] I know where this is going.

[1005] And then somebody told me that they were coming from their Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, which was right down the blog.

[1006] And I was so struck by that.

[1007] You know, that's what I was going to say.

[1008] Yeah, when drunks go out for coffee after a meeting, it's a very particular vibe.

[1009] Yeah.

[1010] It's a very specific vibe.

[1011] I can kind of see it.

[1012] Yeah, the second I walk into a restaurant, I'm like, oh, they just all came from a meeting.

[1013] To go back to your question about the pairing, I think that's a really interesting one.

[1014] I would say that just like with anything, that sometimes people pair assortatively that way, you know, if you're a sort of sensitive bittersweet type, you're going to look for your counterpart.

[1015] This part's just anecdotal, but I feel like more often people pair with someone who's a little bit their opposite, someone who complete something in them.

[1016] That's certainly true with introverts and extroverts.

[1017] You have a lot of those, and I think the same might be true here.

[1018] Well, yes, and then on one hand, you can say I was much more extroverted than Aaron, and I could kind of walk him into not being shy.

[1019] But I think romantically, I agree with that.

[1020] Like, I tend to search out someone who has some opposite virtue.

[1021] But I guess the comfort of being seen by somebody who is seeing the world the same way you do when you're young and a friendship, again, I'm sure it's just anecdotal to me. I don't have any friends whose parents weren't divorced.

[1022] Nearly zero friends growing up that weren't addicts.

[1023] I think I felt great comfort in other people who are embarrassed about their household, other people who are, you know.

[1024] Yeah.

[1025] That's changed, though.

[1026] As I've gotten older and I've worked through a lot of this stuff, now many or most of my friends are I have married parents.

[1027] So it's like it's evolved.

[1028] The ACE score in my friendship circle has dropped as I've worked through stuff.

[1029] It's all curious.

[1030] Do you think that you were seeking out people who had had those experiences because you felt the experiences had marked you?

[1031] Right, with shame.

[1032] And so only someone who had suffered the same shame could actually like you, something like that.

[1033] Yeah.

[1034] I'm very attracted to people who are not judgmental.

[1035] Now I'm less in need of that because I don't have shame.

[1036] So I don't really care of someone around me is judgmental because I don't feel judged anymore.

[1037] more.

[1038] And I also watch too, like Aaron and I have talked about this a lot, the sliding scale of when you're really damaged and wounded, most of your friendships, the number one virtue's loyalty.

[1039] And implicit in that is no matter how shitty I am, you're going to stick with me, because we're still very much in the coping mechanisms that are pretty shitty.

[1040] And so the primary character trait we're looking for is loyalty.

[1041] And then as you are less ashamed of yourself and you're exploring less terrible things, I don't need people to be all that loyal.

[1042] Because guess what?

[1043] I don't need them to stand by me through too much crap anymore.

[1044] So it's funny how the priorities evolve as you evolve.

[1045] Right, because now you can stand by yourself.

[1046] Yeah, like, I'm not going to do anything in front of you that's going to make you want to stop being my friend anymore.

[1047] There was a big chunk of my life where you had to be ride or die if you wanted to be around me because I was going to get us in a fight.

[1048] I was going to crash a car.

[1049] I was going to do all this stuff.

[1050] I'm a little ahead of Aaron in that voyage of sobriety.

[1051] So it's like I get to see it more firsthand of like what friendships are now standing the tested time through sobriety and which ones are more appealing.

[1052] And it's all very fascinating.

[1053] I think we all to some degree go through these evolutions and who we need at what time in our life.

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] I guess I think for people who are in relationships, whether it's a romantic relationship or a close friendship, and if you feel like your person is different from you on these core traits to know that that can really work.

[1056] And it's just a question of honoring each other and showing the other person that you may not fully get them, but you get them enough and you honor who they are.

[1057] One thing I just want to read is a quote from you from this great New York Times interview.

[1058] You said, during the beginning of the pandemic, I fell into this habit of doom -scrolling Twitter.

[1059] It was what I would do the first thing in the morning as I woke up.

[1060] I decided that was really unhealthy.

[1061] I was thinking of the poem by Rumi where he talks about how we wake up every morning empty and frightened.

[1062] Oh, I relate.

[1063] And instead of going straight to our study, we should pull down the musical instrument and let the beauty be what you do.

[1064] This is a banger of a quote.

[1065] Tell me how you change your routine because I think a lot of people relate to waking up and feeling basically just scared.

[1066] Can I get anything done?

[1067] Am I of value?

[1068] How do I do anything?

[1069] Yeah, and also because we've just come from the unconscious realm where we've spent the whole night working through whatever is bothering us and you're still kind of halfway in that realm when you rise.

[1070] So you're dealing with all of that emotionally.

[1071] What I started doing instead, I started following all these different art accounts on Twitter.

[1072] Like I went on Twitter and asked people to tell me their favorite artists and accounts.

[1073] You follow a few of those and then you get more and more and more.

[1074] So now my whole feed is full of art. And then this was all happening while I was really intensely in the writing phase of this book.

[1075] I would take every morning, one of my favorite pieces of art, and then I would pair it with a quote or poetry or an idea or something that I felt went well with the art, and then I would post that on social.

[1076] It just became this incredible morning practice that grounded me personally, but it was also this incredible way of reaching out to kind of kindred spirits in the world who follow me on my socials, who like that way of being.

[1077] You know, they're kind of on that wavelength, and you feel connected with that.

[1078] and all of that's happening, like before I ever start writing a word.

[1079] Yeah, it's capitalizing on that sweet little zone and not looking at it as a hurdle as much as like a cool little period of your day that you're open to different things and you can embrace certain things.

[1080] Yeah, and also, I don't think we spend enough time thinking about beauty.

[1081] We're obsessed with it when it comes to, you know, commercial beauty.

[1082] But like, we don't think enough about the beauty outside your window or like just incorporating more everyday art into your life.

[1083] And there's all kinds of studies that find that when we do engage with beauty, you don't actually have to be the creator of the art. You could just be the consumer of the art and it improves your health and your sense of well -being and your sense of agency, all these amazing things.

[1084] But you don't need the studies to tell you that.

[1085] You know that that's true.

[1086] And yet we like relegate it to Sundays at the art museum instead of making it just an everyday practice and one that we share with other people.

[1087] Yeah, putting it in the food pyramid is something we should have daily.

[1088] Exactly.

[1089] Monica, we should work that into our next year's resolutions.

[1090] Okay, I like that.

[1091] Why next year?

[1092] We like to do things at the beginning of the year.

[1093] We like to eventize things.

[1094] It's the addict in me. Like, you're going to quit on the first or you're going to start this on that.

[1095] Okay, should we try to live forever?

[1096] What an interesting question for you to pose in this book.

[1097] Tell us.

[1098] I was thinking a lot in this book about how we live in such a culture of positivity.

[1099] And I thought, wow, well, the ultimate expression of positive.

[1100] is all these people who are out there, especially in California, but everywhere, who are like engaged in this quest to make humans live forever, or if not forever, you know, to live healthily for hundreds more years.

[1101] And I thought it would just be really interesting to see what was motivating all these people.

[1102] And so I kind of plop down in their world for a little while and went to one of these conventions where the scientists are presenting their latest findings and everything.

[1103] Like a longevity convention?

[1104] A longevity convention.

[1105] Oh, wow.

[1106] Oh, I want to go.

[1107] Oh, my God.

[1108] It's so fascinating.

[1109] I mean, the one of the one of I went to is in San Diego, so not so far from you.

[1110] It was this organization called Radfest.

[1111] And it was this mix of like really serious scientists and a whole new age element thrown in.

[1112] I have to say it like I ended up pretty sympathetic to their goals.

[1113] And it was really interesting how many of these scientists got up to give their presentation about whatever their latest scientific finding was, but they would begin by telling their own stories of some kind of bereavement that had happened.

[1114] in their lives, but their reaction to it had been unlike the way most of us process it.

[1115] Like most of us were like, this happened, and I'm sad, but we don't think to question it.

[1116] I'm thinking of one scientist in particular, and he recalled getting a burger at a Burger King one day, and the Burger King happened to be located across the street from a cemetery, and he said he looked at the cemetery and, like, it suddenly hit him the full force of it, that this was this field of people who would never be alive again.

[1117] And he was like, God damn it, that's not acceptable.

[1118] that can happen.

[1119] If it has anything to do with this, I'm going to make this stop.

[1120] Wow.

[1121] As a scientist, how do they account for the seven billion of us here that are still reproducing?

[1122] Like when we run out of space?

[1123] Yeah.

[1124] Within a few generations, we would run out of space.

[1125] I just wonder, is there any acknowledgement of that, that this Earth would have to expand at the same rate we're reproducing?

[1126] Yeah.

[1127] Okay.

[1128] So on the one hand, I would say I went to this conference, like, really excited to get into all the philosophical questions that it would raise.

[1129] But they're all, like, beyond the philosophy.

[1130] They're like, we're really happy that we're here with all these like -minded people and we don't have to talk about these questions.

[1131] Let's just focus on getting it done.

[1132] So there isn't so much of that.

[1133] But they did talk about what you just said.

[1134] And there's kind of this general feel, I would say, of like, if we could solve mortality, then we could solve anything, you know, including additional planets, including running out of space, including war, including all of it.

[1135] I would be honest.

[1136] I'd get up and go, I want to live forever, but I don't want everyone else to live forever.

[1137] except for the people I know and love.

[1138] Because you wouldn't want it to get too crowded.

[1139] Yeah, exactly.

[1140] Like, I'm not going to look at a cemetery full of people and go, I wish they were all alive.

[1141] That's insane.

[1142] He's just saying that so he can make himself live forever in his loved ones.

