Vivek Murthy

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

[1] I'm, oh, someone requested, what was it?

[2] Max Plemerton.

[3] Oh.

[4] I guess I threw a Max Plemerton out and someone wanted to hear that again.

[5] Oh, they missed it.

[6] Yeah, let me try it again.

[7] Okay.

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

[9] I am Plamberton.

[10] Oh.

[11] Wait.

[12] That's not what you just said you were going to do.

[13] Max Plymerton.

[14] I'm joined by who do you want to go by today?

[15] I'll just go by my regular self.

[16] Okay, Monica Padman.

[17] Emmy nominated.

[18] Today we have just a mind -blowing expert, a Dr. Vivek Murthy.

[19] He is an American physician and former Vice Admiral in the Public Health Service Commission Corps, who served as the 19th Surgeon General of these United States.

[20] Murthy founded the nonprofit Doctors for America in 2008 and was the first Surgeon General of Indian descent and was the youngest active duty flag officer in federal uniform service.

[21] He is a Harvard grad, a university, a university.

[22] A university Yale grad.

[23] And he has a great book entitled, Together, Why Social Connection holds the key to better health, higher performance, and greater happiness.

[24] And Vivek wanted us to make it really clear that we had recorded this before the many protests and that he would have liked to have commented on it.

[25] Yeah, especially because this is a lot about mental health and happiness.

[26] And so it's a little regrettable for him that he couldn't really speak on what's going on right now.

[27] Yes.

[28] Now, without further ado, please enjoy Dr. Vivek Murthy.

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

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

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

[32] Please accept my apologies.

[33] I had to do a cost -benefit analysis.

[34] be rude and late or have coffee and be good at this interview.

[35] And I apologize.

[36] You had to bear the brunt of that.

[37] It's okay.

[38] You made the right choice.

[39] Where are you sitting currently?

[40] Well, I'm actually in my sister's house in Miami, Florida.

[41] Oh, no kidding.

[42] So D .C. is where my wife and her kids and I live now, but I grew up in Miami, Florida, and my parents were still here, my sister and brother -in -law.

[43] So we had actually planned to come down here mid -March because my grandmother had fractured her hip and was recovering from surgery.

[44] And that was just when things were starting to start to close down.

[45] My wife and I, the night before the flight, we said, you know, we may not be able to come back if we go down.

[46] But we thought, well, better to be quarantined with family than to be alone in a small condo in D .C. So here we are.

[47] Okay, so Vivek, I knew you were from Miami because I know about you now.

[48] And do you have an interesting story that I think ultimately will funnel into why you've written the book you've written and why you're interested in the topic you're currently?

[49] pursuing.

[50] So first and foremost, mom and dad, they immigrated here from the UK, and you were there to what, three?

[51] Huxley, I was actually one when we left the UK.

[52] So they originally left India in the early 70s, came to the UK.

[53] When I was one, my sister was two, they left and went to Newfoundland to a rural part of Newfoundland, that too.

[54] Are there any non -rural, yeah, urban parts of Newfoundland?

[55] Well, this is a thing.

[56] This is rural compared to other parts of Newfoundland.

[57] So it was definitely a remote area.

[58] And it was really a shock to their system, many ways.

[59] I mean, they grew up in the warmth of South India.

[60] And now they're in Newfoundland where it's warm, maybe a couple months out of the year.

[61] After two years, they relocated to Miami, Florida.

[62] And that's where I grew up.

[63] Okay, so can I ask you a really bizarre off -topic question?

[64] Have your parents ever been to Santa Barbara?

[65] They have not.

[66] Okay.

[67] I urge you to take them there because Monica's parents are also from South India.

[68] And they feel like Santa Barbara reminds them the most of home of any place in the U .S. You should have your parents come visit Miami at some point because my parents feel the same way about Miami that your parents do about Santa Barbara.

[69] So when they move here, they set up this effort to recreate India in the backyard.

[70] So right now, if we were just walking through our yard, we have like 10 varieties of mangoes, six varieties of jackfruit.

[71] We have like jikku and sitepo and bananas and all kinds of stuff growing there.

[72] They would love it.

[73] Okay.

[74] And now also, did you have Monica's experience?

[75] Did you run from being Indian?

[76] Was it something that you felt made you other and excluded you from the young kids in Miami?

[77] Or did you embrace it and love it?

[78] Great question.

[79] So we were deeply immersed in Indian culture when I was growing up.

[80] So we embraced it, but it wasn't always so easy because when we were in school, my sister and I were really, I think, the only Indian kids in the school.

[81] And so people really didn't know quite what to make of us.

[82] They thought that we were Native American.

[83] They thought that we had weird smelling food at home, funny -sounding names, and our parents had strange accents.

[84] So there was a lot of that to deal with that made us feel like we were othered in some way.

[85] Fortunately, there were other Indian families that we would get together with when we went to Temple and see on weekends.

[86] So we were deeply anchored in the culture, but we did feel like outsiders often.

[87] Now I wonder if this is also gendered.

[88] Oh.

[89] Because do you think you and your sister both felt that?

[90] Or do you think she wanted more distance from the culture or the same?

[91] I think we were pretty similar in that respect.

[92] And we're both also by personality very shy.

[93] Mm -hmm.

[94] I'm not even sure.

[95] Maybe I'm a little more shy than she is, or at least I was growing up.

[96] And so I think that contributed to some of the feeling, to those feelings of being an outsider.

[97] Suffice to say, I mean, I would ask you this, but already know this about you, but the experience, at least at school was a lonely one, yeah?

[98] It was, it was, especially in elementary school and I would say most of middle school.

[99] Like, toward high school, like I found my community to some extent, but yeah, those early years were rough.

[100] It's interesting, you know, I didn't really want to go to school.

[101] I would sometimes fake having a stomachache, you know, for that reason because I just, I wasn't scared about exams or teachers.

[102] I was just, I didn't want to feel like I was a loner, like, all the time.

[103] Yeah.

[104] And that's like, you know, the scariest time of the day for me was lunchtime when I walked into the cafeteria and was petrified about whether I would have somebody to sit next to or not.

[105] That was just, that was so painful.

[106] I still remember just waiting for the bell to ring at 3 o 'clock.

[107] So I could just like run and find my parents and go home where I felt really loved and really secure.

[108] I felt like I belonged at home.

[109] I loved it.

[110] But school was a different matter.

[111] Do you think they had a sense of how excluding the environment was they had brought you to?

[112] Or what was their kind of stance on it?

[113] Were they like, this is going to make you great?

[114] This place has an opportunity.

[115] It's going to be worth it.

[116] Or was it like, ooh, we've put him in a pretty difficult situation.

[117] Yeah, you know, I think they knew it would be challenging.

[118] But I don't think they knew at the time that I was feeling lonely and that I was having a hard time making friends with other kids.

[119] I think my father, you know, we had this one conversation I remember when I was, gosh, maybe in like second or third grade where I remember him asking me, like, why I wasn't playing with other kids.

[120] And I don't, I didn't really know how to tell him, like, that I was feeling really shy and I wasn't confident.

[121] I just didn't know how to explain it because I think I was even just trying to figure out myself.

[122] Well, you were probably embarrassed, no?

[123] I mean, I imagine I would feel shame and embarrassment if my dad asked me that.

[124] And I, yeah.

[125] Yeah, I was deep.

[126] ashamed of it.

[127] And I just, you know, because at that age, like, also saying that I, you know, wasn't able to hang out with other kids.

[128] It was somehow like saying, like, I wasn't likable or that there was something wrong with me. I was socially deficient.

[129] And I didn't want to feel that way.

[130] I didn't want to admit that to somebody else.

[131] Yeah.

[132] So I remember him being puzzled and just, he kept asking me. He's like, why aren't you hanging out with other kids?

[133] Like, why don't you want to hang out for other kids?

[134] And I just kept thinking to myself, I want to.

[135] I just don't know how to.

[136] Well, the interesting thing is, I don't think that he had necessarily experienced the kind of loneliness that I had experienced.

[137] You know, my father, like, Monica, is from his small village, like in South India.

[138] And, you know, they didn't have much at all in the village.

[139] Like, they grew up in relative poverty.

[140] I mean, to give you a sense of it, every night for dinner, they used to boil dal or grain.

[141] And they would just keep diluting it with water until they had enough volume to, like, fill up everyone's bowl.

[142] Because it was my father and five other siblings.

[143] his mother had died when he was 10 from tuberculosis.

[144] And so my father actually largely raised his siblings.

[145] Sometimes are really tough, but one thing that they were not foreign were relationships.

[146] They felt like they had a community.

[147] They felt supported.

[148] And it wasn't just their family.

[149] It was neighbors.

[150] It was other members of the village.

[151] They all felt like they were part of the same team, if you will.

[152] So this notion of going to school and not playing with other kids and feeling like an outsider was foreign to the experience of my mother and father growing up.

[153] Yeah.

[154] Not to harp on this too much, but we've talked about this a few times where it's like, I am deeply sympathetic to first generation kids because you're inheriting someone else's dream.

[155] You know, it's one thing if I decide, you know what, I'm going to fucking try to make my way in China.

[156] It's going to be difficult, but I see some value and then hopefully I'll achieve this goal I have over there.

[157] But, you know, when you take away that desire to go there and you just inherit it, It's just such a different thing.

[158] And I don't know that you even consider that when you make those decisions.

[159] Yeah.

