Laurie Santos

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

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Moniston Mouse Man. Hi.

[3] How you doing?

[4] Good.

[5] It's the sunny day in Los Angeles.

[6] It is.

[7] We had a little rain yesterday and now the sun's back.

[8] Yeah.

[9] Today we have Lori Santos, who is a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale University.

[10] You know, she has the most popular class in Yale's history on happiness.

[11] And she is also the host.

[12] of the podcast, The Happiness Lab.

[13] So everyone should listen to that.

[14] She's very fascinating and has such good tips for wellness, for feeling happy.

[15] Especially right now.

[16] Especially right now.

[17] So please enjoy Lori Santos.

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

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

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

[21] He's an obtrancement.

[22] Hi.

[23] First and foremost, please excuse our tardiness.

[24] Two minutes was really tough.

[25] Well, we had a little conversation.

[26] We're in Monica's apartment, and she was, look at, first, let me say, I'm always the one that's late.

[27] So this is not to throw her under the bus.

[28] But she was doing some things.

[29] I said, I think we're getting close to what, and she said anything four minutes or under is fine.

[30] What's your stance on that?

[31] Yeah, I think four minutes are under.

[32] As academics, we always have this window for class.

[33] It's usually like a six -minute window, right?

[34] Oh.

[35] Can the students leave?

[36] At my school, the students could, like, leave after 10 minutes if the professor didn't show up.

[37] What's so messed up is, so my undergrad institution had it that you could leave early.

[38] Like, that was like you left before the end.

[39] But then the Yale institution, like, it was switched.

[40] And so it was like this weird culture shock of like some people showing up early and some people leaving early.

[41] And it was kind of messed up.

[42] Lori, we're so excited to talk to you.

[43] And you came to us by way of what I think is a God living among us, which is Malcolm Gladwell.

[44] He emailed me and said, you really need to get hip to Lori.

[45] And let's just take one second to talk about how much we love Malcolm.

[46] No, Malcolm's fantastic.

[47] I think I met Malcolm for the first time.

[48] I was like a new assistant professor.

[49] I had just started up at Yale.

[50] And he was doing this dinner party with one of my colleagues.

[51] And the whole time I was just like, Malcolm Gladwell.

[52] This was like right when I think the tipping point had just come out.

[53] I was just like, God among men, you know.

[54] Yes, Apex Gladwell.

[55] As I was learning about you today, Lori, I got really excited because you've done a ton of primate work.

[56] Yeah?

[57] I did psychology, not anthropology, but it was like an anthropology side major, unofficially.

[58] You got a BA in both biology and psychology, yeah, from Harvard?

[59] Yeah.

[60] Although it was kind of a little bit of a trick, though, because they just started this new joint major.

[61] And so they hadn't really worked out, like, which classes you needed to take yet.

[62] I managed to get a biology degree from Harvard by taking the minimum possible amount of biology classes, which is embarrassing now when I try to teach things like genetics, because I'm like, you know, that stuff.

[63] AC, G, C, C, T, whatever, just keep it going.

[64] Exactly.

[65] Did you have a lab as part of that?

[66] I did some lab stuff, but not that I remember super well.

[67] Mostly I did animal behavior stuff.

[68] That was like my main thrust in biology, hence the monkey work.

[69] What was the genesis of your working with animals or studying animals in relation to human psychology.

[70] Well, it actually came out of a hatred of running human experiments.

[71] I started doing work when I was like a freshman working in a lab that studied humans.

[72] And we were studying this thing called implicit memory, which is just this phenomena that the stimuli that are in your world are kind of affecting you without realizing it.

[73] So if I give you a list of words that are all related to elderly people, you can kind of prime that without you realizing it, right?

[74] But the whole point of this effect is like you're supposed to not know what's happening.

[75] But it's something we teach, We teach, like, in the intro psych class.

[76] So I, you know, freshman Lori, go in to try to test implicit memory in these freshmen who are taking a class about implicit memory.

[77] And at the end of every study, I'm like, did you have any ideas about what the study was about?

[78] And everyone was like, was it an implicit memory study?

[79] And we were like, yes.

[80] And then we'd have to throw out their data.

[81] And so part of the move to go to animals, I was like, animals don't have hypotheses about what the study is about.

[82] They're not like messing up my data with their big conscious thinking brain.

[83] And so that was part one.

[84] Yeah, so let's digress for a second.

[85] This is one of the most fascinating aspects of Anthro, which is like they're studying humans for a hundred years and you just almost can't study humans.

[86] And we're trying to figure out the study you're a part of and you're almost probably trying to be a great subject and help the professor or a person doing the study get the results they want.

[87] Like it's all we're too conscious of all the things, right?

[88] Yeah.

[89] And it's super, I mean, that and it's like super hard to get it, what humans are really like because of all these cultural influences, right?

[90] Like if I want to study the human, it's hard to not be studying the American human or the Zimbabwean human or like, you know, your culture prevents me from knowing what's really built in to being a human.

[91] And so monkeys, for both of these reasons, were a breath of fresh air.

[92] Like, they don't have all these cultural influences messing with them.

[93] And they definitely don't know that they're in your study.

[94] They don't want to do a good job in your study.

[95] Sometimes it feels like they might actively not want to do a good job in your study.

[96] Sure.

[97] I listen to your podcast and there's a couple different areas and I really wanted to explore and I'm kind of obsessed with status.

[98] So many primates are highly social animals.

[99] We're the apex of social animal, right?

[100] And so we have so much hardwiring and evolution to make us cohesive in a group.

[101] And I think we're largely unaware of it, right?

[102] So I do wonder, even in your primate studies, like your capuchins, right, they're very smart.

[103] Did they ever interpret your status as?

[104] being like alpha, do any of the people conducting the experiment become the alpha?

[105] Yeah, not so much with my guys, because status wasn't that much of a thing, like they had their one alpha male and so on, but researchers in chimpanzee labs report this all the time.

[106] In fact, what's super interesting is you get cultural differences in these different primate labs.

[107] So the chimpanzee labs in, say, Japan, the chimps are really clued into who is the high status researcher.

[108] So if you come in and you're like Joe freshman, like I was in that experiment, the chimps will just like dominate you and you can't get them to do anything or whatever.

[109] But then the PI, the like principal investigator, big head honcho comes in.

[110] And all of a sudden the chimps are like, oh gosh, I'll do everything you want.

[111] And so it's like the chimps are somehow, which is such a cool question, they're somehow implicitly picking up on the human status.

[112] It's not just like we're all higher status.

[113] It's like, well, some of the humans might be higher status.

[114] But like some of them are completely low ranking and I should just abuse them.

[115] Yeah.

[116] And the conclusion would have to be that we're sharing so much nonverbal communication that they are able to witness how we look the length of time, who has the floor the longest.

[117] They're probably just aware of it subconsciously as we are aware of it.

[118] Yeah, I mean, they're not looking at people's academic titles.

[119] Like, somehow we're giving off these cues that we don't even realize, which is so fascinating.

[120] It is.

[121] It is.

[122] I love it.

[123] Okay, so let's go through your history a little bit, because I always like knowing why people gravitated towards the thing they did.

[124] So you're from Massachusetts.

[125] I'm probably saying that wrong.

[126] I have a hard time with that word.

[127] And your dad is from a chain of islands that I would have only known because the Canary Islands are close.

[128] Yeah, so my dad's side of the family is from Cape Verde, which is a set of islands off the coast of Africa.

[129] Very few people in the U .S. are from Cape Verde, but they tend to, like, cluster in cities that were big, like, sea ports or whaling ports in particular.

[130] So like when the whaling ships would kind of go around Africa, they would sort of stop and fuel up in these tiny islands off the western coast of Africa called Cape Verde.

[131] And then Cape Verdeans were like, I'm going to get involved in this.

[132] This seems like a great lucrative enterprise.

[133] And so they wound up kind of in Massachusetts.

[134] Like my hometown, New Bedford, is the town of Moby Dick, right?

[135] So it's like a big whaling town, you know, from back in the day.

[136] And so you get these kind of tiny clusters in seaports.

[137] But it's sort of an African -Portuguese mix.

[138] I'm like biracial by nature, but even more biracial because, you know, one of my sides is already biracial by nature of the way those islands work.

[139] And mom was a guidance counselor in the school you actually attended in Massachusetts?

[140] Yeah, that's right.

[141] And so she, she always really loved education and kind of wanted me and my, my brother to, like, go off and, you know, get the best education we could.

[142] She kind of instilled that in us from a really early age.

[143] Were you delivered?

[144] I try.

[145] Check off the box.

[146] You know, that was always a passion of hers.

[147] But it wasn't necessarily something everybody in my town did.

[148] Like, I don't know anybody else from my town who, like, went to Harvard or, like, went to Ivy League schools and things.

[149] So it was kind of a, it was kind of a strange thing to do to kind of double down.

[150] It was like a working class town, I assume.

[151] Yeah, because, I mean, it was back in the Moby Dick days.

[152] It was the richest town in the U .S., but, you know, whaling's not like a super huge industry anymore.

[153] There wasn't new industry that kind of came in.

[154] Yeah, I never see the whalers on the Forbes 100 list.

[155] I know.

[156] I don't like the little stock.

[157] There's a suspiciously absent.

[158] Yeah.

[159] So, yeah, so it wasn't in a town where a lot of people went off to these schools, but it was awesome.

[160] I mean, it completely changed my life.

[161] It's nowadays when I advise high school students, you know, I'm like education is the way to completely transform what your opportunities look like.

[162] It definitely worked for me. But why were you drawn to psychology?

[163] Because I have a really offensive theory on most psychology majors, which is generally they were from a pretty fucked up home and they kind of wanted some answers or they themselves feel all drifting a little confused upstairs and they need some answers.

[164] What was your motivation?

[165] Yeah, I wasn't as fucked up.

[166] Maybe that's because I never wanted to do clinical psychology.

[167] Like I never wanted to be a shrink or help people.

[168] I was just fascinated by people.

[169] I was like one of these nerdy kids who like your, the mom was always like, go play with your friends.

[170] Like, stop hanging out with the adults.

[171] Like I just wanted to kind of be watching people and pay attention the whole time.

[172] Are you the oldest?

[173] I am the oldest.

[174] Yeah.

[175] Yeah.

[176] So I was always psychologist even before I was technically an academic psychologist.

[177] Yeah.

[178] And it sounds like your interest is in an interest I share, which is like I'm deeply curious about why people do the things they do.

[179] Like more than any other things.

[180] And most specifically why I do the things I do because so often I think I know why.

[181] And then upon closer inspection, I don't know why I do it or I have to learn because there's all these biological impulses in the mix.

[182] There's there's ego.

[183] There's culture.

[184] It's so dense how much stuff is contributing to our decision making, right?

[185] Do you think you know why you wanted to know why people work the way they did?

[186] People are just weird.

[187] Like we're weird as organisms.

[188] Like there are no other species on the planet that is kind of like us.

[189] You know, we should be just one of billions of other species, or there should be some species that are kind of like us, you know?

[190] We're just, even our closest living relatives are smart, but they're not making podcasts or having art around them, like, communicating, like, sharing ideas that are in my head with your head, like, no other species does this.

[191] We're, like, so weird.

[192] But at the same time, we're also just, like, not good at understanding our own psychology.

[193] Self -insight is a problem for our species, even though we're so smart.