[1143] No one wants all seven billion people to live forever.

[1144] Most of the people were telling stories about, like, losing their parents.

[1145] Yeah, they want their parents to stick around, for sure.

[1146] They don't want Chairman Mao to still be alive.

[1147] Not Chairman Mao.

[1148] But I actually think that the quest for immortality, is a little bit of a red herring because even if we could live forever, it's not solving the real problem to me. The real problem, I think, is like this wish for the lions to lay down with the lambs.

[1149] Or like the fundamental equations of life to be different from what they are, like that life shouldn't have to eat life in order to survive.

[1150] And so immortality wouldn't solve any of that.

[1151] I think that their response to that would be this area of research called terror management theory, which has basically found that, that when we are reminded of our mortality or when we have reasoned to fear that death is imminent, that's when we get much more fearful of the outgroup.

[1152] It's where we get more tribal and more hostile.

[1153] So their belief is that if we could cure mortality, we could also cure tribalism.

[1154] I don't buy that.

[1155] Well, no, because even if you could turn off the mechanism for aging, you're still going to have to feed this furnace.

[1156] So food scarcity is still a thing.

[1157] All the other scarcities are still going to be on the table.

[1158] We'll get more.

[1159] Yes.

[1160] In fact, it'll exponentially grow scarcity.

[1161] We're still left with the same source code of human nature.

[1162] So to me, that's like the fundamental whole, the heart of the whole quest.

[1163] But it's all fascinating.

[1164] Yeah.

[1165] As you're saying it, I just made myself think, would I be the same parent I am if I thought my daughters and I were going to live forever?

[1166] It'd be much easier for me to kick downstream.

[1167] Like, let me make a bunch of money right now.

[1168] We're going to have eternity to hang.

[1169] But I know I'm only here for another 30 years, 40, whatever, and that's it.

[1170] So the time is scarce, and I have to give it now because I don't have the illusion that time is infinite.

[1171] So I think it would really dramatically affect how we live.

[1172] Oh, that's interesting.

[1173] So you're saying, like, if you knew you had 300 more years, you might be like, yeah, I won't invest in my family time so much for the next 10.

[1174] and I'll make a lot of money now.

[1175] Yeah, I don't need to, like, go dirt bike riding with my daughter yesterday.

[1176] I've got eternity to go ride dirt bikes.

[1177] So I better just focus on my prime earning years right now to make us all safe for the eternity.

[1178] You know, like, you would just kick downstream, perhaps.

[1179] There is a time clock, and it drives so much of what we do.

[1180] Ambition.

[1181] And I think we have talked about this before because we had someone on who's, like, in this field.

[1182] I actually think it would make everyone way more fearful because if there's the ability, to live forever.

[1183] Things can still kill you.

[1184] You can still get hit by a car.

[1185] You can still.

[1186] So then it's like, oh my God, I really got to be careful because I'm wasting an opportunity to live forever.

[1187] Yeah, I've had that thought too, right?

[1188] Step in front of a truck.

[1189] That would be like an unparalleled tragedy.

[1190] The amount of pain that would cause is way more.

[1191] You can even chart it between George Washington and now.

[1192] He and his wife lost everybody.

[1193] She had like five kids.

[1194] They all died.

[1195] and all of her brothers and sisters and his brother died at 19.

[1196] Like the way they dealt with death, even compared to how we deal with it, now that infant mortality is so low and most kids make it to adulthood, for us it's become more tragic.

[1197] It would be an insurmountable tragedy to know, shit, my daughter could have her live forever.

[1198] I wouldn't even have her on a motorcycle.

[1199] Exactly.

[1200] It's interesting, too, what you say about how things were in George Washington's time because I think there are a lot of people who hear about what the longevity types are up to and they feel like it's, you know, kind of like against nature.

[1201] But if you compare today to the way things were 200 years ago, they would have said what we have is against nature.

[1202] For sure.

[1203] Intervening with antibiotics and respiratory machines.

[1204] Social media and all of that.

[1205] Vaccines.

[1206] Exactly.

[1207] But what you were saying about if you had 300 more years, maybe you would just spend the next 10 years making money.

[1208] That kind of reflects the whole philosophical argument that there's something about death that gives meaning to our lives.

[1209] There is this amazing researcher at Stanford.

[1210] Her name is Laura Carstinson.

[1211] and she has basically looked at older people who only have a few years left to live, and she's found that older people tend to be more focused on meaning, on meaningful relationships, they don't get as angry, they have more gratitude.

[1212] And at first, the thought was this was kind of like some mysterious property of age -conferring wisdom, the way the folk tales tell us.

[1213] But what she found is that it's actually more to do with an awareness of life's fragility.

[1214] Like, the more in tune you are with how fragile everything really is, the more you get into the state that we call wisdom.

[1215] And so she found that even younger people who, because of their life circumstances, were more aware of fragility.

[1216] Maybe they were growing up in difficult political times or something.

[1217] They had that same profile as the older people.

[1218] And it's basically like what I'm talking about with this bittersweet state, that there's something about being in that state of mind that makes us mainline into this attitude of communion.

[1219] My last question for you is, should we try to get over grief and impermanence?

[1220] We're kind of circling that in the current conversation, but that was a question as well, you ask.

[1221] Yeah, and I have one or two chapters about this in the book because it's such a big one.

[1222] I don't think that the answer is to try to get over it.

[1223] One of the best formulations that I've come across comes from the writer Nora McKinnerney, who lost her husband at a very young age.

[1224] And she talks about the difference between moving on and moving.

[1225] forward.

[1226] Because in our culture, we so much get this message of like, get over it, move on.

[1227] You know, a really polite way of saying that is let it go.

[1228] But anyway, she talks about how instead of moving on, there's a way in which you can move forward with your life, but you can still carry the lost person with you.

[1229] So they're always part of you.

[1230] And the grief is always part of you too, maybe.

[1231] But the grief is coexisting with all the other aspects of your life.

[1232] Part of what I'm trying to say with this book, this is how it's always been.

[1233] I mean, this is what humanity is.

[1234] It's always you know, grief and love together.

[1235] It's joy and sorrow.

[1236] It's light and dark.

[1237] So you move forward carrying all those dualities with you as you go.

[1238] Well, in my own experience, I think about my dad very often, and I had a very strained relationship with him.

[1239] I'm more coming to terms with a lot of that was on my end.

[1240] But because I carry it, I have always in my memory an example of how I cared about a lot of stuff I shouldn't have.

[1241] I fought about things with him that I wish I hadn't.

[1242] I had a story about him that was probably incomplete.

[1243] And it helps me challenge my current relationships.

[1244] I don't wish to repeat that.

[1245] And so knowing anyone in my life could die, I try to learn from that lesson.

[1246] And I don't really want to get rid of the grief from that.

[1247] I don't want to be paralyzed by it.

[1248] But I also wanted to feel present in my mind of, shit, I'd probably do a few things differently.

[1249] So I have an opportunity to do those with the people that are still in my life.

[1250] What if you hadn't had a complicated relationship with him?

[1251] And so it was a I don't know if pure grief is the right way of putting it, but a less complicated grief, let's say.

[1252] How would it be then?

[1253] I guess I'd have to imagine what it would be like to lose someone in my life who I don't have a complicated thing with.

[1254] And I guess that would just be like the sorrow of not being able to interact with them.

[1255] But again, I hope that would then motivate me to be grateful for the people I still get to interact with.

[1256] Yeah.

[1257] I think also for the pieces of the person that you will carry with you forever.

[1258] Let me ask you, because I'm imagining you maybe didn't have a complicated relationship with your dad.

[1259] So how is it for you carrying the grief?

[1260] I didn't.

[1261] My complicated relationship was with my mother, which is a whole other story that I wrote about.

[1262] Well, we were talking before about beauty.

[1263] My father was somebody who was like intensely engaged with beauty.

[1264] He was really busy.

[1265] He was a medical school professor and doctor and worked really long hours.

[1266] But he was constantly finding all these things that he found like just ridiculously beautiful and living them.

[1267] So he fell in love with orchids, so he built a greenhouse in the basement and just grew orchids and would come home every night after work late at night and tend to his orchids.

[1268] Or like, he fell in love with the French language, so he decided he had to learn it fluently, even though he never had time to go to France, but he just, like, loved the language.

[1269] He was so happy when a French person on vacation came through his doctor's office.

[1270] Yes, absolutely.

[1271] He was the one who taught me to love music from the time I was really little.

[1272] So I feel like I carry that with me all the time.

[1273] I mean, he's not here, but that legacy is so much part of me. There are thousand times on an explicit level, I'll hear music and I'll be like, oh, I want to tell dad about that.

[1274] But it's not even always explicit.

[1275] It's more like, you know, it's like an orientation towards life that you carry with you.

[1276] That's beautiful.

[1277] Yeah.

[1278] I hate promoting people to have kids, but I will say it helps to have kids when you're wrestling with these.

[1279] For me, because to your point, he's gone, but he's not.

[1280] This chunk of him is literally talking to me right now.

[1281] And it does, for me, help with the notion that, like, oh, I don't die.

[1282] I just transferred to these two little kids and they're going to transfer to somebody, maybe.

[1283] But it's not just kids.

[1284] It's like you leave imprints on people in any relationship you have.

[1285] And it's the same thing.

[1286] You carry pieces whether you know it or not.

[1287] Absolutely.

[1288] Yeah.

[1289] You're infused in everyone you've had a close relationship with.

[1290] Yeah.

[1291] You're part of them forever.

[1292] I guess you just have to have some close relationships with young people to feel like when you're dying because when you die most of these people that you're sharing everything with are also dropping like flies.

[1293] But you have Delta.