[160] Well, you know, when they came over, I don't think they really knew what it was going to be like because it wasn't like they had a whole, you know, bevy of friends who had gone over 10 years earlier and said, this is what it's going to be like.

[161] This is what to look out for.

[162] Here are the things you need to do.

[163] They were coming over without really any contacts or much background on what to expect.

[164] And that's why, you know, I think about that journey they made from relative obscurity and poverty in a small village in my father's case and from a relatively modest family from Bangalore in my mom's case.

[165] And I think about all that they've seen and everything that they've encountered and the risks that they took jumping with both feet into completely unknown scenarios and doing so with children and somehow finding a way to make it and coming to the place where they have and I recognize that there is no leap I can make in my life that will equal the size of the leap that they made.

[166] And so it's humbling for me to remember that because, you know, it's easy when you're talking about your parents to sometimes take them for granted and just to assume that, you know, they don't know what you're going through, et cetera.

[167] But I realize that I'm not sure if I will ever fully appreciate what they went through.

[168] Yeah.

[169] It's quite an extraordinary journey.

[170] Well, maybe when you take your two children up to an Elon Musk space station on Mars, where they don't value education, it's just like a labor camp.

[171] So it's just you'll have no skill set there.

[172] And maybe you'll understand.

[173] I just had a curiosity, what did your father end up doing career -wise down in Miami?

[174] So he trained in medicine.

[175] So he was practicing medicine up in England and Newfoundland into Miami.

[176] He initially, when he came down here, he was teaching at the University of Miami School of Medicine and practicing there.

[177] And a few years later, he and my mom set up a medical practice.

[178] My mother actually her degrees in English literature, but she built and ran the office for my dad.

[179] And what was really extraordinary for me as a kid who didn't understand much of the science that was going on in terms of what they were doing, is I could see that they were both really important participants in the healing that their patients were experiencing.

[180] And they did that through building relationships with them by getting to know them, making them feel seen and heard and understood.

[181] And that happened all the way from the very beginning moment when they set foot into the door.

[182] My mother readed them and spoke to them and spent time with them to when my father examined them, to when they would both call them afterward to check on them and see how they were doing.

[183] There's this experience that I write a little bit in the book about when I was really young, I think when I was maybe seven or eight years old, I remember being woken up by my parents and just hurried into the car.

[184] And it was probably two in the morning.

[185] And they just started driving to this trailer park in Miami.

[186] And they explained to me along the way that their patient, Gordon, who had been struggling with metastatic cancer, had just passed away.

[187] And they knew Gordon well.

[188] and they also knew his wife well because they got to know people's families and they were really worried that his wife Ruth would be grieving alone and so we drove to that park to check on Ruth and I remember so to this day my mother and her traditional Indian Saudi walking up the steps of Ruth's trailer I remember the door opening and Ruth stepping out with tears just streaming down her face and I remember the two of them embracing just under the light of the moon it was an extraordinary moment and I remember in that moment thinking wow they are so different in terms of the worlds that they came from and now I reflect on that moment and I realized that as different as they were what they had made of each other was family they had built this amazing relationship that had crossed over life experiences and differences and differences in culture and that to me became what medicine was all about was building those kind of relationships, healing through that process.

[189] Well, if there is a singular human condition that transcends all ethnicities and populations, it is losing people you love.

[190] No one will escape that fate on planet Earth.

[191] Yeah.

[192] Wow, that's profound.

[193] Now, let me ask you another provocative question.

[194] Had you been embraced by everybody in elementary school and in junior high, do you end up at Harvard and at Yale?

[195] Did you ever ask yourself that question?

[196] I do.

[197] I mean, it's so hard to know, like, what?

[198] twists and turns in our path, like lead us to where we go.

[199] So I wouldn't change the past because I don't know if that would change what I have now.

[200] I think about some of the bullies I encountered in middle school.

[201] Today, like give me a deeper appreciation for who I was and more sympathy for others who were being bullied.

[202] Perhaps so.

[203] So yeah, you know, I look back at them and, you know, I feel grateful that I was able to learn from them, but especially grateful that I had family that I could lean on during those hard times.

[204] If I did not have, a family to come home to.

[205] I didn't have the security of being loved by my parents and sister.

[206] I don't know how I would have handled those difficult situations.

[207] Oh, and so many of the folks that are in that situation just don't have that.

[208] Then they go home to more isolation.

[209] But one thing I realize is, especially as I was getting older, is I think there's something about experiencing pain and exclusion that makes you sensitive to it in other people.

[210] And I started to recognized that over time that there were actually a lot of people around me who were feeling like they didn't measure up who were feeling left out who felt othered in some way and they weren't just people you know who had brown skin like me and had plenty sounding names it was white kids it was black kids it was Latino kids I was like I was like wow there's just there's something broader here happening it's not just me well the system is set up even in the high school it's only really benefiting about 8 % of the kids that are really popular or on the sports team like in reality the vast majority of people aren't on the top of that pyramid and they are looking upward and it's not ideal for the majority of people I'd argue and those kids too also are going through whatever they're going there's not like super popular but their dad beats their yeah yeah yeah there's no escape hey can you guys hold on one sec my three year old son is about to peek in through the door here what the three year old have to say oh well I think he gets upset when I'm on the computer on the phone for too long.

[211] So he's a very sweet boy.

[212] He's very sensitive.

[213] So he actually, he and I are very similar, like in terms of what I was like when I was a child.

[214] It's crazy to see that.

[215] Does that excite you?

[216] So I ended up with two girls with now I'm really grateful.

[217] I'm so glad I don't have boys.

[218] But the one thing I was excited to do was to have a boy that hopefully had all the same emotional issues I had because I feel like I figured out how to work with them.

[219] And I was excited to like give them the playbook on what do you do with the?

[220] weird suite of behaviors.

[221] Are you finding that exciting that you know what he's feeling with those emotions?

[222] It's surreal to see like a mirror effectively to see like your your life playing out again like, you know, a few decades later.

[223] But you know, I'll be honest, Max, it worries me a bit because I don't want him to go through the same pain and difficulties that I went through.

[224] Like I see him shy, for example, around other kids.

[225] I'm like, oh, no, I don't want him to feel scared and lonely like when he goes to school, like the way I did.

[226] You know, I see him like really sensitive to the emotions of people around him, which can be an extraordinary gift.

[227] But I also don't want him to feel too much pain, you know.

[228] And I look at my daughter, who is so interesting, like my daughter looks much more like the Indian side of our family, but she's very much more like my wife and personality.

[229] And my son is the opposite.

[230] See, my wife is Chinese American.

[231] And so my son looks very Chinese, but he's personality very much like mine.

[232] So I look at her and she's just so not.

[233] perturbed by things that happen around or at least much less so and you know he'll pick up on this cue or that cue and start crying about this or that you know if i'm upset he'll sense it like this just before this podcast started i was lying down on the bed and thinking about something and he ran up to me and he jumped on my stomach and it like knocked the wind out of me so initially was like oh and then he just started wailing because he thought he had hurt me you know yeah and so he's extraordinarily sweet and i feel like like super attached to him and protective of him, but I don't want him to feel the same pain that I did growing up.

[234] Oh, we need a world good enough for those boys because the trajectory has always been, you take your son and you try to forge him into something that can handle this brutal existence.

[235] But more and more, I'm like, no, no, no, they're perfect.

[236] We need to make a world that accepts them and embraces them and doesn't bully them.

[237] But also he's lucky because he has you as his model.

[238] so at least there's something like, well, but my dad is this now.

[239] Yeah, ex -surgeon general.

[240] I doubt when he asks a girl out and she says, no, he's going to give a shit about that surgeon general thing.

[241] Maybe I'll say, my dad was the surgeon general for Barack Obama ever heard of him.

[242] Okay, so I have another question.

[243] So you go to Yale for your medical degree, but then you also pick up an MBA.

[244] Why?

[245] Yeah, you know, when I came to Yale, I didn't think I was going to do another degree, but I had come off of spending a few years building.

[246] this nonprofit organization with my sister.

[247] So, you know, we go to college thinking that we're going to just focus on studying and maybe going to grad school afterward.

[248] And I remember a fall of freshman year, my dad calls me. And he says, hey, Vivek, there's a philanthropist in Florida who just moved here and he wants to give money to a cause, but he doesn't know what cause to give it to.

[249] And I was like, do you have any ideas?

[250] There's something you and Rushme and my sister want to work on.

[251] Oh, wow.

[252] I was like, wow, I never thought about that.

[253] Sounds like a scam if you asked me. That's my baggage.

[254] Oh, actually, no, that's very prescient of you.

[255] There's a story behind that.

[256] No one's going to give money away.

[257] Funny, you should say that.

[258] So what happened is this guy ended up funding this idea my sister and I had to build an HIV education program in India.

[259] And we had spent a little time in India this summer before, and we knew that HIV was a growing problem there, but no one was doing a whole lot about it.

[260] So we thought, what if we built a peer education model there, mobilized youth around the country to do the work on prevention of HIV that the country really needs?

[261] So that's how we started it.

[262] And so we trained a bunch of students.

[263] And six of us went to India that summer to Bangalore.

[264] And we conducted all these workshops.

[265] And it was an amazing experience.

[266] And then we did this national recruitment process and got all these students and started training them to go the next year.

[267] And then that second year, just when we were finishing our training, five days before we were supposed to get on the plane, We called a travel agent to confirm our tickets.

[268] This was back on the day when you did things like that.

[269] Yeah, yeah.