[194] And so I think that was something that always fascinated with me. And then I think I was drawn to the discipline to be like, I'm going to figure this out.

[195] And then what the discipline taught me is like, no, what's built in is just all these biases, all these stupid strategies, intuitions that are just completely wrong and leading you astray all the time.

[196] Thanks a lot, natural selection.

[197] Like, what did we, you know, wait around for?

[198] This sucks.

[199] Yeah.

[200] For me, the tastiest thing I can learn.

[201] And it's why I love Malcolm Gladwell is almost his entire work is in pursuit of debunking a very commonly held intuition.

[202] I mean, that is a deeply fun thing about psychology, but also a deeply frustrating thing about psychology because we get that our intuitions are wrong, but we actually don't have fantastic solutions for fixing those intuitions.

[203] Like the mere act of realizing like, hey, my intuition was wrong before.

[204] It doesn't immediately update it, which means you can be like an expert psychology and have like the years of training that I do and still suck at life and still have really bad intuitions.

[205] Oh yeah.

[206] And still get it wrong all the time.

[207] Do you think that humans, I actually don't know if this is true, but I think it is, that humans have the highest emotional capacity than other animals.

[208] So we get blinded by those in a way that others don't.

[209] Yeah, I think we're, I mean, part of the problem is like we're carrying around these sort of like old school emotions and tendencies.

[210] You know, some people call it our lizard brain, but I don't know if that term's fantastic.

[211] But basically, like, we're carrying around this old school architecture in our minds.

[212] At the same time as we have these really smart frontal lobes that can reason and do all this stuff.

[213] but the interaction between those just doesn't work.

[214] There's also all these just ways that our brains are shaped that just make no sense whatsoever.

[215] Now that I'm doing work in the happiness space, one of the ones I've been super interested in recently is so it turns out that the circuits that govern wanting in the brain, like what you crave and what you go after, are just completely different than the circuits that govern liking.

[216] Like what you're actually going to appreciate when you're getting.

[217] So I know, like, from your history, Dax, you probably know, you see this a lot in the context of addiction, right?

[218] Like, you're craving and wanting systems like, go get this drug or go get this thing.

[219] But then you get it and you're like, I'm super habituated to this.

[220] This didn't even work, right?

[221] And the system doesn't update.

[222] I mean, it's just like not working in the way that we think.

[223] And then the flip side is true, right?

[224] Like there's all these things that feel really nice when I do them.

[225] You know, for me, it's like meditation or like a really hardcore exercise, but I don't have like a craving like I do for, you know, like a sugary snack or like a drug user would have for heroin.

[226] And I just have to like force myself to be like, no, no, no, it's going to feel like.

[227] good, like, just force yourself to do it.

[228] But then I like it.

[229] And I'm like, systems, why can't you just freaking talk to each other?

[230] Like, everything would be so much easier.

[231] Yeah.

[232] And is that because the chemistry that the frontal lobes, I have to imagine that the frontal lobes kind of in charge of the pleasure behind meditating or things that are, you know are productive and positive for your future in a sense.

[233] But though the chemical actually isn't as strong is that reward center one that is like fuck, eat, kill, all those things.

[234] There's just no comparison in the strength of those, right?

[235] Yeah.

[236] Part of it is that like, There's just certain things that wig out the dopamine system.

[237] That's that reward system.

[238] Like, you know, heroin, which is basically kind of almost like synthetic dopamine in certain ways.

[239] Like drugs mimic these chemicals really well.

[240] So part of it's that the chemicals are different for the good stuff that we really like.

[241] But part of it's just like the systems are different.

[242] So the liking system is registering information, but it's not updating in the wanting system.

[243] And that just means there's this disconnect.

[244] There's actually cool kind of techniques you can use to try to get it to update better.

[245] one actually is mindfulness and sort of taking time to pay attention.

[246] You know, if you are really mindful about what you like, you know, after, after meditating, you're like, that feels really good.

[247] I feel really calm now.

[248] You can kind of get your wanting system to notice a little bit because it's like, oh, wait, there was a reward there.

[249] Like, spritz a little dopamine.

[250] Like, I should update things.

[251] Yeah.

[252] And in my experience, because I'm a very big proponent of exercise, that I actually mentally have to link the negative thing that's very, very powerful for me. So it's like, I know what I feel like in the absence.

[253] of exercise.

[254] And that almost has to be my motivator versus the marginal uplift in my mood after I exercise.

[255] Yeah, I think both of those are super important.

[256] Yeah, for me, it's noticing the good parts afterwards, which I tend not to do.

[257] I had this wonderful yoga teacher once who at the end of a practice would take a moment when you're in Shavasana to be like, notice how you feel right now.

[258] Like really notice how you feel and if it's different from how you felt when you started or whatever.

[259] And again, my liking system's like, wait a minute, this feels nice.

[260] We should do this again, you know?

[261] We should get together again.

[262] I totally agree with you.

[263] I've had that sensation post -yoga where I'm like, wow, this is the sedative I always dreamt of when doing drug.

[264] Yeah, it's one of the many tools we don't employ when we're feeling bad.

[265] I mean, there's evidence now that like a half hour of really strong cardio can be as effective as a prescription of Zoloft, which is one of the leading anti -depression medications.

[266] But, you know, psychiatrists don't prescribe, you know, exercise to people.

[267] They prescribe pharmaceuticals.

[268] So we forget that there are other things that can give us those hits, especially if we're paying attention to the benefit in the end.

[269] Yeah, I think the NHS right in England, they, years ago, stopped prescribing SSRI inhibitors for people with mild depression and instead prescribed access to a gym or some kind of, you know, trainer -related exercise that did yield in the long -term better results, which is fascinating.

[270] It's tricky because I almost feel like the liking system is attractive.

[271] to things that take time that are slow processes and the wanting system is like a quick fix.

[272] Yeah, totally.

[273] If you can get a, you know, a heroin level bang to your dopamine system, the wanting system notices that and it really likes it, right?

[274] But yeah, the slow burns, you know, it doesn't notice as much.

[275] But, but again, it's so frustrating when you think evolutionarily because, like, I don't know if every quick hit evolutionarily was like the thing that we really wanted.

[276] Like, I don't, you know, natural selection could have built in some slow burns.

[277] It had go after them, you know, but somehow it never did.

[278] So you get the BA in biology and in psychology, and then you get your master's in psychology, and then you get a PhD in psychology, all from Harvard, Monica, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, we love fancy schools.

[279] So impressive.

[280] And you have the distinction we interviewed Tall Ben Shahar, and I do think it's interesting right out of the gates that he teaches the most popular class at Harvard, which is on happiness, and you teach the most popular class in the history of Yale, which is also on happiness.

[281] Yep.

[282] So what I would glean from that is like we all deeply want to be happy, right?

[283] I mean, yeah.

[284] I mean, I think that's like exactly the right intuition.

[285] What's also funny is that Tall did this about a decade before I did.

[286] You know, his class was huge and famous at Harvard.

[287] And then, you know, he went off and became a popularizer and did other things.

[288] And then many years later, I did the same thing at Yale and got all this press for it.

[289] And what was funny was in every article I got interviewed for.

[290] I was like, you know, this was like my idea.

[291] Like there are other schools that did this before me, but that somehow it never makes it into the media.

[292] But yeah, I think people really want to figure out what they can do to be happy, you know.

[293] And I think in this day and age, people really want evidence -based strategies for what they can do to be happy.

[294] You know, these days, I think students aren't as much drawn to the humanities or great literature to explore this question of how to live a good life.

[295] I think they're like, what does the science say about living a good life?

[296] You know, give me the neuroscience of the good life.

[297] And so I think that's part of what drew people to my and tall's class, which I think is a fall.

[298] I think my read is a lot of the stuff in science right now is just validating what great literature and philosophy told us before and good religions and things like that.

[299] But, you know, bracketed, I think the way students want it is they don't just want, you know, to hear what somebody did.

[300] They're like, show me the graph that this makes my anxiety better.

[301] And then I'm going to do it.

[302] So to that exact point, I watched you on the news recently in reference to COVID.

[303] And you had given five tips on how to feel good in quarantine.

[304] And I got to say, four or the five are like tenants of AA.

[305] And I was like, isn't this interesting that like some of these things are known, but they do eventually take data to be recognized as real?

[306] So your first tip was deep belly breathing, right?

[307] Yeah.

[308] It's important to explain because I think people can sometimes get pissed off when I give this tip because everyone's had the experience of like, you know, getting really mad.

[309] And somebody's like, just take a deep breath.

[310] You know, but scientifically, we know that this is one of the few ways we can hack our autonomic nervous system.

[311] So quick biology lesson, even though I didn't really take the right biology classes, but I got enough to do this one.

[312] You got enough for this podcast.

[313] Yeah, this is like, we're good, we're good.

[314] But your sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight system.

[315] Like, it evolutionarily is built so that when there's like, you know, a lion about to jump out and attack you, you can either freeze or flee.

[316] Like, it's ready to like tighten your muscles, get your heart beating fast.

[317] And to do that has to shut down all the other normal systems.

[318] Like your digestive system shuts down, your immune function shuts down, your sexual system shut down.

[319] It's just like run away, right?

[320] No. We are now in the context of COVID, and in the context of lots of life stressors, just like activating that fire or flight system constantly, right?

[321] It was never made to be on repeat, like a YouTube video that keeps going.

[322] It was meant to play the one, two minute spot and then shut off.

[323] But we don't do that.

[324] And in the context of COVID, I think it's really hard to shut off because this crisis isn't going away.

[325] The one way our bodies have to hack it, other than actually shutting off the threat, which isn't possible, is to, to regulate our breaths such that our bodies think the threat is gone.

[326] You know, if you're sprinting from a lion, you cannot take deep breaths, right?

[327] You're just like chest breathing.

[328] You're like running a marathon, right?

[329] But if you're just like really slowly take a deep belly breath, then your mind is like, well, hang on, there can't be a lion.

[330] We're not running away anymore.

[331] There's no lion.

[332] Activate the vagus nerve.

[333] And once you do that, you kick in the opposite system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system.

[334] That's what's like the rest and digest.

[335] It turns back on your immune function, turns on your digest.

[336] question and all that stuff.

[337] But the key is that the way you kind of turn it into high gear, the way you turn on the rest and digest, is actually through your breath.

[338] That would happen naturally if the lion ran away and things went back to normal and it was chill.

[339] You'd be taking deep breaths, but you can kind of force it and sort of hack the system.

[340] So the statement that usually pisses people off of like, just take a deep breath.

[341] I'm like, no, no, this wonderful neuroscience of like hacking your autonomic nervous system.

[342] Totally works.

[343] Your breath and your heart rate and your brain are all connected up.

[344] And, you know, there are a few ways to hack the system because it's good.

[345] You don't want to have full control over your autonomic nervous system because, like, you might not turn it on when it needs to go on.

[346] But this is one way we can do it in a nice way.

[347] And it has these corresponding effects on our heart, on what we're thinking about, on what we're able to think about.

[348] Lots of evidence that those kinds of breaths can reduce anxious thoughts, right?

[349] Because, again, your mind's not just like, threat, threat, threat, threat, where's the lion?

[350] It can, like, you know, scale back and focus on the stuff we want to focus.

[351] on.

[352] I'm just now realizing it as you explain it.

[353] I think that's part of the major appeal to me for motorsports.

[354] You're exercising this exact same thing.

