Maya Shankar

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

[1] Experts on expert.

[2] I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Mr. Mouse.

[3] Hi.

[4] Hello.

[5] Minister Mouse here.

[6] The Duchess of Duluth at your survey.

[7] Somebody sent me a really cute left -handed mug that says Duchess of Duluth.

[8] You're kidding.

[9] Yeah, it's so cute.

[10] Oh my God.

[11] And left -handed.

[12] Well, yeah, they know what they're doing.

[13] They know what they're doing.

[14] Wow.

[15] That's really nice.

[16] We have a wonderful guest today.

[17] Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

[18] We really, really love talking to her.

[19] It was in person.

[20] We could have done it for another five.

[21] hours.

[22] We barely scratched the surface of the things we wanted to talk about.

[23] Truly.

[24] Her name is Dr. Maya Shanker, and she is a cognitive scientist who served as a senior advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as chair of the White House Behavioral Science Team.

[25] She also served as the first behavioral science advisor to the United Nations under Ban Ki -moon, and as a core member of Mayor Pete's debate preparation team.

[26] Also, we're allowed to say, but we weren't allowed to talk about.

[27] She is Google's behavioral scientists as well.

[28] That's right.

[29] Yeah, so she's a bad MFer.

[30] That's right.

[31] She has an awesome podcast called A Slight Change of Plans, which is on Pushkin, which is, of course, Malcolm Gladwell's network.

[32] Favorite Malcolm Gladwell.

[33] And a slight change of plans is inspired by Dr. Schenker's personal experience with change, as well as her expertise studying human behavior.

[34] Check out a slight change of plans.

[35] It's wonderful, and I listen to it in preparation of this.

[36] So please enjoy Dr. Maya Shanker.

[37] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[38] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[39] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[40] He's an armchair expert.

[41] But yesterday was a, did you already say?

[42] About Matt Damon.

[43] Yeah, yeah.

[44] Did you show her the pictures?

[45] No, I will.

[46] I have known Monica for seven years.

[47] and I've never seen these looks on her face.

[48] Look, he's the love of my life.

[49] I know.

[50] I love it.

[51] What about with Obama?

[52] Come on.

[53] I was blushing every time I met with Obama.

[54] But Obama wasn't in person.

[55] Oh, it was virtual.

[56] Okay, yeah, his presence is, wow.

[57] I did get blessed by Michelle Obama once.

[58] She put her hands on my head.

[59] Oh, really?

[60] It was like six days before the 2016 elections.

[61] So we were all freaked out of our minds.

[62] Sure.

[63] And we were having this goodbye party for staff, and she came over.

[64] And I just felt like I'm not a religious person.

[65] Right.

[66] But I was like, I do subscribe to the Michelle Obama form of religion.

[67] If that's a thing, I'm into it.

[68] I need to know this because one of the most fascinating aspects of the Obama interview was how sexy Monica found him.

[69] And then when she went and told all the other gals at the house, like their first questions were kind of like, was he sexy?

[70] And you were saying, oh, my God, he's so sexy.

[71] And all the women were like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know, he's so sexy.

[72] So I love that.

[73] He has that impact.

[74] So I just wanted to know, did you have a crush on him before I hear the story?

[75] because I feel like it would help with me evaluating how elated you were.

[76] Or is that inappropriate because you worked for him.

[77] It is inappropriate.

[78] Okay, great.

[79] Don't answer.

[80] Oh, my God.

[81] I'm so glad you've said that.

[82] Yeah, it's definitely inappropriate.

[83] Wait, what did you say?

[84] I'm so glad he said that.

[85] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[86] She's a boss.

[87] I admired him deeply.

[88] So that's my baseline going in.

[89] Everything, though, also his aesthetic appeal.

[90] But his brain and the whole package.

[91] The whole package, okay?

[92] Yeah.

[93] One of the many reasons why Obama is Godlike is that he, He makes you feel like a million bucks when you are in his presence.

[94] He has 15 million things on his mind.

[95] And when you are with him, he is laser focused on you.

[96] And I remember the night before the interview, I was preparing prep documents.

[97] So it's funny because I'm, I lead the team, which means I'm both preparing the president's briefing docs, but I'm also a participant in the meeting itself.

[98] So I get this vantage point of like, I have lines that I'm writing for him.

[99] So then I get to know which were the ones that he actually came up with on his own, right?

[100] That's a fun vantage point.

[101] So anyway, I'm preparing all the bios of all my teammates.

[102] And then I get to mine, alphabetical order.

[103] I remember that I have this line at the end about how I used to be a violinist.

[104] And I was like, should I keep that in?

[105] Like it feels a little tendential to this whole public policy thing.

[106] Right.

[107] I should probably cut it.

[108] And then I'm like, you know what?

[109] This man has important things on his plate.

[110] The chances that even has time to read, 14 bios let alone mine is so small.

[111] I'll just keep it in.

[112] Yeah, yeah.

[113] He opens the door.

[114] The first thing out of his mouth is, Maya, you studied with my buddy It's a Pearlman.

[115] That is so amazing.

[116] You know, he played at my inauguration.

[117] So it's like, again, I am just a flash in his day.

[118] Right, right, right.

[119] But he made it a point to make me feel so special and that my past mattered to him too.

[120] It wasn't just my present, right?

[121] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[122] And so anyway, we have this meeting.

[123] We have amazing rapport, making jokes, left and right.

[124] At the end of the meeting, I remember he's like, now, Maya, anyone gives you crap.

[125] Like anyone gives you a hard time.

[126] You got my number, right?

[127] Like, you just give me a call.

[128] You call me. And I'm like, OMG, this is basically President Obama's way of telling me that he wants to be my BFF.

[129] And I happen to be hiring for the position.

[130] So this is so awesome.

[131] And there's a videographer in the meeting.

[132] So after the meeting happens, she shares the footage with me. And at the end of the meeting, my teammates and I have left the room and the door closes.

[133] And at this point, it's just the president.

[134] And he's talking with my boss, the president's science advisor.

[135] And I'm like, this is the moment.

[136] where it's going to happen, he's going to be like, that Maya Shunker girl, what a gal.

[137] I mean, I've been looking for a new role model for Lasha and Leah for some time.

[138] You know, we got the family dinners.

[139] And what actually happens is he goes, okay, good.

[140] So, John, about that memo that you sent me last week.

[141] And I was like, ah, yes.

[142] Yeah, it's back to reality.

[143] This is why he's amazing at his job because he made me feel like the work I was doing was so important.

[144] It was the only thing on his mind.

[145] And then, of course, you get that.

[146] Did you feel betrayed a little?

[147] I didn't feel betrayed because.

[148] Yeah, well, that's very sweet.

[149] I mean, it's the honor of a lifetime to have been able to work for him.

[150] So I'll take any of it.

[151] So cool.

[152] I would have liked to have kicked a provocative topic down the road until we had some rapport.

[153] We have rapport, yeah.

[154] All right, but I have to say, I have to say this.

[155] This is so bad because it wades into something that's potentially offensive, which is you're worthy of all that attention.

[156] You went to Yale, you're a Rhodes Scholar, you went to Oxford, you went to Stanford, you are worthy of all that attention.

[157] But does it also crush your mind?

[158] Do you think that he read the bio of like the three dude, the dude in this group, who was the three, did he read his bio and go into his office and go, hey, I see that you played tennis?

[159] Do you think he did?

[160] I think he did.

[161] You do?

[162] I think he's a stand -up guy when it comes to integrity.

[163] I don't want to diminish or degrade all the reasons he should be interested in you, which is your fucking brilliant.

[164] But also, you're super attractive.

[165] He's a human on planet Earth and you're a human on planet Earth.

[166] You don't think, you don't.

[167] No, he's too, he also, I mean, he's too much to protect.

[168] How about this?

[169] Would it be okay of him if there was someone in his staff that was really attractive and he was a little more interested in that person?

[170] Would that be morally okay or would that be not okay?

[171] I just think Obama doesn't go there.

[172] He transcends that.

[173] So thoughtful and so respectful.

[174] And look, his frontal cortex is so on point.

[175] Yeah.

[176] It's running the show.

[177] It's run in the show.

[178] He's just run in the show.

[179] And that's one of the reasons he's so admirable as a person, which is he's allowing the frontal cortex to dictate the way that he lives his life, which is why it's worth noting there were no scandals during the entire Obama administration.

[180] And he's just such a high integrity guy.

[181] I believe he is all those things.

[182] But also I think he's an.

[183] An animal that was put on the earth to procreate ultimately, and that you're more aware of people that you'd like to procreate with than not procreate with?

[184] I think there's, like, can't there be room for all of it?

[185] Like, he totally respects you.

[186] He was drawn to your intelligence.

[187] And he noticed you're really attractive.

[188] I'm sure he noticed.

[189] I'm just saying some animals are better than others.

[190] And I think Obama is the king of the, he's the head of the animal kingdom.

[191] I agree with you.

[192] I hear what you're saying.

[193] He's allowed to notice that there's a beautiful person in front of him.

[194] That doesn't mean it's going to change his action, and it didn't.

[195] Well, I guess what scares me about it is I think we put people into these binary categories of evil or perfect or hero or, you know, saint.

[196] And I don't subscribe to that model at all.

[197] Like I see humans as falling on a gradient for sure.

[198] And I know enough about you, and I've heard you speak enough that my fear is, is that when we put people in these categories, then when he does do something that is very human, everyone on the left who loves him has to deny it.

[199] and everyone on the right has to put him over fire.

[200] So it's like I just get nervous and perpetuates this thing where like he can't also be a human man. Well, he said Kamala was hot or beautiful or something.

[201] Yeah.

[202] He's vibing her.

[203] And then it turned out she was actually the only female DA or something like that.

[204] So he's very justified in making the comment.

[205] Yeah.

[206] And she is.

[207] It's great.

[208] Let me just say one more point on that, which is I don't want to obviously assign, I was joking by calling him godly, right?

[209] I don't want to assign a deity status because I'm completely with you.

[210] It is dangerous for us to see the world in terms of good and evil and saint versus sinner.

[211] And when you label people, they feel so much pressure to defend that identity, to defend that social identity that it can lead to over corrections.

[212] It can lead to levels of caution you don't want to see in a normal person, like all sorts of backfire effects.

[213] However, having engaged with so many.

[214] amazing people in my lifetime, I will say he stands out from the pack.

[215] Like, you look at his biography, you look at the way he lives his life, and I really feel profound admiration.

[216] I completely agree.

[217] I think maybe a better way to have come at this would have been.

[218] Hold on, no, hold on.

[219] Instead of trying to say whether or not he's attracted to people or trying to figure out what's going on his head, I'll start by admitting, if I admire someone greatly, and then on top of it, they're attractive, then it takes on a different way to my own mind.

[220] Like the attention is sweeter if it's coming from someone who I'm also finding attracted.

[221] Yeah, but it's hard to separate.

[222] For me, anyway, if I admire someone, I find them attractive inherently because of the reasons I admire them.

[223] The people that we admire, they're constellations of traits, right?

[224] Yeah.

[225] Physical, mental, emotional, what have you.

[226] Take charisma, for example.

[227] That's technically a superficial trait that a person has, right?

[228] But of course, it is so intoxicating.

[229] and almost everybody finds Obama charismatic, and that's part of the appeal.

[230] And when a charismatic, like to your point, I'm not going to mention the attractiveness piece, but I will talk about charisma.

[231] When a charismatic person thinks you're charismatic, that feels amazing.

[232] Of course.

[233] I love the banter with Obama.

[234] Of course.

[235] I liked it when you laughed at my jokes.

[236] Yes.

[237] We have a friend who was in kind of a spin cycle of dating, and one of her complaints was that the person has to be really funny.

[238] And this person is a comedian.

[239] And I said, you know, it is important to figure out whether it is that you actually enjoy being around someone that's funny so much and they're so entertaining versus I want to be acknowledged as funny by someone I admire as funny.

[240] So if it's all to drive your own ego and what you hope to receive praise from someone you admire, that's probably worth looking at.

[241] But is it a bad thing to assign more weight to a compliment coming from someone you admire?

[242] I mean, you admire them for a reason, which is you aspire to have some of their traits.

[243] You aspire to achieve some level of brilliance they show or compassion or empathy or whatever it is that the traits are.

[244] I think it's a very reasonable thing to be like, yep, that compliment coming from Obama means more to me because I aspire to be like him.

[245] Oh, I would way rather Howard Stern tell me I'm a great interviewer than you.

[246] And I would way rather you tell me I have a handle on cognitive behavior than Howard Stern telling me that.

[247] Yeah, for sure.

[248] But then you've got to ask yourself, is the opinion of any human more or less valuable than any other human?

[249] Yes, it is.

[250] It is.

[251] Okay.

[252] I mean, I don't know.

[253] Maybe that's a non -good thing.

[254] Absolutely.

[255] Yeah.

[256] In the sense that it won't be the same person for everyone.

[257] But each person has a set of things that they're inspired by that they're attracted to in another human being.

[258] And when they see those traits coming out of someone else, of course it will carry more significance from that person.

[259] Right.

[260] If you say your core or something.

[261] on some person that has all these attributes.

[262] And then that person tells you you've basically acquired the things I. It is definitely a significant arrival moment.

[263] But I guess it's hard for me not to think it in terms of comedy.

[264] Because in the comedy world, people write a lot of shows.

[265] People are snobby about the shows they write.

[266] Oh, well, that's dumb comedy.

[267] That's lowbrow comedy.

[268] That's his elevated comedy, blah, blah, blah.

[269] And often I take the position of like, human beings laughing is human beings laughing.

[270] You cannot possibly create a hierarchy.

[271] of what is more important.

[272] So let's say that 30 million people are laughing at Big Bang Theory versus 1 million people are laughing at curb your enthusiasm.

[273] I can't really take the position.

[274] Oh, Curbs better.

[275] It's better.

[276] And those people are simpletons or Philistines, whatever.

[277] No, humans are laughing at things they find funny and there can't be a hierarchy in that.

[278] There just is...

[279] And one's not better.

[280] That's your opinion, whether you like this or you like that.

[281] That's kind of, I think, why I'm clouded in this conversation because I think sometimes about that, how there seems, like people want to present it as a hierarchy.

[282] So I think, yeah, I wouldn't frame it as better or worse.

[283] I would frame it as more or less meaningful to that individual.

[284] That's great.

[285] Given what their long -term goals are.

[286] Yeah.

[287] But I think where you get into little trouble is, like, you know, we talk to Amy Poehler and she's my hero.

[288] Comedically, she's my hero.

[289] So if she tells me, Monica, you're so funny, of course that is going to mean something substantial to me more than other people.

[290] But where it gets a little tricky is like, Monica, I loved Monica and Jess Love Boys.

[291] She said that.

[292] And that compliment meant so much to me. But maybe it shouldn't.

[293] Like, I've elevated her to this.

[294] In all areas.

[295] Now in all areas.

[296] Yeah, she gets a halo effect across the board.

[297] Yes.

[298] Which is dangerous.

[299] Yeah, like, if she said she loves your style, you'd also love that.

[300] Yeah, I'd be like, oh my God, it's not that she's like Diane Bodfirstenberg.

[301] Exactly.

[302] You she doesn't have.

[303] But now I've made her, I put her on a pedestal, which can be dangerous, I think.

[304] Yes, I think that's right.

[305] Yeah, I try not to elevate any human to any human.

[306] status that's too high.

[307] I just think we all have our foibles.

[308] We all have our weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

[309] So I typically feel like I admire lots of people, but I also feel like I could probably have a conversation with them that was hopefully enriching on both sides.