[270] And I was like, I don't have any tickets for you.

[271] We're like, wait, these should have all been booked.

[272] He's like, well, a reservation was made, but there was never a payment issued.

[273] We're like, oh, my gosh.

[274] So we called the sponsor.

[275] And we're like, hey, we bought all these students around the country ready to go.

[276] We had like 10 or 12 students.

[277] And we weren't the tickets.

[278] And we couldn't reach him.

[279] And then the days kept on, we couldn't reach him.

[280] And finally, it turned out, he had flooded the country.

[281] country because he was an international con artist.

[282] And this is what he would do.

[283] He would go to different communities.

[284] And he would supposedly fund causes for initially to build trust.

[285] And he would scoop up people's money.

[286] That's called the good faith money.

[287] Exactly.

[288] In a confidence scheme.

[289] Exactly.

[290] So that was actually a really difficult moment for us for two reasons.

[291] One is because, you know, we had put our entire summers, you know, the line we had asked other people to invest her faith in us.

[292] They had gone to battle with their parents saying that, hey, I got a do this, this is for a good cause, even though their parents wanted them to do a safe job and work in a research lab at home.

[293] And now we felt like we were going to let them all down.

[294] But there was another reason it was really painful is because the person that he took the most money from was actually my family, my father and my mother.

[295] And he had spent like several years becoming really close to my family.

[296] He recognized that my parents really wanted to build a temple in South Florida and they had all these other philanthropic goals.

[297] And so he had convinced them that that they should focus on philanthropy and that he would help them manage their assets so that they could take care of their family, put their kids through college, but really focus on serving humanity, which was their goal.

[298] Yes.

[299] And he scooped up the money and fled the country.

[300] And so we were also personally devastated.

[301] And my sister and I were both in private colleges that were pricey, you know, at that time.

[302] And it was really tough.

[303] This is why my wife and I are such a great combo, because I think everyone's trying to get one over on me and she wants to build that temple.

[304] It's perfect.

[305] You know what I'm saying?

[306] Yeah, it's not, you know, my father is very trusting of people, and he always sees the best in people.

[307] And my mother does too, but I think she's a little bit more cautious than my father.

[308] And so in this instance, she was starting to get worried, but he was like, no, he's been a family friend and so close to us for years, et cetera.

[309] So we never really thought that this would happen.

[310] But it was pretty devastating.

[311] As you would probably know, there are support groups for people who have been the victims of con artists or something.

[312] scams.

[313] Like, it is deeply humiliating.

[314] It's trauma in the biggest way because it's violated such a deep sense of trust.

[315] That's exactly right.

[316] Oh, man. That's exactly right.

[317] And that might even be a deeper wound than the money that's lost is that loss of trust, the shame that comes with it.

[318] Yes.

[319] That's why scams work so well because people are too embarrassed to report them so often.

[320] That's why it's why it's one of the best crimes because people are just, they'd rather just let it go way.

[321] Yeah.

[322] Okay, we're covering all the topics today.

[323] So to answer your question, so we went through this crazy experience over the next five days where we had to make this decision, like, do we just send everybody back home?

[324] Or do we find some way to raise $15 ,000, which is how much money we had to raise, to buy tickets, to go to India, to support everyone that summer and to bring them back?

[325] Now, we were a bunch of college students.

[326] Fifteen thousand dollars was just, it could just well have been millions of dollars.

[327] It was so far from the realm of possibility for us.

[328] But that ended up being a defining moment for me and for the group because, you know, my sister and I were leading this organization and, you know, we were, I was like 18 years old, right?

[329] Like I didn't know anything.

[330] But, you know, people were looking at us to know what they should do.

[331] And it was one of those moments where I realized I felt like this weight on my shoulder.

[332] I was like, okay, if I make the wrong call here, 12 people will lose their summers, and it's going to be bad.

[333] But I was like, you know, I think this is one of those moments where we just got to put our faith in ourselves and find a way to make this happen.

[334] So I said, let's commit to getting $15 ,000.

[335] And we had five days.

[336] So what we did is we called up everybody we knew.

[337] We held fundraisers locally.

[338] We phone banked potential donors.

[339] We went to the media to get stories written about what we were trying to do.

[340] And we raised that $15 ,000 just in time to get to India.

[341] And it was a miracle that had happened.

[342] And it would only happen because of the generosity of people who took a leap of faith on us.

[343] And it was ironic that at a time where we had been cheated by somebody because we put our faith in the wrong person, other people who barely knew us were putting their faith in us and giving us money to actually go to India.

[344] So we were especially grateful for that.

[345] But we spent the next several years building this organization, expanding its work around India to the United States.

[346] And when I arrived in medical school, I was thinking about that experience, about the HIV organization we built, about a second organization we started a couple of years later to train community health workers in a small village in India.

[347] And I was thinking, maybe I want to do more of this in the future.

[348] Maybe I want to build more organizations.

[349] But I kept thinking about all of these instances where I had been up at like three in the morning trying to figure out a fundraising strategy or dealing with management.

[350] issues that I had absolutely no skill in dealing with.

[351] And I kept thinking, somebody has figured out how to do this well.

[352] I just don't know how to.

[353] Maybe if I go to business school, I'll learn how to build effective organizations.

[354] And that's what ultimately got me to go down the MBA path.

[355] And I can think about several moments like that in my life, like pivotal moments, make or break moments.

[356] Yeah.

[357] And it could have changed the trajectory of my life.

[358] And when I think about my kids in particular on how we want to raise them, I would love to be able to raise them to be able to make the informed a courageous call in moments like that.

[359] But I even more want to be able to support them and train them and how to deal with it when it doesn't work out.

[360] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[361] When they make that call and they actually don't get the outcome, I mean, that can be crushing, right?

[362] And then how do you pick yourself up?

[363] How do you put the pieces back together?

[364] How do you build up the courage to be able to make the bold call next time?

[365] That's, yeah, that's not easy.

[366] Now, okay, we got to jump ahead because we want to talk about your book, but also we got to tell people that, of course, you were the Surgeon General of the United States, these United States.

[367] And there's some fun stuff along the way.

[368] You had also started Doctors for America, right, which resulted in 15 ,000 physicians and medical students all working in concert somehow.

[369] So quickly tell me about the accomplishment of that.

[370] Well, that was one of many unexpected turns in the road, so to speak.

[371] At the time that I started building Doctors for America with a few calls.

[372] colleagues.

[373] I was practicing medicine and I was teaching and I was building a technology company at the same time.

[374] And I was feeling really stretched in.

[375] I was actually trying to figure out how to cut something out so that I could really focus in.

[376] And then it's 2007.

[377] The presidential elections are heating up.

[378] And I'm hearing all this discussion about healthcare.

[379] And I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm in health care, but I know nothing about policy or politics, but I know that things aren't working well in our system.

[380] They could be a lot better.

[381] And I wonder if maybe this is our opportunity for things to get better.

[382] Maybe we elect a president who can put a real sensible health care reform plan in place.

[383] I'm also seeing all of this cynicism among my colleagues.

[384] We're saying, nah, nothing's going to get done.

[385] You know, if something does happen, it's just going to be people with lots of money who get a seat at the table like big insurance companies, pharma companies, hospital systems, but no one cares about what we think.

[386] Something just felt wrong about that.

[387] I was like, you know, it's you guys, it's all of us who are in the front lines, right, nurses, doctors, physical therapists, others, they're seeing what's working, what's not working.

[388] It's like, why don't they have more of a voice?

[389] And so that's why, you know, I was actually remember very specifically where I was when this idea came to me. I was sitting in a law firm at the top of this building, this very, very fancy conference room.

[390] And the only reason I was there was because a friend of mine who was working on campaigns had asked me to come to this meeting, where a bunch of politicals were talking about what the campaigns should do, what their health care platform should be.

[391] And these were people who had a lot of power and influence.

[392] And then there was just me, like it was the bottom of the total pole, like he was hanging out in the corner of the room.

[393] And I remember thinking to myself, wow, these people have the power to change a platform.

[394] But there's actually nobody here who's been on the front lines of providing care.

[395] What would it be like if we built a movement of people on the front lines who could actually sit at the table, shape policy, make sure that it worked for patients and for clinicians and build a kind of healthcare system that this country deserves?

[396] And that was what ultimately led me to build Doctors for America.

[397] And the thing is, I had absolutely no skill in how to organize people.

[398] I'd never build a grassroots organization.

[399] I didn't know anything about politics or policy.

[400] But I felt in that moment when I was thinking about that idea, India.

[401] The same feeling that I had felt when I was 17 years old, when we went on our first vision's trip doing the HIV work in India, when I was standing in front of a group of 600 students at a high school in Bangalore, talking to them about the movement that we wanted to build of students all across India to take on HIV.

[402] And I had been chasing that feeling of inspiration ever since then, because I had realized in that moment that what I really enjoyed was putting forth a vision for how we could improve the world and bringing people together who shared a similar set of values to make that vision into something real that would transform people's lives for the better.

[403] And I spent years searching for an opportunity to do that.

[404] And sitting in that conference room, thinking about that idea of organizing doctors around the country, I felt the same way.

[405] And I was like, you know what?

[406] It doesn't matter if I don't have enough time.

[407] I've got to do this.

[408] I've got to figure out a way to make it happen.

[409] And so that's what led to this journey.

[410] building Doctors for America with other colleagues.