[355] So every single turn is a challenge and every single turn has the stakes of death potentially, I suppose.

[356] So it forces you to be in control of that panic so that you're doing your best thinking and you're staying calm wallet.

[357] And it's just lap after lap of almost mastering that of pushing that feeling aside and keeping yourself aware and calm and making good decisions and there's something very rewarding about that you know a lot of people kind of get a high from it but also self -report being like almost zen afterwards right and i think that ability to like shift back and forth can be really powerful because we definitely do like things that put us in like death situations this is another stupid weird thing about human nature is that we love sticking ourselves into awful negative emotion situations like yeah i'm a huge i'm a huge fan of Halloween and i love watching these haunted houses that show the like snap of people, like, freaking out when they're getting scared.

[358] If you showed those pictures to an anthropologist who study fear, they'd be like, these people are miserable, but these people pay, like, 60 bucks in some cases to have someone do that to them.

[359] Why is that?

[360] We talk about that on here a lot.

[361] Like, what is happening there?

[362] I think when we have fear of things, we want to get as close as we can to the thing we're afraid of, but in a safe way so that we can process it, like work through it.

[363] So I think that's why we enjoy murder mystery shows, because it's like it's our ultimate fear, but we're consuming it in a safe environment.

[364] We know we're safe, but we get to experience enough of it that we can kind of comprehend it.

[365] I don't know.

[366] Give us the real reason.

[367] There's not, I think people are still fight about that.

[368] It's actually a great mystery.

[369] My colleague here at Yale, Paul Bloom, has a whole book on this about how pleasure is kind of weird, right?

[370] But that's one of the theories.

[371] It's like we're sort of practicing what those things feel like.

[372] And that's true for fear.

[373] That's true for sadness, right?

[374] Like, why do people watch depressing movies?

[375] You know, Why do people watch, you know, terms of endearment or something like really super, super sad?

[376] That's dumb.

[377] Like with sadness, it doesn't feel good, right?

[378] But we like to engage those things like fear and sadness, even disgust or pain sometimes.

[379] There's people who eat the really hot, hot chili peppers.

[380] So it's almost at the point of really hurting your mouth, but not that bad.

[381] I'm going to gross you out so much.

[382] I told the story once on here, but I have this very distinct childhood memory of coming up on a pile of horse poop in the woods.

[383] and I could not stop staring in it.

[384] It was making me sick and I hated it.

[385] And yet I'd even walk away and then I had to go back and look again and to get to the brink of throwing up.

[386] I have no clue why that was happening, but it was a good 15 -minute exercise and just grossing myself out.

[387] Yeah, looking at half the subreddits, you know, like they're not like pleasant things.

[388] People really dig stuff that's weird.

[389] Anyway, yet another feature of the mind.

[390] But yeah, back to the breath, I think, regulating your breath, controlling your sympathetic nervous system, is a way that we can make the threat not as threatening right now.

[391] And I use it.

[392] I can watch myself kind of get really anxious if I'm panics rolling on Twitter.

[393] And I've just been realizing like, okay, this is a time to do just like three deep belly breaths.

[394] And afterwards, you just, you feel so much better.

[395] Yeah.

[396] Okay.

[397] Number two was do acts of kindness.

[398] And of course, for NAA, that is like be of service.

[399] You have to be of service.

[400] It's a tenant.

[401] So tell us the advantages of doing acts of kindness.

[402] Yeah.

[403] I mean, the advantages are huge, and I think our culture just really doesn't realize.

[404] And this is another spot where I think our intuitions lead us astray, but also our culture.

[405] Like right now, it's all about like treat yourself, like self -care.

[406] Like as soon as COVID kicked in, it was like article after article about bathtub self -care, which is like, again, it's not that bathtubs are bad.

[407] But the point is there's an opportunity cost to do stuff for other people, right?

[408] And so there's all these data suggesting happy people do nice stuff for others, equated for income or happy person you tend to give more to charity.

[409] you tend to volunteer more.

[410] And there's some lovely work by folks like Liz Dunn and others that show that if you force people to spend their money on other people, they end up happier than if you force them to spend their money to do something to treat themselves.

[411] Yeah.

[412] Well, okay, so an AAR explanation of that is my real problem is thinking about myself and all my needs and then craving.

[413] But when I'm helping you, it's nearly impossible to be thinking about my own desires and wants.

[414] And so I'm just stepping out of that craving.

[415] It, like, it forces me to stop thinking about myself, and I find great relief in not thinking about myself.

[416] No, totally.

[417] I think as we get inward focused, you know, again, this is what the Buddhists, again, getting back to ancient traditions realized about desire.

[418] As soon as you satisfy it, it's just going to come back, right?

[419] And so, you know, the craving is just going to be a vicious cycle that you can never get over.

[420] But the hit that you get from helping somebody, you can kind of do that again.

[421] Like, you get the sort of warm glow, as scientists call it, from kind of helping other people.

[422] this is the sort of happiness that we get from doing nice things for others.

[423] It just kind of feels good.

[424] So it both gets you out of your head.

[425] But it's also that you get kind of a double reward hit because like it feels good to help another person.

[426] And then the research suggests it also helps your social connection, right?

[427] Because often the people we're helping are a social relationship that is going to give back to us.

[428] You know, the service that you're doing in AA, which is often with other addicts, you know, those people could help you when you're in a tough time.

[429] So you're developing these meaningful, important social relationships, which is also important.

[430] Yeah.

[431] Exactly.

[432] Yep.

[433] We had this discussion the other day about being charitable and whether that's just ego or not.

[434] And I was arguing no. And you were saying everything stems from a selfish perspective.

[435] I'm of an Anne Rand point of view that you can't do anything on planet Earth that's not selfishly motivated.

[436] Now, you could have different selfish motivations that have outcomes that are beneficial to all.

[437] But there's just no way you can pretend that it.

[438] is this organism on planet Earth?

[439] You're not first starting with your own desire.

[440] I guess yes and all, right?

[441] Like, that is borne out by an evolutionary perspective.

[442] Natural selection would hopefully not be leaving stuff in that was actively bad for our own reproductive success.

[443] It just wouldn't do that.

[444] Right.

[445] But that might not be the motivation in your head when you're doing it.

[446] And so as an anthropologist, you probably remember these biologists distinguish between what they call the ultimate level, which is like, why is it selfish for your own survival and reproduction versus what's the proximate level, which is like, what does it feel like to you right now in your head right and so you know if you think about why you might want to have sex with somebody at the ultimate level that is always about getting your genes into your next generation right like that's why the instincts there but at the proximate level you're not thinking about like boobies or like whatever yeah that didn't even they didn't even know that made a baby for years or when or why or yeah and so my guess is like doing nice things for others when people have this motivation works the same way right like selfishly natural and, like, oh, help other people because reciprocity and you'll get all these goods later and this is so great.

[447] Whereas the proximate level, we're like, we just feel better if we do nice stuff for other people or we just really are motivated to do nice stuff for other people.

[448] So in some sense, it can be both.

[449] And like, that's good.

[450] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[451] Yeah, I think there's there's diminished returns when we satisfy ourselves.

[452] So I can buy the perfect house and then I can buy the perfect couch and I can make the perfect meal and I can have the perfect wine.

[453] And a certain point, I'm just going to max out on things I can do for myself to amp up pleasure.

[454] It just keeps falling off.

[455] Whereas every person you help and the gratitude that you experience, that's not a diminished return.

[456] It doesn't kind of run out.

[457] Yeah.

[458] And I think this is something that happiness researchers are just starting to figure out, which is like, so everything we do for ourselves has this adaptation.

[459] The researchers call it hedonic adaptation, right?

[460] Where it's like, you know, you buy yourself a new phone and it's awesome for the first week.

[461] But then, you know, over time you just get used to it.

[462] You buy a new boat or bike, and the first time you ride it, it's great, but then time number 87 you ride it, you're just bored with it.

[463] But what's weird is the acts of kindness that we do to other people don't have that feature.

[464] I think because they're like individual.

[465] Like there's a moment you do active kindness and then you do another one.

[466] Like you just don't get the adaptation to doing more of them.

[467] Each one is as good a hit.

[468] And so you kind of end up helping yourself by investing and doing nice stuff for others because you just, it's not as subject to this adaptation over time.

[469] Yeah.

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

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[492] Okay, the third one was focus on what you do.

[493] control.

[494] And this is one we stole.

[495] I mean, honestly, it's stolen from pretty much every ancient tradition, like, you know, the ancient Stoics are these Roman folks who really wanted to control their emotions.

[496] You know, the first chapter in Epictetus, who is one of the main Stoics book is there are two things in life, the things you can control and the things you can't control, right?

[497] Like totally serenity prayer.

[498] And then, you know, the Buddhists had this wonderful parable about control, the second arrow that I use all the time.

[499] This is one of the things that's been getting me through this crisis a lot.

[500] So the story goes like this.

[501] So Buddha's asking his followers, if you're walking down the street and you get stuck with an arrow, like somebody shoots you with an arrow, is that bad?

[502] Everyone says, yep, super bad.

[503] It's like, all right, if you're walking down the street and then you get hit with a first arrow and then someone shoots you with a second arrow, is that worse than just the first arrow?

[504] People say, yeah, two arrows are worse than one.

[505] And so then the Buddha goes on to explain, the first arrow is out of your control.

[506] Like, that's the circumstances in life.

[507] That's the, like, shit happens, right?

[508] But the second arrow is on you.

[509] Like, that's your reaction to it.

[510] That's if you have a drink when things are bad or you yell at your partner.

[511] Or you, like, just are mad and stew about that one email for the whole day.

[512] Like, Buddha points out that's on you.

[513] And so the idea is don't stab yourself with the second arrow.

[514] Right.

[515] And so for me, in this crisis, I've been just, like, trying to figure out where are these spots of second arrows, right?

[516] You know, the information on the internet is scary.

[517] But the fact that I chose to look at it for four hours and not go to bed on time, that's on me, right?

[518] Yeah.

[519] But there's real power in realizing, I mean, I think it's also helpful for addicts, right?

[520] because I can think, you know, addiction and craving, all that stuff can feel out of control.

[521] But when you realize your reaction to the craving is in your control, then you're like, all right, game on, this is a thing I can work on.

[522] This is me. I can do this, you know, so it can be powerful.

[523] Yeah.

[524] And then my favorite thing, number four, exercise and healthy food.

[525] You know, we forget that what we put into our body affects our brain.

[526] And sleep is another one in this kind of category.

[527] For our healthy immune function, we need decent food and some exercise and good sleep.

[528] but we need that for our mental health too, you know, the exercise is giving you these natural highs of pushing your body, you know, moving your breath around, giving yourself a threat kind of revs up the sympathetic nervous system, but in a healthy way that shuts off when you're done.

[529] Like, it's just good for us.

[530] And I feel like we need it more than ever because we need to promote our mental health during this time, but also a lot of us, the exercise we normally did before is harder now.

[531] You know, even people who are kind of sedentary, you know, probably like walked around the neighborhood or like walk to the car to drive to work and then got out of the car and walked around, you know, I think the internet thinks the step counting is broken.

[532] Like there's some step counting universe where they're like, why are we off by order of magnitude this one?

[533] Like, what's going on?

[534] You know?

[535] Yeah.

[536] So, yeah, so I think we got to double down on good cardio and good healthy exercise right now.