[1294] That's true.

[1295] Your soulmate.

[1296] I was also investigating stoicism as part of this book.

[1297] And the stoics have this practice that they do.

[1298] And many wisdom traditions do called memento mori, which is the idea that you should always be bearing in mind that death could be around the corner at any moment as a way of, remembering how precious life is.

[1299] And I started doing this, especially with my kids, I would do it, like when my kids were younger, we had this bedtime ritual that we did every night.

[1300] And I would sometimes find it hard if I was busy at work, not to be looking at the phone.

[1301] We'd be doing the bedtime and they'd look away and I'd steal a look at the phone.

[1302] And I knew that was wrong, but I couldn't really stop it.

[1303] And then I started doing this memento Mori thing.

[1304] And I would just say to myself, you know, you may not be here tomorrow.

[1305] They may not be here tomorrow.

[1306] You have no idea.

[1307] and that completely transformed my attitude to these bedtimes.

[1308] Like it was no big deal to put the phone in the other room.

[1309] I no longer wanted it.

[1310] And it didn't feel negative or wallowing or anything like that.

[1311] It just felt like, oh, my perspective just got right.

[1312] Yeah.

[1313] Oh, I love that.

[1314] Sorry to bring Aaron back into it.

[1315] But 2022 for us is the terminal year we've called it.

[1316] So we're living like we have a terminal illness this year.

[1317] So we were just in Florida together for eight days.

[1318] And I said to him, you know, it's really good that we're doing our terminal year now while we're not terminal because I'm exhausted living out these fantasies.

[1319] And if we actually were wrestling with a medical condition, like it wouldn't be fun.

[1320] I'm glad we're having our terminal year before we're terminal.

[1321] I feel like it's kind of similar.

[1322] I tried to do that for a few days.

[1323] And when I was doing it, I was thinking, oh, you know what?

[1324] I'm really not afraid of death at all.

[1325] I just don't feel like I am.

[1326] I'm afraid of being bereaved, but I'm not afraid of death.

[1327] And then right in the middle of that, I went to get my mammogram and had a scare, which turned out to be absolutely nothing.

[1328] But I had a day or two of waiting for the results, and it was kind of scary.

[1329] And I was like, oh, that was not true at all.

[1330] You're totally afraid of this.

[1331] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1332] Which just made me realize, like, it's really hard to put yourself in the exact state until you face it.

[1333] That's what I say.

[1334] I'm against turning off aging, but asks me when I'm 80.

[1335] Yeah.

[1336] I'm also humble enough to go, like, I guarantee my opinion's going to change.

[1337] Well, that's what these longevity people do.

[1338] There's a thought experiment that one of them gave me. His name is Keith Camito.

[1339] And he said to me, you know, if I said to you, would you want to die?

[1340] tomorrow, would you say yes or no?

[1341] And of course the answer's no. And he's like, okay, well, what about the day after that?

[1342] No. What about the day after that?

[1343] Well, no. And like, it turns out to be impossible to imagine the day you would actually say yes if you were given the choice.

[1344] It's true.

[1345] You'd have to be experiencing quite a bit of suffering, I'd imagine, where you're like, okay, great.

[1346] Oh, yeah.

[1347] Once you're talking about hyper -suffering, that's a completely different scenario.

[1348] But they're talking about living healthily without suffering.

[1349] Yeah.

[1350] And you've got to imagine what day you'd go, no, yeah, kill me tomorrow.

[1351] I doubt the day comes.

[1352] So he got us.

[1353] We're into it now.

[1354] Yeah.

[1355] Good job, Ken. What was his name?

[1356] Keith, Keith, Keith.

[1357] He's great.

[1358] He's awesome.

[1359] Well, Susan, this has been wonderful.

[1360] I hope everyone checks out Susan Cain's Bittersweet, how sorrow and longing make us whole.

[1361] I think you're giving permission to people to be who they are one book at a time.

[1362] I dig it.

[1363] Well, thank you so, so much.

[1364] And it's funny you use that word permission because I would say that's the word that pops out most often in my reader mail.

[1365] I see that word all the time.

[1366] Oh, wow.

[1367] That's great.

[1368] Yeah, so that was very intuitive of you.

[1369] Thank you.

[1370] And Monica, thank you for Delane your death for us.

[1371] Oh, you're welcome.

[1372] A couple more hours.

[1373] I know it was a struggle.

[1374] We enjoyed your voice.

[1375] Well, when I picked, I said tomorrow, but not today for dying.

[1376] Okay, great.

[1377] Because I wanted to do this, you know.

[1378] Great, great, great.

[1379] I hope you feel like it was time well spent.

[1380] It was.

[1381] It's all very fascinating.

[1382] I hope so.

[1383] And I also really hope you rest.

[1384] You know, you're supposed to rest with COVID.

[1385] I know.

[1386] So, like, when you're done with this, like, you should be more horizontal.

[1387] Okay.

[1388] Bullshit.

[1389] You need to get in Black Mold Paradise.

[1390] We got to sweat it out of you.

[1391] We got to max out and we got to break it.

[1392] I'm doing my fair share of sweating, just lying down.

[1393] Don't you worry.

[1394] Congratulations.

[1395] Well, thanks so much, Susan.

[1396] And good luck with everything with the book.

[1397] Monica, good luck with your health.

[1398] We love you.

[1399] And we'll talk again soon.

[1400] It was such a joy to connect with you both.

[1401] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1402] Hello!

[1403] Happy Memorial Day.

[1404] Well, can we say that?

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] Oh, okay.

[1407] How's your day going?

[1408] Great.

[1409] Lots of walks.

[1410] Three miles in already, probably.

[1411] Oh, yeah.

[1412] Right?

[1413] Well, no. I don't think.

[1414] Isn't Callie's up the hill?

[1415] Yeah, a little bit.

[1416] Oh, my gosh.

[1417] Well, let's double those miles, incline.

[1418] In Brentwood, right?

[1419] Yeah.

[1420] I walked to Bradlock.

[1421] Oh, my gosh.

[1422] It was more like 13.

[1423] Yeah, I did some walking.

[1424] My energy's back up, finally.

[1425] Oh, I bet.

[1426] And when it just returns to normal, doesn't it feel almost euphoric?

[1427] Yeah, it's great.

[1428] Yeah.

[1429] The listener must know.

[1430] You have quite an outfit on today.

[1431] Do you like it or no?

[1432] Seven.

[1433] Yes, I love it.

[1434] You look seven because you.

[1435] you have bright white tennies on.

[1436] Like, those are tenies.

[1437] Air maxes.

[1438] White air maxes.

[1439] They're very fashion.

[1440] Oh, they are.

[1441] They're only $90, but they're very fashion.

[1442] That's wonderful.

[1443] And your Atlanta 96 Olympic sweatshirt.

[1444] Yep.

[1445] By the way, not too hot in that sweatshirt?

[1446] God, you run cool.

[1447] I'm always so cold, you know.

[1448] Wow.

[1449] It's incredible.

[1450] How about that guests we had on that explained that cold was just a, it's not a real thing?

[1451] Oh, that's an Easter egg.

[1452] Yeah, like many animals and organisms don't have a pain response to cold.

[1453] Yeah.

[1454] We do to warn us we were not meant to be there.

[1455] Well, the big, should we get into it or is it too fun for later?

[1456] But it's great.

[1457] It's a good Easter egg.

[1458] Easter egg is, is ice cold?

[1459] That was the question put forth.

[1460] And it's tricky because to some animals, ice is not cold.

[1461] That's right.

[1462] We can't.

[1463] We can't say it's frozen.

[1464] We can't.

[1465] But we can say it's cold.

[1466] We can say the water's in a solid state.

[1467] Yeah.

[1468] But it's cold to me. Yes, of course.

[1469] Of course.

[1470] But anyways, you're somewhere on that spectrum.

[1471] Yeah.

[1472] Where hot maybe is not for you.

[1473] That episode really messed with me. Me too.

[1474] I've been thinking about it ever since.

[1475] It was really good.

[1476] It's coming up Easter.

[1477] Oh, Easterer.

[1478] It's coming up next Easter.

[1479] Actually, it's coming up next week.

[1480] Next Thursday.

[1481] Orthodox Easter.

[1482] On Mouse Easter.

[1483] I meant Greek Easter.

[1484] The Greeks have a different Easter.

[1485] you know.

[1486] Oh, really?

[1487] Yeah, Greek Orthodox are doing Easter.

[1488] I don't know whether it's one or two weeks past the other Easter.

[1489] Everyone else is doing.

[1490] I know because I like to text Yorgo happy Easter.

[1491] Oh, I see.

[1492] Peggy, happy Easter.

[1493] All the Greeks, I know.

[1494] Oh, that's nice.

[1495] Yeah, because it's a separate holiday.

[1496] Well, the Romanians, um, they do Mother's Day on International Women's Day.

[1497] Oh, that's a cheat.

[1498] Well, that's a big time cheat.

[1499] Although what's weird is, Because International Women's Day must have fallen on Romanian Mother's Day.

[1500] Because certainly Mother's Day predates International Women's Day.

[1501] Yeah, because International Women's Day, I feel like just popped up like two years ago.

[1502] Yeah, yeah.

[1503] Maybe it's not International Women's Day, but there's a women's day they have and they also make that Mother's Day.

[1504] Yes, which is, that's a bummer because moms should get, you know, two things.

[1505] Well, moms can also just get love any time.

[1506] Well, that's true.

[1507] I guess we don't need a holiday for everything.

[1508] Could do regular Sunday.

[1509] Mother's love.

[1510] Listen, have I talked about George Washington's teeth at all on here?

[1511] We talked about George Washington, but not his teeth.

[1512] Okay.