[411] And we were able to build a large coalition of doctors all across the country who helped shape pieces of what became the ultimate health reform bill, who helped build support for it.

[412] It wasn't a perfect bill.

[413] It didn't do everything that we felt they needed to do.

[414] But it took us forward.

[415] It helped us cover more people.

[416] And so many of us were just really upset about the fact that our patients couldn't get care because they didn't have insurance.

[417] It helped us really move toward better quality of care.

[418] which was essential too.

[419] And it became a defining experience for me. It changed the trajectory of my life because it took me into the world of policymaking and I don't think I ever would have gone there otherwise.

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

[421] What's up, guys?

[422] It's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good.

[423] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest.

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[438] Now, I'm observing a pattern.

[439] I think when you're born into a system that you're clearly a part of, you're incentivized to keep the system going.

[440] When you're the beneficiary of a system, you're generally incentivized to keep it trodden along.

[441] Now, you're born into a system.

[442] in Miami.

[443] Well, you're not born, but you move into a system that really doesn't include you.

[444] And you decide, no, I don't accept that there's a system I'm now a part of that I will be excluded forever.

[445] And no, I'm not going to find this channel that I refuse to be left out of this system.

[446] These aren't all coincidental.

[447] Yeah, no, you're right.

[448] I mean, that's a good insight.

[449] I feel like I should be lying on a couch because I feel like you're in these deep insights about who I am.

[450] and this is actually helpful to hear.

[451] These interviews are only successful if they end with you laying on a couch and sobbing.

[452] That's how we measure whether they were successful or not.

[453] So there is some value into having always been looking at things from the outside and going, no, I will insert myself in some way.

[454] And I can imagine where a lot of the white doctors who are making a good amount of money were like, yeah, the system's fucked up.

[455] But I'm a part of it and it kind of benefits me. You know what I'm saying?

[456] I don't know.

[457] Yeah, no, I think there's something to that.

[458] And I think you're writing your assessment that I think I have often felt like an outsider for various reasons.

[459] You know, when I was young, it was because people looked at me as like an outsider.

[460] And later in life, it was because I was interacting with people who had very different ages and backgrounds for me. So when I was doing the HIV work, for example, the people I find myself raising money from working within the school system, etc, were three, four decades older than I was.

[461] But I felt like, okay, that's okay.

[462] I've got to find a way to make this work.

[463] I'm an outsider, but I have a different point of view.

[464] I have something to add.

[465] And I do, my wife actually often says to me that I see myself outside the box looking in.

[466] And then it's not that I think rules don't apply to me, but she finds that I question rules a lot.

[467] I question the status quo.

[468] I'm always asking, well, I don't think it has to be that way.

[469] I think we can do it a different way.

[470] And I think sometimes, you know, sometimes she admires that.

[471] Sometimes it's like highly annoying to her.

[472] That I do that, you know, perhaps more annoying than anything.

[473] But I do think that that's who I am.

[474] And I wonder, will there be.

[475] a time in my life where I feel like I'm an insider.

[476] There are people who would look at the three of us now and say, well, you guys are all clearly insiders.

[477] Oh, we're the ultimate, we're the establishment at this point.

[478] Right.

[479] We're operating from places of privilege and, you know, and comfort.

[480] And yes, we're on the inside.

[481] But, you know, I actually don't feel like that.

[482] I feel like I'm still on the outside.

[483] I'm with you.

[484] I'm with you.

[485] I bet your wife has about the same ratio of mine does, which is I challenge everything.

[486] It's my hobby.

[487] Love really flush.

[488] not political points of view that I don't have.

[489] Like, I really try to immerse myself and convince myself of what they're.

[490] And I think for my wife, it's about 4 % of the time it's worth it.

[491] Like, where I have a real kind of paradigm -breaking viewpoint on something.

[492] But the rest of the time, it's just annoying as hell.

[493] That's really fair.

[494] I do think there's a similar dynamic with me and Alice.

[495] And I think it's particularly around this idea of me. I think she thinks I'm too pushy, first of all.

[496] And I think I trace the origins of this back to the fruit and vegetable market in Bangalore in India, where as a kid, I would just walk, you know, into the market and I would see people bargaining.

[497] And I would just practice bargaining as well.

[498] They try to get tomatoes for the cheapest price, for mangoes for the cheapest price, or whatever it was.

[499] But I think Alice always feels like, you know, I'm like too pushy that I ask for things that I should just accept kind of like whatever it is given, like the price, the opportunity, whatever.

[500] But I just, I don't know, it comes back to this thing about do you think that you have to accept the world as it is?

[501] And I just, I don't know, I think from a young age, and I do think a lot of this comes from my parents.

[502] I think they brought me up with this idea that you should always respect other people.

[503] You should always treat other people well, but that doesn't mean that you can't aspire for bigger things, that you can't ask people to do more, to give more, to serve more.

[504] It doesn't mean that you can't demand more of yourself and of others, and don't be limited by what you see in front of you.

[505] Think about what's in your head and see if you can create that.

[506] That was the mentality that they brought me up with.

[507] it's funny you know sometimes i feel like you know as we get older we change and this and that and in some other ways we stay the same oh yeah part of those mentalities i are sort of the same as when i was a child a lot of that that's come from my parents okay so i want to touch in on like a couple of the things that you were behind while you were the surgeon general because the interests me greatly i have to imagine but i don't know the history of it were you the first surgeon general to go hey guys addiction is a is a health issue it's not a moral failing was that new and proprietary to you as the Surgeon General when you said that?

[508] I certainly don't own that point of view.

[509] We did issue the first Surgeon General's report on the topic of substance use disorders when I was in office.

[510] And this is a core point that I wanted to make.

[511] When I came into office, I said, I want to modernize how we do our reports in terms of how we think about our communication strategy.

[512] I don't want us to just put together a sheet of papers that sits on a shelf at 10 people with two PhDs and read.

[513] But I want us to put together something that speaks of people's really.

[514] real lived experiences.

[515] And I want us to work with different messages, messengers, and channels to make sure that we're tailoring these messages, the people who need them.

[516] But the real goal with all of these reports, and frankly, with all the campaigns we ran, was to make these about head and hard.

[517] So it was not just about conveying the criteria for diagnosing a substance use disorder and enumerating all the evidence to support various types of medication -assisted treatment.

[518] This is about recognizing that our ability to be compassionate towards others, our ability to give and receive love, sometimes just as powerful in our healing as the medicines that doctors like me have written prescriptions for over the years.

[519] And part of the reason that was so important to me is I had spoken with so many people over the years who had struggled with substance use disorders.

[520] Some of them were my own patients.

[521] Others were people I met around the country when I was Surgeon General.

[522] And to a T, just about every one of them said that there was a person or a group of people that had played a pivotal part in them getting through that dark tunnel of addiction and emerging in recovery and staying in recovery.

[523] And so it's not just about the medicines, although they're important.

[524] It's not just about the counseling, although that's critical.

[525] It's also about the people in our lives, about the community that we build.

[526] And to me, that was an empowering message because it means that each of us has an extraordinarily powerful role that we can play in supporting people around us who may be struggling with addiction.

[527] And that was a core message that I wanted to deliver through this report.

[528] And you were in medicine when this shift first happened, right?

[529] There was a very exact moment where pharma had funded some study and it approved, and I'm putting in quotes, proved.

[530] that there was really no risk of long -term addiction with all these opiate prescriptions.

[531] And that, in fact, OxyContin was very safe because it was time released and all this.

[532] And they launched right a just all out boots on the ground.

[533] They went and met with every doctor.

[534] They showed them this data.

[535] Don't be afraid to prescribe this stuff.

[536] You must have been working in medicine when that first happened.

[537] Do you recall that push?

[538] I do.

[539] I do recall that push.

[540] And there were several things happening.

[541] there was a push for us to be more humane in our treatment of pain, recognizing that we were letting people's pain go only partially treated and people were suffering unnecessarily.

[542] There was also this push to use opioids to relieve the pain.

[543] And I so distinctly remember what so many of us that were taught during training, we were taught that if you give opioid medications to somebody who has, quote, unquote, legitimate pain, that they can't get addicted to it.

[544] Right.

[545] We now know just how wrong that was.

[546] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[547] But thousands and thousands and thousands of healthcare professionals were taught this.

[548] Yeah.

[549] Well, that's what I was wondering, if any of your spidey senses at that time, was any part of you going like, hmm, I don't know about this.

[550] Because I remember being on the outside and I've been sober for 15 years.

[551] And I remember just thinking, well, this is horseshit.

[552] I don't care what the study says.

[553] The notion that this isn't addictive is preposterous.

[554] Yeah, you know, well, when I was in medical school, I didn't really think to question that.

[555] you know, because I didn't have an experience and know otherwise.

[556] But as the years went on, medicine and I started to realize that we were seeing so many patients who had opioid use disorders.

[557] And then on the other hand, we were sending so many people out on it.

[558] I was like, wait a minute, this is disconnect here.

[559] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[560] This has got to be more dangerous than we need it.

[561] You should just tell the people you prescribed it to just hang in the lobby for a while because they'll be back to deal with the addiction.

[562] But what happened with the pharmaceutical companies are the ones that funded these studies?

[563] Like how did this happen?

[564] That's what ended up coming out, right?

[565] That this one study that was very fatally flawed was the one that they built this mountain on top of.

[566] The evidence was not nearly as robust as people thought it was, showing that this was safe.

[567] And it turned out there was extraordinary marketing muscle behind it from the pharma companies that, you know, they were pushing selective data onto doctors.