[537] Well, and there was an article in the New York Times yesterday that I read about the value in even short, like even five -second bursts of exertion.

[538] What it does to your body is it actually helps break up the triglycerides.

[539] I realized like, oh, there's so many ways to fuck up.

[540] So I work out for an hour that day.

[541] But then they sit for about eight hours.

[542] And if you don't get up every couple hours and kind of move that body, which you would do at work, you'd jump up and you'd run to the elevator, whatever you would do, that cycle of like little blasts or actually end up having a impact on how many triglycerides you have the following day, which is like, oh, great.

[543] So now I've got to think about that.

[544] Like, I got to work out.

[545] And then I also got to like just jump up and sprint across the room every, you know, hour.

[546] Yeah, yeah.

[547] Although the good news there, I mean, I agree it's like work to.

[548] do that but the good news there is like it doesn't actually take that much time you know it could be that every hour we had to do like a half hour you know every half hour and half hour off but like bodies don't need that much they just kind of need yeah yeah that is true okay and now five this is one of the few things i think is absolutely magic on planet earth like there's no reason that this has the cascading effect that it just does and that's gratitude number five so gratitude this is another one that's super countercultural.

[549] We are not in a grateful society right now.

[550] We're in a gripee society right now.

[551] I see this in my students.

[552] They're all obsessed with memes.

[553] I don't know if the meme culture has pervaded in the lack of tax household, right?

[554] But like, you know, they complain about the dining hall.

[555] They complain about this and they complain about that.

[556] And it's just like the culture they're consuming all time.

[557] But happy people don't do that.

[558] Happy people are spontaneously grateful.

[559] If you ask happy people how their day's going, they don't list all the bad things.

[560] They list the good things.

[561] And there's research showing that we can hack that ourselves just by like forcing your brain to go to the good things, which we can all do just by thinking of a few good things that are happening in our life.

[562] But the consequences are huge.

[563] So one of the consequences of gratitude for whatever reason is that it helps with self -regulation, which is basically like saying no to the tempting things in our life.

[564] So people who are more grateful, even who are facing things like addiction and so on, do better off facing temptation.

[565] Dave Desteno is a professor at Northeastern.

[566] He has this idea that these social emotions are for cooperation, right?

[567] And so they're for kind of taking care of somebody else's need ahead of yours.

[568] So when you're grateful, you're kind of thinking like, oh, all these blessings I have right now, I could do something for somebody else.

[569] Like, I'm good, right?

[570] And so it causes you to be okay with self -sacrifice a little bit.

[571] So people, when you put them in a grateful state, are more willing to save money for tomorrow rather than spend it today.

[572] They're better able to forego temptations.

[573] You don't think that like, oh, this is the three things I'm grateful for and it helps you with avoid alcohol but like the data suggests magically it does again it's all very primitive which is if you're coming from a scarcity mentality where you're very aware of all the things you do not have and you're focused on the things you do not have and you want you feel like you don't have enough so of course you can't share you don't even have enough for you but if you're regularly reminding yourself of all the you know amazing things you have then, of course, you feel like you have some despair.

[574] That's exactly right.

[575] And, like, I think the idea is that all our emotions are for something.

[576] We don't just feel something.

[577] They're kind of motivating us to do something, right?

[578] And gratitude is the emotion that we think is, like, part of motivating us to cooperate.

[579] It's like, well, you know, because if somebody does something nice for us, they reciprocate or something, we feel grateful.

[580] You know, we're like, oh, that's great that somebody did it.

[581] And the idea is natural selections, dude, somebody did something nice for you.

[582] You got this benefit.

[583] You better give it back before they, you know, stop wanting.

[584] to be your cooperative partner, you better jump into that.

[585] Yeah, there's a symbiotic relationship that you need to nurture because you're benefiting.

[586] Exactly.

[587] But the consequence in our kind of proximate system is like, we just have more resilience.

[588] You know, we can forego a temptation.

[589] We can just allow ourselves to do the hard goals that we really want to do, but that take a little bit of work.

[590] Somehow magically scribbling down three things you're grateful for every day helps with that.

[591] The claim is like just the experience of that can make you be like, all right, this is a hard problem, but I'm ready to face it, which is crazy.

[592] I mean, it's crazy that the act of scribbling down the few things we're grateful for can give us that resilience.

[593] We have this, like, superpower that's just sitting there that we could use whenever, but we kind of choose not to.

[594] Well, it is the great challenge of all mental health issues is that you're asked to do something in your worst state.

[595] So the time you need it the most is the time you have the least amount of willingness to do anything or apt tight to do anything.

[596] And I get it.

[597] It's, it's all the things are like self -accelerating.

[598] And that's why in my life, I always say this in, in short, shares, which is like, my body's never in homeostasis, ever.

[599] It never has been.

[600] It's always getting worse or better.

[601] For me, it's always accelerating up, adding things that are making me feel better.

[602] Or I'm just slowly losing ground and then I had the ice cream.

[603] Now I slept in now.

[604] And then just going downhill.

[605] And then I crash and burn.

[606] Then I got to recline the mountain.

[607] You know, just for me, I'm never in a state of just like contentment happiness.

[608] There are individual differences of people who feel that more than others.

[609] But the science suggests that that's just true for everybody.

[610] My colleague, Nick Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago, has this analogy.

[611] He says, happiness is like a leaky tire.

[612] You know, like, it might be puffed up for a while, but it's slowly going down.

[613] And then you got to, you know, experience some gratitude or do some exercise or do something nice for somebody and kind of pump it back up.

[614] But this idea of happily ever after, we just like hit some level and we're good, that's never true for any good thing in life, you know?

[615] Like, if you're trying to get gains at the gym, you don't just like do leg day on Thursday.

[616] And you're like, all right, good.

[617] No more leg day.

[618] Like, that's the analogy I always use.

[619] Like we, we seem to all of us understand the paradigm of physical fitness, which is like there's no last rep with sustained great body for life.

[620] It's just an endless pursuit.

[621] And our mental health is the exact same.

[622] Can I divert real quick to talk about memes because you brought up memes.

[623] I think it's actually related to this.

[624] Because at the beginning of COVID, memes were everywhere.

[625] I mean, and I'm not into that generally, but I got so into it.

[626] It was like sending them to my friends and excited to see the new one of the day that everyone was passing around.

[627] And it felt weird because I was like, I don't do this.

[628] But there was something about feeling connected to people that like, oh, they're going through the exact same thing that I am.

[629] I relate to that.

[630] I relate to that.

[631] I relate to that.

[632] And you're like laughing because it's so dead on.

[633] I didn't look at that as oh, people are complaining.

[634] I looked at it as like, oh, everyone's seeing each other right now.

[635] Yeah, I think this is tricky, right?

[636] Because we do get that out of memes.

[637] We do get that out of griping.

[638] You know, if I'm like, let me tell you about this coworker I hate.

[639] And you'll be like, oh, my God, let me tell you about my co. We kind of share that.

[640] And we are in this weird time where, you know, it's not just like my problem that I want to gripe about.

[641] And you have to listen.

[642] Like, we all have the same problem.

[643] Like, literally all over the world.

[644] We're all facing the same problem.

[645] And so I think we can get some connection out of the griping.

[646] Like, it is a benefit of it.

[647] But there's an opportunity cost of a different way to connect, which is through the gratitude.

[648] And so this other emotion of just expressing what you are thankful for can be really powerful, especially if you do it to other people.

[649] You know, there's evidence that if you're a manager and you work on a team, you express gratitude to your teammates.

[650] It can increase their performance by one and a half times.

[651] This is actually some work by Adam Grant, who I think you have on a chair back in the day.

[652] Yeah, a huge fan.

[653] But that's crazy that, you know, the simple act of expressing gratitude to people can be so powerful.

[654] There's one study by Marty Seligman, but it might be kind of.

[655] of one of those studies where it's like a particularly big effect in the one published study, but I think it's really huge that the act of writing a gratitude letter to somebody can significantly bump up your well -being for over a month.

[656] Wow.

[657] So, like, you know, genuinely writing a heartfelt letter of thanks to someone can be that powerful.

[658] And I think, you know, the griping feels good, but like it's a quick fade.

[659] And I think at the end, we're kind of like, you know, and sometimes you can, if you do it too much and it's not the funny kind, it sort of sticks with you.

[660] And so on our season two of our podcast, we did a whole episode about griping.

[661] And I wanted to find like expert level griper.

[662] So I brought in the guys from Reply All that podcast to PJ and Alex Goldman.

[663] And so I forced them to do gratitude letters.

[664] And what was funny was, you know, they were, you know, it's really countercultural for them.

[665] But they were feeling it.

[666] You know, they felt good afterwards.

[667] Okay.

[668] So I listened to an episode of Happiness Lab podcast, which is your podcast, which is under Malcolm's company, which I didn't even know he had until I listened to yours, which is exciting.

[669] It makes me want to explore all their stuff.

[670] But you had one on grades.

[671] And as a parent of two children and we're like, we're just getting in the canoe and starting to paddle down the stream of this whole weird thing.

[672] There was so many fascinating things.

[673] And even the history of it, let's just start with the name Ezra.

[674] As soon as I heard that the guy who virtually invented the ABCD system, albeit it was written Latin and evolved to that.

[675] His name was Ezra, and I just started thinking, the only Ezra's I know are, like, hyper -intelligent, and I want the Freakonomics guys to study that name.

[676] I don't know, that is so fascinating.

[677] Shime in or not, but, yeah, yeah, major, major sidebar.

[678] But Mr. Ezra created grades.

[679] He didn't know what he was doing.

[680] This is Ezra Stiles, President of Yale back in the 1800s, and he had just had his students have an exam, because before that there were no grades.

[681] Like, grades aren't even that old.

[682] They're like only a couple hundred years old.

[683] You inherit this structure, and you can't even comprehend what instruction and learning would be without those grades.

[684] And I think it's just crazy.

[685] I mean, yeah, I mean, basically they just thought you wanted to learn, right?

[686] Like, that's why you went to school, right?

[687] So you're motivated to do this.

[688] Stiles had this moment where he was like, I should probably just write down how they did, you know.

[689] And what was interesting is two things.

[690] One is, if you look at his grades, he did Latin for, you know, kind of pejores, which was bad, and four different Latin levels.

[691] but the highest level that was what the most kids got.

[692] Like there was grade inflation, even from the moment of grades, right, which is kind of interesting.

[693] But the other thing is that he didn't tell his learners about their grades.

[694] It was just kind of for his private, like, how did I do as a teacher, you know, who got it, who kind of didn't do so well, right?

[695] And I think all of that has changed a lot.

[696] Not only do kids know their grades, but they're obsessed with them.

[697] You know, I'm not sure how old your kids are.

[698] You're just on the start, but, you know, already they know that grades are a thing and that they're being evaluated.

[699] I mean, they get evaluated in like preschools.

[700] They get their little, you know, how well they shared and all this stuff.

[701] And I think, you know, it matters for them, right?

[702] And it matters for parents, right?

[703] Because we kind of soak up this culture where grades mean a lot.

[704] Well, in that selfish way is it where we're really, it's a reflection of our own ego.

[705] Like we're doing a good job or we're doing a bad job.

[706] So it's like now we're inheriting these stupid grades.

[707] Exactly, exactly.

[708] And I think a lot of parents react incredibly strongly.

[709] We're seeing this now at Yale where in the midst of this pandemic, you know, people don't have access to Wi -Fi.