[1513] His teeth were a very big issue in his life.

[1514] Maybe the biggest issue in his life.

[1515] He was just riddled with decay and rottenness.

[1516] Disgusting.

[1517] Yes.

[1518] He showed me pictures now.

[1519] And this great book I'm reading, I can't speak highly enough about it.

[1520] The Chernow book, there's a whole chapter about his teeth.

[1521] You get sprinkled throughout, and then they hit you.

[1522] The other night, we were laying in bed listening, and they hit us with a chapter, and it was all about his teeth.

[1523] This poor man, you know, think about what getting dentures made was like in 1780.

[1524] There's no fix -a -dent, right?

[1525] So it's not like you can get two different pieces and have it suction to the roof of your mouth.

[1526] So you're talking about either a lead base with huge springs in back to add pressure so they don't pop out.

[1527] These are all the ingredients that were involved in his many different dentures.

[1528] He had hippopotamus tusk.

[1529] He had elephant ivory.

[1530] He had a mix of bovine, equine, whatever hog teeth are.

[1531] A really bad source of teeth.

[1532] I don't even want to say.

[1533] Yeah.

[1534] Oh, so bad.

[1535] Okay.

[1536] In those 1780s, they would, what's the right?

[1537] It's so bad.

[1538] Black people would sell their live teeth.

[1539] Well, sell.

[1540] I'm sure they just pulled them.

[1541] Well, slaves, they probably just pulled them.

[1542] And then also they sold.

[1543] them live and they would implant them in another person.

[1544] They'd pull the root up.

[1545] I mean, geez, Louise.

[1546] Anyways.

[1547] God, the things we've done.

[1548] Oh, God.

[1549] I know, but this is about his teeth.

[1550] I know, but I'm sorry, but that's a part of it.

[1551] Yeah, I should have just left out what kind of teeth.

[1552] Anywho.

[1553] Why?

[1554] Well, because it was a fun thing about teeth and now I feel bad, as I should, as I should.

[1555] It can be both things.

[1556] It can be fun about teeth and also really a horrible history lesson yeah horrific anyways basically he had a single tooth left to hold in this huge apparatus so there would be a hole in it mind you can look at these pictures on the internet type in george washington's teeth and hughy has been to mount vernon and seeing the teeth on display they're on display so anywho's all this culminates in the kids they pick up they just pick up what you're talking about even if it's in another room or whatever i wouldn't have thought link and was even aware of this George Washington's teeth obsession I have.

[1557] She came into the room yesterday morning.

[1558] I said, how did you sleep?

[1559] And she said, well, I had a hard night's sleep.

[1560] Just thinking about George Washington and those donkey teeth and alligator teeth they put in there.

[1561] And I thought donkey teeth was so funny.

[1562] To my knowledge, he never had donkey teeth.

[1563] Donkey teeth.

[1564] I'm drinking liquid death, and it reminded me of a story.

[1565] Oh, great.

[1566] Tell it.

[1567] Last time we were recording a fact check, I was drinking some.

[1568] I'm trying to drink more water.

[1569] Mm -hmm.

[1570] So I only drank, like, you know, three sips of it during the fact check.

[1571] So I thought, oh, and when I walked, so I was like, I should finish it.

[1572] I should walk with it back.

[1573] Now, liquid death, as people know, looks like beer.

[1574] Yeah, like a tall boy.

[1575] Purposefully, it's supposed to.

[1576] Yeah.

[1577] So it was like 11 .30 in the morning, and I'm walking home with this beer can.

[1578] Mm -hmm.

[1579] And it was a ride.

[1580] At first I was like, oh, this is fun.

[1581] Like, people think I have beer, but it's water.

[1582] Like, what a trick.

[1583] Yeah.

[1584] Also, what a badass.

[1585] Stalling down the street drinking a talsy.

[1586] Not even a bag around it, saying, cops come get some.

[1587] Yeah.

[1588] Come over, cops, it's just water.

[1589] Yeah.

[1590] But then it turned.

[1591] Then I started to feel self -conscious, and I was like, I need to be done with this.

[1592] You felt like it might invite bad people?

[1593] Mm -hmm.

[1594] And guess what?

[1595] Uh -oh.

[1596] What happened?

[1597] A creepy guy.

[1598] Oh, okay.

[1599] feel is Boulevard and I was walking on the sidewalk and I saw him look and he was like staring and I was like rubber neck oh he's staring at the beer he thinks I'm drinking beer whatever then I just you know I keep walking and then like three minutes later he pulls in front of me that's too long like on a cross street he intersected you exactly he had turned around yeah and he said where's the party at oh geez and I was like oh it's just water and He was like, where are you going?

[1600] And I was like, home.

[1601] And he was like, home, do you live around here?

[1602] And I was like, oh, I live down there.

[1603] And then I like just started walking.

[1604] And then he was like, nice to meet you.

[1605] And then he left.

[1606] Okay.

[1607] Do you know what where's the party at means?

[1608] I'm a prostitute.

[1609] Yeah.

[1610] Yeah.

[1611] Yeah.

[1612] When John's approach women they think are call girls, prostitute sex workers.

[1613] They say, where's the party at?

[1614] And also the sex workers say to the.

[1615] guys when they stop where it's the party yet it kind of says like both folks are into this transaction right right but it was 1130 in the morning and I was wearing big pants and like a long oh wait what was I'm wearing oh it was a bathing suit top and a some fish nets and my six inch heels this guy was a fucking per I probably thought you were leaving like a long night of work yeah that's yeah with my ear work in sex work quotes yeah yeah wow I'm like that's kind of like that's kind of Flattering, isn't it?

[1616] He said flattering a little bit.

[1617] Yeah.

[1618] He was creepy, though.

[1619] Yeah, we don't like him.

[1620] I know, but like it wasn't flattering because if he was hot, then maybe, but he wasn't.

[1621] Maybe you'd say the party's at my apartment.

[1622] Maybe at this address.

[1623] No. No, never.

[1624] Can't trust.

[1625] I feel like someone else stopped and talked to you, or is that the same story?

[1626] Probably same story.

[1627] Oh, okay, different day.

[1628] Same day, same story.

[1629] Same old story.

[1630] Different day.

[1631] Anyway.

[1632] That's that.

[1633] Man, I saw people enjoying imbibing yesterday.

[1634] Oh, yeah.

[1635] I got like a crazy, you were over.

[1636] I got a crazy hankering.

[1637] What I really got a hankron for was to be on Belle Isle in Detroit.

[1638] That was the vibe I was in search of.

[1639] And if anyone's from Detroit, they'll know what the weekend holiday, Belle Isle vibe is.

[1640] You said you wanted to cruise.

[1641] I wanted to cruise, yeah.

[1642] And I wanted to see lowriders.

[1643] And I wanted to smell barbecue.

[1644] I just wanted to feel, you know, I wanted that summer vibe, the holiday vibe.

[1645] Yeah.

[1646] So, oh, I struck gold.

[1647] On Crenshaw, Crenshaw Square, a bunch of low riders, tons of dudes on Harleys.

[1648] Pulled up, I rode the Dakotty.

[1649] I got some love because it's a twin, but it's Italian.

[1650] So it's like, well, that sounds like a Harley.

[1651] Ooh, that's not.

[1652] Okay.

[1653] Everyone was just, I'm going to say moderating beautifully.

[1654] People were just smoking a little bit of pot.

[1655] A lot of guys had little flas, and there's taking a nip now and then, casually drinking some beers, It was just that summertime buzz.

[1656] I was witnessing it, and people were really guiding it beautifully.

[1657] Did you get any barbecue out of it?

[1658] No, but today I'm going downtown again to a barbecue restaurant.

[1659] Oh, nice.

[1660] That apparently has some cars.

[1661] Fun.

[1662] 4 p .m. Eastern standard time.

[1663] No, that's 7.

[1664] If you're on the East Coast, you have three hours.

[1665] Shoot here.

[1666] I'm glad you found what you were looking for.

[1667] Thank you.

[1668] It's rare to find what you're looking for in life.

[1669] I still haven't found.

[1670] What I'm looking for That's why you two wrote a whole song about it That's right That's exactly right Okay so Susan Great episode What's really fun is she has a quiz It's the bittersweet quiz Okay So let's begin Oh this is a bracelet I want Oh I'll buy it for you send it No you can't It's...

[1671] Send it over It's way too much Send it it's on my life list Oh I made a life list What's a life list Lifeless?

[1672] Oh, no. No, no. Okay.

[1673] James Purs?

[1674] I made a wish list.

[1675] Okay.

[1676] Of things I want over the course of my life.

[1677] Oh, okay, great.

[1678] Material.

[1679] Not like things I'm looking for.

[1680] Right.

[1681] Not, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1682] But one of them is this Tiffany's bracelet.

[1683] It's actually called a bone cuff.

[1684] Oh, fuck.

[1685] Fuck me. Why is it called a bone?

[1686] It's gold.

[1687] Bone cuff.

[1688] That also sounds perverted, like a reverse back.

[1689] Oh, my bone cuff.

[1690] It's grotesque, because it looks like your wrist bone is protruding violently.

[1691] That's what it does.

[1692] So it, like, it cuffs around your wrist and it accentuates, yeah, and envelopes the bone.

[1693] Is that considered, like, an elegant part of a lady?

[1694] Don't you?

[1695] Aren't you attracted?

[1696] No, it looks like a protrusion.

[1697] Like, there's a tumor in there.

[1698] I love it.

[1699] Now, you can get it in left or right.

[1700] Right, only.

[1701] Of course.

[1702] Of course.

[1703] But it's on my wish list and it just popped up.

[1704] I just, it's awesome.

[1705] To me, it really, I don't want to use the word reeks because that's pejorative, but it reeks of fad.