[568] And they were doing what they had done for many years, which was buying doctors' trips and dinners and other things just to wine and dine them until they get them to use their medication.

[569] And, you know, it turns out we are still paying the price for that.

[570] We likely will for a really, really long time.

[571] Yeah.

[572] So the other kind of novel approach you had as the Surgeon General, again, to my knowledge, I'm no student of Surgeon General policy.

[573] But it seems like you really shifted the focus to prevention.

[574] There's just a kind of couple fun topics within that because a it goes without saying i totally agree i mean so many of these downriver health issues are so preventable and yet it slams up against some things that i regularly wrestle against i am someone who values liberty i think that's a tenant of this constitution in this country that has to be defended fiercely and i believe in it so on one hand i believe everyone has a right to destroy themselves as weird as that sounds that everyone should have the right to live as short of a life as they'd like.

[575] But of course, what all of us people who love liberty don't want to acknowledge is those people then end up in the system.

[576] So it's a dicey one because you're dealing with liberty, but then of course we have a system by which we will not turn people away from hospitals.

[577] So the reality is we will deal with their choices.

[578] So how did you wrestle with those little sticky parts?

[579] It's a really good question.

[580] And public health is a place where these tensions really intensify.

[581] They do so around food when we're trying to figure out, well, should we put restrictions on food and nudge people to where it's healthier food?

[582] Yeah, should we treat it like cigarettes?

[583] The most obvious answer is yes.

[584] I mean, if you're comparing lung cancer to cardiovascular disease, there's more people with cardiovascular disease than lung disease, and yet we're very able to, you know...

[585] Draw a hard line about lung disease or cancer.

[586] Yeah, and not food.

[587] So that's, to Monica's point, these are arbitrary lines to some extent that we're drawing.

[588] Like, we like to think we've got our own clarity on our philosophy and that we apply that rigorously and consistently across all dimensions of our life.

[589] But truth is, none of us really do that.

[590] Like, we're messy, all of us, and myself included, and how we apply our philosophical beliefs.

[591] So I think one thing that I tried to do and try to think about when I was in office and still now is to think about not just is this about individual liberty versus government intrusion and heavy -handedness?

[592] But is there another lens to which we can look at this?

[593] Can we look at this through the lens of collective responsibility?

[594] So if we believe, for example, that we're all out here just for ourselves and that our destiny is determined solely by us, then we can go and live our lives in the way we want.

[595] We can work hard if we want or we can not.

[596] We can eat, you know, 10 cheeseburgers a day, or we can jog every day.

[597] We can do whatever we want.

[598] But if we recognize what I think is the reality, which is that we are truly interdependent creatures, and that we rely on other people to build our path of success, we rely on other people to support us when we fall down.

[599] And then we may start to make very different decisions, right?

[600] So in a collective society, what we do is if we recognize we're truly interdependent, we also don't let people suffer entirely on their own.

[601] And so I'll give you one example of a policy that might seem obscure, which embodies this.

[602] In the Reagan administration, there was a law put forward called the EMTALA rule, which essentially said that an emergency department in a hospital was required to take care of somebody who came in with a medical emergency, even if they didn't have the money to pay for it.

[603] that you might say, well, what kind of philosophy is that based on?

[604] Well, I can't tell you what kind of political philosophy it's based on, but I can tell you it's based on a human value that says that when the chips are down and other people are suffering, we step up and we take care of them.

[605] That's a human value.

[606] And I think that it's actually resonant with the deeper beliefs that most people have, not everyone, but most people.

[607] And you know you see that come out in times of crisis when there's a hurricane or a tornado that rips through an area, people don't start counting chits to see whether they're going to get paid back for donating a meal to a family of need.

[608] They step up and they serve.

[609] And that's the best of humanity coming out.

[610] You're seeing that right now during the COVID -19 pandemic when doctors and nurses are putting their lives on the line, even though they don't have enough masks because they have a sworn duty to help protect other people.

[611] You're seeing neighbors dropping up meals to support other neighbors who are too old to go out because they're in a high -risk group.

[612] You're seeing humanity at its best.

[613] And you saw it in 9 -11.

[614] And 9 -11 was extraordinary.

[615] One of the lesser -known stories of 9 -11 is the boatlift story from 9 -11.

[616] Do you guys, are you familiar with the boatlift story?

[617] I'm not.

[618] I don't think so.

[619] When the Twin Towers were burning down, there was a tremendous amount of smoke and ash in the air, and it was hard to tell which direction to go if you were fleeing.

[620] And so some people fled north, and that was actually the path of relief.

[621] But a lot of people fled south, not realizing that they were.

[622] were just heading towards the Hudson and that they would have no escape from there.

[623] And as that happened, thousands and thousands of people started to build on that southernmost tip of Manhattan.

[624] And they were getting more and more anxious and desperate as the smoke and fire behind them were growing.

[625] The Coast Guard recognized that this was going on.

[626] And they knew also that they didn't have enough resources in the area to be able to rescue all of them.

[627] So they did something they had never done before, which is they issued a call to all the civilian boats in the area and asked them to join on this unprecedented rescue mission.

[628] You might think in that moment, if you're sitting on a boat in the Hudson and you see this inferno growing in front of you, are you going to take your boat toward the inferno or are you going to head for the safety of home?

[629] Within minutes, there were scores of boats that were streaking toward Manhattan.

[630] And these boats guided by civilians, brought soot -covered passengers on board.

[631] They gave them water.

[632] They ferried them to safety.

[633] In total, they rescued nearly 500 ,000 people that day.

[634] And that 9 -11 boat rescue became the largest boat rescue in the history of the world.

[635] It's bigger than Dunkirk.

[636] Wow.

[637] That's exactly right.

[638] Wow.

[639] That's what people do.

[640] Because in our hearts, when the chips are down, we are guided by our human values.

[641] And when I was Surgeon General, I tried to think about that as a guiding principle to how we act.

[642] We can get into debates, into political philosophy debates about what's the appropriate role of government.

[643] And those are important debates to have.

[644] Don't get me wrong.

[645] But I think what we have to make sure is always guiding us is that human perspective of how do we take care of each other, recognizing that we all do truly depend on each other.

[646] How do we recognize just because we are doing well in one area, whether that's economics or our health, or children are doing well, doesn't mean that because other people aren't doing well in that area, that it's all their fault.

[647] If we were born in different circumstances, if I was born into poverty with two parents who were struggling with addiction, who couldn't be there for me, and who couldn't provide me with comfort when I came home scared and worried from school, would I have turned out the same?

[648] You'd be a comedian.

[649] Well, I certainly would have taken a very different path.

[650] And I used that example because that is the path that so many children that I have met over the years have been struggling in without the support from parents, et cetera.

[651] So when we understand that so much of what we have is a product, both of our individual effort but also our circumstance, when we realize that our outcomes are truly interdependent outcomes, that informs a very different approach to policy.

[652] It's a more compassionate and more empathic and a more collective approach.

[653] And that is the way that we create policy in public health that actually works for everyone.

[654] So here's where I'm entirely pessimistic about humans.

[655] I in general think systems are capable of a lot more than humans are independently.

[656] The latch is in the back of all cars that are made so that you can buckle a baby seat into, right?

[657] So the hooks exist on all the cars.

[658] Now, all of us are, whether it's a penny or not, we're all going to, we're going to bear the burden of that as a society so that every single car that comes off the line has these hooks.

[659] Now, if you were to ask me what I thought the percentage of people, if you told them, okay, you have a baby, you have a car seat, you're going to have to go get hooks installed in that car to use the car seat.

[660] I'm very pessimistic.

[661] I think it'd be half.

[662] I don't even know what the number would be, but it would not be 100%.

[663] And the reason it's 100 % is because we came up with a system that's better than people.

[664] And so that's now the counter of my kind of liberty first thing is, unfortunately, we're going to need systems to be better than people, particularly in pursuit of prevention over cure, right?

[665] Because the incentive is 40 years out.

[666] We need these systems and there's so much hesitation to have these systems, but they're so necessary.

[667] And I couldn't agree with you more.

[668] They are necessary because we are imperfect beings and change is really hard to do alone.

[669] I say this is someone who has spent so much time with patients advising them on lifestyle change around diet and exercise and who myself has tried to make many changes over the years around my own diet and exercise pattern.

[670] And it's really, really hard.

[671] It's incredibly difficult to do.

[672] And you're a person who's demonstrated you have enormous willpower.

[673] Anyone that can get to both those colleges.

[674] Like, you're probably apexing the willpower scale.

[675] And it's hard for you, right?

[676] It's really hard.

[677] And I think it's really hard for most people.

[678] But the reality is that these things get easier when three things happen, when we've got people that we can take on these challenges with.

[679] Second, when we have an environment that supports the right changes.

[680] And third, when we have a culture that also supports healthy behavior change.

[681] Let me just say what that actually means.

[682] Having people around us is more obvious, right?

[683] If we're making a pact with a couple of friends that we're going to eat healthily, that we're all going to go to the gym three times a week together, that's a lot easier to keep up and if we're doing it alone.

[684] But the environment piece is also really important.

[685] If you surround somebody with healthy food versus surround them with unhealthy food, they will make very different choices.

[686] And it doesn't matter how educated they are, how smart they are, how much willpower they have, they will make very different choices.