[710] they're in these yucky situations.

[711] Many institutions just said, you know what?

[712] No grades this semester just pass fail.

[713] Everything's just pass fail.

[714] And we get parents who write to us fighting about this.

[715] That was like my kid was on the verge of a minus this semester and he can't get it now.

[716] Like what can I do?

[717] Like I pay $75 ,000 and I want my kid to like get an A this semester.

[718] And you're like, we're in a pandemic.

[719] Like people are dying.

[720] Your kid's a minus is not, you know.

[721] But Laura, you're magna cum laude.

[722] And I was magna cum laude, and it is a cornerstone of my self -esteem so I can relate.

[723] That's true.

[724] It's true.

[725] I did put that on the CV.

[726] I did put that on the CV.

[727] No, but what's crazy, though, is that I think, especially in the current time, the data is suggesting that the grades are doing more harm than good.

[728] Like, what they're doing is they're reducing the student's intrinsic motivation.

[729] So every time you stick an extrinsic motivator on something, now you're not doing it for the love of it anymore.

[730] You're doing it because you're getting some other reward.

[731] The step tracker we were talking about, right, you know, you might just start because it's fun to walk around.

[732] But as soon as you get like a Fitbit that's kind of grading you or giving you stars or giving you a ding when you do a good job, you know, if you experience extrinsic rewards like I do, all of a sudden it's like it's like it's not about the steps anymore.

[733] It's about the good beep at the end or something like that.

[734] And then you kind of get obsessed, right?

[735] It doesn't feel good anymore.

[736] You want to like compete with other people.

[737] You know, it's no longer about what it started, which is it would just feel good to move my body.

[738] Now it's like, it's a thing.

[739] There's a wonderful David Sedaris essay about this.

[740] I think he calls it like the Fitbit brain where he gets a Fitbit and he starts freaking out and waking up super early to get his steps in and not hanging out with the people he cares about and is really obsessed.

[741] And then it breaks.

[742] And then he kind of realizes, you know, all this craving that he had for numbers that were like stupid.

[743] But functionally, we in our society have turned learning into that.

[744] Kids like learning just for learning's sake.

[745] Like it's fun to do puzzles.

[746] It's fun to learn.

[747] It's fun to get better.

[748] When you slap a grade.

[749] on it.

[750] It's like saps the desire that kids would naturally bring to this otherwise fun activity and makes it kind of yucky.

[751] It makes it about the grade.

[752] And there's data that grades increase the desire to cheat.

[753] So it makes kids cheat more because if it's all about the grade, if it's not about learning, just do it the quickest way possible, even if it's a little dastardly.

[754] There's evidence that grades make students take on less hard assignments.

[755] Because if you're just doing it for the grade, you know, pick the easy book.

[756] Why would you pick the long one?

[757] Like pick the super easy one to get the easy grade, right?

[758] it was the gentleman you interview because he was so man did i enjoy listening to him speak he has such a handle on this thing and he said you know we tend to blame the students we're like oh they don't even want to learn they just want the a and it's like well no the system is set up to get a's that is the incentive so what are you talking about you're disappointed that they didn't read the iliad instead of catcher in the rye of course they did because the a a a is the incentive it's the goal yeah this is this guy archie cone he like hates grades even more than i do it's a strong a very strong statement but you Yeah, I mean, his data really suggests it's making kids, not just that they hate learning, like the best kids, the kids who get the best grades, hate learning the most, which is just tragic.

[759] And they also have the lowest levels of happiness, as well as the lowest levels of self -esteem and optimism, right?

[760] And so this pursuit of grades, like, should be, I mean, you think the nerdy kids who get the A's are the kids who like really love learning.

[761] But these days it's not.

[762] It's the opposite.

[763] They're the ones who are the most miserable.

[764] You did this great job of pointing out that.

[765] So if you give people three letters and you ask them what word that is, what is that anagram?

[766] And then if you give them, you gave us a three letter one, a five letter one.

[767] And what's great is I was doing it real time.

[768] And so as Kristen, because I was on the toilet listening to it loud and she was listening to.

[769] And once you get to a nine letter word, so there's a sweet spot in learning, right, which is if it's really easy, it's not that fun.

[770] If it's kind of challenging, but you can get it, it's really fun.

[771] And then if it's too hard, it's just not fun and why pursue it.

[772] But the grading system will actually steer people into wanting to do the three -letter anagram because they will get an A for it.

[773] And that is now the outcome they want, as opposed to the pleasure of being challenged and then persevering.

[774] That's so rewarding and fun.

[775] But it lopsides that system where that's not even why you would do it anymore.

[776] Exactly.

[777] It's both not fun.

[778] And you end up engaging in practices that make you learn the least, you know?

[779] Like, imagine if we did this like for fitness, like you're like, I'm just going to like lift the lowest weight over and over again because like I can do my 10 reps right but you never challenge yourself you just don't progress right and I think what we've done is create a system where it's not about progress it's not about them loving learning it's not even about their mental health because we're seeing like you know huge hits and happiness because of grades it's really about some arbitrary thing that we want kids to do and I do think it's a little bit about like parental kind of ego in that arbitrary thing that your kid is doing too which is even more dangerous I think What is an A?

[780] An A has no value only in its relativity that a B exists, right?

[781] There's no say, A doesn't mean anything.

[782] I could define it any way I'd like so long as it's above a B. Yeah.

[783] So implicit in that to me is comparison.

[784] It would be great if an A meant something that you would achieve some level that we all respect.

[785] But in fact, it's just that you beat the rest of the people or that you beat the B, right?

[786] If you go up, up, up, upstream, that's the, that's the, this huge bit of hardware we have that we're social and we're all obsessed at all times with our status in our group.

[787] We have anxiety about where are we in this huge group.

[788] And this has been compounded by the fact that we used to live as a group of 100 people and now we're living in as a group of 7 billion people.

[789] So our anxiety level is only, you know, went up exponentially because we don't know where we fit in this.

[790] So then we come up with this arbitrary architecture to allow us to figure out where we're at.

[791] Like, do you think social hierarchy is so at the base of all this stuff?

[792] Oh, yeah, definitely.

[793] And I think it's one of the reasons students are so much more anxious now, right?

[794] Is that, you know, before, back when I went to college, like, I was, you know, quote unquote, competing with, like, other people, but, you know, I was doing my best.

[795] Now I think a consequence of the fact that literally anybody can get into a school like Yale if they have certain grades, you know, your income doesn't matter, your prep school doesn't matter.

[796] It means these kids are competing with the other billions of kids out there, and that is really anxiety -provoking.

[797] And there's this perception that the spoils of the war are really high.

[798] And so kids are foregoing their sleep, their mental health, all this stuff to get perfect grades, to get into a place like Yale.

[799] And then they get there, and they're kind of miserable.

[800] You know, it's kind of back to this hedonic adaptation that we talked about.

[801] That moment that they find out isn't really a great moment.

[802] Like the students at Yale, when they get in these days, they don't get a letter like I got back in the day.

[803] They click on this little link online and they get a little video.

[804] It says, like, you got into Yale, like, welcome to the class of 2024.

[805] And it plays this like, Bulldog, bulldog, bah, wow, wow.

[806] It plays a stupid song.

[807] And so, there are videos online if you watch this.

[808] This is kind of some feel -good, wholesome meme content of, like, students clicking on it and finding out, like, screaming and being excited.

[809] Yeah.

[810] But what students often report is the moment after that click, when they're really excited, they have this, like, incredible emptiness.

[811] Because it was like, that was all I was working for.

[812] Like, I didn't really love chemistry or any of my stupid extracurriculars.

[813] I was just trying to get this moment to get it.

[814] and now it happened.

[815] And now I'm like, okay, there's the rest of my life.

[816] Like, what's the next carrot?

[817] Like, what's the next extrinsic reward, you know?

[818] And you're probably now evaluating the effort versus reward.

[819] Like, wow, that was four years of effort.

[820] And it was for that 40 -second moment.

[821] Is that a good cost -benefit analysis?

[822] Exactly.

[823] And they're hopping right back on that treadmill because now they're like, all right, now I've got to go to Yale where the spoils of the war are even higher.

[824] And they haven't figured out, do you actually love chemistry?

[825] You know, maybe you want to be a photographer.

[826] Maybe you'd really love to be a janitor.

[827] We don't know.

[828] And then graduate top of your class and then get the best job and then get promoted to the best position at the job.

[829] It never, what's driving all of it is this primate status thing.

[830] I was so flattered to get to give this speech for the anthro class at UCLA last year or the year before.

[831] The thing I pointed out is like if I go to the Hollywood Bowl to watch a concert, I may be in the seat that is absolutely optimum for sound, for visibility to the stage, all these things.

[832] But I will throw out all of the objective things that are good about that seat.

[833] And I will evaluate, wow, there's three rows ahead of me. Those three rows are people that have higher status than me. They paid more so they have jobs that, you know, for whatever reason, I'm now uncomfortable because with the simple knowledge that there's three rows that are better than mine, even if they're objectively not better than mine.

[834] We have higherarchy hardwiring that is just killing us.

[835] And my only suggestion to anyone there was do not compare yourself to anyone else.

[836] Compare yourself to previous versions of yourself.

[837] That's the only comparison you should be allowed to do in your life.

[838] I mean, this is one of the worst hits on our well -being that you can have, which is that our well -being isn't about our absolute position, amount of money, you know, happiness level, whatever.

[839] it's about a relative amount of money, happiest level, and so on.

[840] And that means you can be objectively killing it, but still feel really awful.

[841] In one of our podcast episodes, we tell the story of Michaela Maroni, she was a gymnast who won the silver medal.

[842] And she was a meme for a long time because she made this thing called The Face.

[843] She was on her silver medal platform, and I think she was trying to kind of hold back how pissed off she was, and she just made this, like, face quite obviously super pissed off.

[844] Yeah.

[845] And so you can ask the question, like, she just won this silver medal.

[846] Like, she just, like, won an Olympic medal that proves that she's better than everybody else in the planet except one person.

[847] And it turns out that that is enough to make you feel really awful.

[848] Oh, it's heartbreaking.

[849] And actually, there's studies on this.

[850] This guy, Tom Gillivich, who's a psychologist at Cornell, he actually looks at videos of silver medal winners and codes, like, their amount of smiling and finds that they're not just, like, less happy than the gold, but they're actively showing emotions like, contempt and disgust and sadness so it's like but what's really weird about it is that and this kind gives us some hope about how to deal with the system is that if you look at the bronze medalist they're actually super happy like in some cases happier than the gold medals because what's their social comparison like they were not going to get the gold they were like many seconds away or their score was really shitty or whatever but they're thinking if i had just like screwed up a little bit more I would not be on this stand.

[851] I would be like everybody else who didn't make it.

[852] And so their reference point, which is a kind of sciencey term for this, is like everybody else who didn't make it.

[853] Whereas the silver medalist reference point is the gold.

[854] And this is where kind of the insight comes in about how you can deal with this, which is that we can't control that we experience reference points.

[855] That's just built into our primate heads.

[856] But we can sometimes take action to shift those reference points if we pay attention.

[857] So our natural reference point is sadly, because of our negativity, bias, the one that makes us feel really crappy.

[858] That's like what our brains naturally go to.

[859] But you can actually shift it.