[310] And I actually do feel sometimes, Monica, I don't even feel this way that like as women were not supposed to say that we're a self -assured and confident and that we do feel we could hold our own in a conversation with nearly anyone.

[311] But maybe, yeah, maybe I'll just say it on your show.

[312] I do feel that way.

[313] Of course.

[314] You should.

[315] But, you know, there's a lot of the gendered research saying if you say that, then you're viewed as this or that or whatever, overly confident.

[316] You're controlling or you're a bitch.

[317] Yeah, whatever those things are.

[318] You're not humble.

[319] I just had this conversation with a friend of ours because, and you brought this up right before we started.

[320] Maya said that, oh, I really liked on the fact check about the Obama episode, the pulling up the chair and stuff.

[321] She really liked that.

[322] Oh, she did.

[323] Yeah, good, good, good, good.

[324] Yeah.

[325] She created armchair experts along with you.

[326] Yeah, yeah.

[327] Did you think the debate was nuanced enough in that I agree.

[328] 100%.

[329] You should own the things that you own, right?

[330] So I agree with that.

[331] There's a broader global conversation if in the first 10 minutes with a guest, which I just did to you, you take the risk of potentially making them feel like they just put their foot in their mouth.

[332] Is the global goal of this podcast for Monica to have all of our proppers, or is it to get this guest to get so comfortable that we hear something we've never heard before?

[333] That's the global goal of the podcast.

[334] So I think it was more for me, from my point of view, just evaluating what objective you're serving in this moment.

[335] Yeah, I mean, I think, look, he asked her a very straightforward question, if I remember correctly.

[336] Yeah.

[337] How'd you get in that chair?

[338] Yeah.

[339] And she felt sheepish about answering that honestly.

[340] That's the sense that I got.

[341] Yeah.

[342] And in some way, and I think I fall prey to this too, which is, it can be hard as a woman to own your accomplishments and speak straightforwardly in that way.

[343] And I wanted you to lean in more on that.

[344] And so I was grateful when you guys had that fact check at the end, and you were like, you know what, I have a light regret about the way that I framed my contributions to this.

[345] And can I make a point that I believe would be on your side of this debate, which is, yes, Monica as a human being should not prioritize this person's potential embarrassment over her truth.

[346] So I agree with that.

[347] There was no tradeoff there, right?

[348] Was there?

[349] We can't pretend we don't live in a certain time and space.

[350] So here's Obama.

[351] He's an older male.

[352] We're in a great period where we're debating how we're treating women, how we're underestimating them.

[353] I think some men are proceeding with great caution, and if it would appear in his mind that he just actually stepped over that line and was part of the problem publicly.

[354] I see.

[355] I don't remember the exact way the question came up.

[356] So did it presuppose that it was your show, Dax?

[357] Or how to yes.

[358] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[359] I forgot that part.

[360] Absolutely.

[361] You do need to, there's a balancing act for sure.

[362] There is.

[363] So on one man, it's like, yes, Monica should not possibly evaluate the stranger's fragile ego over her truth.

[364] And then also, Monica's a person who has a big, big goal of making the show spectacular.

[365] So it's also like, what thing does she want to be true to in that moment?

[366] Does she want him to keep the ball rolling feeling good and open up?

[367] Or does she want in the first 10 minutes get him insecure?

[368] He might have just made a big public faux pa. Again, I think, and you know him so you may be able to tell us, I think he would be like, get it, girl.

[369] Hell yeah.

[370] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[371] Like, I think he would have appreciated that more than not.

[372] But sorry, we got off sort of on a tangent.

[373] The reason I brought this up is because our friend, our male friend, listened to this episode.

[374] He listened to the fact check seven.

[375] He was like, Monica, I'm really glad you didn't say that.

[376] And I was like, why?

[377] And he was like, well, it's always good to like sound more humble.

[378] And I'm like, not for women.

[379] I don't think so.

[380] Well, actually, this is a debate that I had with Adam Grant on my podcast, a slight change of plans.

[381] He was talking about the silver linings of imposter syndrome and how, you know, why do we treat it like a syndrome?

[382] And actually there's research showing, yeah, it meets you more conscientious about staying up to speed with your craft and learning the latest and working hard.

[383] And I said, what were the demographics of that study?

[384] Were populations of color included in that study?

[385] Were women included in that study?

[386] Because when you're looking at certain communities, they fall prey to things like stereotype threat.

[387] And they're starting.

[388] off in an unreasonable place relative to their actual potential.

[389] I'm anxious about the idea of going on the road with like, imposter syndrome is actually good because I don't feel that that applies.

[390] And I joked with him.

[391] I was like, I feel like the actual rallying cry should be imposter syndrome is good, comma, white men.

[392] And everybody else.

[393] Nope, keep boosting it.

[394] Keep boosting it.

[395] Because I studied stereotype threat.

[396] And I've studied how that can play communities of color and how harmful that can be for people's long -term outcomes.

[397] Yeah.

[398] And this is kind of my critique of all books that come out with any prescription for how to either feel good, be healthy, do anything.

[399] We're two variable.

[400] So, right.

[401] I do think you're right.

[402] Like, imposter syndrome for me is probably fantastic.

[403] And then it's probably crippling and antiproductive for any one of a marginalized group.

[404] But maybe not everyone in a marginalized group.

[405] So that's the importance, right?

[406] We need to assume there's also heterogeneity within groups, right?

[407] I was talking just now it hasn't always been the case.

[408] I want to pretend I came out of the box, super confident.

[409] But, like, yeah, I'm a fairly confident person.

[410] And it's hard for me to say that too, right?

[411] We just talked about why it's hard to actually say that.

[412] It feels very empowering to say that, though.

[413] Yeah, good.

[414] But I do think it's important, yeah, to not see groups as homogenous and recognize that there isn't this one -size -fits -all approach.

[415] Actually, that, Dax, exactly what you just said was part of the motivation for me creating my podcast a slight change of plans.

[416] Because the answer is don't lie in a textbook around how to navigate big change in your life.

[417] You can't just be like, yep, I'm in the throes of addiction.

[418] Let me open up to page 90.

[419] And there's my answer.

[420] There's my DAC's personalized answer.

[421] Right, right, right.

[422] So I realized the science has been insufficient in giving us all the answers because of exactly what you described, which is that every person is a cluster of genetics and environment and experience.

[423] A ratio of which we actually don't even know yet.

[424] Absolutely.

[425] The ways that we even process our own experiences, the narratives we tell ourselves, the ways that we've tried to fit adversity into our storytelling, like, There's so much complexity and how we process things that my goal was in many ways to marry, sure, some of the science.

[426] The science has something to say on change, but the power of people's stories.

[427] Because I feel like you can listen to my episode of Hillary Clinton and then Monica can listen to my episode of Hillary Clinton.

[428] You're going to take away completely different things from her.

[429] As you see that medicine is starting to get, I remember when my stepfather was dying of prostate cancer, they were starting to map the patient's genome to figure out what medications would work best with their genetics.

[430] So it's like, that's where we're heading, where I will first get my shit mapped, and then they'll tell me every single thing that'll work great for me. And that's just happening.

[431] Like that's around the corner even.

[432] And that's a, by comparison, a very simple equation versus a human exhibiting a personality with their trauma, with their history, with their genetic, that whole combination of things.

[433] So like on the social science side, we're much even further from that.

[434] Absolutely.

[435] Yeah.

[436] I mean, when I was at the Obama White House, there was a whole precision medicine initiative that was doing exactly what you described, which is like, can we tailor mental health drugs?

[437] Can we tailor, yeah, psychiatric drugs?

[438] But we're so far away from getting to that point.

[439] And you know what pisses me off about that is that the, it seems like the general consensus in the population is instead of understanding of that, like, oh, this is a very evolving field.

[440] And we're learning and learning, learning.

[441] I think because there's errors, people want to throw the whole thing out.

[442] They don't see it as something that's progressing towards truth as much as a bunch of failed hypothesis.

[443] Yes, it's incremental in the same way that a driverless car will have some accidents and we can't freak out.

[444] The nine people who got the Vax and it didn't work.

[445] Exactly.

[446] We have to be forgiving when there are.

[447] I mean, this is an extremely complex system we're working with.

[448] It would be profound if we could make any inroads in this space.

[449] I almost feel like we should approach the whole enterprise with so much humility and gratitude.

[450] that we're at a moment in science where, like, where precision and personalization is even possible.

[451] But I will share a personal story.

[452] I got permission from this person to share this.

[453] A dear friend of mine, he lost his daughter tragically in an accident just like two months ago.

[454] And I was visiting him and his family.

[455] And he looked at me and he said, you know, Maya, we don't know shit about grief.

[456] Everyone's telling me how I should feel, how I should respond, who I should go talk to, who my therapist should be.

[457] You read this book and not that book.

[458] And this one's got it and this one hasn't gotten it.

[459] And he's like, that is not working for me. I, given what I know about myself, have to create my own plan to move forward.

[460] I need to account for my own personality.

[461] And he was checking off, you know, here are the things I've decided that continue to bring me joy every day.

[462] Here are the things that I'm going to be doing for myself.

[463] And they're not in any book.

[464] And it taught me this valuable lesson, which is, you know, I study behavioral science for a living.

[465] But at the end of the day, it will always fall short in giving aid.

[466] individual person.

[467] We might have population level conclusions we can draw.

[468] When it comes to prescribing an individual recommendation, that's really hard.

[469] I'm always singing the praises of AA, but one thing I'll say that I think is so awesome about AA is you are encouraged while there to find someone that has what you want and ask them how they got it.

[470] And the best part of doing that for me is first recognizing, like, who has the same personality type as me?

[471] Who has a real issue with authority, who's a cynic, who had that?

[472] And now what did they do to find contentment and happiness?

[473] And that's on the menu there.

[474] You know, that's not like on the menu most of the time.

[475] And I think it scares.

[476] People, like, we'd really love to have an answer.

[477] We'd love to have a prescription for how to deal with grief and not have it be individual, not have it be like, okay, I have to look inward and I now have to figure this out.

[478] Like, that's hard for people, especially we're in the people who are in the middle of it.

[479] I mean, it feels very, very, helpless for everyone.

[480] Yeah.

[481] I think it is so reassuring to hear from other people that the stuff others might be telling you to do in your life.

[482] If it's not working, it's okay.

[483] Yeah.

[484] It's not your fault.

[485] And that's relatable.

[486] It's not like there's something wrong with you.

[487] You're not failing.

[488] Yeah.

[489] Yeah.

[490] It's that the system has prescribed a path that just doesn't actually work for, you know, any given person.

[491] And it's funny because we take on this like personal responsibility layer in that realm, if you go to the doctor and the doctor go, I'm going to give you something, something, mysis, and you're going to take that and that's going to clear it up.

[492] When it doesn't clear it up, you don't go to the doctor with shame.

[493] You don't return with like, oh, my body wasn't good enough to use this, I guess.

[494] But all the other things, they feel like personal failures, like, they told me I should make a gratitude list.

[495] Well, I've done it for two months.

[496] I feel like, shit, I must be doing something wrong.

[497] Well, no, maybe that's not the thing for you.

[498] That's not, exactly.

[499] No, I think that's totally right.

[500] Okay, so what you, oh, my God, there's so much I want to talk to you about.

[501] Do you have six hours?

[502] Yeah, like five and a half.

[503] Okay, perfect.

[504] I think behavioral science deserves an explanation.

[505] Sure.

[506] It's the study of how the mind works.

[507] It's the study of how we make decisions, how we develop our attitudes and beliefs about the world, what makes us feel certain things and other things we don't respond to, how we change our minds, why we don't change our minds.

[508] I mean, it's just an umbrella field that is about the way that we move about in this world.

[509] And I think the reason I'm so fascinated by, and the reason why I was drawn to this space is that the science teaches us that there are some really surprising factors that influence our judgments and our behaviors that operate outside of our conscious minds.

[510] And so we can fully appreciate where those biases are, what those biases are.

[511] And we can in turn design systems and programs and policies and products that better serve people.

[512] Yeah, so the reason the field totally interests me and always has, and it probably starts with Malcolm, who I know you work with, I love finding out that our intuitions wrong.

[513] I love finding out that we don't make logical decisions when we think we're logical creatures.

[514] All of our flaws in thinking is kind of what interests me about it.

[515] Our mind is doing the most perplexing, wonderful things.

[516] And a lot of your work is in this category, which is probably my great obsession, which is identity.

[517] So tell us how identity informs how we make decisions, how we process the decisions we've made, when they confirm our identity, all this stuff.

[518] Yeah.

[519] Well, I mean, so just to comment on what you were talking about.

[520] talking about the miraculous nature of the mind, you know, we're so hard on ourselves.

[521] But if you open up a cognitive science textbook and you figure out what's behind our ability to make a decision at all or speak language or comprehend language or whatever these basic functions are that our minds can give rise to, you will be in awe of the human mind.

[522] You will think you are crushing it every single day just by living.

[523] And so I think that's part of my fascination, which is, you know, I'd be like, oh, why do I have this personality trade and why am I like this?

[524] And this is annoying.

[525] And it's like, nope, by living, you're crushing it.

[526] Like, that's my, that's my philosophy.

[527] And so when it comes to identity, one of the most fascinating parts of our field is trying to figure out how it is that we can change people's minds and change our own minds.

[528] And in my mind, changing minds is the most elusive coveted types of change, right?

[529] It is the hardest thing to do.

[530] It is a type of change that feels the most intractable to behavioral scientists.

[531] I mean, there are ideas out there.

[532] I'm sure you talked about some of them with Adam Grant.

[533] It's like their ideas out there, but if we can fully crack that nut, it would be a game changer for humanity.

[534] Now, how does this relate to identity?

[535] So we all know that we can disagree on empirical matters, like whether climate change is real or whether the coronavirus has led to deaths or whatnot.

[536] And we're thinking, by the way, whether a fucking dress is blue or gold.

[537] That's more forgivable than some of the other ones.

[538] But at least that's something someone's experience.

[539] Like, wait, you're sitting.

[540] You're sitting.

[541] Getting next to somebody, this can't possibly be subjective.

[542] Again, I think that the dress color thing is totally reasonable and tracks with how the visual system operates.

[543] And I'm down with that.

[544] What I'm not is down with people denying what data shows, right?

[545] However, what we know from research, and this comes from an area of research called cultural cognition, is that we don't develop our attitudes and beliefs about the world based entirely on facts.

[546] using just facts, right?

[547] Of course.

[548] No, no, no, yeah.

[549] A large part of how we construct our beliefs about the world comes from our group identities and what values that group has.

[550] And there's a very evocative study.

[551] I don't know if you guys have heard about this, which I think shows how potent the impact is.

[552] And it relates to this dress thing that you were just talking about.

[553] They showed fans of opposing football teams video footage of controversial referee calls.

[554] And they were asked to evaluate these calls, okay?

[555] And even though they were watching exactly the same footage, Their conclusions around those controversial calls were vastly different.

[556] Yeah.

[557] So if you were on one team side, you tended to feel that the unfair calls were against your team and vice versa.

[558] Now, what's fascinating to me about this example is that it's not like people are consciously thinking, yep, I'm biased.

[559] I can't see things with pure objectivity.

[560] Of course not.

[561] They believe that this is their reality.

[562] And what this study shows me is that this group membership and identity is, you know, is so powerful, it can actually transform your perception of reality.

[563] Yes, it's really easy to be judgmental of that.

[564] Like, oh, we know that in -group, out -group thinking is detrimental to us on a societal level.

[565] But don't feel bad.

[566] It's why we're sitting here.

[567] That also has to be acknowledged, in my opinion.

[568] Your ability to forego some of your reasonableness to stay a member of a group kept you alive on planet Earth for a very long time.