[687] And so if you ensure that people have ready access to healthy food options in their workplaces, that kids have access in their schools, that you can go to a grocery store that actually has healthy produce and other healthy options at an affordable price, those are the kind of environmental changes that will make and nudge people toward healthier choices.

[688] An example you brought up Dax of having hooks in a car is an example of that too, right?

[689] You're changing the baseline environment in a car to make healthier behavior possible.

[690] But the third piece, this culture piece, is perhaps, I think, the most important of all, because ultimately all cultures are a collective set of beliefs.

[691] And culture supports policy, it influences our decisions.

[692] If we live in a culture that tells us that eating fruits and vegetables is a weak thing to do.

[693] And the more manly thing to do is, let's say, to eat a hamburger, right?

[694] Then we're going to discourage everyone, especially young children, from eating fruits and vegetables because they're going to see it as uncool or undesirable in some way.

[695] Apply that to like, you know, to anything else.

[696] You know, if we tell people, for example, that cigarette smoking is cool, right?

[697] Then it doesn't matter what the policies are nearly as much.

[698] young people will gravitate towards cigarette smoking.

[699] So it is through the culture that we shape, that we also dramatically influence the choices that people make.

[700] The powerful thing about that is that culture is in our hands.

[701] It's not easy to change.

[702] It doesn't change overnight.

[703] But we can even on a micro level start changing culture within our family, within our group of friends, by making different choices, you know, by talking about why we're making a step in a certain direction.

[704] And so if we really want to change health, You've got to understand, I think, these three core elements that we are truly better and more effective when we're doing things together.

[705] Environmental change nudges people in the right direction.

[706] We've got to use that.

[707] But it is our cultural beliefs that we have to proactively shape.

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

[709] You know what I worry about with my kids and with all of our kids, frankly, is I worry that we are raising them in a culture that predominantly tells that.

[710] that their sense of self -worth is defined by whether or not they're successful, and their success is determined by their ability to acquire one of three things, wealth, power, or reputation.

[711] So if someone's become famous, if they've acquired a high position in government or in a company, if they've sold a company and made millions of millions of dollars, we say, you know what, they've made it.

[712] They're successful, and hence that they have value.

[713] But our value as human beings and our kids' values is not extrinsic.

[714] It's actually intrinsic.

[715] And it's rooted in our children's ability to give and receive love.

[716] That is what makes people valuable intrinsically.

[717] And the thing is, all of our kids do that automatically when they're born, right?

[718] They don't feel ashamed to express joy, to give someone a hug.

[719] They're much less restricted than we are as we get older.

[720] but what happens as they get older is they start worshipping at the altar of these three false gods and that leads them down a path through in which they believe that their value and self -worth is truly conditional whereas we know that it is not and so this all points to why as culture is so essential when it comes to how we live public health but also the future that our children hold because I want our kids to grow up knowing that they have intrinsic worth.

[721] I want them to approach other people in life, not from a place of insufficiency and where they feel like they need validation, but knowing that, yeah, they've got things they could learn, they could be better, but they inherently have work because they have the ability to express compassion, generosity, kindness, and love toward anyone else.

[722] Well, and yes, they're a part of this interconnectivity that you speak of, and so they're an asset to those around them.

[723] Okay, I could talk to you about that for, another four hours.

[724] But we have limited time with you, and I want to talk about your book, which is entitled, Together, The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.

[725] I want you to start with your most delicious, provocative story, which is tell me about the guy who won the lottery, because I think we all have a fantasy about what it'd be like to win the lottery.

[726] This patient that I speak about in the book, he's somebody I met in primary care clinic.

[727] And I remember reading his chart beforehand, I saw that he had diabetes, he had high blood pressure, he was dealing with obesity, and he was coming in just for a routine visit to adjust his medication to see how he was doing.

[728] When he walks into the room, I asked him, how can I help you?

[729] And one of the first things he said to me is he said, you know, Doc, I won the lottery, and it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And he was being literal.

[730] He actually did win the lottery.

[731] Oh, my goodness.

[732] And he had all this money coming to him every year.

[733] You know, to him and to the outside world, it was like, this guy is a perfect life.

[734] Before that, he worked in a bakery, and people loved what he made.

[735] He was actually pretty talented.

[736] He lived in a modest house and a modest neighborhood.

[737] He certainly would have loved a bigger house, but he liked his neighbors, and he knew the people around him.

[738] And when he won the lottery, he figured, why do I need to work anymore?

[739] I've made it.

[740] So he quit his job.

[741] He moved to this expensive community on the water and bought a big house with a big fence around it.

[742] And then he started to find that he was profoundly alone, that he didn't have colleagues at work who he enjoyed chatting with every day.

[743] He didn't have customers who told them how much they loved his big goods.

[744] He didn't have neighbors that he could just banter with, you know, in the evenings and on weekends.

[745] He was all alone.

[746] And surely after that, he developed diabetes and hypertension.

[747] And he just told me, he said, you know, I used to be a pretty happy guy.

[748] And now I just feel like I'm angry all.

[749] the time.

[750] And the story was really striking to me for a couple of reasons.

[751] One is it was one of my early introductions to loneliness.

[752] And I started to see in the years that fall, the loneliness was extraordinarily common among my patients.

[753] So many people would come in to the hospital alone.

[754] They would have to deal with the really hard diagnoses and decisions all by themselves.

[755] Well, God, that's so sad.

[756] Yeah.

[757] And even at the time of death, honestly, there were a number of instances were the only witnesses to people's final hours were myself and my colleagues in the hospital.

[758] Were you observing loneliness or were people admitting it?

[759] Because I find that this topic, which is so important, and you have so much data to back up its actual long -term health effects and whatnot, it requires a ton of vulnerability for someone to say, I'm lonely because what they think you think is, oh, you're a loser, no one wants to be around you.

[760] It's an incredibly vulnerable statement to make.

[761] So I'm curious if in your practice, do people feel safe enough to say, I'm lonely, or were you seeing the markers of loneliness?

[762] Yeah.

[763] So in almost all instances, people did not feel comfortable saying it.

[764] So that was mainly me observing it.

[765] And every now and then I would surface it.

[766] And they would say, yeah, you know, I don't have anyone.

[767] I wish I had friends in a community.

[768] But, you know, the truth is, the honest truth is, I also had no idea how to talk about it.

[769] You know, I was early in my medical career at that time, I was seeing something, loneliness, that I had never learned about in medical school and had been trained on in residency.

[770] And I'm thinking to myself, how am I supposed to be helpful here and feeling guilty that I didn't know how?

[771] And so even with my patient who won the lottery, all I knew how to do was I just tried to listen as best I could.

[772] I tried to be as empathic as I could.

[773] And I hope that that had some value.

[774] But the reality is I was feeling pretty lost.

[775] Like I just didn't know to handle this.

[776] And, you know, I think that a lot of doctors feel that way.

[777] We don't talk about that in medicine.

[778] We don't learn about it in medical school.

[779] And so we continue on all the while focusing on the things we know how to control, like adjusting people's medications, but not always being able to deal with sometimes what's their underlying primary issue, which might be a lack of social connection.

[780] The data that I'm sure you're more than aware, maybe we're even a part of generating, but yes, that if you had to pick for your child, as shockingly as this is, whether or not they had a friend and were a smoker or no friends and smoked, that actually the better choice if you had to make that with a gun to your head would be a friend in smoke cigarettes, that they'll probably live longer, which was just a mind -blowing proposition.

[781] The research we're alluding to is this is done by Julianne Holt -Lonstat at Brigham Young University, and it had been suspected based on data that had been accruing before her work that loneliness had some serious impacts on health.

[782] What her study showed is that loneliness is associated with an increased risk of heart disease and depression and anxiety, but it's also associated with an increase in premature death and a reduction in lifespan.

[783] And the degree to which the lifespan is reduced is similar to their lifespan reduction you see with smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

[784] It's greater than the mortality impact of obesity and of sedentary living.

[785] And I think about how much time myself and my predecessors in the office of the Surgeon General have spent on smoking, obesity, and sedentary living, and how little we have spent on our social health, on loneliness.

[786] And it's not that those other three aren't important.

[787] They're critically important, but there's been something that's been missing.

[788] And Julianne's research helped to bring that to life.

[789] light.

[790] Do you think that the hesitation was, A, just a blind spot, or is that there is an empirical challenge to tackling something like loneliness?

[791] Like, how do you quantify it?

[792] How do you, you know, is there methodological reasons why it's not as explored?

[793] I mean, it's certainly both, but I think that the lack of recognition that it was an important issue to investigate prevented us from marshalling the resources and attention needed to develop the right methodology and to put the right resources to word research so we can understand what's driving loneliness, what are the consequences and how to we ultimately address it?

[794] I would imagine the upside of our technical intertwinedness is that you're seeing some synthesis of all these different disciplines.

[795] And we've had a couple different experts that, you know, an obesity study that comes to find out a lot about aces, right, like a crude childhood adversity and how much that impacts people's health and may result in obesity.

[796] So it's like, you're starting to see all this data kind of merge and be synthesized in this fascinating way, which is like if you're betting on prevention, which you are, and I believe in, then you really got to start looking at childhood and all these emotional states that are hard to quantify, and we've got to value them, and we've got to think of them as much as diet and exercise and all that.

[797] And it's just a paradigm shift, isn't it?

[798] It really is.

[799] And it's been fascinating just to see the growing body of work on trauma, both childhood trauma and adult trauma and thinking about how we redesigned care to be trauma -informed.