[1706] I just, I'm imagining in eight years, people are like, can you believe people are wearing fucking bone jewelry?

[1707] No, no, no. So this is a very old, this is an old classic Tiffany's.

[1708] Oh, that's a standard.

[1709] But it's not standard.

[1710] It's not like the bean necklace.

[1711] which like cute, it's cool, but it's old.

[1712] Okay.

[1713] It's an Elsa Peretti, which she was like an old designer for Tiffany's.

[1714] She has since passed.

[1715] Oh, I'm sorry.

[1716] Thank you.

[1717] But anyway, so it's not a fad.

[1718] It's old, it's classic, but it's rare.

[1719] Like, you see other people have Tiffany's stuff that's, like, more common, but this one's not as common.

[1720] Speaking of Rich, Monaco Grand Prix was last weekend.

[1721] Yeah.

[1722] No, what a raucous start.

[1723] Really bad rain.

[1724] A whole track was flooded out.

[1725] They had to delay the race 45 minutes.

[1726] And then they did a rolling start.

[1727] What's that mean?

[1728] They don't start from still.

[1729] Oh, my God.

[1730] They're following the pace car.

[1731] The pace car drops off.

[1732] Boom.

[1733] Oh, weird.

[1734] Yeah.

[1735] You know, I root for Max.

[1736] He's my dude.

[1737] Yeah.

[1738] And so it was kind of a good day for him because he didn't qualify good.

[1739] He didn't practice good, whatever.

[1740] But I also love Leclerc.

[1741] Yeah.

[1742] He's so.

[1743] cute.

[1744] It's very handsome.

[1745] He's very handsome and he drives like a striped -assed ape.

[1746] He really was moving.

[1747] Every practice he was fastest.

[1748] I have a feeling he doesn't smell good.

[1749] I'm just saying it.

[1750] Oh weird.

[1751] I know.

[1752] It's just a feeling I have.

[1753] Yeah, he looks like he doesn't smell good.

[1754] Oh my God, no. I think you guys are way out to lunch.

[1755] I think he's perfect.

[1756] He eats carrots and stuff.

[1757] No, no. Yes.

[1758] Also, let me tell you about him.

[1759] He's so good looking.

[1760] It's impossible.

[1761] I think people get cocky when they have when they're that good looking if they don't brush your teeth.

[1762] That's what Matt and I were talking about.

[1763] Do you want to hear what we were really talking about, like locker room talk.

[1764] Oh, yeah.

[1765] We were looking at him, and he takes his helmet off, and he's just so fucking gorgeous.

[1766] He starts doing his hair, but we're both like, get real.

[1767] You don't even have to touch it.

[1768] You always look great.

[1769] And I said, I wonder, though, I wonder if you look that good, if dating's even interesting.

[1770] Because it's almost a foregone conclusion that every girl around likes you, or at least thinks you're gorgeous.

[1771] Thinks your gorgeous is different from like you.

[1772] He might have a bad personality.

[1773] I don't think so.

[1774] I think he's got a pretty great personality.

[1775] Anyways, there's no challenge.

[1776] In general, we can just say on a continuum of people who have a challenge, he's a super rich Formula One driver who's just gorgeous.

[1777] That's right.

[1778] So I'm imagining, yes, I'm imagining the thrill of, like the status approval thing probably doesn't exist for him.

[1779] I hope not that maybe he can find someone he really likes.

[1780] Yes.

[1781] Matt and I were like, we're really working through this whole thing.

[1782] Like he doesn't even desire the approval.

[1783] So we were like, he probably comes as fast as he can.

[1784] Like when he has sex, he probably Because he's not He's not trying to please her He's got no reason to impress her But don't you still enjoy sex?

[1785] Let's just say as a standard Rob will back me up on this Especially in your youth He's 24 years old You're trying to hang in there as long as you can And you're fighting it, Rob?

[1786] Yeah, that's true A guy naturally, especially a young guy He could spray in three pumps If he let himself.

[1787] Is that fun?

[1788] Like don't they enjoy?

[1789] Don't you enjoy like the pumping?

[1790] Absolutely.

[1791] Absolutely.

[1792] Doesn't it feel good?

[1793] Absolutely.

[1794] It's too good, though.

[1795] It's the problem.

[1796] More pump.

[1797] That's fun.

[1798] Absolutely.

[1799] It's all everything.

[1800] Listen, you kind of ruin the thing now.

[1801] I'm so sorry.

[1802] The thought experiment is that maybe he just tries to come as fast as he can, which no guy in the history of the world's ever tried to do.

[1803] That's kind of the fun of it.

[1804] Because he doesn't care.

[1805] He doesn't care at all.

[1806] And then he rolls over and he doesn't, and this would be impossible for any guy.

[1807] Doesn't even offer an excuse.

[1808] Like any guy that shoots real fast, he's embarrassed.

[1809] We're all embarrassed.

[1810] So then we're like, oh, shit, I think it's because I took, you know, whatever you say, Sudafed today.

[1811] You make something off.

[1812] You're really embarrassed.

[1813] I ate a hot dog.

[1814] Yes, I ain't too many hot dogs.

[1815] All right.

[1816] It's been a year since I'm masturbated.

[1817] Whatever you do, you try to.

[1818] Of course.

[1819] And you apologize many times.

[1820] I'm so sorry.

[1821] I'm so sorry.

[1822] We'll be able to do it again here in a minute.

[1823] That's the normal protocol.

[1824] Okay.

[1825] So just the notion that he's like, I'm going to try to come as fast as I can, then he rolls over and he's just...

[1826] And he's a speed freak, so...

[1827] Yes!

[1828] He wants that record.

[1829] I hate him.

[1830] Hold on.

[1831] This is not him.

[1832] This is Matt and I just chit -chatting during the race.

[1833] Well, it was a funny experiment for us to think someone could be that liberated from all sense of caring if someone thought it was a good job.

[1834] Yeah.

[1835] You're upset by this.

[1836] Yeah, because men suck sometimes.

[1837] What do you mean we suck?

[1838] We're fighting so.

[1839] hard to please the lady.

[1840] Well, you're not.

[1841] We're wired to come immediately so we're not vulnerable to attack while we're having sex.

[1842] Honestly, every male animal.

[1843] Monica, that's an evolutionary fact.

[1844] It used to be, you're a human.

[1845] I know, but genetically we haven't changed since that period that much.

[1846] Okay, that's fine.

[1847] I believe you about that.

[1848] But I'm just saying it's nice to want both people to be enjoying.

[1849] Of course I'm just saying That's funny for guys But like for me When I hear that I'm like Yeah, ew Of course, ew That's the whole point It's so ew Every woman would hate it Yeah That's the point Okay, I'm just Yeah, I agree with you A female perspective No but listen Monica We have the same perspective That would be miserable It'd be terrible It would be selfish of him It'd be a bad experience Yeah Agreed.

[1850] That's the point.

[1851] Can you imagine someone that doesn't care so much because he is so beautiful?

[1852] He has no concern about anybody.

[1853] That's the funny element of this setup.

[1854] Yeah.

[1855] It's because it's a given that would be terrible.

[1856] Yeah.

[1857] Google says he's a very generous lover.

[1858] Oh my God.

[1859] That's great news.

[1860] I'm just kidding.

[1861] I'm just kidding.

[1862] I'm sorry.

[1863] He's probably as good in the rack as he is on the track.

[1864] Good in the rack like I am on the track.

[1865] That's probably what he says to Gales.

[1866] Yeah, probably.

[1867] Okay, the quiz.

[1868] Please indicate how much you agree with the following statements from zero, not at all, to ten completely.

[1869] Do you tear up easily at touching TV commercials?

[1870] Two.

[1871] Are you especially moved by old photographs?

[1872] Four.

[1873] Do you react intensely to music, art, or nature?

[1874] Ten.

[1875] Have others described you as an old soul?

[1876] Eight.

[1877] Okay.

[1878] Do you find...

[1879] Hold on.

[1880] I just got to preface that.

[1881] I'm really basing that on my youth.

[1882] Yeah, of course.

[1883] I think that's fine.

[1884] Yes, adults used to say that to me a lot.

[1885] Yeah.

[1886] Do you find comfort or inspiration on a rainy day?

[1887] 10, 10, my favorite days of the year.

[1888] Do you know what the author C .S. Lewis meant when he described Joy as a, quote, sharp, wonderful stab of longing?

[1889] No, I don't understand that.

[1890] Okay, so zero?

[1891] Yeah.

[1892] Do you prefer poetry to sports, or maybe you find the poetry in sports?

[1893] No, I don't.

[1894] I have very few poems I liked.

[1895] Do you find poetry in sports?

[1896] Is that a separate question?

[1897] No, it's all in here.

[1898] I think it's saying, like, if you find sports poetic, that would also be...

[1899] Oh, then let's go five.

[1900] You do find sports poetic?

[1901] Yeah.

[1902] You do.

[1903] Oh, good idea.

[1904] The last dance.

[1905] Right.

[1906] Tiger's story.

[1907] When I watch MotoGP, it's a ballet to me. Okay, yeah, five is good then.

[1908] Okay.

[1909] Are you moved to goosebumps several times a day?

[1910] I wish.

[1911] Four.

[1912] I get them.

[1913] We call them goose pimples in my family.

[1914] Do you see, quote, the tears in things?

[1915] this phrase comes from Virgil's Aniad Three You gotta be pretty learned To take this test See us Lewis Do you feel elevated by sad music?

[1916] Nine Do you tend to see The happiness and sadness And things all at once?

[1917] I like that What do we think?

[1918] Great Do you seek out beauty In your everyday life?

[1919] Eight If you're a clerk I guess you don't You don't need to.