[569] So one must be patient and forgiving of us because it was our survival at play.

[570] I completely agree with that.

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

[572] We've all been there.

[573] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[574] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[575] But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[576] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[577] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[578] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[579] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[580] Follow Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[581] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music.

[582] What's up, guys?

[583] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[584] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[585] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[586] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[587] And I don't mean just friends.

[588] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[589] The list goes on.

[590] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

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

[592] I always say that when you're a cognitive scientist and you understand why it is that people cling on to their beliefs, it is the greatest empathy builder out there.

[593] It is so hard for me to judge people for their views now that I understand the psychology behind it.

[594] And I understand that, you know, we'll walk around the world and say, it's just a damn piece of cloth.

[595] Like wear a mask.

[596] I promise you, this is going to keep you safe.

[597] And you get exasperated and frustrated and anxious about it.

[598] And then you realize to a person, wearing a mask can carry huge symbolic significance.

[599] And it might potentially threaten their group membership and allegiance, which, of course, to your point, Dax, they hold sacred.

[600] Because we are social creatures.

[601] We thrive on feelings of belonging and membership and aligning ourselves with people who share our values.

[602] That's why gossip is such a productive thing that we do as humans, because it reaffirms our shared values and allows us to see those.

[603] that we agree with.

[604] And police unacceptable behavior within our group.

[605] Yeah.

[606] Yeah, it's so subjective.

[607] Even so you, you admire Obama.

[608] He's attractive in all ways.

[609] And your father was a professor at Yale.

[610] And so, yeah, I could maybe predict that.

[611] Now, had your father been a mechanic in town, you might think Jesse James the fabricator is the coolest dude in the world.

[612] So it's like even the thing we might think are like, well, these are objectable quality.

[613] someone should be attracted to you.

[614] Horshit, you're born in a different house.

[615] Your dad does a different thing.

[616] We don't know.

[617] It's a wonderful thought experiment.

[618] And again, I think an empathy builder to ask yourself, what if I was born in a different country?

[619] What if I was born to a different family?

[620] What if I was born in a different time frame?

[621] How would my beliefs about the world change?

[622] And I think that, you know, one of the dangers that we fall into is when we too closely associate and tie our identities not just to our opinions about things, but to our values.

[623] I think there's danger there because values can be off and values can be very culturally dependent, context dependent.

[624] And I think it's really important for us to compel others and ourselves to revisit what those values are at times.

[625] Without shaking one's full sense of self, you don't want to be revisiting your values every day.

[626] You know, because I think the reason why we fight that thought experiment is it makes us uncomfortable.

[627] It's like, wait, no, no, I can't challenge my values because that's so crucial of who I am.

[628] If you take the time to empathize and understand the other person's point of view, there is some fear that you will lose yours.

[629] Absolutely.

[630] So when you imagine you being in a person who grew up with different values, not someone else, it's just you, me, Maya, just growing up in a slightly different environment, it can make you feel far more open to changing your mind.

[631] I think it's also, it's helpful to be someone who's moved across different places.

[632] Like, I grew up in Georgia and now I'm here.

[633] If I had just stayed there, a very, very, very small change in my life, I would be a different person.

[634] I would have different values.

[635] I would maybe still have the same core ones, but they'd be variable.

[636] You know, they'd be different than they are now and cemented in a different way.

[637] And that's just based on one decision I made.

[638] Yeah.

[639] So every decision you make affects the way you think about everything.

[640] I experienced that a ton, and I think most people who have moved somewhere that's radically different culturally has this where you go there at first, you're like, I don't, L .A., everyone's obsessed with her, how they look, blah, blah, blah, blah, I have all these things.

[641] Then I don't even notice it.

[642] And then by God, I'm sucked into it.

[643] And then I go home to Michigan.

[644] And I'm just like, oh, wow, yeah.

[645] I didn't know one person who exercised growing up.

[646] Oh, that's interesting.

[647] Oh, I didn't know one person.

[648] And then now you feel more like an outsider from where you're from.

[649] So anyone who's like had that experience.

[650] that's telling.

[651] Yeah, and I see this with my relatives in India.

[652] Monica, I don't know if you experienced this too, where I think in America we assign so much sanctity to life as a thing.

[653] It's like life and death, that's the dichotomy.

[654] And in India, there's at least among my relatives, a much greater focus on suffering around quality of life.

[655] And so in terms of what's important to me, in terms of my value system, they've been very impressionable.

[656] And so I've started to shift more towards caring about suffering as I get older and as I have more of these conversations with folks.

[657] That's so interesting.

[658] My family's not like that.

[659] Can we completely detour for half a second?

[660] One bit of cognitive dissonance I have with India, which is I have this great obsession with it.

[661] I think because I'm friends with Monica, I believe that's where it started.

[662] I watched the bad boy billionaires on Netflix, bad boy billionaires of India.

[663] At any rate, there's this interesting dichotomy that I like that I'm observing.

[664] And maybe I'm wrong and I'm simplifying, but like the Bhagwan.

[665] He's a spiritual leader.

[666] so many profound things to say, so much humility.

[667] Part of it for them is like they drive rolls rices.

[668] He had like 25 rolls rices.

[669] And I found this is kind of a common baguwan thing in India that the spiritual leaders can also exhibit great opulence and ostentatiousness.

[670] I'm fascinated by that dichotomy.

[671] Does that ring true?

[672] Is that my own simple?

[673] Like something pure mixed with something very materialistic.

[674] Yes, like something that seems like yes, some very spiritual truth coupled with this very worldly material possession and how culturally that's totally not frowned upon.

[675] As an anthropologist, I'm curious about that.

[676] I think there might be salient examples in your mind that are rooted in India, but I think we see these contradictions in people anywhere.

[677] Well, yes, but they're called contradictions.

[678] So, like, when you have these megachurch parishioners who also fly private jets, John Oliver exposes them for an hour.

[679] And we all laugh at them.

[680] You don't feel like judgment is passed.

[681] There's no judgment.

[682] It's kind of like, it's like celebrated.

[683] It's a Like, yeah, good.

[684] He is the spiritual leader of this thing.

[685] And he's telling you, you better believe he should have 13 -year -old's races.

[686] Like, that little hiccup to me is interesting.

[687] That scene is hypocritical here.

[688] If you're a spiritual leader who has profited greatly, you're flying around on a private jet.

[689] But there's also tons.

[690] I think maybe, you know, those are the ones that maybe get global attention, but there are tons of spiritual leaders there who are living in aesthetic life.

[691] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[692] The Gondhies of the world.

[693] Yeah.

[694] I think maybe what you're getting at is, I think America has a purity complex problem, which is that we look for purity in others.

[695] It's the concern you were articulating earlier about, oh, no, if we build up Obama to this like perfect God, and then there's even one little mistake, they fall from grace.

[696] And so we tend to do this binary thing.

[697] And I prefer to see people along a gradient.

[698] And so, you know, you're allowed to have good traits and bad traits and they mix, and you can have contradictions within you, and that's fine.

[699] So maybe that's what you're getting at them.

[700] maybe more other cultures might be more accepting of nuance?

[701] Yes.

[702] Well, even we had a guest on an economist who was talking about Sweden and how Sweden, you know, that's the third way or the new way economically and how someone got their retirement package, a CEO, and it was such a huge number that everyone in Sweden publicly shamed him.

[703] It might have been Denmark, whatever, is one of the Scandinavian countries, shamed him publicly to the point where he gave the money back.

[704] Wow.

[705] Now, that's just a fascinating cultural aspect of that area that I'm interested.

[706] And by the way, when I bring up the thing about the Indian spiritual leaders, I can promise you it's like through an anthropological lens, which is like, I have no judgment of it.

[707] It's just something I've observed, which is like, oh, that's fascinating.

[708] Their spiritual leaders can also be like really flashy.

[709] Yeah.

[710] Anyways, that was a useless detour.

[711] But to the identity thing.

[712] So I was listening to your episode with this guy, Scott.

[713] And again, your podcast is a slight change of plans.

[714] Scott is an individual who has for his whole life seemingly been obsessed.

[715] with preventing untimely death.

[716] And diminishment.

[717] And he is eaten vegan forever.

[718] He works out.

[719] Intermittent fasting, high intensity interval training, adds turmeric and chia seeds to his food.

[720] I mean, he's bringing Indian vibes into his day -to -day life.

[721] Yeah, 100%.

[722] Drives a rolls.

[723] And lo and behold, he ends up with this one in 350 ,000 people get it type of cancer.

[724] And now I want you to wade into what you know scientifically.

[725] you have a PhD in this, but...

[726] How old are you?

[727] 35.

[728] I wanted to ask that so bad, but I wasn't allowed to...

[729] Well, I am, and I did.

[730] Okay.

[731] I don't mind being asked my age, but I do know that that's a thing.

[732] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[733] Well, just because you've done so much, it feels like you should be 50, and obviously you're not.

[734] Anyway, go back.

[735] Okay, okay, back.

[736] So, so identity, I have this theory and I can't anchor it in anything, which is, because I'm not someone who believes in metaphysical stuff and I don't believe in God.

[737] And I don't think things happen for a reason.

[738] Yeah, me either.

[739] yet when I've had an identity anchored in certain things, lo and behold, those things happen regularly and confirm my identity.

[740] My one case I'll just give as a quick example is I thought, if you listed the top three things you liked about me, in that top three list would always be, I feel protected around him.

[741] And my wife told me at one point, I don't feel more protected that you're that way.

[742] I feel more in danger.

[743] When you're around, anything might happen.

[744] And I was like, holy shit, that's opposite of what I thought it was.

[745] And I got to change that.

[746] When I stopped thinking that that was a top three reason people like me, I stopped seeing all the stuff.

[747] And my wife could tell you this.

[748] Once a month, we saw a dude from the gym yelling at an old lady at a traffic light in the car and banging on her window.

[749] Like, I saw this stuff all the time, and I had to get involved all the time.

[750] And I no longer think of myself as I went, I don't know, the world hasn't changed.

[751] It couldn't possibly have changed.

[752] I don't see any of that anymore.

[753] It's not around me anymore.

[754] That's very suspicious to me. I don't understand it.

[755] But I couldn't help but think this guy, Scott, with that great obsession he had with not getting cancer, is there something in the world that can explain how we can manifest our fears?

[756] I'm allergic to the word manifestation.

[757] You are telling you.

[758] Okay, great, no. As a scientist, I just, I can't subscribe to that for a few reasons.

[759] One is, I just don't understand what the mechanical properties of that would be.

[760] But more importantly, just look at the world at how much suffering befalls really great people.

[761] And it will make you question whether this manifesting thing, sorry, I probably alienated like a million.

[762] I just have to share my opinion, which is I don't believe in manifesting.

[763] I don't think we can will things in any cosmic sense.

[764] I don't think the universe cares about me, Maya.

[765] Okay, I don't think the universe has a plan.

[766] I don't think I can talk to the universe.

[767] Same.

[768] However, there are two traits that are very characteristic of humans that I think propel us forward in these moments of adversity.

[769] The first is we are natural -born storytellers and narrative writers, right?

[770] When an experience happens to us, like Scott getting the stage four bone cancer diagnosis in his 30s and leads him to have to amputate his leg and get 18 administrations of chemotherapy, when it doesn't track with his experience to date or his sense of self -identity, I think it is a very natural human instinct to try to justify that experience by making it make sense.

[771] And he said this very matter of fact, but also very poignant thing to me. he said Maya, it would be a tragedy if my body was deteriorating and I was also becoming a worse person, like if my personality was also getting worse.

[772] So I need to make this work for myself.

[773] I need to become a better person through this.

[774] So I think one thing that can help those of us, like look, I wish I thought things happened for a reason and I wish I believed in manifesting because I think I'd probably be a happier person because I would believe that I'd more agency and control in my life than I do.

[775] But I always find some solace in the fact that I would.

[776] that I know, even with the particular way in which my mind is wired, it is still very susceptible to this insatiable desire to build a narrative out of my life and to try and find meaning or silver linings in experiences in order to justify them, to not feel like we are living in a world that is as random as it actually is.

[777] Yeah, so I agree with you.

[778] So I think most of our actions in life are attempts to confirm our identity.

[779] So we're telling people where this, and by God, we've got to kind of demonstrate that we are that.

[780] So I agree with that.

[781] I would draw a distinction between manifesting and cosmic in that.

[782] You're subconscious, which I don't think we understand all that well yet, I don't think we're there.

[783] Your subconscious is given an example.

[784] You're driving down the road in the car.

[785] You're doing everything one needs to do to operate the car, but you're not aware of it.

[786] So you're making tiny little micro adjustments to the steering wheel.

[787] You're adjusting the gas.

[788] All that stuff's happening in the background.

[789] It's running in the background.

[790] I think it is possible that this mechanism that runs in the background are subconscious can do a bunch of stuff that we don't know about yet.

[791] And in that way, the subconscious can manifest all these weird things.

[792] It can take steps that we're not even aware that we're taking to confirm our identity.

[793] But why are you using the word manifest?

[794] That's my question in that situation.

[795] Like, sure, our subconscious thoughts can precede our conscious thoughts.

[796] Like there's a processing that happens in the mind and one transitions from brain already knows I'm going to lift my left hand up before my conscious brain has registered that.

[797] But why do we use the supernatural word manifesting?

[798] Oh, so maybe we have a different definition of manifest.

[799] Okay, I'm talking about manifesting in the way that, like, the Bachelor might use the word manifesting, the TV show.

[800] Okay, be careful.

[801] Be careful now.

[802] You're on very shaking around.

[803] I love The Bachelor.

[804] I'm sure you do.

[805] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[806] I interviewed with Nick Viol this morning for Vial files, okay?

[807] Please do not think in any way that I am not a super fan of The Bachelor.

[808] We will talk about the season and Katie and Greg and all the people.

[809] Yeah, I'm behind, too.

[810] I'm behind too.

[811] Okay, sorry.

[812] Good.

[813] I just didn't want you to piss Monica off inadvertently.

[814] If you were going to be critical of The Bachelor, I just want to warn you.

[815] I have watched almost every season.

[816] It is my go -to.

[817] And I recently got my husband into it.

[818] It's wonderful.

[819] Okay, so we have a bonding situation going on.

[820] I'm talking about in that sense of like, well, I just hear it all the time.

[821] These are this word manifesting, which is like, if I put it in my journal, if I write it, it will happen.

[822] Can I give you an example of manifesting?

[823] So Eric has a great, great fear of losing his money.

[824] Okay.

[825] And because he has this great fear of losing his money, he tries to diversify the money in all these different abstract ways.

[826] One of them being like, oh, I'll have some gold.

[827] I'll have gold somewhere, and that'll protect me from when everything else collapsed, right?

[828] So it's this big preoccupation that he's going to lose it, he's going to lose it, he's going to lose it, he's diversifying.

[829] So in the process of buying gold, buying all these things, he's kind of opened himself up to juggling too many balls.

[830] Well, lo and behold, he kind of keeps losing money.

[831] He's losing money because he has all these weird ways of holding it.

[832] And one time, a bar of gold was stolen out of his car because of a, a 15 -minute overlap of when he was bringing home above line.

[833] He's telling me the story.

[834] And I said, do you realize what's happening is you're manifesting your fears?

[835] You're so fearful of this that you're now launched into all these different directions that are going to result in you losing money, which is you're going to confirm that you're, you were right to be fearful.

[836] Like, I think someone's subconscious has the ability to orchestrate all that without much of us being aware of it in the present.

[837] I understand.

[838] If there's like a causal mechanism by which you articulate intentions and then those intentions express themselves.

[839] But it doesn't involve any of the cosmic stuff that I can't get behind.