[800] But what's so interesting about so much of the work around trauma is that relationships end up being an really important cushion, if you will, for people who are struggling with traumatic experiences.

[801] They cushion the blow, if you will.

[802] They're an important part of their healing as well.

[803] And that issue is true across the lifespan is that you can think of relationships in our life as the buffers that protect us from adversity.

[804] They also allow us to not only be healthier, but also perform better.

[805] And it turns out that our connections with each other, I think, have a profound impact on the polarization that we're seeing right now in our society and the toxic politics, frankly, that has consumed so much of the world.

[806] It's relevant in this respect.

[807] When you have a growing disconnection between people, when neighbors don't know neighbors, when people don't know people of different political parties because they can just silo, like in their own chat room or text thread, when we don't build a relationship with others, then we actually can't dialogue with them.

[808] Because when you have relationships with others, you can actually listen more effectively to them.

[809] So if you, for example, have somebody in one of your families, a relative perhaps who has very different political views from you, because you have a relationship with them, even if their views annoy you, even if you totally disagree with them, you can sit down and have a conversation.

[810] You're more likely to listen to what they're saying.

[811] But if you don't know somebody, if they're just jk74 at yahoo .com in a chat form, then you know, you're not going to listen to them as clearly because it's easier to make them into a point of view as opposed to a human being.

[812] And so as our connections with each other have frayed, it's become harder to listen to each other, which has made dialogue harder.

[813] And if you think about the big challenges we're facing today, whether it's climate change or whether it's systemic inequalities or whether it's major problems with our health care system, we can't overcome these problems without being able to talk to each other and come together in some way.

[814] And there's a conventional view that says, Well, if you've got people of different views, you put them in the same room, and you get them to talk about the issue, and they will find some common ground.

[815] And that's actually not how common ground is found.

[816] But the way you actually overcome polarization is you build a relationship first.

[817] People connect on their shared experiences, their shared concerns.

[818] They talk about their families.

[819] They get to know what's happening with each other's children.

[820] And then on that relationship, they can start to talk about difficult things.

[821] But if we don't get that, how central relationships are, to how we function, then we won't build those connections.

[822] We won't prioritize human relationships and we will be stuck in the same polarization with the same poor health outcomes that we're dealing with today.

[823] Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree with you more.

[824] I'm always urging people to start with like, hey, are you guys both fathers?

[825] There's a profound amount of overlap in your lives just right there.

[826] And then are you a son with an aging parent?

[827] I mean, if you really chalk up the percentage of people's days that's, occupied by their activities.

[828] The activities themselves are so relatable and we're all doing them yet, yeah, we're letting, you know, 2 % of their thoughts, their political opinions be their identity.

[829] And in COVID, you know, it started very heartwarming for me where I was like, oh yeah, this could be great.

[830] There's no side of the aisle that's immune from this.

[831] And then yet it found its way in the last few weeks into being a left right thing.

[832] And just to see that those things merged is so disheartening.

[833] No, you're absolutely right.

[834] I mean, whether or not you wear a mask in public shouldn't be a political statement.

[835] It should be a public health decision.

[836] And unfortunately, we're even seeing masks become a political symbol.

[837] And that just feels tragic because we want people to protect themselves, regardless of their political ideology.

[838] And it feels sad to see people giving up protection for a political means.

[839] Yeah.

[840] Okay.

[841] So let's assume that there's people listening that go, wow, man, I actually have to think about loneliness and my human connection.

[842] with the same stakes as I would think about whether I should quit smoking or turn my diet around.

[843] And then the question is there's a lot of great prescriptive methods for those things.

[844] What if someone's listening there like, fuck, I got to take this very seriously.

[845] Where on earth do I start?

[846] That's a great question.

[847] And so I wrote the book for people to recognize that loneliness, number one, can show up in different ways in our life.

[848] It's not just the person sitting alone in a corner during a party, but loneliness can manifest as anger and irritability.

[849] It can manifest as us pulling back and secluding ourselves from others.

[850] It can look like depression and sadness.

[851] It can look like anxiety.

[852] It can show up in different ways in our life.

[853] And in those moments, it can be confusing if we're not thinking that loneliness may be a component here.

[854] The good news is that there are small things we can do that can make a big difference in how connected we feel.

[855] So one is to focus on the consistency of time that we have with other people.

[856] people, just taking 15 minutes a day to spend with people that we love, whether that's video conferencing with them, having a phone call with them, or simply writing them a message to say, hey, I'm thinking of you, and I just wanted to check in, see how you are.

[857] That, when done consistently over time, can really build a powerful lifeline to the outside world.

[858] The second thing we can do is focus on the quality of time that we spend with others.

[859] And this is especially important for people who might be incredibly busy, who don't have extra time to devote to an hour -long conversation each day or to a two -hour pow -wow with a friend, who they're getting together with for a meal.

[860] But even if you don't spend a single minute more, if you focus on improving the quality of time that you have with people, that can make each difference.

[861] And one of the clearest ways to do that is by reducing distraction when you're talking to other people.

[862] I'll admit that I have been guilty on multiple occasions of calling a friend of the phone and then somehow in the middle of the conversation I find myself scrolling through my inbox, refreshing my social media feed, Googling a question that just came up, watching the news in the background.

[863] I mean, it's just, it's crazy.

[864] And I think many of us convince ourselves that we can multitask, but that's like one of the great myths of human beings is that we actually can't multitask.

[865] Science is very clear that we task switch from one thing to another.

[866] So simply focus, on somebody else and giving them one of the greatest gifts that you can give another human being, which is a gift of your full attention, that can be incredibly powerful.

[867] And if you think back to a conversation you've had with somebody who was fully present, who was listening deeply to you, who was sharing openly with you, you know that five minutes of quality conversation like that can be so much better than 30 minutes of distracted conversation.

[868] So that's the second thing in people who do.

[869] There's a third thing that I recognized in the writing of this book that surprised me. And that was that service is a powerful antidote to loneliness.

[870] It turns out that when we are chronically lonely, a couple of counterintuitive things happen to us.

[871] So one is that our threat level shifts up.

[872] So we start to perceive things around us as a threat, whereas they may not be.

[873] The second thing that happens is our focus shifts inward because we're feeling unsafe.

[874] We're feeling under threat.

[875] And the third thing that happens to us is that our self -esteem starts to erode over time as we start to believe that the reason we're lonely must be that we're not likable or broken in some way.

[876] And all of these constitute a downward spiral because the less self -esteem I have, the harder it is for me to reach out to other people.

[877] The more threatened I feel, the more I'm focused on myself, the harder it actually makes it for other people to have a meaningful interaction with me. But service is powerful because it short circuits these patterns.

[878] It shifts the focus from me to someone else in the context of a positive interaction, but it also reaffirms for me that I have value to bring to the world.

[879] And that feels good.

[880] The last thing I would share, there are so many things that I learned from the beautiful stories that any of which I've included in the book that I think are powerful in addressing loneliness.

[881] But the last thing I would share is also a counterintuitive one.

[882] And that's that solitude is actually an important part of the solution to loneliness.

[883] And I'll explain why.

[884] So solitude is time that you spend alone that's joyful, that's peaceful, that's replenishing.

[885] And solitude is important because it's in moments of solitude that we allow the noise around us to settle.

[886] It's where we allow ourselves to reflect on what's happening in our life where we re -center and re -ground ourselves.

[887] And when you approach somebody else from a place of groundedness and centeredness, the conversations are usually better.

[888] You're able to listen more clearly to them.

[889] You're able to show up more clearly as yourself as opposed to trying to be somebody else that you're not.

[890] Those centering moments of solitude, they don't have to be seven -day retreats that you take away from your family.

[891] Although if that works for you, you should absolutely do that.

[892] But we can find moments of solitude in just a few minutes of time that we take to sit out on our stoop and feel the wind against our face or take a short walk in nature.

[893] It can be a few minutes that we take to remember three things that we're grateful for or that we take to meditate or to pray.

[894] These are all simple, small things that can have an immeasurable difference.

[895] I learned this actually years ago from my nephrology teacher who taught me about the key.

[896] kidney in medical school.

[897] She was an amazing, amazing woman.

[898] She was a mother.

[899] She was an administrator.

[900] She was a doctor.

[901] She was a teacher.

[902] She seemed to do everything.

[903] But her life was really crazy and it was incredibly stressful.

[904] And she wanted to meditate every day, but she didn't have time.

[905] But she needed to do something to center herself.

[906] So what she would do is before she walked into a patient's room and when she washed her hands, she would just turn the warm water on and let the water run over her hands for 20 seconds.

[907] And during that time, she would just just think about all the things that she was grateful for, the opportunity to teach a medical student that morning, the chance to be a part of someone's healing in that moment.

[908] And then she would walk into the patient's room, feeling a bit more grounded, a bit more center.

[909] That became her meditation.

[910] And those micro doses of gratitude and micro doses of solitude can be extraordinarily powerful in grounding us.

[911] And when we approach other people from that standpoint, it really strengthens our human connections.

[912] The lesson to me that came out of that learning was that the secret to connecting with other people starts with connecting with ourself.

[913] Those moments of groundedness that matter a lot.

[914] And if I think about my own life in the last few years, I realize that I have so often approached other people, being way off -kilter myself, you know, being really frazzled, being completely distracted, overwhelmed with stuff.

[915] Like, thousand things are going through my head.

[916] And I can't even focus on the conversation.

[917] You know, I can't be the kind of friend I want to be.