[860] You know, if you're in the Hollywood Bowl, you could be like, hang on, let me look at the thousands of rows behind me. Yeah, yeah.

[861] Like, oh my God, this is really great.

[862] And so gratitude is one of these techniques actually that allows us to pay attention and be like, hang on, I could actually be back there.

[863] You do the reverse counterfactual.

[864] And that can, it doesn't make you feel as good as the bad comparison makes you feel bad, but it can kind to stop that negative social comparison of it.

[865] Yeah, there's this great book.

[866] I don't know if you've read, but the broken ladder, and it's all about income inequality.

[867] And it talks about there are cultures that you know, kind of consistently down compare.

[868] And there's cultures that consistently up compare.

[869] And US, of course, is like the apex of up comparison.

[870] Yeah.

[871] And it does take work.

[872] I mean, our natural reference point is the one that makes us feel pretty bad about ourselves.

[873] And what's amazing is it will totally shift depending on like what metric you're using.

[874] Like, if you're in the actor metric, it's going to be like Brad Pitt, but if you're in the like motorbike metric, it's going to be.

[875] Valentino Rossi.

[876] Okay, Valentino Rossi, exactly.

[877] You know, this is the sad thing is you can get objectively as good as possible, but there's still going to be.

[878] And this is, I think, where we make, where modern technology, you know, when we want to talk about how we can shape our modern world to fit with our evolution, our modern world really screws this up, right?

[879] Because, you know, 15 years ago, we still had this architecture that was causing us to socially compare in these dumb ways, but we didn't have people's stupid Instagram.

[880] live profiles with this like curated perfect body and content and lighting on all this stuff and 70 deleted photos for the ones that get on there and that makes us feel even crappier and even worse because people aren't posting all the bad motorbike days or the bad acting days they're just posting the perfect stuff oh yeah stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare one interesting thing that you said you did in your happiness class having explored grades recognizing the outcome, you, what do they call it at Yale?

[881] Credit D?

[882] Yeah.

[883] So it's kind of like what a lot of schools are doing now with pass fail, except Yale had this one distinction where it had what's called credit D fail, because it's kind of hard to like get a D. Like it's really hard to fail a class at Yale in all honesty.

[884] Like you basically have to like not show up at all.

[885] And so credit D is like you either get credit, which is basically like pass or you get a D and fail.

[886] And so it's just, it's like a slightly harder thing than pass fail because very few people.

[887] people actually fail, you know, but you could get a D if you're really kind of screwing around.

[888] And so they have credit D normally, like when we're not in COVID time, that's the grading system.

[889] Is Stanford pass fail?

[890] I'm not actually sure.

[891] Okay.

[892] Right now, pretty much every university in the country is pass fail.

[893] I think, again, because of this crazy grade stuff, because, you know, people are in the midst of a pandemic.

[894] They don't have Wi -Fi.

[895] Their family might be sick.

[896] They might be immunocompromised.

[897] But they still can't shut off this desire for the external reward enough to be like, you what, screw it.

[898] This semester, I'm not going to care.

[899] They'll, like, drive themselves into mental health dysfunction to kind of fight with it.

[900] And it was tricky on campus because this sort of idea of promoting universal pass or pass fail became this sort of social justice charge that, like, this was the way we protect people who are, like, in these bad circumstances and blah, blah, blah, which I get, this is because we have a broken system.

[901] If you're in a bad situation, just, you know, screw it.

[902] No one's going to care what grades you got in spring of 2020.

[903] Everybody's going to look at that semester.

[904] Oh, yeah, that semester.

[905] No one's going to care.

[906] right?

[907] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[908] You know, and so the fact that people couldn't stop caring, I think is a symptom of this awful culture of grades that we're in right now.

[909] Yeah.

[910] And so, so you've been in this world of academia for the last, I go 25, 27 years or something, probably, yeah.

[911] You anecdotally, from what you've seen, is there is an increased level of anxiety and depression.

[912] Yeah, it's just been ramping up.

[913] Oh, yeah.

[914] Yeah, definitely.

[915] Like, shockingly so and a big spike in the last five years.

[916] That's both my anecdotal experience and what the data really show.

[917] yeah just the level of like suicidality and just extreme anxiety it's just kind of heartbreaking you know when you see these students just are going through just real mental health anguish and they're like 18 and there's some different explanations right none of them are facts yet they're all theories i think we had jonathan hide on and you know the parenting is being questioned over the last 20 years and this lack of coping mechanisms parents allow their kids to acquire and the challenges and all these things so those are kind of well documented And I think there's validity in all of them.

[918] But also, you know, like it or not, well, you and I can rage against Instagram for the next 5 ,000 years.

[919] It ain't going anywhere.

[920] People like, I like Instagram, even when it makes me feel shitty.

[921] So it's not going anywhere.

[922] Life's not going to slow down.

[923] There's just going to be more technology.

[924] So then the question becomes like, you're not going to beat it.

[925] So how can we adapt to it?

[926] The mere notion you said it when you did your TED Talk, like, you flew to that location.

[927] You didn't flap your arms.

[928] doing things you shouldn't do.

[929] You get in a car, you go 80 miles an hour.

[930] That's not a natural pastime for a primate.

[931] So our brain is just, it's ill -equipped on so many levels to be a part of a group that's $7 billion in size.

[932] That's not how we're supposed to do it.

[933] What's in the future that we could do?

[934] Do you have theories?

[935] I think, honestly, other people are more optimistic.

[936] Usually I'm optimistic, but for this, I'm really scared, right?

[937] Because I think we still don't know what this technology is doing to our psychology.

[938] And I'm actually less worried about social media.

[939] I mean, I think everything you've said about social media is true.

[940] It makes us horribly social compare.

[941] Even in these domains we don't care about.

[942] Like somebody today posted this awesome like lentil soup.

[943] And I was like, I suck.

[944] Like, why didn't I make lentil soup?

[945] I'm like, why am I feeling bad about myself over a lentil soup?

[946] Like, Jesus.

[947] Yeah, you're a Yale professor and you're like, you're a fucking failure because you can't make lentil soup.

[948] Anyway, but so that's aside and I think we all get it.

[949] But what we don't get is what technology is doing to us in ways that we don't notice.

[950] And that's the research I'm most scared by because it's not just that social media is really tempting for us and distracting for us.

[951] It's like all the technology on the other side of that phone.

[952] Right.

[953] And so, you know, our brains, as you know, crave stuff that's cool.

[954] And we've given it a stimulus that is completely unprecedented in the history of the human species.

[955] Like never have we had access to, you know, the library of Alexandria, every cat video on the internet, all this.

[956] porn, you know, celebrity, like, newsletters, all the emails I've ever gotten since 1999.

[957] Like, my brain knows that's on the other side of my iPhone.

[958] You know, I might like to be enjoying this conversation with my husband, but there's part of my brain that's like, I bet this conversation isn't as good as at least like 30 % of the cat videos or like, maybe we should check the porn right now.

[959] And so we like to think we have brains that can shut it off, but the new data are starting to suggest that the mere presence of phones is screwing us up in all these.

[960] ways we don't realize.

[961] Liz Dunn, who's a professor at UBC, who's been doing lovely work on this, finds that if you have your phone out in a waiting room, she does these experiments where she brings people into like a fake waiting room, and you can have your phone out or a way they've collected it before.

[962] You're not really even using it.

[963] But what she finds is that people smile 30 % less at the people around them when their phone is out.

[964] Even if you're not using it.

[965] If you look at enjoyment of activities and presence, like say you get a massage, and again, you're not using your phone.

[966] It's just there.

[967] It's like reducing your enjoyment of the massage.

[968] And it makes sense why, because there's got to be part of your brain that's like, no, no, pay attention to the massage.

[969] Don't go on Reddit right now.

[970] Like, no, there's probably nothing on Reddit.

[971] This is this constant kind of distraction and it's a constant stimulus.

[972] Let's face it, it's like designed to be better than most of the stuff in the real world.

[973] You know, having that nice cup of coffee playing with your kids.

[974] The internet is cooler than that.

[975] It just is, right?

[976] I can tell you from experience, cocaine gives me a level of serenity and contentment.

[977] because my brain is just so satisfied.

[978] The phone is the only thing I can say that even compares to that, where two hours can go by and I don't question anything about what I got to do.

[979] I'm just, my experiential self is just fulfilled on a level that really can only be compared to cocaine.

[980] Because it's designed to be like cocaine.

[981] Like it's designed on the premise of a slot machine.

[982] I mean, the folks who do a lot of the original designs for, you know, how these algorithms work and so on are called dopamine labs.

[983] They are on to something of what they're doing.

[984] They're not idiots.

[985] But I don't think we know the outcome of the experiment of putting that kind of slot machine in six billion pockets around the world.

[986] And what it's going to do to social connection, what it's going to do to mere presence of paying attention to what your life feels like right now.

[987] I think we just don't know.

[988] And so my one hope about what we can do to do better is that Internet companies don't want to be the cigarette industry.

[989] Like Facebook doesn't want to be the cigarette industry.

[990] The iPhone doesn't want to be the cigarette industry.

[991] they know what it's doing to us but they also know that they have to maintain this safe balance where they want us to be addicted to it but not get so bad that government regulators come in or we all say like screw it I'm going back to my flip phone and they're also in competition for in the attention economy they can only be so good or they're going to lose out to the other competitor that's exactly right too and so I think they're kind of starting to build in things you know like your iPhone now tells you how much time you've spent on your iPhone right and I think nobody ever looked at the iPhone like listing was like I should I'm really like slacking on the iPhone today like I should I should I should stay on Instagram a little bit more today like that's not why they put it in there so so my sense is they are trying to help with this yeah are trying to give us tools and so my sense is that the future is that ultimately we're going to need some social norms to navigate this stuff better norms about when we use our phones how present they are in our lives how much we're allowed to kind of forego go normal social interaction to do this stuff.

[992] And we'll have that in families.

[993] We'll have that in workplaces.

[994] And I think once we build those norms in as a society, maybe we'll get better.

[995] You know, kind of like smoking.

[996] All right, you can do it, but like not on a plane, not, you know, in schools, not in a restaurant.

[997] So that's the hope.

[998] Yeah.

[999] Utopian future would be one where it's normal that when you go to a friend's house, oh yeah, we don't do that during this time.

[1000] We put that away.

[1001] And it's, well, I guess we'll take brave people at the beginning to get the, to get the ball rolling.

[1002] But yeah, I would love it if like I got invited to a game night and it was like, hey, phone free game night.

[1003] Yeah, I'm there.

[1004] I'll leave my phone in the car, you know.

[1005] Yeah, I think we need, we need somebody to make like cool structures for our house.

[1006] New pieces of IKEA furniture that's like the phone holder.

[1007] You know, like when you walk in somebody's house and there's like the shoe area, you take your shoes off.

[1008] There's also like you slide your phone in it and it like closes and you can't see it.

[1009] And then you just have your day and have your normal social interaction.

[1010] I don't know.

[1011] We need we need more of that stuff.

[1012] The problem is when phones are stealing our attention, they do it in a way that's blind to us.

[1013] We don't often notice.

[1014] Like, we don't notice the smiles we're not making at the people around us or the conversations we're missing with our spouses because we don't notice what we don't notice.

[1015] And so I think we need more awareness of what these technologies are doing to our attention and to our social relationships.

[1016] It's like what you said at the beginning, how students now, they want scientific proof as to why they should do X, Y, and Z. They're not just going to take it anecdotally.