[840] Then absolutely in the same way that like if I get out my journal and I write, my goal is to be on blah show, right?

[841] You might work harder.

[842] You might have a plan for the first time.

[843] Of course I believe in the translation of like intention to action or like goal setting and goal achievement.

[844] But those are those are in the conscious mind.

[845] All the examples you just listed.

[846] I guess I'm making an argument for that perhaps.

[847] The subconscious mind is capable of many, many things we don't yet understand.

[848] If you just look at what they're learning about when we talk in person now, the levels of oxytocin that change, all these different biochemical reactions we have to each other in person, that feels metaphysical 35 years ago.

[849] But 30 years ago, it would have been described as energy, but now we understand mere neurons and we understand that.

[850] Yeah, is my subconscious brain responding to the fact that I find you to both be very warm people and in turn, I feel like I can open myself up and I can also be warm 100%.

[851] I guess maybe it really just comes down to how we're defining manifesting.

[852] Yeah, I don't think there's a supernatural...

[853] Yes, okay, great, great.

[854] Then we're on the same page.

[855] I think that's important delineation maybe between various ways in which manifesting is described is I believe the subconscious mind obviously can inform the conscious brain and psychology in profound ways.

[856] I just have never felt that our own thoughts can will physical things to happen in the world, that there's any connection, unless we literally, like, lifted the object.

[857] It's like a rolled -all Matilda thing.

[858] Like, I don't think she can use her eyes to get the chalk on the chalkboard, that sort of thing.

[859] That's where I'm like, okay.

[860] Yeah, yeah, you're out.

[861] And maybe this is my dad being a theoretical physicist.

[862] And so I grew up with physics in the home and we obey the laws of physics, folks.

[863] I do think this has something to do with, again, why everybody's so variable because it's your experience with your dad that makes you feel like that.

[864] I logically, logically don't believe in manifestation, but the picture we just showed you of me hugging Matt Damon, there is no, there is no explanation.

[865] No, there is an explanation.

[866] You worked really freaking hard.

[867] You made an extremely successful podcast, successful enough that someone like Matt Damon wants your audience to listen to him.

[868] That's why it happened.

[869] You're right.

[870] You're doing this thing.

[871] No, there's a causal connection between that you are, maybe articulated it in your head back in the day, Matt Damon, and then you built an empire.

[872] That's why it happened, Monica.

[873] That would be my assessment of why it happened.

[874] But what about like even weirder things?

[875] Like, you know, I would watch Kristen.

[876] I would, I was like, oh my God, Kristen Bell, so long ago.

[877] Oh my God, Kristen Bell.

[878] She is so fun.

[879] Like, I think I could be friends with her.

[880] Like everyone in the whole world thinks when they watch Kristen on, on YouTube.

[881] And while I'm doing that, little.

[882] You think that's where most people are consuming Kristen YouTube?

[883] That's where I do.

[884] Okay.

[885] So when I'm doing that, little do I know.

[886] She is living in an apartment here in L .A. 10 years later, I am living in that apartment without knowing.

[887] And then I meet her via friends.

[888] And then we become best friends.

[889] And I'll think.

[890] Yeah.

[891] So let me unpack that one.

[892] Okay.

[893] So you need to consider the denominator of all thoughts, not just the numerator.

[894] So you are cherry picking examples of cases where.

[895] you had this immense crush on this person, Kristen Bell, and then, oh my God, I ended up as her babysitter and then I built this empire.

[896] How many moments of crushes have you had?

[897] What is the denominator of experience?

[898] How many times have you watched YouTube and been infatuated with a star and nothing ever happened with that star?

[899] That star doesn't know who you are.

[900] You don't know who that star is.

[901] The second thing I want to say is from whose vantage point is this manifesting happening?

[902] Because like you said, millions of people are watching Kristen Bell having exactly the same response and they're not sitting in an attic with Dax Shepard right now, right?

[903] So my question is why do you have fate and they don't?

[904] Absolutely.

[905] It's like we like to believe we're the protagonist in the film.

[906] Yeah, yeah.

[907] We manifested it.

[908] It happened to us for a reason.

[909] It's like from whose vantage point?

[910] So I want you to, every time you have that instinct, just challenge yourself and be like, how many other Kristen Bell experiences that I had that didn't lead to anything?

[911] And then how many other people had the Kristen Bell experience but are still sitting in their living rooms, and then it might make you think slightly different differently about that.

[912] Well, and also I'll bring up something you know a great deal about, which is like people regularly confuse, it's so tempting to confuse it, correlation with causality.

[913] So yes, these things are correlated.

[914] Does that mean one cause the other?

[915] No, the greatest example is like the Vax scare that it caused autism.

[916] Well, you get that shot around the time you start exhibiting signs of autism.

[917] So that's the correlation.

[918] Man, we got that booster shot.

[919] And three days later, I noticed he wasn't making eye contact.

[920] It seems pretty fucking obvious, but it's simply correlated.

[921] It's not causality.

[922] And then we do this great big epidemiological study and we find out there is no core.

[923] Do you think it's dangerous to believe in it?

[924] Like what is wrong with believing in it?

[925] Before you answer, can I say, I want you in our friendship group so bad.

[926] Yeah, hang out with us.

[927] This is such a good fit.

[928] Yeah.

[929] She's bossy.

[930] I know.

[931] Yeah, okay, go ahead.

[932] I mean, I'm kind of like holding down that part of the group.

[933] so maybe I'll feel threatened, but it's okay.

[934] Oh, my gosh.

[935] But also, you might feel lighter.

[936] I'm just kidding.

[937] Yeah, I know.

[938] We just always are each other's corner.

[939] It might be like Matt Damon and Ocean's 11 where he can finally feel the weight going off his shoulders.

[940] I would like a partner in crime here with this one for sure.

[941] Oh, I mean, he needs to be managed.

[942] I can already see that in space.

[943] There's already a team of people managing.

[944] Okay, is it dangerous?

[945] Yeah, that is a fantastic question.

[946] First of all, it's so much fun to be asked all these fun questions.

[947] It's just nice to think about them.

[948] I think for the individual, it can be very productive to believe in the idea that things happen for a reason, to believe you are the superhero protagonist in the movie, to find meaning in life.

[949] So let's take the example of you accidentally physically hurt someone.

[950] You're riding your bike, you accidentally run into someone.

[951] They get hurt.

[952] And you're feeling plagued by guilt.

[953] It's a terrible situation.

[954] But then your mind kicks in and these supernatural beliefs kick in and you're like, ah, I think this was the universe trying to teach me a lesson.

[955] I was meant to learn something from this, okay?

[956] So now that person, this actor, we'll call them Monica, is feeling great about the world.

[957] However, Dax is the person that Monica hit with her bike.

[958] And so what about from his vantage point?

[959] Was this meant to teach him a lesson?

[960] Maybe.

[961] That could be dangerous.

[962] That can be a dangerous psychology for you.

[963] There's an egosentricity there, right?

[964] Which is if you believe everything's happening for a reason for you, to you, then what about all the people who are suffering as a consequence of the decisions that you're making, it almost, the dangerous part happens when you feel like it's a get -out -of -jail -free card.

[965] When you think everything happens for a reason, you might not take responsibility.

[966] You might not assume that you have the full agency that you do have, and that's where I think it can get into murky territory.

[967] And again, bringing back to AA, one of my favorite parts of AA is calling out that being megalomaniacal thinking, oh my God, I'm the greatest thing in the world, I have all this control over everybody, blah, blah, blah.

[968] We can recognize that quite quickly as pathological, yet self -pity is the exact same thing.

[969] The universe is out to get me. Everyone's conspiring to get me. Both things have elevated your importance on this planet way beyond everyone else's, and neither are true.

[970] They're equal.

[971] They're equal in their egocentricity and their megal nature.

[972] You're not that fucking important for good or bad.

[973] But I do think, Monica, to your question, in the same way that I was saying, you know, when you learn enough about the mind, it is like the greatest empathy builder.

[974] and it prevents you from passing too much judgment, I do also believe, look, life is really freaking hard.

[975] And if people use some of these tactics as coping mechanisms, if religion brings them deep peace, if believing things happen for a reason, brings them deep peace, like, you do you.

[976] I'm not here to judge unless there are negative externalities and it has negative exogenous effects on the world where other people are harmed.

[977] Yeah, you're banning gay marriage.

[978] Yeah, exactly.

[979] But it's like you have spiritual beliefs that wake you up every morning and make you feel purposeful.

[980] Well, again, you come from a scientific background.

[981] So it is also relevant to recognize, like, we have a lot of vestigial things that are not good for us.

[982] I think as we move into, like, this postmodern world, it's more learning about, like, what bad design we have and how we mitigate the outcome of the bad design and how we manage it.

[983] Yeah, I think that's very well said.

[984] And I do think that when we look at these traits that we see as exclusively negative in humanity, we will find either a strong, not for everyone, not every trait we have, is going to facilitate reproduction, right?

[985] We know that there can be traits that evolve as a part of the evolutionary process, but oftentimes you will find a strong evolutionary explanation or some pro -social advantage to having a particular trait.

[986] Yeah, yeah.

[987] Can I do a random aside?

[988] And we love a sides.

[989] I was curious about this because I know that last year you had a motorcycle accident.

[990] Uh -huh, yeah, yeah.

[991] And that you became addicted to painkillers.

[992] And one, I so appreciate your honesty.

[993] Oh, thank you.

[994] Being honest about that.

[995] I'm curious to know when you went to the doctor that day, how many pills they prescribed to you as part of your first dose?

[996] Do you remember?

[997] Like in that first bottle that you're getting, right?

[998] How many weeks of medication are you getting?

[999] How many pills are you getting?

[1000] Oh, I think you're getting like four days at a time maybe.

[1001] So like the first, yeah, well, I got to go to the second surgery because that's when it was much more extensive.

[1002] I want to say there was like 60.

[1003] And I'm supposed to take two every four hours.

[1004] So there's 16 hours I'm awake.

[1005] So that would be four.

[1006] That'd be eight a day.

[1007] I don't know.

[1008] So I guess it's supposed to last four to five days or something.

[1009] Okay.

[1010] So you got 60 pills or so.

[1011] Yeah, yeah.

[1012] Okay.

[1013] The reason I ask you is that one of my favorite findings in behavioral science has to do with the power of the default setting.

[1014] So there was this study they did.

[1015] Obviously, we're in the middle of an opioid epidemic, right?

[1016] There's lots of factors.

[1017] But one of the ways that we could potentially design, better solutions to help mitigate the creation of a problem for certain people is in that moment in the doctor's office where that doctor is first prescribing your initial dose.

[1018] And what they found is, you know, usually doctors will use some sort of software system to make the prescription.

[1019] And there's a preset number of pills that's listed in the system in that little blank field.

[1020] So it'll be 30 pills, let's say.

[1021] Okay?

[1022] And that's the default.

[1023] That's in anything, that's the number that's going out there.

[1024] And these researchers modify that number, they reduced it to 12 in the system.

[1025] So now the default number is 12.

[1026] And what they found is that by making this subtle change and what the default number is, they reduced opioid prescriptions by 15 % across the hospital system.

[1027] And the reason why I find this example so powerful and I was curious about how your doctors were engaging with you is that 30 is not going to be the right number for everyone.

[1028] But it's serving as a profound anchor for doctors.

[1029] They're getting cues that this is the social norm in the space.

[1030] It's appropriate to give this amount, but it's not the most conservative number.

[1031] And what this study showed is that when you force doctors to engage in that moment of reflection, where they're seeing a number that might be lower than they're used to seeing, but it is lower so that if you don't do anything, the default goes through, that moment of reflection leads to a lower opioid prescription rate.

[1032] And that's a nice example of we understand the power of the default and then we can manipulate the default number to lead to better health outcomes for people.

[1033] Yeah.

[1034] And then just to add to that to give some sympathy to the doctors, which is like for many years, that was the default.

[1035] The default was like, don't give those out.

[1036] Then you have this huge PR push by Purdue, you know, big tours of renowned doctors saying we are under prescribing people in this country.

[1037] And then so the pendulum swings.

[1038] And then it swung into insanity.

[1039] And I think now people They're trying to, yeah, they're really trying to navigate.

[1040] And I think actually the key piece of this intervention is that you're preserving full agency and freedom for the doctor.

[1041] Right.

[1042] Like they could prescribe 200 if they follow.

[1043] They can do whatever they want.

[1044] I think it's literally just, you know, in life, people are inundated with complex information all the time, which means in order to live, we need shortcuts and heuristics and we need these biases in order to just help us navigate this very complex world without feeling so much cognitive overload, we just explode, right?

[1045] So there's a huge benefit to having cognitive shortcuts.

[1046] And one of the shortcuts we use is looking at default options and assuming that that's the one that we should go in.

[1047] The group thing is like, oh, did the whole group agrees on this?

[1048] Okay, good.

[1049] Then I'm not at least going to get called out as irresponsible.

[1050] Exactly.

[1051] And actually a really effective way of combating over prescribing doctors is to tell them that they're in the top percentiles when it comes to to publicly shame them and say, hey, look, in your medical community, you're at the top one percent.

[1052] Yeah, you're three standard.

[1053] You're going to be picked out of the group.

[1054] Yeah, we know you're taking that first class flight to Hawaii on whatever Purdue's dime, but, like, you might want to reconsider, and that can be actually a very effective antidote.

[1055] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1056] You know, and let me add, too, the trouble started when I started buying them illegally.

[1057] Like, when I got to give the dose I thought I needed was when the real trouble.

[1058] And then let me also own, because I've talked to other addicts, the way my brain works, which differs from other people, is other people think that the pills should get rid of the pain, that that's the goal of the pill, which is the goal of the pill.

[1059] But the way my brain works is like, anytime I do something uncomfortable or terrible or I sacrifice, I deserve a reward.

[1060] I'll find it.

[1061] If I work my ass off on a script for three months when it's done, I get six dominoes pizzas and I over and don't.

[1062] Like, that's how my brain works.

[1063] It's very reward, you know.

[1064] Yeah.

[1065] So if I go let someone chop my whole body up and saw my bone in half, not only do I deserve to not feel pain, I actually deserve to feel some euphoria for the next seven days, because that's my reward of having this experience.

[1066] The whole thing is fucked up in my head.

[1067] I actually deserve pleasure.

[1068] I don't know why you have to say that it's fucked up in your head.

[1069] Well, in that it leads me to very bad places.

[1070] But I feel like using slightly more compassionate language, even in this moment.

[1071] Yeah, I hate myself.

[1072] I can show you some love and compassion.

[1073] I can't show myself.

[1074] But it's a bit of an entitlement.

[1075] You deserve things.

[1076] Well, if I suffer, I must suffer first.

[1077] But you are also manifesting the suffering.

[1078] You could argue that.

[1079] Yeah.

[1080] I mean, I really don't think I'm crashing intentionally because I had gone 17 years without doing it.

[1081] But I would say entitles me sitting on the couch going like, I deserve you for you.

[1082] Oh, I know.

[1083] I'm not saying that.

[1084] Yeah, that's fair.

[1085] That's really fair.

[1086] Yeah, yeah.

[1087] But like, anytime I suffer, there had better be some big reward.

[1088] Like, I'm a little baby that way.

[1089] Like, where's my reward?

[1090] Yeah, it's braddy.

[1091] Yeah, I guess it's braddy.

[1092] So we all kind of do it like, oh, I'm having a bad day.

[1093] I need ice cream.

[1094] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1095] People can relate to it.

[1096] My boyfriend dumped me. I'm going to eat 17 pines of ice cream.

[1097] Wait, how's that going to help with any of this?

[1098] I wanted to loop back on one point regarding Scott's story.

[1099] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1100] Because you were asking about identity.