[1920] You just look at the mirror.

[1921] Well, he might search on a mirror a few times a day.

[1922] Yeah.

[1923] Does the word poignant especially resonate with you?

[1924] I got to back up for one second.

[1925] Okay.

[1926] I want you to know that LeClerc is maybe the nicest guy on the radio communications.

[1927] Yeah.

[1928] I'm sure he's very...

[1929] And he's a sweetheart.

[1930] Like when he and Max will have a fight, you know, they'll have like a real duel on the track.

[1931] If Max Wings he'll go, he was great today.

[1932] He did a little better.

[1933] Like, he's a fight.

[1934] fucking really humble, nice guy.

[1935] I just want to add that.

[1936] Okay, sorry.

[1937] Does the word poignant especially resonate with you?

[1938] Seven.

[1939] When you have conversations with close friends, are you drawn to talking about their past or current troubles?

[1940] Yeah.

[1941] That's all I'm interested in talking about.

[1942] Yeah, nine, ten.

[1943] Do you feel the ecstatic is close at hand?

[1944] Oh, yeah, seven.

[1945] Okay, your score is 6 .3.

[1946] If you score between zero and 3 .8, you tend toward the sanguine.

[1947] If you score between 3 .9 and 5 .7, you tend to move easily between sanguine and bittersweet states or to experience both states to moderate degrees.

[1948] If you score between 5 .8 and 10, ding, ding, that's you.

[1949] You're a true connoisseur of bittersweetness, the place where light and dark meat.

[1950] Oh.

[1951] We'll be interested in note that exploratory studies show a high correlation between high scores on the bittersweet quiz and the trait identified by psychologists and author Dr. Elaine Aaron as high sensitivity, highly sensitive people might be described to those who respond intensely to all that life offers, whether a screeching car alarm or a gorgeous sunset.

[1952] A high correlation with a tendency to absorption, which predicts creativity and a moderate correlation with awe, self -transcendence, and spirituality.

[1953] Finally, they found a small association with anxiety and depression.

[1954] cool well you're bittersweet yeah i try not to spray in three pumps that's kind of dude i am that's bittersweet yeah okay i thought that quiet was one of bill's books you know he does like it is it's on the her wikipedia page i mean no he recommends it oh he does recommend it but then i thought it was on like he sends books out oh i don't think it was part of that the Christmas.

[1955] I thought it was.

[1956] Or the New Year's book club thing.

[1957] Yeah, I thought it was, but it's not.

[1958] But I do have a full list of Bill Gates' book recommendations from 2012 to 2020.

[1959] Oh, great.

[1960] Let's hear them.

[1961] Do you want to pick a year?

[1962] I want to hear 18.

[1963] Okay.

[1964] Because that's in the year of the movie you watched.

[1965] Your scary movie, you guys.

[1966] Hereditary.

[1967] We watched Hereditary this weekend.

[1968] Me, Kristen, friends Laura and Matt and Eric and you, but you bailed out.

[1969] Well, I'll never say anything negative.

[1970] No, that's okay.

[1971] But I'll just say I did go for a bike ride in the middle of it.

[1972] Yeah, yeah.

[1973] You just decided it wasn't for you.

[1974] That's okay.

[1975] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1976] I'm not a huge horror movie person.

[1977] It's very rare that I love a horror movie because I'm not scared.

[1978] So then that's really the whole point of those things.

[1979] For sure.

[1980] Then I did have a dream that night that I got possessed.

[1981] Oh, you did.

[1982] Yeah, I did have a nightmare.

[1983] And then this more.

[1984] morning I woke up.

[1985] So Molly, Eric's wife, is out of town.

[1986] Yeah.

[1987] So I woke up this morning to a text from Eric at 1230 in the morning.

[1988] He sent it to me. Chris, he left you off of it.

[1989] Okay.

[1990] And it was a picture that he took in the dark in the middle of the night of his room.

[1991] And he was like, I think there's a monster in here.

[1992] And he like circled this area.

[1993] He thought there was a monster.

[1994] This is in the middle of the night.

[1995] He's sending us this text.

[1996] Yeah, probably just ate like some birthday cake he said Molly's not home and I'm scared of monsters in my room I took a picture I think this might be a monster what do you think and he sends us this this picture come on it was just all I see is a circle I drew a circle around it I went and slept with Lily though his 11 year old yeah and she protected me scary here without Molly oh my god anyway that was hilarious.

[1997] Oh my god, ding, ding, ding.

[1998] Next fact is percentage of people who are night owls.

[1999] Oh, great.

[2000] Oh, shoot, I got to go back to Bill's books, but this was just too good of a ding ding.

[2001] Oh, okay, okay.

[2002] Night owls survive after dark and may struggle to wake at sunrise, occurring multiple alarms.

[2003] This chronotype is typically more creative in the afternoon and evening.

[2004] According to researchers, while a third of the population doesn't have a strongly defined chronotype, 30 % are ascribed night owls.

[2005] Oh, but our whole society's designed for early birds yeah that's true the fact that you go to fuck i used to go to high school like this i think it started at 7 oh 5 in the morning yeah that's fucking bonkers i'd be out my house at 6 a m driving there from milford and the snowstorm and a mustang gt slipping and sliding smoking dope behind the wheel oh i didn't need to put that in you were off by like 230 though right uh 215 i think yeah yeah ours too we were 720 and 245 oh man And I had early dismiss, of course, so I could go work.

[2006] Oh.

[2007] Because all I wanted to do was make them greenbacks.

[2008] You know me. I've been chasing that way first.

[2009] But what does that mean you, like, asked if you could get early dismissal?

[2010] No, it was something seniors could do.

[2011] And then you got a grade from your employer.

[2012] Complicated that I worked for my mom.

[2013] It was fine.

[2014] I didn't care.

[2015] They allowed it.

[2016] And every day, I would get off my school.

[2017] I'd drive out to errands.

[2018] I don't know if we can call it a school, but his school with the 28 -year -old guys working there.

[2019] I'm matriculating there, the tradesmen.

[2020] I'd pick him up, and then we would go out to Troy.

[2021] We'd start working, and we'd go deliver cars all around Detroit.

[2022] And we'd get off at six.

[2023] We'd eat some cony dogs, and we did that every day, five days a week.

[2024] What time did you get off school for early dismiss?

[2025] Oh, it was, I want to say, when they broke for lunch, so maybe noon.

[2026] Wow, you were barely there.

[2027] Well, and listen to this.

[2028] This is bad.

[2029] I don't recommend this to anyone.

[2030] Okay.

[2031] I also had, as you may recall, an AP history class taught over a television set at the other high school in our area.

[2032] Okay.

[2033] No teacher in the room.

[2034] Yeah, I'd open a window and I'd sit and back and I'd just fucking blow camel lights the whole class.

[2035] Oh, wow.

[2036] Menthos?

[2037] No, no, no, no, no, standard, standard.

[2038] And then I just stopped going.

[2039] So I really, I gave myself late arrival.

[2040] There was a certain point where I knew I was going to fail that class.

[2041] I did and I didn't get caught.

[2042] The guy that came in and took the attendance, which could be cheated.

[2043] You wrote your name on a thing.

[2044] I had a buddy who wrote my name on there off and that's how I got no arrival.

[2045] And then he came in there, reek like fucking darts.

[2046] Yep.

[2047] I was the only dirtbag in AP history class.

[2048] So it was very clear who was smoking.

[2049] So he pulled me out of class and fuck did I do a smooth move.

[2050] I was walking just behind him on the right side of him.

[2051] He's taking me down to the principal's office, and I knew I'm going to get searched for cigarettes.

[2052] And we walked by a trash can, and I fucking just tossed the pack out of my middle.

[2053] Yeah.

[2054] And got him out of my possession by the time we got down to the office.

[2055] So I actually didn't get in trouble because I didn't have any, there was no proof.

[2056] Anywho, I had late arrival in early dismissal.

[2057] I was virtually there from like nine until noon.

[2058] Wow.

[2059] I barely graduated.

[2060] I went from having terrific grades.

[2061] Yeah.

[2062] Ninth and 10th grade and then just decided I didn't really give a shit.

[2063] I decided I wasn't going to college and I was going to live in my car.

[2064] Yeah.

[2065] What did I need those grades for?

[2066] Yeah.

[2067] But then.

[2068] But then I went to college.

[2069] Then I wanted those grades.

[2070] You went to college and then you did a commencement speech.

[2071] That's right.

[2072] I did.

[2073] It's on my wish list, not material items.

[2074] I'm glad you have some non -material items.

[2075] Well, that one's specific to material items.

[2076] Of course I have all these other wants in life, you know?

[2077] Where are you keep all these lists?

[2078] I want to get eyes on them.

[2079] They're in my bag.

[2080] Oh, they're in your bag on a piece of paper?

[2081] Actually, in my other purse, yeah.

[2082] You don't hang them anywhere?

[2083] No, I just wrote them down yesterday.

[2084] Oh, this is brand new.

[2085] Okay, okay.

[2086] So commencement speech is on your...

[2087] It's like a...

[2088] That's where I guess bucket list.

[2089] I don't like calling it that, though.

[2090] Okay, right.

[2091] Life list.

[2092] Lifeless, non -material.

[2093] Non -material lifeless.

[2094] Bill's, oh, so go ahead.

[2095] Is there a bar, though?

[2096] Is that like, okay.

[2097] I mean, no, but I would.

[2098] Like, if you got asked to speak at a community college in the middle of Northern Michigan?

[2099] No, I don't have time.

[2100] You're right, okay.

[2101] Taylor Swift just did one.

[2102] Well, she did.

[2103] At NYU, and it's so good.

[2104] They gave her a doctorate.