[1017] There's going to have to be a lot of studies about exactly why this is harmful, like why we know tobacco is smoking is harmful, as opposed to like, just watch less TV.

[1018] No one's watching less TV.

[1019] You know, we're going to have to have some proof, which I hope we can get.

[1020] I agree completely.

[1021] And then the problem is that that's really hard because at least with smoking, there were some people that didn't smoke, right?

[1022] Whereas who's...

[1023] Great.

[1024] Fine.

[1025] Your study only grandparents is the control group.

[1026] Or like that one guy from your work that's a freakazoid and still has a split phone.

[1027] Like, I don't want him to be the medical.

[1028] of like human control groups.

[1029] I don't trust anything, any data derived from that guy.

[1030] What a psychopath.

[1031] Well, Lori, I think everyone should check out Happiness Lab podcast.

[1032] It's so great and it's very much in the vein of Malcolm's thing.

[1033] Because it immediately reminded me of the great revisionist history episode about how useless LSAT scores are in the success of an attorney, ultimately career -wise.

[1034] I loved hearing that.

[1035] And it's in that vein.

[1036] It's great.

[1037] Is there anything else you want to tell us about that we should check out?

[1038] No, that's great.

[1039] go check out the Happiness Lab podcast.

[1040] We get a new season coming out.

[1041] And also a bunch of episodes on COVID -19 if you want special help for how you can stay mentally healthy during this crazy time.

[1042] And also enroll in your class at Yale, you know.

[1043] It seems easy to get into.

[1044] Can we?

[1045] I'd like to.

[1046] Yeah, it turns out.

[1047] Turns out we did put it online completely for free.

[1048] And 170 ,000 people immediately signed up.

[1049] Yeah.

[1050] We've had, we've had a 2 million in just the last couple weeks.

[1051] I think people are bored.

[1052] board at home and want a few things to do and are focused on what they can do to be happier.

[1053] Well, how do people find that?

[1054] Where do they go for that?

[1055] Yeah, so that is at corsair .org, and it's called the science of well -being.

[1056] The science of well -being.

[1057] Okay, fantastic.

[1058] Amazing.

[1059] Well, Malcolm wasn't wrong.

[1060] You're awesome.

[1061] We love you.

[1062] We hope you'll come back and talk to us as you write more, learn more, and come up with more theories.

[1063] We'd love it.

[1064] Thanks so much for having me. Thanks, Lori.

[1065] Thank you.

[1066] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soul.

[1067] old mate and Monica Padman.

[1068] Fact check take two.

[1069] All right, we're recording fact check number two.

[1070] Let's start with some admissions by Dan Shepard.

[1071] There's two whoppers.

[1072] I'll start with an admission.

[1073] First, I was late today.

[1074] Oh, I didn't care.

[1075] I'm normally not late and I don't like it.

[1076] Mm -hmm.

[1077] It just made me happy because I was like, oh, she knows what I'm feeling like when I'm like.

[1078] It was a rough start.

[1079] So maybe you literally just can't, you can't get out of that damn house.

[1080] Yeah, and then your macha spills.

[1081] Messes up your most beautiful blue sweat track suit.

[1082] Then your internet doesn't work.

[1083] Step on your macho with your stinking shoes.

[1084] Oh, my God.

[1085] It's almost too much to go on.

[1086] It is.

[1087] Okay, so mission number one, which I already made on Instagram, which is, and by the way, I didn't go back and listen, but enough people voted that there was consensus.

[1088] That 50 cent was doing exactly as you had interpreted.

[1089] his thing.

[1090] Thank you for that admission.

[1091] That's very big of you.

[1092] And then secondly, I didn't have Corona.

[1093] I got an antibody test and I didn't have it.

[1094] Wow.

[1095] Yeah, to my disappointment.

[1096] I also didn't have it.

[1097] You didn't have it.

[1098] No one in the house had it.

[1099] Nope.

[1100] Yeah.

[1101] Which I mean, if one person had it, likely the rest of us would have.

[1102] So it was really an all or nothing anyway.

[1103] It was.

[1104] But y 'all's tests came in really fast.

[1105] Here's another frustrating thing is I got a prescription.

[1106] Then I went to this quest place in a grocery store.

[1107] They took my blood.

[1108] Oh, you had to go to the grocery store?

[1109] Well, that's where it was at.

[1110] Yeah, it's inside of a Vons.

[1111] Very weird to get your blood drawn at Vons.

[1112] Yeah, I don't like that there's blood at the grocery store.

[1113] That's a side note.

[1114] And then I didn't get my results for like four days, maybe five.

[1115] But then you guys took a test that you got the results in five minutes.

[1116] Ten minutes.

[1117] Yep.

[1118] And all of you were negative for antibodies.

[1119] Yes.

[1120] But I was still holding out like, well, maybe I got it when I was in Colorado or Texas and just, you know, passed through me by the time I got back.

[1121] Even though your theory was we all had it last year.

[1122] Yeah.

[1123] Well, January.

[1124] Beginning of the year.

[1125] Yeah.

[1126] And it's just, it's not the case.

[1127] It's not the case.

[1128] It's not the case.

[1129] And I've never had it.

[1130] I was pretty.

[1131] Excited?

[1132] No, no. I was not excited.

[1133] But I was, I was saying that the whole time.

[1134] You were?

[1135] Yeah.

[1136] Yeah.

[1137] I didn't think we had it.

[1138] Yeah.

[1139] And I felt validated.

[1140] Sure, of course.

[1141] It feels nice.

[1142] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, big time.

[1143] But I do, of course, wish I had it.

[1144] Yeah, me too.

[1145] Yeah.

[1146] Me too.

[1147] Without knowing.

[1148] Mm -hmm.

[1149] That's the dream.

[1150] That's best case scenario.

[1151] You just haven't, you don't even know you had it.

[1152] Yeah.

[1153] You still had an inexplicably long stretch of diarrhea.

[1154] Okay.

[1155] That is true.

[1156] That is true.

[1157] Stop acting like that's everyone's in.

[1158] It is.

[1159] It is.

[1160] Cutting that.

[1161] Oh, no. Oh, my God.

[1162] It's such a fun part of you.

[1163] January you had, when you're at your mom's house, you had like six days of uninterrupted.

[1164] For some reason, you think that.

[1165] I have no memory of that.

[1166] I know.

[1167] It's so weird.

[1168] I have total memory.

[1169] I keep a poop journal, though, for you.

[1170] So anytime you say something, I mark it in there.

[1171] I don't remember, like, being with friends and then having to go to the back.

[1172] Like, I would remember that.

[1173] That would be traumatic.

[1174] It would.

[1175] It would be memorable.

[1176] There's so many kinds of diarrhea, right?

[1177] There's like food poisoning diarrhea where you literally can't be away from a toilet.

[1178] You can't be more than like 300 feet from a toilet at any moment.

[1179] And then there's just like, oh, you went in the morning, it was Lucy Goosey.

[1180] And then you went again in the afternoon and it was maybe straight water.

[1181] That's diarrhea.

[1182] But you could still like carry about your business in that version of it.

[1183] That's often what I'll experience for a little spell.

[1184] like it's not unmanageable it's very manageable and civil if it's only diarrhea in the morning okay you don't count it is diarrhea sure yeah okay anyway I have to cut all no you gotta keep it up because everyone talks about their poop with their friends they do I don't know I don't talk about it with my other friends if I'm being honest oh you don't no oh it's almost all I talk about with my friends and I don't think a lot of people do Oh, all right.

[1185] Do you enjoy talking about your cycles?

[1186] My flies?

[1187] No, no, no. You're brown cycles.

[1188] I don't like talking about it in public.

[1189] Yeah.

[1190] I think it's an extension of the vulnerable theme because it is so vulnerable.

[1191] It's the grossest thing we do.

[1192] I know.

[1193] At the same time, like sometimes I really think about it.

[1194] Yeah.

[1195] And I'm like, it's not gross.

[1196] You put food in and then it turns it into this thing.

[1197] But it stinks.

[1198] Yes, it stinks.

[1199] The stickiness is so gross.

[1200] Well, it's repellent so that you don't monkey around in other people's waists and pick up diseases.

[1201] I think it's evolutionary.

[1202] But if you trust that someone else isn't a disease carrier like your family members, it's not as gross.

[1203] It's still pretty gross.

[1204] It's still pretty gross.

[1205] What were we talking about before this?

[1206] Oh, antibodies.

[1207] Antibodies.

[1208] Did it affect?

[1209] your position at all knowing you know for sure you didn't have it didn't have it yeah well I will say you know this speaks to confirmation bias I'm holding out like a 3 % chance I think the tests were flawed but that's low I'm 97 % accepting of the outcome this is a bit hypocritical how so because if I'd said that yeah you would not like it you would say if you said 97 no no no No, no, no, if you said 97 % and you're only holding out 3 % hope that the tests will be revealed, that's, you make decisions beyond 51%.

[1210] I think that would have elicited a bad reaction if I said that to you.

[1211] You're also a fan of glimmers of hope.

[1212] If the tests were positive, I need you to really step back and think about the scenario in which all the tests came back, we had it.

[1213] And I said, okay, but there's a very small chance that this is wrong.

[1214] You would not like it.

[1215] I know it.

[1216] Yeah, I want it.

[1217] But if you said 3%, I at least go like, oh, you're acknowledging the truth.

[1218] Okay.

[1219] Yeah.

[1220] I'm acknowledging the truth.

[1221] Yeah.

[1222] I just have a fantasy that somehow still we could have all had it and not worry about it.

[1223] Don't you think most likely one of the tests would have come back?

[1224] Yes, I do.

[1225] Yeah.

[1226] Yeah, I do.

[1227] But you asked it, does it change my position on anything?

[1228] I mean, it does in that I'm like, before I was traveling through the city, doing things simply for you guys, like I had the, I have the gloves on and the mask.

[1229] And it's really just for you guys.

[1230] Yeah.

[1231] It's not for me. I'm not worried about it.

[1232] But now I'm like, oh, I could catch it still.

[1233] So yes, there's another variable now that I think, oh, should, I could still catch this.

[1234] Again, which is tricky because I'm not afraid to have it.

[1235] But then the hellfire, I would, you know, if it could be figured out that it was I who had tainted the group, then yeah, I would hate that.

[1236] Yeah.

[1237] I guess what it does do, though, is it, and I've learned this lesson before, I thought I knew who robbed our house one time and I was so convinced of it.

[1238] And then it turns out I was wrong.

[1239] And I was humiliated with the notion of how wrong I was.

[1240] Similarly, I am not humiliated, but reminded how wrong you can be and feel right.

[1241] Yeah, for sure.

[1242] You're trying your heart is not to gloat, aren't you?

[1243] No, I did a good.

[1244] You did a great job, yeah.

[1245] I don't want you to feel bad.

[1246] No, I know you don't.

[1247] I actually forgot all about it.

[1248] Oh, you did.

[1249] I was not like, I wonder if he's going to tell everybody.

[1250] I haven't even, I totally didn't even think about it.

[1251] Because I knew.

[1252] Yeah.

[1253] I already knew in my heart.

[1254] We didn't have it.

[1255] And I knew in my heart we did.

[1256] That's what I'm saying.

[1257] It could have gone either way.

[1258] One of us was bound to be completely wrong.

[1259] And it was me, which I'm owning.