[1101] One thing that was really powerful about Scott's story is, like you said, he really attached himself to being a health nut, obsessed with fitness to his physical appearance.

[1102] And suddenly, you know, his legs amputated and he has a limp because of the vertebra that was removed from his spine and he has a piece of his tibia removed and he's in cancer treatment.

[1103] He's lost all of his hair.

[1104] And he was very honest about the fact that vanity was playing a role in some of the psychics, which I loved that.

[1105] I loved hearing that from a guy that like, actually he says at one point in the interview, I'm more concerned with losing my six pack on any day than I am about dying.

[1106] And first of all, I love that honesty.

[1107] But the thing that really struck me, because this is again corroborated by some of the science, is that he said this experience.

[1108] has allowed him to see his identity as more, quote, negotiable than he had before, that these things that he thought were so core to who he was maybe aren't as critical as he thought.

[1109] And I felt that play out in my own life, which is, you know, when I was a youngster, I was on the speed train trying to become a concert violinist.

[1110] If you'd ask me as a kid, like, who are you?

[1111] I'd be like, I'm a violinist.

[1112] And then I'd be like, oh, I'm also Maya.

[1113] You know, like, that would have been the sequence.

[1114] That's how much the violin meant to me. And to this day, like, my right shoulder slightly elevated, relative to my left and like my spine slightly curved.

[1115] Like I literally grew into the ergonomics of the instrument because that's how many hours I spent going like this every day.

[1116] So it defined me. And then I have this hand injury.

[1117] Can I ask what the hand injury was?

[1118] I tore a tendons in my hand.

[1119] Playing?

[1120] Yeah.

[1121] Oh, so it was like repetitive disorder?

[1122] I wish it was repetitive.

[1123] That would mean I practiced more than I did.

[1124] It was actually a single note where I overstretched my finger and then it was like a popping sound.

[1125] And I had to get surgeries and stuff here, but all the tendons in this area.

[1126] Went like this.

[1127] And, you know, maybe if you're just living normal life, that's fine.

[1128] But when you need the agility that's required for being a concert violinist, then, of course, it can have a big impact.

[1129] So I'm told I can never play again.

[1130] And when you're a kid, I don't feel like, well, at least I wasn't precocious enough to ask all these existential questions about myself before this.

[1131] You know, I just like went about my life and I was playing the violin and that was great and I loved it.

[1132] But then you lose the thing and you start to ask yourself.

[1133] I remember at 15 asking myself all these questions like, who am I and who am I?

[1134] without the violin, and this was the thing that defined me. It's very scary to not know what you are.

[1135] Yes, and what you do, right?

[1136] And there's this concept in, you might be familiar with this because of all the conversations you had, but it's called identity foreclosure, and it does refer to the idea that we can become really fixed in our sense of selves in adolescence, and we can label ourselves with certain labels, and it prevents us from having an open mind around all the other forms our identity can take.

[1137] See, I'd call that manifesting.

[1138] But go ahead.

[1139] Okay, sure, this is great.

[1140] We are on the same page, right?

[1141] So being forced out of the thing I love the most in the world at a young age served me very well because it allowed me to see my identity as more malleable than I thought.

[1142] And in the future, if you're ever...

[1143] Exactly, but I've had other twists and turns.

[1144] But importantly, I'm so curious to know whether this tracks with either of your experiences.

[1145] It taught me that it was more stable for me to attach my identity not to a thing, but to the traits or features of that thing that lit me up.

[1146] So with the violin specifically, I think as a child, I kind of believed, oh, it's the instrument that I love.

[1147] I love the way that it feels.

[1148] I love the wood.

[1149] I love the sound it produced.

[1150] But actually, what the violin gave me was the ability to forge this very quick emotional connection with people that I'd never met before.

[1151] So as a kid, you go on stage, right?

[1152] There's thousands of people in the audience or complete strangers to you.

[1153] You're a stranger to them.

[1154] And within moments, you're making them feel.

[1155] something they've never felt before.

[1156] You're bonding in this incredibly intimate emotional way.

[1157] And more id -driven, you have control.

[1158] Yeah.

[1159] You're young.

[1160] Yeah, totally.

[1161] You don't have social capital and you don't have money and you don't have power, but you are in control of how those people feel.

[1162] Yeah, and you can craft a phrase in a certain way where you make people feel something different than they would have otherwise.

[1163] I mean, that is an incredible gift to be given, right?

[1164] It's like, oh, if I just play it this way, I get the tingles.

[1165] And if I play it this other way, no, not so many tingles.

[1166] Right.

[1167] And so what I realized in reflecting back on the experience is that it's humans that get me to tick.

[1168] It's my fascination with forming emotional connections with people.

[1169] Like, I love this conversation because I feel like I'm connecting with both of you.

[1170] Yeah, yeah.

[1171] And I'm in love.

[1172] That's so kind.

[1173] And I feel like I've been able to find that in other pursuits, those traits.

[1174] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1175] I study the mind.

[1176] course, that's getting me high every day.

[1177] And then with my podcast, I have licensed to get into a room and with no pleasantries needed, be like, so Hillary Clinton, tell me about the worst moment of your life or like, tell me about your most.

[1178] I'm sure you guys have this experience all the time with this podcast.

[1179] You have licensed to forge these emotional connections.

[1180] And so, by the way, I'm noticing in this interview, I want to be looking at Monica equally, but because the microphones placed here, it feels like I'm giving Dax more attention.

[1181] But I just want you to know that I am feeling you, girl.

[1182] And it's just, I want to make sure I'm talking.

[1183] into the mic also okay yeah pull it closer also um you're you're you're actually experiencing the new and improved version of this because Monica used to sit there for the first year and a half and people were just like I don't like like I would say something and they'd be like oh well and by the way talk about flaws in thinking and causality and correlation for the first year of it we assumed all these people are so disrespectful to Monica because they don't know her like we filed it in the like a misogyny yeah all these things like I was giving credit to people who were, like, totally turning their bodies to see me. I'm like, that's a respectful person.

[1184] But the person who comes in with a bad back, you're like, what a dick.

[1185] How dare he?

[1186] Well, again, there was all this correlation and no cause.

[1187] And we were finally like, maybe just see.

[1188] Jake Johnson was here.

[1189] He was like, I can't really see her.

[1190] Can you move?

[1191] Yeah.

[1192] He made her move.

[1193] And then we were like, yeah, we should kind of just do this from now on.

[1194] But that's nice that you just said that.

[1195] Yeah.

[1196] Thank you.

[1197] But I do want to say, I can relate to it so much.

[1198] because when I watched Goodwill Hunting for the first time and friends, all I could think was like, I want to be an actor, I want to do that.

[1199] But really what I wanted was to make people feel like I felt when I watched it, which was connected.

[1200] That's all.

[1201] And so I took this path of acting, but then when we landed ourselves here, I was like, oh, I did it.

[1202] I did the thing I was actually searching to do, which is connect.

[1203] We had a guest who forced us to go through this and pointed out that, no, I've been pursuing the same thing.

[1204] Because I'm like, no, no, I'm flexible.

[1205] When the directing didn't work out, I just switched to this and blah, blah, blah.

[1206] And he's like, but it might have always been about all the same things.

[1207] Someone who was encouraging us to find out why your kid liked soccer.

[1208] It might not be soccer.

[1209] They might like the outdoors.

[1210] They might like being with people.

[1211] They might like snack time.

[1212] Like, get granular about what you really like about the thing because that through line could exist in many, many, many.

[1213] ways.

[1214] Exactly.

[1215] And I think it just feels safer.

[1216] Like I, one of my motivations for starting a slight change of plans is that I'm fearful of change.

[1217] Like, it's coming from my own insecurities about liking the status quo and falling prey to all the human biases we all have.

[1218] And it was partly a personal journey for me to be like, how do I get more comfortable with this change thing?

[1219] How do I tap into the fact that in my own life, I've seen this play out many times?

[1220] And I have felt like these traits and features of an activity are more, it's more durable.

[1221] It feels like I'm on dirtier ground.

[1222] You know, for example, I'm working in the Obama White House.

[1223] It is my absolute dream job.

[1224] I'm thinking, I want this to last forever.

[1225] And I was hoping to work for the next administration for eight years.

[1226] And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, shit's at the fan.

[1227] That's not happening anymore.

[1228] And in that moment, it's like, no, no, no, but Maya, it's okay.

[1229] Because what did you like about your time in the White House?

[1230] I love connecting with people.

[1231] I love flying to Flint, Michigan, talking with folks on the ground in the middle of the lead in water crisis, understanding that actually the lead in water issue was a symptom of a much bigger problem, which was decades of disenfranchisement and systemic racism and that folks in the community had not felt heard by their government for decades.

[1232] And I wouldn't have known that just sitting in my, you know, my office.

[1233] Like, those are the moments.

[1234] So I'm like, let me try to find those connections again.

[1235] Okay, can we go back to the violent injury?

[1236] Yes, of course.

[1237] Because I don't know if this is my cynical nature.

[1238] I can't place why this is where my mind goes when you tell that story.

[1239] But is it possible?

[1240] Well, first of all, can we acknowledge some assumptions I'm making about you that you can confirm or deny?

[1241] You're an overachiever.

[1242] Yeah, I mean, by all, by all measures, your type A as they come.

[1243] You're an overachiever.

[1244] I thought I had that word tattooed in my forehead.

[1245] So I just, I appreciate you confirming it.

[1246] But of course, I mean, my personality is, yeah, I'm always striving for the next thing.

[1247] And I didn't want to race ahead assuming that.

[1248] If I don't know you, and I hear this story, what also seems quite plausible to, to me is it could have occurred to 15 -year -old you, without you acknowledging you recognize this, I'm not going to get to the level that I need to get to.

[1249] I'm on this path, and I'm so fearful that it's going to get to the stage where I'm supposed to be a virtuoso, and I don't know if I'm going to get there.

[1250] And now I'm fucked, and body rescue me. You're saying, was there gratitude at the injury because it relieved me of the pressure?

[1251] Here's what I'll think.

[1252] Let me just say really quick.

[1253] We're watching this show called Alone.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] This female contestant, she's so good.

[1256] Everyone's fucking miserable.

[1257] They're in the tundra dying.

[1258] Yeah.

[1259] And people are quitting.

[1260] And you get to watch the mental process by which people quit.

[1261] And what I really quickly recognize, because it's very addicty, is finally creating a story that will give you the permission to quit.

[1262] So this woman had not gone to the bathroom.

[1263] She hadn't shit in like, I guess, two weeks.

[1264] Mind you, she's not eating.

[1265] So, of course, she's not shitting because she's not eating.

[1266] But in her mind, she had an impacted bowel.

[1267] And her pelvic floor was vulnerable because of her first pregnancy.

[1268] And so in her mind, it became a decision between will I ever have another child again, which is the most important thing to me, or will I stay on this show, potentially this impacted bowel is going to fuck up my pelvic floor and I'll never have kids again.

[1269] Now, that's probably not the case.

[1270] But it is the story that gave her permission to stop doing the things she didn't want to do.

[1271] And the brain is incredibly skilled at doing that.

[1272] And without our permission, knowledge, anything.

[1273] I believe she, probably this woman believes that's exactly why she left the show.

[1274] That really her pelvic floor was in danger.

[1275] And so just knowing your type of personality, I could see being very scared at that point or at you were a virtuoso, I'm sure, till 15, but then there's this going to be this leap you're going to have to take to really be a legendary violinist.

[1276] Could the fucking body finally give you the permission?

[1277] mission to bail out of that.

[1278] I see what you're saying.

[1279] I don't think that applies in my situation.

[1280] No, I really loved it.

[1281] And I didn't feel my parents were very supportive, but didn't apply any pressure.

[1282] They probably also didn't have much of a bar to compare you to.

[1283] Like, I don't know if you're what a great violinist is versus a good one.

[1284] My dad's a physicist.

[1285] My mom helps immigrants get green cards to study in this country.

[1286] Like they're not in the music space.

[1287] And so they were like, oh, I'm the youngest of four.

[1288] We all played instruments.

[1289] They're like, okay, Maya's particularly interested in this thing.

[1290] Let's have her do her thing.

[1291] In my case, I had a complicated journey with my injury.

[1292] I first get injured.

[1293] I've torn tendons.

[1294] I need surgeries and all that stuff.

[1295] And they tell me that I can't play.

[1296] And then I was actually misdiagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis for seven years.

[1297] So I was on immunosuppressants and anti -inflammatories for six or seven years.

[1298] It was later determined.

[1299] It had actually been a misdiagnosis and I didn't have rheumatoid.

[1300] But that was actually doctors telling me you cannot play the violin.

[1301] I would have played the violin.

[1302] I was kicking and screaming.

[1303] Uh -huh.

[1304] like clinging onto the instrument, trying to play through pain.

[1305] I was not looking for the escape valve, which is what I think you're asking.

[1306] Like permission to maybe leave.

[1307] Maybe I would have at some point.

[1308] Well, what would be unacceptable to you as the person I've now met and know is that you mentally didn't have it.

[1309] That's an unacceptable proposition, that you didn't have the fight and the willpower and the motivation to achieve that.

[1310] So when that's unacceptable.

[1311] But when one's body breaks down, that's very acceptable.

[1312] It's just fun.

[1313] This is what I was talking about, like, do we think we can manifest shit like that?

[1314] Yeah.

[1315] Like, could someone be playing and they're like, I can't get that fucking cord?

[1316] I can't get that forward because I'm going to reach for it.

[1317] And I fuck.

[1318] And then boom, I finally push too far and I break this thing.

[1319] I'm just kind of fascinated by that area of the brain and whether or not that happens and to what frequency.

[1320] You know, I was talking this conversation actually with, are you familiar with Annie Duke?

[1321] No. Oh, she's a poker player.

[1322] Poker player, exactly.

[1323] She's writing a book on quitting and how important it is to learn how to quit.

[1324] Yeah.

[1325] And I remember, I mean, there was a moment where I had to quit.

[1326] And it was really hard, but you just have to do it.

[1327] So I was doing my postdoc at Stanford in Cognitive Neuroscience.

[1328] And I'm in the basement of an FMRI laboratory.

[1329] It's like my fifth hour scanning people's brains.

[1330] And it's a windowless basement.

[1331] And like this guy comes in and within minutes, I'm like peering into his courtesies.

[1332] Okay.

[1333] And I remember thinking.

[1334] Given my personality, I'm like, peering.

[1335] And I remember thinking, given my personality, I, I feel like the order of operations is whack here because I don't know this person, whether he has kids, whether he's married, what his favorite ice cream flavor is.

[1336] I don't know basic things about him and yet I'm looking at his amygdala.

[1337] Like this is just, this is not right for me. But up until this point, I had spent almost a decade in this field.

[1338] And I didn't know what to do, right?

[1339] I remember thinking, you know, should I become a general management consultant?

[1340] Like I don't know what to do.

[1341] So I call it my undergrad advisor, Laurie Santos, who I know you've had on the show.

[1342] I met her as a freshman.

[1343] and I'm like basically told her, if you let me in your monkey lab, I will give you my unborn children.

[1344] I will give you my soul.

[1345] Just like whatever it takes, accept me as the lowly freshman into her class.

[1346] And she was so kind.

[1347] And I was allowed into her class, which changed my life.

[1348] That's for another day.

[1349] So I call up Lari and I'm like, what do I do?

[1350] So you know that thing I've been doing for like 10 years that like, you know, I've been doing kind of because I admire you and you're a professor?

[1351] I don't want to do that thing anymore.

[1352] And I actually am not great at it.

[1353] And so what do I do next.

[1354] And so I was about to apply for management consultant positions.