[2105] Well, I'll give you a doctorate.

[2106] This is valid.

[2107] What if she starts prescribing medicine and stuff?

[2108] And seeing patients.

[2109] That's what I should do.

[2110] No one should give you an honorary doctorate.

[2111] Well, and it's going to be from a middle of Michigan, Northern Michigan College.

[2112] I'll get one from.

[2113] Community College.

[2114] The first ever doctor degree earned at a community college.

[2115] Taylor, her speech was awesome.

[2116] I posted about it.

[2117] Oh, really?

[2118] What did she say?

[2119] All kinds of great stuff.

[2120] Like any one thing that you had that you.

[2121] Yeah.

[2122] Don't look it up.

[2123] Just off the dome.

[2124] Off the dome?

[2125] Like what was the message?

[2126] What was the message?

[2127] Like, be nice to yourself.

[2128] Don't be self -conscious.

[2129] Yeah, there was a lot of like, don't listen to the haters kind of.

[2130] Okay, right.

[2131] That is also one of her songs.

[2132] I don't know if I'm conflating.

[2133] Sure, sure.

[2134] Can I look it up, please?

[2135] Okay, I'm going to read it.

[2136] Okay.

[2137] The whole thing.

[2138] Yep.

[2139] Four minutes.

[2140] Get comfortable, everybody.

[2141] No, guys.

[2142] Guys, weo.

[2143] Come on, guys.

[2144] Wayo.

[2145] If you haven't seen that.

[2146] That's the best video ever.

[2147] We want to talk about bittersweet to bring it full circle.

[2148] Why?

[2149] Because I'm so emotional when I watch that.

[2150] You cry?

[2151] Well, I love her.

[2152] She's putting herself out there.

[2153] And also, who among us has not been in our room doing something as weird as that?

[2154] I just see her.

[2155] Also, it was early.

[2156] It was before TikTok where people are now doing this all the time, and she kind of started it.

[2157] She wants everyone to be as pumped about this song as she is, and I can relate to that feeling.

[2158] Boom, boom, boom, boom.

[2159] Now let me hear you say, weeh, ho.

[2160] I say boom, boom, boom.

[2161] Now everybody say, wayho.

[2162] I say boom, boom.

[2163] Now, let me hear you say, we ho.

[2164] I say boom, boom, boom.

[2165] Everybody say, way ho.

[2166] Okay, I got to stop it.

[2167] No, you didn't get to the hey guys.

[2168] Okay, okay.

[2169] That's all that was the whole reference point.

[2170] Okay, okay.

[2171] Here we go.

[2172] It didn't hold up as well when I'm watching it now.

[2173] In what way?

[2174] I feel bad.

[2175] Oh, you feel bad?

[2176] Yeah.

[2177] There's a lot there.

[2178] There's so much.

[2179] There's so much there.

[2180] Yeah, yeah, it's very bitter.

[2181] So, like, again, I know how she feels.

[2182] Yeah.

[2183] I know how she feels.

[2184] And it's a very sweet, innocent young.

[2185] She discovered a party song that makes her feel great.

[2186] Yeah.

[2187] Her tempo's not ideal.

[2188] She doesn't have it down, yeah.

[2189] She shouldn't go into drumming.

[2190] and she's so happy, and I love it.

[2191] Okay, it's very bittersweet.

[2192] Very bitter sweet.

[2193] Okay, Taylor.

[2194] And then Bill.

[2195] Do you see I'm getting some refreshments because I know I have time to chew?

[2196] Let me just say, welcome to New York.

[2197] It's been waiting for you.

[2198] That's an Easter egg.

[2199] Oh.

[2200] She said with, oh.

[2201] I'm sorry.

[2202] Add.

[2203] Okay, ready?

[2204] Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard.

[2205] This outfit is much more comfortable.

[2206] I feel like I'm auditioning, you know?

[2207] Yeah, I'm scared.

[2208] Okay.

[2209] I'd like to say a huge thank you to NYU's chairman of the board of trustees, Bill Berkeley, and all the trustees and the members of the board.

[2210] Kiss ass.

[2211] That's how she got that doctoral degree.

[2212] NYU's president, I knew you'd want to interject.

[2213] NYU's president, Andrew Hamilton, you have to say this stuff.

[2214] I don't know.

[2215] I want it.

[2216] Yes.

[2217] As NYU's President Andrew Hamilton, Provost, Catherine Fleming, and the faculty and alumni here today who have made this day possible, I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees, Susan Hockfield and Felix Maddoz Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work.

[2218] As for me, I'm 90 % sure the main reason I'm here is because I have a song called 22.

[2219] And let me just say, I'm elated to be here with you today as we celebrate and graduate New York University's class of 2022.

[2220] Not a single one of us here today has done it alone.

[2221] We are each a patchwork quilt of those who have loved us, those who have believed in our futures, those who have showed us empathy and kindness, or told us the truth even when it wasn't easy to hear.

[2222] Those who told us we could do it when there was absolutely no proof of that.

[2223] Someone read stories to you and taught you to dream and offered up a moral code of right and wrong for you to try and live by.

[2224] someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to the child that was you as you asked a bazillion questions like how does the moon work and why can we eat salad but not grass and maybe they didn't do it perfectly no one ever can maybe they aren't with us anymore and in that case i hope you'll remember them today if they are here in the stadium i hope you'll find your own way to express your gratitude for all the steps and missteps that have led us to this common destination i know that words are supposed to be my thing but i will never be able to find the words to thank my mom and dad and my Austin for the sacrifices they have made every day so that I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today because no words would ever be enough.

[2225] To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors, teachers, allies, friends, and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now, welcome to New York, it's been waiting for you.

[2226] That's the ding -daining from her song.

[2227] I thought she was going to say it's Saturday night.

[2228] Is that it?

[2229] No. Oh.

[2230] Well, it's only a good outline.

[2231] No way.

[2232] Okay.

[2233] I, like, she already doubled back.

[2234] Didn't she say it's waiting for you at the beginning?

[2235] No, that was a mistake that I did.

[2236] Oh.

[2237] Wow.

[2238] I'd like to thank NYU.

[2239] Oh, Jesus.

[2240] There's more faculty shoutouts.

[2241] We said the intro still.

[2242] I'm practicing for my big...

[2243] To play dealer in a movie.

[2244] No, this is my practice for when I do a commencement speech.

[2245] Okay.

[2246] All right.

[2247] And this is off the cup.

[2248] This is a dry read.

[2249] I'm doing pretty good.

[2250] Yeah.

[2251] Well, yeah, you're doing great.

[2252] I'd like to thank NYU for making me technically on paper, at least a doctor.

[2253] Not the type of doctor you would want around in case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook in an intensely cathartic bridge section or if your emergency was that you needed a person who can name over 50 breeds of cats in one minute.

[2254] That hold for laughter?

[2255] Yep.

[2256] Okay.

[2257] I never got to have the normal college experience per se.

[2258] I went to public high school until 10th grade and finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals.

[2259] Then I went out on the road on a radio tour which sounds incredibly glamorous, but in reality it consisted of a rental car, motels and my mom and I pretending to have loud mother -daughter fights with each other during boardings.

[2260] so no one would want the empty seat between us on Southwest.

[2261] As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I'd hang on the wall of my freshman dorm.

[2262] I even set the ending of my music video for my song Love Story at my Fantasy Imaginary College, where I meet a male model, reading a book on the grass, and with one single glance, we realize we have been in love in our past lives, which is exactly what you guys all experienced at some point in the last four years, right?

[2263] Hold for laughter.

[2264] But I really can't complain about not having a...

[2265] There wasn't a guy with a...

[2266] air drum and a symbol was there not yeah it was the way oh she was on drums yeah okay but i really can't complain she hits it right in the middle of the last word of her joke but i really can't complain about not having a normal college experience to you because you went to NYU during a global pandemic being essentially locked into your dorms or having to do classes over zoom everyone in college during normal time stresses about test scores but on top of that you also had to pass like a thousand COVID tests.

[2267] I imagine the idea of a normal college experience was all you wanted to.

[2268] But in this case, you and I both learn that you don't always get all the things in the bag that you select from the menu and the delivery service that is life.

[2269] You get what you get.

[2270] And as I would like to say to you, you should be very proud of what you've done with it.

[2271] Today, you leave New York University and then you go out into the world searching for what's next.

[2272] And so will I. So as a rule, I try not to give anyone unsolicited advice unless.

[2273] they asked for it.

[2274] I'll go into this more later.

[2275] I guess I have...

[2276] Oh my God.

[2277] She's just earmarking that for late.

[2278] She's going to bring that back around later?

[2279] How long?

[2280] How long is this?

[2281] Dorosh Taylor.

[2282] I guess I have been officially solicited in this situation to impart whatever wisdom I might have and to tell you the things that helped me in my life so far.

[2283] Please bear in mind that I in no way feel qualified to tell you what to do.

[2284] You've worked and struggled and sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here today.

[2285] And so you know what you're doing.

[2286] You'll do things differently than I did them and for different reasons.

[2287] So I won't tell you what to do because no one likes that.

[2288] I will, however, give you some life hacks.

[2289] I wish I knew when I was starting out my dreams of a career and navigating life, love, pressure, choices, shame, hope, and friendship.

[2290] The first of which is life can be heavy, especially if you try to carry it all at once.

[2291] Oh, I liked this part.

[2292] Ah, this is about bags.

[2293] James Purse.

[2294] They're so reductive.

[2295] The first of which is life can be heavy.

[2296] You're going to make me repeat if you...

[2297] That's all right.

[2298] Okay.

[2299] Especially if you try to carry it all at once.

[2300] Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release.

[2301] What I mean by that is knowing what things to keep and what things to release.