[1260] Anyhow, I hope everyone's doing well.

[1261] Me too.

[1262] Lori Santos.

[1263] Lori.

[1264] Side note.

[1265] In the episode, you started talking about names a little bit because you were talking about Ezra being.

[1266] Oh, yeah.

[1267] And then you said, and like your name, Lori, like every Lori I know is so fun.

[1268] And I was like, what are you talking?

[1269] I was specifically thinking of like this Lori in my groundlings class.

[1270] That was really fun.

[1271] And then what other Lori do I know?

[1272] What is Lori short for?

[1273] Oh, wow.

[1274] I think.

[1275] But you know, Lori Bell, Lori is short for Lorla.

[1276] Which I love.

[1277] Because of Gilmore girls.

[1278] I just think that's a beautiful name.

[1279] It is Lorelai.

[1280] I don't have tons of strong feelings about Lori.

[1281] But I have very strong feelings about Ezra.

[1282] I know.

[1283] And Justin.

[1284] Justin's the other name.

[1285] I have such profound.

[1286] You do?

[1287] Yes.

[1288] What do you feel about it?

[1289] Well, so the coolest kid in my school was Justin Tishura.

[1290] And he had moved from California to elementary school.

[1291] So he's from Cali.

[1292] Uh -huh, sure.

[1293] And he was the first to have the Lee pinstripe denim jeans, which became really popular like the next year.

[1294] He was ahead of his time.

[1295] Yes.

[1296] And I clocked like, oh, this motherfucker was one year ahead.

[1297] Uh -huh.

[1298] And then my cousin, Justin LaBeau, was like the coolest guy ever knew.

[1299] He was sponsored as a BMX freestiler.

[1300] Then he was sponsored as a snowboarder.

[1301] And he was in a band I love.

[1302] He was just the coolest.

[1303] And his name was Justin.

[1304] And then I met a few justins.

[1305] And they're all cool.

[1306] I guess many justins, I know, like Justin Wilman, the magician.

[1307] He's very cool.

[1308] He does magic for humans.

[1309] Magic for humans.

[1310] Yeah, he is a slick dude.

[1311] Yeah.

[1312] Yeah, he's very cool.

[1313] It's a strong name.

[1314] It is.

[1315] Should we, next time we make a pee baby, if it's a boy, we could name it Justin.

[1316] That's an interesting thought because I would be more inclined to name the pee baby like Ezra.

[1317] Because I think maybe the pee baby will be capable of like.

[1318] Genius.

[1319] Yes, highly intellectual pursuits, but doesn't have the physical shape to perform any kind of athletics or dancing or any of the things that would make you cool.

[1320] Okay.

[1321] Your idea of cool is so specific.

[1322] It's like cool.

[1323] It's like you can do shit really well physically.

[1324] I think it's cool to be smart.

[1325] Yeah.

[1326] Yeah.

[1327] But, but, but, but.

[1328] Just again, the Justin's I knew were more like they were chill.

[1329] They, the babes loved them.

[1330] They were great at everything.

[1331] They were likable.

[1332] All the guys liked them.

[1333] Well, maybe our pee baby is very likable.

[1334] Yeah, it's just our pee baby is gelatinous, right?

[1335] or it's...

[1336] Ugh.

[1337] That's disgusting.

[1338] It's in liquid form.

[1339] It's not in solid form, right?

[1340] It's liquefied.

[1341] It's not gelatinous.

[1342] Okay.

[1343] God, if it gets gelatinous, then it's on its way out.

[1344] How will we know when it's sick?

[1345] Like, we have no experience with pea children to know what their symptoms would be.

[1346] Like, I guess if it got gelatinous, it's already jaundice looking.

[1347] Well.

[1348] So you could never determine if the kidneys were shot.

[1349] That's kind of part of its charm.

[1350] that in spite of looking so unhealthy, it thrives.

[1351] Yeah, exactly.

[1352] It'd be nice for our pee baby to have a little brother or sister.

[1353] I could see a pee baby being one of the X -Men.

[1354] I don't know a ton about X -Men, but one guy's in a wheelchair, right?

[1355] And he, like, makes all the metal fly around.

[1356] Like, our P -baby could be very powerful in a superhero world.

[1357] Yeah, I see that.

[1358] Could even be the leader of the whole gang.

[1359] Oh, my God.

[1360] Just sits in a toilet bowl.

[1361] They come to it.

[1362] They come to a toilet bowl that it lives in.

[1363] A fancy toilet bowl.

[1364] toilet bowl, probably like a crystal clear toilet bowl so that they can see him without having to lean over the toilet bowl to communicate with him.

[1365] So when I renovate my house, I have to make sure to make all the toilets translucent.

[1366] Glass toilets.

[1367] All right.

[1368] She talks about this psychologist Liz Dunn, who's doing all this research and says, if you force someone to spend money on other people, they're happier than when they spend money on themselves, which I thought was really interesting.

[1369] And so I looked up, she has a TED Talk.

[1370] Uh -huh.

[1371] And it was really worth listening to.

[1372] And yeah, it says that.

[1373] But it also, like, they do this experiment with kids.

[1374] Like, it starts even when you're two.

[1375] They bring these two -year -olds in.

[1376] And there's, like, a bowl of goldfish.

[1377] They give them the goldfish.

[1378] And they're very happy, of course.

[1379] Sure.

[1380] They're so cute.

[1381] And then they have this stuffed monkey.

[1382] And they say, like, oh, there's none left for the monkey.

[1383] Can the monkey have one?

[1384] and they all like say sure and then give him one and then they've like mapped their response to after they receive the goldfish and after they give the goldfish away and the kids are happier after they've given it away oh which is interesting yeah but okay so this TED talk was she had already put out the research saying that and then the TED talk was basically like I put out this research and then I was like but this doesn't apply to me like I don't really give to charity and I don't really want to.

[1385] Yeah.

[1386] And she was like, maybe there's something wrong with my research as she went back in.

[1387] And basically the new conclusion is the benefits spike when the people feel that they have a sense of connection to those that they're helping and that they can easily envision the difference that they're making.

[1388] Uh -huh.

[1389] So they did this experiment where they asked people to donate to either UNICEF or this organization called Spread the Net, and they pick those because they have the exact same goal.

[1390] Okay.

[1391] But because Uniseth is like this big, well -known charity and people don't really know exactly where things are going and spread the net give like a very specific motivation, which is for every $10, they provide one bed net to a child with malaria.

[1392] Uh -huh.

[1393] You know, the more money people gave to spread the net, the happier they felt after.

[1394] But with UNICEF, the emotional return on investment was flattened.

[1395] So it matters if you feel like you're connected personally.

[1396] Well, it's also the kind of the Paul Bloom empathy thing.

[1397] It's like, you feel one kid, one net, I'm like, Ann, I can relate to that.

[1398] And once you get into UNICEF, it's like a billion people.

[1399] It just gets diluted, your feeling of impact.

[1400] Yeah, but even if you donate $1 ,000, you then know like, oh, I did this.

[1401] you can like really connect.

[1402] Yeah, you go, oh, I got a hundred kids bed nets.

[1403] Fast math.

[1404] So anyway, I thought that was interesting.

[1405] It is.

[1406] Okay, so you said the article in New York Times said five second burst of exertion help break up triglycerides.

[1407] Yeah, four seconds of high intensity exertion repeated periodically throughout the day might counteract some of the unhealthy metabolic consequences of sitting for hours.

[1408] Epidemiological studies.

[1409] indicate that most American adults sit for at least 10 hours a day, a total that is likely to have risen now that many of us are home all day.

[1410] Yeah, in quarantine, I think I'm sitting like 14 hours a day.

[1411] Really?

[1412] Oh, sure.

[1413] I think you are too.

[1414] I'm moving about.

[1415] Are you?

[1416] I think.

[1417] I mean, I sit a lot because I'm by my computer so much, but I get up to get snacks.

[1418] Yeah.

[1419] I change location a good bit.

[1420] Well, when you're changing locations, spring.

[1421] sprint there.

[1422] Yeah.

[1423] That'll break up your triglycerides.

[1424] Sprint into the kitchen to get your goldfish.

[1425] Okay.

[1426] But make the sprint last four seconds.

[1427] Maybe sprint into your living room, going a circle, then into your kitchen.

[1428] Okay.

[1429] That'll probably take four seconds.

[1430] Yeah.

[1431] Yeah.

[1432] In particular, multiple hours of sitting can contribute to a rise in the bloodstream of fatty acids known as triglycerides, probably in part because muscles at rest produce less than contracting muscles due of a substance that breaks up triglycerides.

[1433] And then you do this whole experiment with this, basically the stationary bike that they invent and they have these athletes come and do these quick exercises and it helps.

[1434] But they, they're still working on this.

[1435] And the bike is not like available.

[1436] Right.

[1437] So it's just saying probably good to burst around a bit.

[1438] Yeah, do some bursting.

[1439] Yeah, do some bursts.

[1440] Okay, so you talked about you guys both being magna cum laude.

[1441] I get my mouth shut.

[1442] I thought maybe you were going to bring it up, but you didn't.

[1443] And then I didn't want to brag, but I'll brag now that I'm suma.

[1444] Right.

[1445] That is nice.

[1446] Yeah, it's nice.

[1447] Although you were summa at Georgia.

[1448] Yeah, you think that's different.

[1449] Like, probably cum laude at UCLA?

[1450] No. Okay.

[1451] No. Not at all.

[1452] You asked if Stanford's pass fail and it's not current.

[1453] I mean, it's not, it might be right now during corona, but it is not generally.

[1454] Yeah, but I did read this article in the New York Times about these past fails, and a lot of students, and she was saying this, are particularly concerned because they're trying to raise their grade point averages in their final year or two of college to qualify for law, medical, or business school.

[1455] So when she was saying it, I was like, that is crazy.

[1456] But I do kind of get it if it matters in like their next step.

[1457] That sucks.

[1458] Yeah, yeah, I guess it affects the next step.

[1459] But when I had heard that Stanford was past, fail, and maybe I just read something that it was being proposed, the argument was the people that got to Stanford are already A students.

[1460] They've proven that.

[1461] Yeah, right.

[1462] So what is the point?

[1463] They made it.

[1464] Now they can just learn, which I think is cool.

[1465] But I agree it poses this issue about when they want to go elsewhere.

[1466] Well, yes and no. I mean, I think if you enter college and it's past fail and you leave.

[1467] in its pass field, that's fine.

[1468] That's like the standard.

[1469] But right now, it's like if you have one year left and you have a grade point average, it's just that right now, grades aren't lifting it at all.

[1470] Like if you're trying to bring your grade point average up, you can't.

[1471] That stinks.

[1472] I hope everyone passes.

[1473] Passes.

[1474] In conclusion, in summary, we hope everyone passes.

[1475] That's all for Lori.

[1476] That's it?

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] Okay.

[1479] Well, we loved her.

[1480] Yeah, she was great.

[1481] And again, I was really fascinated with how many of her five things were principles of A. Hey, I shared that in my meeting.

[1482] Yeah, I love it.

[1483] And then someone then went and watched her shit and we're like, oh, yeah, it's all the same.

[1484] It's so cool.

[1485] Yeah.

[1486] All right.

[1487] All right.

[1488] Love you.

[1489] Love you.

[1490] Time for a nap.

[1491] Follow armchair expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcast.

[1492] 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.

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