[1355] And then she said, no, no, no, before you do that, there's this incredible work that's happening in the White House right now where they're using insights from behavioral economics to literally feed hungry children.

[1356] Like they're changing the default settings in the school lunch program and now 12 .5 million more kids are eating lunch at school every day.

[1357] She's like, do that.

[1358] And I was definitely filled with fear at this moment because I'm like, okay, I'm quitting the thing that I was planning to do.

[1359] My dad's a professor.

[1360] Laurie is a professor.

[1361] All these people.

[1362] Myers professor.

[1363] I don't know what the path forward looks like.

[1364] Also, the path you were on is highly predictable.

[1365] If you achieve this and you achieve that and you get through this, you'll do that.

[1366] The degree of unknown increased dramatically.

[1367] Yes.

[1368] And I ended up sending a cold email to Samantha Power's husband, Cass Sunstein.

[1369] And I was like, hi, I'm Maya.

[1370] I have no public policy experience and I've published nothing of significance.

[1371] You've never heard my name before.

[1372] But I would love a job and public policy.

[1373] And I remember I did this, Monica, I don't know if you can relate, I did this very stereotyped female insecurity thing where I set myself up for failure.

[1374] I said, I know I'm not cool enough to work with the likes of Obama.

[1375] But if you have an idea for state or local government, that would be amazing.

[1376] That's all I'm asking of you.

[1377] And thankfully for me, Cass ignored my insecurity.

[1378] He wrote back within like, I don't know, two minutes and said so generously, goes, oh yeah, I'll introduce you to President Obama's science advisor.

[1379] just let him know that I sent you along.

[1380] And then within three days, I'm pitching them on this White House position.

[1381] So anyway, that was an example of me quitting and then literally venturing into the unknown in a space where I had no credentials and was really a fish out of water.

[1382] And I remember I was so determined to get this job, guys.

[1383] Like, I packed in my bags and I signed a one -year lease in D .C. Before I even had a formal job offer from the White House.

[1384] I was like, I hear whether you like it or not, I'm going to make myself get myself this job.

[1385] Yeah.

[1386] That email, it's the humility thing.

[1387] It's like, don't worry, I know I don't deserve this.

[1388] I know I'm not good enough for this.

[1389] We've all established that.

[1390] Don't worry.

[1391] Don't think I think I'm better than I am.

[1392] It's a lot of prefacing.

[1393] That's exactly right.

[1394] And that's maybe what I was getting to at the beginning of the interview, which is I think for so much of my life, I've been, I don't know if it's trained or like, you know, I also just don't take myself very seriously.

[1395] And so it's really hard for me to promote in that way and be like, no, I do think that I deserve this position.

[1396] And so now I'm finally getting to the place where I can start to feel comfortable when I do, I mean, there are lots of things I'm unqualified for.

[1397] But when I do feel unqualified, just trying my best to say that out loud.

[1398] Okay.

[1399] This is juicy.

[1400] We must distinguish the spectrum from the binary.

[1401] So either you're a blow heart, you know, either you brag about yourself or you completely diminish your skills and underplay who you are.

[1402] Forget gender, race, everything.

[1403] If I get an email from a human being A who says, I'm going to run this place like a boss, I'm out.

[1404] That's a dangerous person to me. Humility is something I want to see exhibited.

[1405] So what do we do about this?

[1406] Because I agree there's a terrible historical pattern of women selling themselves short, under singing their own accomplishments.

[1407] All that is true.

[1408] But I don't believe that the antidote to that necessarily is like bullish.

[1409] arrogance or no humility or forget that you're a woman.

[1410] That's email you should have sent.

[1411] You don't fucking know a goddamn thing.

[1412] You're not ready to do what you did.

[1413] It turned out you did what you did and that's awesome.

[1414] But it was appropriate for you to say a local level might be a nice stepping style.

[1415] In that moment, it felt honest and accurate.

[1416] But I do wonder whether was it so essential for me to call that out in the email.

[1417] I don't know.

[1418] I don't know either.

[1419] I don't think it's either or I don't think you have to be super humble or be bullish.

[1420] You can just be honest.

[1421] You can just be honest.

[1422] Like, you know, I actually don't have any experience, but I think I can offer this.

[1423] Please consider me. You know, you can say that.

[1424] That's not arrogant to say at all.

[1425] That's just being like, this is what I have to offer.

[1426] I also know my place.

[1427] And not like, and I know like it's a big, it's a huge leap and like, it doesn't have to be either.

[1428] And also, you know, maybe there's just a truth.

[1429] And maybe you want somebody who's applying to have some humility in their email.

[1430] But maybe cast doesn't or maybe somebody else doesn't.

[1431] So maybe, you know, you'll find the right match.

[1432] You're honest to yourself.

[1433] But, Dax, I think one thing that you said, which I think is very thought provoking is...

[1434] What if you said problematic?

[1435] There were many things that were problematic on one of them that was thought provoking.

[1436] Thank you for letting me give you shit during this interview.

[1437] It's very fun.

[1438] As a woman, I might see men being dicks in getting what they want.

[1439] Yeah.

[1440] But that doesn't mean that I actually want to in any way emulate their behavior.

[1441] My ideal, that's what you're getting at.

[1442] It's like the ideal state of the world is actually not over -confident or assholes and are just doing whatever they need to get the thing, I believe fundamentally in being a decent person, expressing humility when humility is warranted, but then also not going out of one's way to diminish themselves.

[1443] And that's where that, like, hopefully perfect balance lives.

[1444] I would never want you to undersell your actual strengths.

[1445] Like, I would never want you to come up, like, because it's intimidating or I'm so smart, I'm going to downplay how smart I'm.

[1446] Like, your true gifts you should own.

[1447] But I would just say in that situation, you actually didn't have the true gift of a policymaker.

[1448] I agree.

[1449] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1450] So I don't think it, I don't know that for me it falls into that like female thing as much as just like the human reality that this was going to be a new endeavor for you.

[1451] And you were acknowledging that, but I'm a fucking brilliant this and a brilliant that.

[1452] I think that's right.

[1453] I think you're helping me see the email differently.

[1454] Again, it was warranted.

[1455] Because this is my sadness for black performers.

[1456] Not only do they have to get into the hardest job on the planet, which has become.

[1457] a movie star.

[1458] You then are also bridled with this responsibility to be a social activist for the black community.

[1459] It just seems unfair.

[1460] It was already harder for you to get here.

[1461] And now you have the added responsibility.

[1462] And I think something can be said as well for women, which is like, it's already harder for you to get in these boardrooms.

[1463] And then on top of it, you have the weight of being a woman on your shoulders and how you're representing women and am I doing it right?

[1464] You know, that's just a lot.

[1465] And I think it can lead to sometimes being too critical on oneself when it's not as deep as that maybe.

[1466] I don't know.

[1467] I actually want to get to a couple things of yours that I wrote down, but this was so flowy and vibey that we didn't need any of this stuff.

[1468] Your podcast is called A Slight Change of Plans.

[1469] I wonder if you could give us an evaluation of, I think we attribute the polarization in this country to a lot of things, to social media, to algorithms, to mouthpieces that have driven that.

[1470] But again, to be compassionate towards, us.

[1471] The rate of change is unprecedented, right?

[1472] Technology is fucking moving at a pace it's never moved at.

[1473] Biotech's about to move in a pace that's just going to be mind -blowing.

[1474] Societal change is happening faster as helped by social media and whatnot.

[1475] Could we give people a little bit of a break, which is we know, I just read the molecule of Moore.

[1476] Have you read that?

[1477] It is so fascinating.

[1478] And there's all these studies about conservatives and liberals.

[1479] And liberals in general are more dopamine genic.

[1480] They're dopamine searchers.

[1481] And you are released dopamine when you experience something novel or unknown.

[1482] And so people with high dopamine levels, they like change.

[1483] Biologically, they prefer change.

[1484] And the conservatives...

[1485] By the way, this whole liberals have more...

[1486] It just sounds like a very suspicious finding.

[1487] You think it's too...

[1488] I'm just saying that my spidey sense is up.

[1489] Like, is that a real finding or was that a finding and then an author decided to...

[1490] And that could be the case.

[1491] Okay.

[1492] Sounds like at a minimum, like a very broad generalization slash simplification.

[1493] Okay.

[1494] Okay.

[1495] That's all.

[1496] Yeah.

[1497] But if we, for two seconds, we just accepted this.

[1498] Just two seconds.

[1499] Biologically speaking, people could be more adverse to change.

[1500] Yes.

[1501] They could be the holders of tradition, which we need these people in our society.

[1502] If it is possible that biologically you could be a little bit predestined to be conservative or liberal, I'm compassionate to people who might be biologically more conservative and who are more adverse to change.

[1503] And those people really are living in the craziest time you could be a conservative and be adverse to change.

[1504] And I think some level of compassion should be shown in understanding to that.

[1505] It's not just that they perceive the world's changing so radically.

[1506] It is changing.

[1507] It is.

[1508] And there's an acceptable amount of fear that's coming with that from some people.

[1509] So I do wonder if some of it is like, it's not our fault.

[1510] Like the level of change that's happening around us is really causing kind of a divide where it used to be like if you're let's just call it a spectrum you're you know five you love change zero you hate it yeah in 1971 you could do fine it wouldn't really be exacerbated but our society is such now that I think it could be exacerbating these things that aren't really are yeah I mean I think it's important to make a distinction between our tolerance for societal change and our tolerance for individual change, change within ourselves, change within our personalities, the lives that we live day to day.

[1511] And maybe that's where my skepticism book was coming from, which is I imagine the conservative political philosophy is around not wanting to see change, but those individuals might still be okay with, you know, going through divorce and getting remarried or taking on the new job.

[1512] So on an individual level, I just want to know whether that dopamine thing is relevant.

[1513] But anyway, yeah, it's interesting to think about us getting like more polarized around this concept of change broadly.

[1514] I mean, I think the aversion to change certainly transcends political allegiance.

[1515] I think, you know, you guys know about the status quo bias, that we tend to prefer business as usual.

[1516] inertia is extremely powerful.

[1517] It's very hard for us to stomach big life changes, especially ones that are unexpected or unwill.

[1518] Well, I've observed it now, which is like no one wanted to go into quarantine.

[1519] That's a huge radical change.

[1520] No liberal wanted to do it, no conservative wanted to do it.

[1521] And then crazy enough, some people don't want to come out of it.

[1522] Yes, exactly.

[1523] Because we get used to our ways, right?

[1524] We obituate very quickly.

[1525] So it's not even the thing.

[1526] It's the change into a thing that's really probably more of the problem.

[1527] It was very humbling to do this podcast because I'm going and thinking I know about the science of change and then my guests are teaching me new things and new angles and new perspectives and new contours of change that I hadn't appreciated before.

[1528] So before going to this podcast, I would give different advice to someone based on whether they were going through a willed or an unwilled change.

[1529] Oh, this is a great distinction.

[1530] And because that's how I compartmentalize the world.

[1531] I'm like, there's the changes we want, and then there's changes we don't want, and I'm going to give them the same advice.

[1532] And I started to realize that's maybe not a reasonable way of compartmentalizing the world.

[1533] And that is because we are very, very bad at predicting the ways in which a narrow change in our lives will spill over into other parts of our life.

[1534] Change does not happen in a vacuum.

[1535] I think we fall prey to this cognitive fallacy where it's like, oh, I'm just going to change this one part of myself.

[1536] but the rest of Maya will stay completely fixed and stable and unchanged in the face of that.

[1537] An example of this coming through is I interviewed this woman named Elna Baker.

[1538] Her life mission was to become thin.

[1539] She felt like if she could just lose the weight, she would be able to achieve her dreams in life.

[1540] And every door would unlock for her.

[1541] And so in a five and a half month span, she lost close to 100 pounds.

[1542] And for a while, she did feel that she was living this dream life until she started a real, that she was becoming a worse person, that interestingly, she had become more self -conscious.

[1543] She had lost some of the irreverence and boldness that she had exhibited before she lost the weight.

[1544] She felt more superficial.

[1545] She felt in many ways that she has this device of calling herself like Old Elna and New Elna that Old Elna was so worthy of love because old Elna was so kind to people and was so generous and warm.

[1546] And then New Elna didn't have to do shit and people were being so nice.

[1547] to her.

[1548] And it really disenchanted her.

[1549] It made her feel very jaded and disillusioned about the world.

[1550] And so here was this change that she willed, that she thought was going to be the game changer in her life.

[1551] But she didn't anticipate all the ways in which it was going to spill over in negative ways, all the negative consequences that this will change would have.

[1552] And the flip side of that is, you know, I'm talking to Scott the cancer patient who's saying, my worst nightmare came true and here I am surprising myself with the fact that I've more or less reached my old happiness levels.

[1553] Like, the worst moments are worse, but the emotional thermostat has prevailed.

[1554] And I think in addition to not being good at predicting our own hedonic states in the future, how other parts of our personality will change.

[1555] Because again, Elna mistakenly believed it was almost like a magic trick.

[1556] She just walks through the mirror.

[1557] And she's Elna, but she's just thin Elna.

[1558] But actually, the dream version of Elna that she envisioned relied on old Elna personality.

[1559] In order for her to greet her dreams and be fearless and have every door open, she needed the boldness of old Elna that she lost in the process, right?

[1560] But in addition to not anticipating how we ourselves individually respond, we can't predict the ways in which people will respond differently to us as a result of our change.

[1561] And so there was a very poignant example of this on the podcast.

[1562] So I interviewed a black man named Morgan Givens.

[1563] He was assigned female at birth, and then he went through hormone therapy to align his body with his true gender identity, which is to be male.

[1564] And he said at first it was intoxicating to be liberated from his female body, right?

[1565] The joy of not carrying that identity around with him, which he did not identify with.

[1566] But then he said that his joy was short -lived when he was soon confronted with the harsh reality of being a black man in society.

[1567] Oh, wow.

[1568] So he's experiencing this transition initially where he was working at Target at the time and he's talking about transitioning from female to male and how the tenor and his voice like people to take him more seriously and the broadness of his shoulders was getting his manager to now his manager witnessed his transition so he knew Morgan when he had presented as female but he's now offering him a raise and giving him management position so he was sealing, oh my God, this is insane, this difference.

[1569] So Morgan's vantage point is incredible because he knows what it was like to be treated as a female.

[1570] But then he gets pulled over by the cops.

[1571] And again, he says, oh, it's so stirring.

[1572] He says, I was caged again.

[1573] I'm not as free as I thought I was.

[1574] Oh, my God, it just, like, it moves me. And he ends up joining the police force.

[1575] Oh, wow.

[1576] And becoming the first openly trans police officer in the DC force.

[1577] And, wow, his story is incredible, but that's an example of he can, inspire this change within himself, but he cannot control how people are going to respond to him.

[1578] It's a fascinating set of reflections from someone who's been through it.

[1579] People have these stories they tell themselves, which is like if I get made partner, I'm going to buy a house.

[1580] Once I get a house, I'm going to find a wife, and then I'm going to have a good.

[1581] So they build atop this one thing, so many things that are multivariable.

[1582] And like, can we all kind of do that?

[1583] If I get this, it doesn't stop there.

[1584] If I get this, I'll get to stop it.

[1585] that coffee shop every day.

[1586] I'll get to see that person.

[1587] All these things are going to happen.

[1588] We plan and prescribe.

[1589] Yeah, and I do think we are terrible cognitive forecasters, terrible at predicting what will make us happy or not, but also how quickly the high of a good piece of news will last and how long the negatives of a bad piece of news will last.

[1590] And it turns out we respond very quickly from the great news.

[1591] It takes a little longer with bad news, but we also more or less achieve those same happiness set points.