[2302] You can't carry all things, all grudges, all updates on your ex, all enviable promotions, your school bully got at the hedge fund his uncle started.

[2303] Decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go.

[2304] Oftentimes, the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there's more room for them.

[2305] One toxic relationship can outweigh so many wonderful, simple.

[2306] simple joys.

[2307] You get to pick what your life has time and room for, be discerning.

[2308] That part was good, right?

[2309] Yeah.

[2310] Secondly, learn to live alongside cringe.

[2311] No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively.

[2312] Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime.

[2313] Even the term cringe might someday be deemed cringe.

[2314] That's already.

[2315] I promise you you're probably doing or wearing something right now that you will look back on later and find revolting and hilarious.

[2316] You can't avoid it, so don't try to.

[2317] For example, I had a phase where for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife.

[2318] But you know what?

[2319] I was having fun.

[2320] Trends and phases are fun.

[2321] Looking back and laughing is fun.

[2322] And while we're talking about things that make us squirm, but really shouldn't, I'd like to say that I'm a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things.

[2323] This is also a good part.

[2324] It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of, quote, unbothered ambivalence.

[2325] This outlook perpetuates the idea that it's not cool to, quote, want it, that people who are don't try hard are fundamentally more chic than people who do.

[2326] And I wouldn't know because I've been a lot of things, but I've never been an expert on chic.

[2327] But I'm the one who's up here, so you have to listen to me when I say this.

[2328] Never be ashamed of trying.

[2329] Effortlessness is a myth.

[2330] The people who wanted it the least were the ones I wanted to date and be friends with in high school.

[2331] The people who wanted the most are the people I now hire to work for my company.

[2332] Yep.

[2333] All right, I can see that you want me to wrap it up.

[2334] So I'm going to leave it there.

[2335] There's a lot more.

[2336] Oh, I thought that was part of her.

[2337] Oh, thank you.

[2338] No, that was me. I transitioned.

[2339] I couldn't tell when the character stopped.

[2340] I understand.

[2341] We're all one.

[2342] But anyway, those were two big highlights.

[2343] Yeah, I like the part about let the things go and go and go on the gun things.

[2344] Catch and release.

[2345] Me too.

[2346] If you want me to keep, I can keep going.

[2347] It's really good.

[2348] I think if I were there, I would have liked it even more because you'd be.

[2349] Because it would have been Taylor.

[2350] No, no, no. Okay, I'm going to go off the dome for NYU.

[2351] class of 2022.

[2352] They have asked me to thank the faculty here, but I have said, no, you know why?

[2353] It's not their day.

[2354] It's your day.

[2355] In fact, they will go to 20 -plus graduations just like this one.

[2356] What I want you to think about today is that life can seem like a race to many finish lines, but there's no finish line.

[2357] The four years you just had, they're going to be the greatest four years in your mind of all time.

[2358] In the next four years, you can choose to make.

[2359] the greatest.

[2360] Let things go and hold on to the things that are good.

[2361] Oh, you borrowed.

[2362] Okay.

[2363] Great.

[2364] I think you borrowed from the speech you actually wrote and then also from Taylor's speech.

[2365] No, no, no. My speech was about status.

[2366] But also I probably had that four years part in it.

[2367] That's four years.

[2368] Oh, I don't know if I said that.

[2369] Race to finish.

[2370] Oh, race to 270.

[2371] No, I didn't promote anything.

[2372] Oh, okay.

[2373] Yeah.

[2374] I didn't bring up any of my companies.

[2375] For the record, I love Taylor Swift.

[2376] The speech really is really, really good.

[2377] Please read it if you'd like, or I think there's probably a video.

[2378] And also for anyone who's considering hiring me, I am open to it.

[2379] I'll do a better job than what I just did.

[2380] But I can also, if you want, I can just reread her speech.

[2381] So you can be hired to perform her speech.

[2382] Yes.

[2383] You probably need to do some licensing arrangement with her, but I can't imagine why she wouldn't want to franchise this speech.

[2384] Yeah.

[2385] Agreed.

[2386] Would you do an accent?

[2387] For her?

[2388] No, I don't do characters.

[2389] Well, that's not true.

[2390] You do metal mic.

[2391] Okay, that's another offering.

[2392] If you want me to do a commencement speech as Metal Mike, I can do that.

[2393] That's very little writing.

[2394] Mainly in the visuals, the eye movements.

[2395] Okay, Bill's Books, 2018.

[2396] We made it.

[2397] Really quick, just to quote my own commencement speech, Bill's Books was the finish line.

[2398] But it wasn't about Bill's books, was it?

[2399] Wow.

[2400] We have more facts even after Bill's books, though, so it's actually not the finish line.

[2401] Linder 2018, educated by Tara Westover.

[2402] That's supposed to be an amazing book.

[2403] Army of Nun by Paul Schar.

[2404] Bad Blood.

[2405] These names.

[2406] Bad Blood by John Karaoke.

[2407] No, it's not Karaokey.

[2408] Carochi.

[2409] Isn't that a Taylor Swift song?

[2410] Bad blood?

[2411] Bad blood.

[2412] It is.

[2413] Oh my God.

[2414] Ding, Great job, Rob.

[2415] Bad Blood by Taylor Swift and John Carrey Rue.

[2416] 21 lessons for the 21st century by Yvonne Noah Harari.

[2417] I would have felt like shit if I hadn't read a single book on that list, but now I feel okay.

[2418] I haven't read any.

[2419] Okay.

[2420] The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness by Andy.

[2421] Coffman?

[2422] Pooty Comp.

[2423] Booty comp.

[2424] Boom, boom.

[2425] Summer, children.

[2426] Summer 2018.

[2427] There goes getting him as a guest I guess on the show I guess.

[2428] I know.

[2429] I know.

[2430] I'm going to cut that.

[2431] No, keep it, Rob.

[2432] Put it back in.

[2433] Summer 2018, Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.

[2434] Okay.

[2435] Everything happens for a reason and other lies I've loved by Kate Bowler.

[2436] Lincoln and the Bardo by George Sondon.

[2437] You read that one?

[2438] Read it.

[2439] Good job.

[2440] Origin story, a big history of everything by Dave Christian.

[2441] Oh, I got to read that.

[2442] That sounds good.

[2443] Yeah, it does.

[2444] Factfulness by Hans Roman.

[2445] with Ola, Rosling, and Anna Rossling, Ronland.

[2446] Okay, those were 80.

[2447] It's just like an S &L sketch.

[2448] That last list of names.

[2449] By Rosalind and Rosalind Rosalind and Rosalind Rosalind Sternstone.

[2450] Hit me again with those authors.

[2451] Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling, Ronlin.

[2452] I'm telling you, it's sounds like a fucking S &L sketch.

[2453] Are you adding Roslings to that now?

[2454] I'm not.

[2455] No, all right, one more time in a straight voice.

[2456] Action.

[2457] Factfulness by Hans Rosling with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronland.

[2458] Come on.

[2459] What is the math of that group?

[2460] It must be.

[2461] Siblings and one was remarried?

[2462] No, I think it's a daughter.

[2463] I think Anna is the daughter of, Hans and Ola and married to Ronland.

[2464] Now, Ola and Anna are married.

[2465] And Hans and then Hansa is the daughter.

[2466] And Hans is the parent of Ola.

[2467] Okay, so it's grandpa, son, and wife.

[2468] Why is it Anna Rossling, Ronland?

[2469] Because her last name, her maiden name is Ronzon.

[2470] But it would go, it would go on a Ronlon.

[2471] But they're intellectual, so they...

[2472] It's great.

[2473] I don't know.

[2474] That's why I pointed it out.

[2475] I know.

[2476] There's a lot of Roslunds and Ronland.

[2477] Ola and Anna, what are they going to do?

[2478] By the way, are they from Frozen?

[2479] Ola.

[2480] These are all Swedish.

[2481] Are Swedes?

[2482] They must be.

[2483] These are literally all the names from Frozen.

[2484] Hans.

[2485] Ola.

[2486] And...

[2487] Arindale.

[2488] Anna, but it's Anna.

[2489] But still.

[2490] But same.

[2491] Same.

[2492] Wow.

[2493] Woof.

[2494] Okay, we got to get back on track.

[2495] I feel like something just glibly.

[2496] in the sim.

[2497] I think that's going to have to be all.

[2498] Great.

[2499] Because it's been long.

[2500] Yeah, yeah.

[2501] There's some other facts, but sorry.

[2502] Oh, you're saying, I thought you were saying there's more books on the list.

[2503] No, those are all of 2018.

[2504] Okay.

[2505] Well, there is 2012 to 2020, but you picked 2018.

[2506] We'll do another book list on another episode, and hopefully we'll get us lucky with the names.

[2507] Because that was, what a ride.

[2508] It was a spinoff podcast of Bill Gates' book recommendations.

[2509] Just reading it.

[2510] And Taylor Swift's speeches.

[2511] Oh, my God.

[2512] I'd love that.

[2513] Every Wednesday.

[2514] It's three hours.

[2515] It's one speech and one book list.

[2516] Yeah.

[2517] None of the others are that.

[2518] They're not that juicy.

[2519] It's not that important.

[2520] Yeah.

[2521] Okay.

[2522] I love you.

[2523] Happy Memorial Day weekend.

[2524] Happy Thursday to everyone who's listening.

[2525] Yeah.

[2526] And I'm excited to hear about your 4 p .m. 7 p .m. Eastern.

[2527] Well, that'll be probably on the next fact check.

[2528] Yeah.

[2529] Mm -hmm.

[2530] Mm -hmm.

[2531] Love you.

[2532] Let you.

[2533] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[2534] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[2535] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.