[1592] And again, understanding this field has just made sense.

[1593] be so I have so much humility with the way that I approach my life and change now because I realize I'm going to grow from the change, you know, in some way.

[1594] But, you know, as one as my guest said, like, you won't get what you think.

[1595] Yeah.

[1596] You'll grow in some way, but you're not going to get what you think.

[1597] And I think that's so well said because if there's one common theme across all of the guests in this season of a slight change of plans, it is that they have surprised themselves in some way or another.

[1598] To your point, Dax, their expectations of what reality would be like and then how reality actually unfolded.

[1599] There was some disparity there.

[1600] There's some disconnect.

[1601] I've met very few people that they aimed at something.

[1602] They achieved that and it was exactly what they thought it was going to be.

[1603] And it just seems to be.

[1604] My therapist tells me all the time, change always comes with a loss.

[1605] Even what you perceive as the best change, as moving up, it comes with a loss.

[1606] And so that's part of why change feels bad even when it's good.

[1607] because you are losing something and the things that you thought like even moving up from being an assistant it's like you never ever ever would think you would be losing something there you're only gaining you're gaining status and you're gaining probably money and but you are you're losing I mean in my case like I think a safety you're losing protection from someone above you like there's so many expectations you now feel that you have to rise to each and every day people to let Exactly.

[1608] Yeah.

[1609] And to your point, you can't forecast that.

[1610] No one knows, but you do have to go through life knowing whatever change you're about to experience, it will come with the loss.

[1611] And unexpected consequences.

[1612] I mean, I think going back to the advice piece about giving the same advice now to someone going through a will or an unwilled change, it would be to approach change with a profound amount of humility and to audit yourself through your change experience.

[1613] Be mindful.

[1614] Like, are there ways in which I'm changing that are not desirable right now?

[1615] Are people?

[1616] responding to me in a way that's distorting my sense of self?

[1617] Like, have a careful eye on all the other parts of yourself when you're going through a change in one area.

[1618] I'm going to, I just want to run through like three really quick things so I can ultimately ask you this question.

[1619] But in your study, there's so many radical things that you know about, understand.

[1620] So there's all these like tricks in how we think.

[1621] And I just want to go through a couple of them, like endowment effect, that you value things more if you own them or you earn them.

[1622] Yeah.

[1623] And that people answer questions in predictable ways if they feel like they own or have earned something.

[1624] Like one neat thing you brought up was veterans.

[1625] Yeah, yeah, I'll tell this.

[1626] I'll tell this story.

[1627] So when I was working in the Obama White House, I was trying to help veterans access a employment and educational benefit that they were eligible for when they returned from their years of service.

[1628] And this benefit is very important because the transition from military to civilian life can be very fraught, right?

[1629] You are having to reacclimate to this new environment.

[1630] You're maybe dealing with a mental health issue as a result of your time overseas.

[1631] You've stalled your education, right?

[1632] So we really wanted veterans to take advantage of it, and we saw that participation rates were lower than we had hoped.

[1633] But we were very budget constrained.

[1634] So my teammates and I were given this one email to work with, and they were like, have at it, do what you want with it, but that's all you got.

[1635] It was a marketing message about the program.

[1636] And we ended up changing just one word in the email.

[1637] Instead of telling vets that they were eligible for the program, we simply reminded them that they had earned it through their years of service.

[1638] And that one word change led to a 9 % increase in access to the program, which is amazing.

[1639] And, you know, I think the psychology behind that is when you own something, now you have something to lose if you don't take advantage of it, right?

[1640] It's yours to have.

[1641] It reminds me. I listen to a podcast that had this great thing about how Facebook, you used to be a able to object to a picture someone posted of you and it gave a drop down menu of what the reason was like that's not me I don't know this person I'm embarrassed something else other yeah everyone click other they're very confused by this they changed a very simple word they change it too it's embarrassing not I'm embarrassed in that simple change of it's like it's objectively embarrassing it's not my vanity it's not my ego this is objectively embarrassing all of a sudden like 75 % of people clicked that thing when they reported why they didn't want this photo.

[1642] And just the ownership of that vulnerability was just calling it's or I. And the brain is like that.

[1643] So related to the point about I versus it's, I think that actually reminds me of this other concept in behavioral science called identity priming.

[1644] And it is the idea that when we give ourselves an eye label or other people give us a label, we act in ways that are consistent with that identity.

[1645] So this can be used for good, right?

[1646] It's like if you voted in a past election, I say, you, Monica, comma, voter, or, you know, Dax has donated to the Red Cross, like, hey, I see you're a charitable guy, right?

[1647] You can use these identities for pro -social purposes, but they can backfire when they lead people to unnecessarily cling to their past.

[1648] So a concrete example of this is when I was working the Obama White House, I was working on reentry guides for folks who are leaving prison.

[1649] And this is a forward.

[1650] looking guide, right?

[1651] It's meant to help folks find jobs reacclimate into their communities, what have you.

[1652] And we looked at the guide, it was using problematic language.

[1653] It was using language like ex -prisoners or ex -convicts or formerly incarcerated.

[1654] That is not productive.

[1655] So we did a scrub and the new labels were community members, job seekers, right?

[1656] Forward -looking identity labels that strip people away from the I, right, relevant to your example, the I was this.

[1657] And instead of, I will be that.

[1658] I will be this new thing.

[1659] And we know from tons of research that if you use more forward -looking identities, it's much easier to facilitate these kinds of behavior changes within ourselves, right?

[1660] And to open up the space for us to explore new commitments or new patterns of behavior or what have you.

[1661] Yeah.

[1662] Detaching that identity from yourself.

[1663] Yeah.

[1664] So there's so many tricks that you've learned, and this is my last question.

[1665] do you manipulate the people you are in relationships with?

[1666] I'm being serious, with this knowledge.

[1667] So when you wanted to ask your husband something, do you quickly go like, well, I phrase it this way as identity?

[1668] That is hilarious.

[1669] No one's ever asked me this question, Dax.

[1670] I don't say that as a compliment.

[1671] So I will say, so one, when it comes to behavioral science, I think it's actually really important for listeners who appreciate this, it is a very limited tool.

[1672] I think sometimes people see behavioral science as a silver bullet.

[1673] It can solve all of our problems.

[1674] Actually, human behavior is extremely hard to modify.

[1675] And certainly, as we talked about earlier, changing people's minds is extremely hard to do, like 10 times harder than that.

[1676] And the reason I say this is that I have found that nudges are only effective when people want to take some action.

[1677] Yeah.

[1678] But things like laziness or procrastination or confusion are coming into play.

[1679] If they don't want to do that thing, you're not going to succeed.

[1680] They're just not that powerful.

[1681] It's the age old sober thing.

[1682] You literally can't get someone sober who has.

[1683] Doesn't previously have a desire to.

[1684] Exactly.

[1685] Because I think sometimes my field can be made to be sexier than it really is.

[1686] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1687] And I just feel like I need to be the sobering thing.

[1688] Yeah, tamper it down a little bit, which is there are absolutely limits.

[1689] We're not able to do extraordinary.

[1690] things with these small tweaks and framing, but they can serve as a powerful nudge when the person already has that intention.

[1691] And so that's one thing to realize.

[1692] When it comes to my husband, well, you say like, you're such a great husband.

[1693] You've conventionally always been so generous to me. Jimmy, you are so great at doing the dishwasher.

[1694] Oh my God, your commitment to cleanliness is amazing.

[1695] The best nudges are transparent ones.

[1696] I don't think there needs to be any layer of deceit or manipulation.

[1697] because good nudges work whether or not you know they're there.

[1698] Like, if you know you're being nudged, look, the doctor in the office knows the number has been changed from 30 to 12 in terms of opioid pills, right?

[1699] They're not being fooled.

[1700] We're not like pulling one on them.

[1701] They're very aware it just gives you that moment of reflection.

[1702] So I have never felt the need to, like, covertly use behavioral science, right?

[1703] My husband, he's a software engineer, but he knows enough of behavioral science just by, like, being married to me, that he's aware of all these principles, So sometimes, you know, there's some jest around it, like with the cleaning thing.

[1704] He'll even say something to me and I'll be like, wait a second, are you identity priming me?

[1705] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1706] Are you trying to make me a better spell?

[1707] It's like, are you reverse psychology in me?

[1708] Yeah, exactly.

[1709] Yeah, yeah.

[1710] And then I just, I feel lucky in that I don't feel that I have to.

[1711] Our minds are wired similarly enough that we can just engage in conversation about stuff we disagree with.

[1712] I will say, though, do I harness everything I know about the human mind when it comes to how I live my life?

[1713] Of course.

[1714] So here's a good example of one.

[1715] Have you manipulated me throughout this?

[1716] I'm going to have to replay this whole thing in my head and see if I got led around by a leash.

[1717] I feel like maybe there's like reverse manipulation happening here in this moment.

[1718] Who will out -manipulate the other?

[1719] Who's doing what?

[1720] But here's a good example.

[1721] So I know from the research, right, how hard it is to change one's mind about something and how much we hate admitting we're wrong.

[1722] Because when we admit we're wrong, we threaten our values or our opinions, which we attach to our identities.

[1723] and so then you can just spiral into this existential world where all of a sudden you don't even know who you are anymore.

[1724] And I'll just add you think you've lost some credibility that in the future I will no longer be listened to.

[1725] Like you're putting some weight on it that doesn't exist.

[1726] Even though the research shows when you admit weakness, when you admit you're wrong, you get more credibility.

[1727] I know, counterintuitive.

[1728] My husband and I, when we do admit that we're wrong, the other person will like enthusiastically back pat on that person.

[1729] That is so awesome that you admitted that you're right.

[1730] wrong.

[1731] You know, I really admire that you don't let pride get in the way of admitting that you're wrong.

[1732] And so we're so, and it's not something we did intentionally.

[1733] I think initially it's just our understanding of the science, but it's like, let's incentivize the other person to admit when they're wrong by creating this space where there's some element of joy and appreciation for having made that admission.

[1734] I am far more impressed by people who can admit they're wrong than someone being right about something.

[1735] It's far more impressive.

[1736] It's much, much harder.

[1737] It takes a lot more bravery.

[1738] I completely agree.

[1739] You know, I'll get like manager feedback and stuff from my direct reports at work.

[1740] And the best compliment that I ever got from a direct report was, you're so easy to admit when you're wrong.

[1741] And I was like, that is the best for me personally.

[1742] That was the best compliment I could get because if I can model that it's okay to be wrong, then everybody else on my team can hopefully feel that same level of comfort.

[1743] And then we just do better work together.

[1744] For sure.

[1745] Because no one's hiding behind their egos or pride and you're not letting those things get in the way of ultimately just doing productive work together.

[1746] Well, in my last attempt to make you also love me back in return, everything I said was wrong.

[1747] You're saying that?

[1748] Yeah, I'm wrong about everything I said today.

[1749] I'm trying to get a pat on the back.

[1750] Dax, you are so insightful and you have just, you've completely transformed my perspective on the world.

[1751] Thank you so much.

[1752] Maya, you're so radical.

[1753] You must come back.

[1754] We didn't talk with half the stuff we were supposed to, and that's always the sign of a great guest.

[1755] So thank you so much for coming.

[1756] This has been a blast.

[1757] chatting with both of you.

[1758] Thank you for having me in your attic.

[1759] Yes.

[1760] You're coming back for sure.

[1761] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1762] You'll be back next week.

[1763] That sounds great.

[1764] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Badman.

[1765] There we go with that gas we've talked about.

[1766] Pervasive gas I have.

[1767] Burping is such a big part of Stern's show.

[1768] Oh.

[1769] I was like, that's a lot of burps he has, more than I ever have.

[1770] Sure.

[1771] And now I find myself here, generally the beginning of these, because we've generally just pounded lunch, which is what we're currently doing.

[1772] Yeah.

[1773] And then I come in a little gassy.

[1774] Okay.

[1775] Do you think this is an age thing?

[1776] Yeah.

[1777] The systems are, they're fatigued.

[1778] Yeah.

[1779] They were working hard for you for a long time.

[1780] So, anyways, we just had a snack.

[1781] You got some to go from Houston's.

[1782] You took your folks to Houston's.

[1783] I was upset because your father ordered the fish.

[1784] Right.

[1785] And your mother ordered the steak.

[1786] Yeah.

[1787] And neither of those are their signature dishes.

[1788] I know.

[1789] They're calling card dishes.

[1790] I know.

[1791] You want them to get what you like.

[1792] Well, I want them to have that apex experience there.

[1793] I know.

[1794] And we have been before and they got, I don't remember what my dad got the first time, but my mom got one of the signature dishes, ribs.

[1795] Yes, yes.

[1796] Can't go wrong with the ribs there.

[1797] She loved them, but she wanted to try something different, I commend.

[1798] I do too.

[1799] I do.

[1800] It's brave.

[1801] I'm a creature of habit.

[1802] I guess, let's put it this way.

[1803] Like, if you had a friend that tried McDonald's for the first time, and they got the salad and the grilled chicken sandwich, wouldn't you be like, well, you shouldn't even go on to McDonald's?

[1804] No. If you're going to go to McDonald's, get a Big Mac and get some fries.

[1805] You've got to have the fries.

[1806] You've got to have a big Diet Coke.

[1807] I don't want to hurt your feelings.

[1808] Okay.

[1809] But this is you just deciding what you like the most is what everyone else likes the most.

[1810] Because if I went to McDonald's and I was with this person and they said, I'm going to get a salad and grilled chicken sandwich.

[1811] Well, and they had never been to McDonald's.

[1812] Right, right, right, right.

[1813] And then I was like, you know, they're known for this.

[1814] There you go.

[1815] And then they're like, yeah, but grilled chicken sandwiches are my favorite food in the world.

[1816] So I'm going to get that.

[1817] Then I'd be like, yeah.

[1818] I guess that makes sense.

[1819] I might then go, well, let's go someplace that specializes in green food.

[1820] grilled chicken sandwiches.

[1821] Like, what is it that has?

[1822] Square One has a beautiful grilled chicken sandwich.

[1823] It's artful.

[1824] We're getting off topic because grilled chicken sandwich is not even part of this.

[1825] Okay.

[1826] I guess right, you would just go, well, you know, the thing that made them a worldwide chain is the Big Mac.

[1827] Sure.

[1828] You might want to try it.

[1829] Yes.

[1830] And then if they do not want to try it and they want to go with the thing that they know they will enjoy, then I think great.

[1831] Go with God.

[1832] Do it.

[1833] And by the way, they were both so happy with their meals.

[1834] They were both so happy.

[1835] They're very grateful people.

[1836] Well, I don't think it's that.

[1837] I think they just like those tastes.

[1838] I'm sure, look, there's no way it was bad.

[1839] It was Houston's.

[1840] But I think I know what I would have done if I was there.

[1841] I would have observed all this.

[1842] I might have mentioned like, you know, they're known for their French dip.

[1843] But they would not have wanted French dip.

[1844] I will tell you that.

[1845] My dad would not like it.

[1846] He doesn't like steak or prime rib?

[1847] No, French dip is.

[1848] It's very raw.

[1849] Rare?

[1850] It's very rare and raw.

[1851] It's rarely raw.

[1852] That's really not for him.

[1853] He gets his steak well done.

[1854] Oh, wow.

[1855] Yeah, so French dip would not have been a go.

[1856] Okay, so what I would have done is I wouldn't have pressured them and I wouldn't have tried to make them feel self -conscious about what they chose.

[1857] And I would have been like, I'm going to order a couple extra sandwiches probably to go.

[1858] and I would order the staples, and they would just be there.

[1859] I'd be like, oh, these are extra if you want to take a bite.

[1860] Right.

[1861] Is that, that still too pushy?

[1862] No, that would have been fine.

[1863] Okay.

[1864] But they probably would have felt some sort of like need to.

[1865] Obligation.

[1866] This is why I can't.

[1867] You don't want me to go out to eat with them.

[1868] Yeah.

[1869] Okay.

[1870] I'm too controlling.

[1871] No, no, no, no. It's not that you're too controlling.

[1872] It's that I...

[1873] You're very protective of them.

[1874] Yeah.

[1875] Yeah.

[1876] And I get really uncomfortable if I know they feel.

[1877] that they have to like appease you or something and you're doing your thing which is like being nice but also wanting them to try your stuff and then it's a comedy of errors yeah but i'm in the middle of it and i want to die and yeah and everyone's less happy exactly it's so interesting i was telling you this i have so much anxiety with your parents around when they're here only when they're here not when i'm home right not like being around them causes it it's when they're here and I am just, like, scared.

[1878] Mm -hmm.

[1879] Well, I think there's a few fears happening, right?

[1880] One is everyone's fear of, like, if someone visits you, you want to entertain them, you want them to be happy, you hope they're having a good time, they've traveled across the country.

[1881] Yeah.

[1882] So there's that, which is natural.

[1883] Yeah.

[1884] And then I also think you have the added thing of, like, will they mesh with my world?

[1885] Yeah.

[1886] I think that's true, but that's less and less as the older I get and the long I think.

[1887] chill of all the parents.

[1888] I know all the parents of all the pod members and your parents are as chill as the next group.

[1889] No, they are.

[1890] They're easy to be around.

[1891] Yeah.

[1892] Your dad's a great conversationalist.

[1893] Your mom's hot.

[1894] Okay.

[1895] Well.

[1896] Yeah.

[1897] What's matter?

[1898] I actually was thinking I was looking at your mom when they came over the other night.

[1899] I was like really dissecting her face.

[1900] Well, just taking it in.

[1901] Sure.

[1902] I think in the past of when I've met them, I don't, for whatever reason, and I haven't taken that in.

[1903] And I was like, intoxicated by my dad.

[1904] Yeah, yeah, that's probably right.

[1905] And I was like, oh, normal is really pretty.

[1906] Like, I really like her face.

[1907] That's nice.

[1908] Yeah.

[1909] She is.

[1910] We were just talking about this, actually, last night.

[1911] My mom and dad and I, because I said that I have this memory that my grandmother was talking on the phone to her sister.

[1912] And her sister asked about me. And I was little, like, you know, 10 or 11 or whatever.

[1913] and her sister asked about me and if I was pretty and then she said she's okay.

[1914] Oh, okay.

[1915] But my parents actually think I made this up.

[1916] Like they don't think that story happened, which, you know, of course I got a little upset about and who knows.

[1917] Yeah, yeah.

[1918] Because they were like, well, how would you know that?

[1919] When you start poking around, yeah, it's like, how did you hear what the friend asked?

[1920] So she would have had to repeat the question in the answer, like on a press junket.

[1921] Well, no, I think what happened is she said my name.

[1922] Like when I visit in the memory, I know where I was.

[1923] I was jumping on the couch.

[1924] You were an animal.

[1925] You're poor grandma.

[1926] You were shoving her and slapping her and licking her legs and jumping on her couch.

[1927] Mainly looking her, yeah.

[1928] You really wanted her attention.

[1929] Yeah, and I did a lot of jumping on the couch.

[1930] And I was doing that.

[1931] It was after our soap opera session.

[1932] So I had to get my energy out.

[1933] Yeah, because you'd watch all of her programs.

[1934] And she said my name.

[1935] But, you know, she's speaking in Molly Ellen, her language.

[1936] And that's what my dad said.

[1937] She was like, you wouldn't be able to understand she would have been speaking in the field.

[1938] Yeah, she probably wouldn't have even said okay in English.

[1939] No, she would have said Monica.

[1940] I think she said Monica.

[1941] Right.

[1942] So then I thought, oh, she said something about me. And then I think I asked her.

[1943] Oh, okay.

[1944] What did you say?

[1945] Uh -huh.

[1946] And then she told me she asked how you were and if you were pretty.

[1947] And then I said, what'd you say?

[1948] And she said, yeah, she's okay.

[1949] Yeah.

[1950] So again, like that exact, that exact, transcript could happen to me in my daughters, and I'm making a joke.

[1951] I said you're okay.

[1952] Oh yeah, she's not.

[1953] She doesn't make jokes like that.

[1954] You sure?

[1955] I'm a hundred percent positive.

[1956] We would know that, yeah.

[1957] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1958] I think she cared at that time more about like, you know, looks, well, especially for an Indian grandmother.

[1959] Like, you're thinking about husbands and stuff like that.

[1960] Like, it kind of factors in.

[1961] I'm going to go a step further.

[1962] Compared to the reflection, she was seen in her own mirror every day for her whole life?

[1963] Yeah, everyone's okay looking, truthfully, being who she is, the most beautiful person ever lived.

[1964] But my mom said that my grandmother was also just that way.

[1965] Like, she wouldn't, she never really would give it up for any of them.

[1966] Yeah.

[1967] And so my mom, I think, grew up also thinking she was really not attractive.

[1968] In the shadow of that.

[1969] Well, not even that.

[1970] Especially your grandpa, because that song, when.

[1971] You're in love with a beautiful woman, you'll watch ass.

[1972] Okay, well, I don't think he was doing that.

[1973] He wasn't nervous.

[1974] No. Oh.

[1975] He's so confident.

[1976] Anyway, I just think some of this stuff gets passed down, right?

[1977] Like my mom isn't getting that kind of validation from her mom, and so I don't think she really did that for me, not on purpose, but just that's not in her body to do.

[1978] Really quick.

[1979] So it's your mom's mom?

[1980] Yeah.

[1981] Oh, my gosh.

[1982] You thought it was my dad's mom?

[1983] Yeah.

[1984] My mom looks like her.

[1985] Yeah.

[1986] Let's get some pictures of your mom younger.

[1987] Yes.

[1988] I don't think I've seen her.

[1989] Well, I have the picture of me on Instagram when I'm a baby.

[1990] Okay.

[1991] I mean, this is a very casual photo.

[1992] Oh, yeah.

[1993] Mm -hmm.

[1994] Beautiful smile.

[1995] Yeah.

[1996] Big eyes.

[1997] You don't have her nose, though.

[1998] I don't.

[1999] You do not.

[2000] I did not get that nice nose that side.

[2001] Oh, I like that.

[2002] Yours.

[2003] Oh, thank you.

[2004] Yeah.

[2005] But my, my grandmother has a very angular.

[2006] Look at this.

[2007] You know what, you really, I don't know why it, it took me so long to realize this.

[2008] I guess your mother started this.

[2009] You're right.

[2010] The fascinating thing about Indian children is they look like fucking adults.

[2011] You look like, you look like a miniature 30 -year -old lady in this photo.

[2012] Like, it looks like your mom has a miniature friend that she knows from computing.

[2013] co -worker that she lets sit on her lap and I guess it is the eyebrows and the hair it is there's so much hair because if you take that out it's still a baby face yeah yeah yeah but from far away if you like put all those babies all like in business wear and they're far enough away you would definitely think they were all adults I hope do you think you would mind about this it's so funny because I asked Husson, I got to stay with Husson recently.

[2014] Yes.

[2015] And I said to him on day one, like, I need to know up front, are you the kind of comedian that's going to like put in your routine, your stand -up shit we talk about?

[2016] Because if you're that type of comedian, it's going to affect how I interact with you.

[2017] Yeah.

[2018] He's like, no, he's like, A, I'm not that kind of comedian, but there are times when I do it, but I've always asked.

[2019] Oh, that's nice.

[2020] Okay.

[2021] Yeah, I guess he's got some Camel jokes that he has, but he's asked Camel if he couldn't say them or whatever.

[2022] Okay.

[2023] So it's ironic because now I'm about to say something about his personal life, but I don't think he'd mind, which is I met his daughter.

[2024] Yeah.

[2025] Ruhi.

[2026] She came around the corner and it was like, I can't even explain what it was like.

[2027] Why?

[2028] Because she came so spunky?

[2029] All I know is there's like the cutest miniature human being all of a sudden entered.

[2030] Yeah.

[2031] It was so much spunk and sparkle.

[2032] And I just was so, I thought she was the cutest thing.

[2033] I heard.

[2034] Yes.

[2035] And I was like, oh, yeah, her eyebrows are fully grown in.

[2036] They're fully there.

[2037] Uh -huh.

[2038] Yeah.

[2039] Yeah, that's an Indian thing.

[2040] It's cool.

[2041] Cool job, Indians.

[2042] Yeah, they come out with eyebrows.

[2043] If you listen to the J .B. Smooth, you know, it's helpful because then you can look someone in the eyebrows.

[2044] That's the window to the soul for him.

[2045] Yep.

[2046] Yeah.

[2047] If they're a baby, you get to get to know them very quickly.

[2048] I guess, yeah, they're telling more.

[2049] Yeah.

[2050] Anywho, so I just was, I think some of these insecurities get passed down is all I'm saying, absolutely but such a ding ding ding like i'm amazed that we're on this topic and mayas who are talking about yeah maya is a beautiful indian woman so beautiful yeah i mean this comes up in the conversation about obama like can you can you be more aware of someone who's beautiful like we talk about this in this interview yes yes all i think is it would it might be advisable to never talk about it but it would also be dishonest to say it has nothing to do with anything.

[2051] That part I like push against.

[2052] Like pretending that humans aren't attracted and find things visually stimulating and all that stuff's working in your head, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

[2053] Well, I think it's okay to acknowledge it, but maybe it doesn't, yeah, maybe it doesn't need to be this big...

[2054] To do.

[2055] Right.

[2056] I'm probably wrong on this.

[2057] You know, the older I get, I'm just wrong on everything.

[2058] Well...

[2059] I'm very aware when I find someone attractive.

[2060] Like while I'm talking to the attractive person, it's a part of it But attraction, again, is so many things It is so many things Anyhow, so my God So my first fact is about Did Obama say Kamala was hot Oh Which he did, like I brought that up And he did?

[2061] Yeah, this was years ago And he got in trouble Obama was so sorry for the remark And quote for the distraction Created by his comments Okay Obama said of Harris You have to be careful to First of all say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough.

[2062] And she is exactly what you'd want in anyone who's administering the law and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake.

[2063] Then he said she happens to be by far the best -looking Attorney General in the country.

[2064] Obama did not want in any way to diminish the Attorney General's professional accomplishments and her capabilities.

[2065] Obama acknowledged that for women, people noticing what you look like in the office is not a feature but a bug.

[2066] He fully recognizes the challenges women continue to face in the workplace and that they should not be judged based on appearance.

[2067] Hmm.

[2068] And it is complicated.

[2069] It too, it also might line up along gender lines a little bit, which is like, no dude in America is going to be bummed that someone said he's a great president and sexy.

[2070] Right.

[2071] And I said that.

[2072] If you're going by the cardinal rule of treat others how you want to be treated, that can run into troubles because guys want to be treated differently than women want to be treated.

[2073] Well, no. Women are treated differently.

[2074] than men are treated.

[2075] So that's the factor.

[2076] If everyone was treated all equally, these conversations might not have to exist.

[2077] But because women aren't taken as seriously as men in a lot of workplaces and then look, start factoring.

[2078] You know, it gets very complicated.

[2079] Oh, from the female's point of view, I'm crystal clear on why it's problematic.

[2080] Right.

[2081] Oh, my gosh.

[2082] How many Rolls Royces did the Bogwan have?

[2083] Oh, God.

[2084] Can I guess?

[2085] Yes.

[2086] I want to say it was like 38 or something insane like that.

[2087] 93.

[2088] 93.

[2089] That doesn't make any sense.

[2090] They don't have 93 models.

[2091] The Rajneishi, the guru and his community.

[2092] Okay.

[2093] So they together had 90.

[2094] Collectively.

[2095] I bet he was the only one to riding in him.

[2096] I know.

[2097] I know.

[2098] So anyway, of course we talk a lot about manifesting.

[2099] Yeah.

[2100] We had a subsequent email exchange with her.

[2101] That's right.

[2102] And we came to see eye to eye.

[2103] We actually do agree, the three of us agree.

[2104] Yeah, I mean, I will say you and her 100 % agree because you gave a definition that she really liked, which was, I think I would define manifesting as the unavoidable confirmation bias you attach to your story.

[2105] That's what you said.

[2106] And that's what she agrees with.

[2107] I agree too.

[2108] What I think is not mutually exclusive is to believe in manifesting and to believe in.

[2109] everything happens for a reason.

[2110] She was connecting those two things.

[2111] Yeah, I don't connect those things at all in my head.

[2112] Me either.

[2113] I don't think anything happens for a reason.

[2114] No, I don't either.

[2115] But I do think, I think you can put energy into a thing.

[2116] People do it.

[2117] We see it.

[2118] Schwarzenegger in his book, Education of a Bodybuilder, written in 1978, this guy has no shot at being a movie star.

[2119] Yeah.

[2120] None.

[2121] He doesn't speak English, Monica.

[2122] He's fucking three times the size of every other actor on planet art. Yeah.

[2123] He's not going to become a movie star.

[2124] And he says, I'm going to become the biggest movie star in the world.

[2125] Oh, my God.

[2126] This is all an excuse for me. No, it just occurred to me midway through I could do this.

[2127] Okay.

[2128] And then I'm going to get into politics and maybe become president, the governor of a huge state.

[2129] And he did.

[2130] And no, that is not possible what he's predicting in 1978.

[2131] He's delusional.

[2132] And guess what?

[2133] He believed in his delusion.

[2134] Yeah.

[2135] There's something there.

[2136] Saying it doesn't make it.

[2137] true but if you put all your energy into something you are subconsciously taking steps to get there i think i think that's more what it is i also think one of the tricks is you actually have to believe it like he believed that i wouldn't have believed that writing that in 1978 i wouldn't have believed that about myself he did believe that yeah so i think if you believe in the story then yes you only see confirmation of yeah yeah anyway you said you heard a podcast saying facebook it's embarrassing I'm embarrassed.

[2138] I think that was on our show.

[2139] I think maybe Tristan told us about that, perhaps.

[2140] Tristan Harris.

[2141] Said what?

[2142] Oh, oh, oh.

[2143] No, I remember where I was driving to the Sand Dunes listening to the whole thing.

[2144] It was on Sam Harris's at some point.

[2145] I definitely heard it too.

[2146] I think it was Sam Harris's podcast.

[2147] Okay, so that wasn't a good fact because I still don't know.

[2148] That's all right.

[2149] Well, okay, that's it for Maya.

[2150] I gave you nothing today.

[2151] I burped, then I was dehydrated, then I talked about women's physicality, and I tried to defend it.

[2152] And here we are.

[2153] We have nothing to air.

[2154] Wow.

[2155] Do you feel like free?

[2156] No, I feel like I failed, but I'm at an age where I'm like, yeah, some days I'm going to fail.

[2157] Okay, that's fine.

[2158] We got to continue.

[2159] You got to do better.

[2160] Okay, well, let's do better.

[2161] Okay.

[2162] Well, that was that.

[2163] We love Maya.

[2164] We had so much fun with Maya.

[2165] Incredibly interesting.

[2166] Way too young to have done all the things she's done.

[2167] She might be a vampire.

[2168] that would be exciting and she's playing it like there's nothing metaphysical oh and she's a fucking shape shift and vamp all right well I'll see you tomorrow see you tomorrow follow armchair expert on the Wondry app Amazon music or wherever you get your podcast 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.

[2169] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.