[918] I can't be the kind of husband I want to be in that conversation.

[919] I got to pause.

[920] I got to just take a deep breath.

[921] I've got to let that noise settle.

[922] And that's hard to do in the modern world.

[923] But so much is coming at us, right?

[924] Through the news to our social media feeds.

[925] And it's especially hard now during a pandemic when we're also scared about what's happening.

[926] There's so much uncertainty around us.

[927] but it makes that solitude all the more important.

[928] It makes the human connection that we know we usually need in our lives all the more important right now.

[929] Well, listen, there's been such a pleasure talking to you.

[930] We really could have covered any one of those topics for another few hours.

[931] I really urge people to read your book together, the healing power of human connection in a sometimes lonely world because, you know, hopefully with the help of you and other people, this will get prioritized on the same level with these other things.

[932] we're all quite aware of.

[933] And I really do hope we're heading in a direction where we do value that and prioritize it because I think, as you point out, it's the foundation upon which so much is built on top of.

[934] That's so true.

[935] And the last that I keep coming back to, the X on this, is I can't help but think of the fact that so much of the transformation we're talking about here in building a people -centered life and a people -centered world is not an effort to transform message is something we're not.

[936] It's a return to who we intrinsically are.

[937] We were designed to be connected to each other.

[938] We have evolved over thousands of years.

[939] But in recent years, we've allowed that to weaken and to deteriorate.

[940] We've allowed ourselves to drift further and further away from other people in our life because our circumstances have changed so rapidly that we're just starting to understand what the consequences are of the new technology, new mobility, and shifts and culture that we've been experiencing.

[941] But if I had a simple credo to put to this book, it would just be three words.

[942] It would be put people first.

[943] And I think when we approach our life with that credo in mind, we make different decisions about where we put our time and attention and energy.

[944] If you're a manager and you ask the question, how would I put people first in the workplace?

[945] And you make different decisions and design a different kind of work environment.

[946] Same is true in schools.

[947] Same is true even in public policy.

[948] If we ask, what does it look like to have an education policy, transportation policy, a housing policy that puts people first, we arrive at different conclusions that if we're just looking at financial outcomes.

[949] And the biggest clue that I take that this matters is from those patients who I've had the privilege of spending time with in the final moments of their life.

[950] And I think about what they talked about.

[951] And to a T, what they talked about was not the promotions they received or how big their bank account was or how popular they were and how many news articles they had written about them.

[952] But they talked about were relationships, the people they loved, people they wished they had spent more time with, the people who had broken their heart.

[953] You know, the final moments of our life, it's our relationships that rise to the top and that to me is a clear signal that it's what matters to us but we don't have to wait until the end of our lives to start putting people first we can do that right now and in doing so we can create the kind of world the kind of generous kind compassionate world that our children's originally deserve thank you so much doctor i'm on the verge of crying now does lovely yeah yeah yeah we'd like you a lot i hope you'll write another book so have a reason to talk to us again.

[954] I'm sure you're not.

[955] You're not done yet, are you?

[956] Well, who knows what's to come, but call me anytime.

[957] I'm always happy to chat.

[958] Okay.

[959] Hey, one random thing I was going to suggest.

[960] Yeah.

[961] I don't know if this is appropriate or not.

[962] We love suggestions.

[963] Yeah, we love it.

[964] But Monica, I was reading that you've been recording this podcast where you're talking about relationships and how hard it is to meet me and meet a guy.

[965] Yeah.

[966] And I think I have somebody I might want to set you up with if you're game for it.

[967] Oh, my God.

[968] Yes, please.

[969] I would love that.

[970] Oh, my God.

[971] Is it Barack Obama?

[972] Oh, my God.

[973] Fingers crossed.

[974] I do not want to incur the wrath of Michelle Obama or anybody else.

[975] Well, they may be opening things up.

[976] We don't know where they're at.

[977] Yeah, that's great.

[978] I would love it.

[979] I have a side hobby as a matchmaker that I started some years.

[980] years ago.

[981] And there's this guy I was thinking about when I was learning about your story, Monica.

[982] He's an amazing guy.

[983] He's Indian.

[984] He's a doctor.

[985] He's incredibly thoughtful, really nice.

[986] He's a very social justice -oriented person, very passionate about advocacy work and community service.

[987] He's a dear friend.

[988] He's a really good guy.

[989] But I wanted to float it out there.

[990] Yes.

[991] If you're open to meeting folks, then let's connect offline and I would love to introduce Oh, I love this.

[992] This is great.

[993] Yes.

[994] He's going to have to pass the Dax Shepherd test.

[995] Just warn him now.

[996] It's my daughter, so I'll have to wrestle him at one point in the front yard.

[997] We could set up a screening interview with Dax first.

[998] Yeah, there I go.

[999] Thank you for thinking of me. All right.

[1000] Well, Dr. Murthy, be good, be safe.

[1001] Thank you so much for all your work and service to the country and to us at large.

[1002] Can't wait to talk to you again.

[1003] Yeah, I'm looking for it to as well.

[1004] You guys take care, stay safe.

[1005] And we'll be in touch.

[1006] Bye.

[1007] Bye.

[1008] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1009] Vivek.

[1010] Vivek.

[1011] Did you call your dad and ask him how to pronounce the last name?

[1012] Was he one of the people?

[1013] I think I did that.

[1014] This is a pretty regular occurrence.

[1015] Before we interviewed him, we did ask my dad.

[1016] He doesn't always give us the definitive answers we're looking for.

[1017] Sometimes the T .H. in certain Indian languages is pronounced just with the T. No, I'm wrong.

[1018] Okay, I'm wrong.

[1019] It's the opposite.

[1020] So sometimes when there's just a T, it's pronounced T .H. Oh, wow.

[1021] So, like, there was a girl in my high school.

[1022] Her name was Amritha.

[1023] But...

[1024] No H. Most people pronounced it Amrida.

[1025] Sure.

[1026] I would have.

[1027] It was spelled Amrida.

[1028] R -I -T -A -S, but really pronounced Am I -Rita.

[1029] Am I -Rita is probably what you would have called her.

[1030] And she was really great.

[1031] Pari, our neighbor, who we love.

[1032] And I probably, I talked to pari more than any neighbor I've ever had.

[1033] Yeah.

[1034] Right?

[1035] Like, I'll spend an hour in his backyard talking to him.

[1036] He's a retired professor.

[1037] Yep.

[1038] And a physicist, which I found out.

[1039] Because he's also got a master's in, like, economics or something.

[1040] He's like a polymath.

[1041] Yeah.

[1042] And I happened to mention I was reading the Oppenheimer book.

[1043] And he's like, that's not the guy.

[1044] This is the guy, you know, this is another thing we talked about recently is like, what I love about Indians is they have an opinion or the ones I've met.

[1045] They have an opinion and they'll stand by it.

[1046] I love it.

[1047] So you are part Indian.

[1048] A thousand percent.

[1049] Yes.

[1050] At any rate, I feel like I'm surrounded by an inordinate amount.

[1051] Unless Indians are way more populous in this country than I ever gave it credit for.

[1052] I just feel like I've met and hung out with and conversed with way more Indians in the last five years than never before.

[1053] And not to stereotype, but so far, love my interactions.

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] I think it's because of me. Okay.

[1056] I think.

[1057] Oh, Bader Meinhauf.

[1058] It's a little Bader Meinhauf.

[1059] A little frequency illusion.

[1060] A little bit, I think.

[1061] Racist.

[1062] No. No. No, no, no. I mean, maybe, but like the positive kind.

[1063] Like, I think because you like me, you kind of like already like Pari.

[1064] You've like, you've like done some connecting, I think, to Indian people because of me. That's true.

[1065] Also, I knew Pari before you.

[1066] Oh, yeah.

[1067] But did you guys talk a lot?

[1068] Yeah, we did.

[1069] Ever since the first time I've met him, he and I chat.

[1070] And so I think what's also at play is that I am both attracted to.

[1071] of intelligent people.

[1072] And even more selfishly, I want the approval of intelligent people.

[1073] Sure, sure.

[1074] And so Pari's very intelligent.

[1075] He's a professor.

[1076] So I want him to think I'm smart.

[1077] Yeah.

[1078] And most of the Indians I've met, they fall into that same thing where I really, like, when I'm at your dad, I'm just like, I'm swimming as fast as I can.

[1079] I'm treading water so fast, trying to get him to think I'm smart like him.

[1080] I know.

[1081] Well, okay, so.

[1082] And it makes me so engaged with him.

[1083] You talk to my dad.

[1084] You talk to my mom.

[1085] You talk to my brother a little bit.

[1086] So really, these are just three people that are connected to me that have increased your number a lot.

[1087] Yeah, big time.

[1088] Yeah.

[1089] And then the show.

[1090] And then the show.

[1091] I mean.

[1092] And generally, the people we interview on the show are very smart, so I very much want their approval.

[1093] I've got a lot to prove.

[1094] I can't wait to meet a dumbass Indian.

[1095] Well.

[1096] I think I've talked about it on here before, but my friend Aaron Tyrell, not Aaron Weekly.

[1097] there was three errands go watch tyrell weekly Tyrell was so comfortable playing the idiot and I saw how much it got him out of in high school and even at work because we worked together and he was drastically smarter than everyone who thought he was dumb right and I was like first just enamored with the strategy yeah it's pretty smart and then doubly blown away at the notion that he can live with people thinking he's dumb yeah like that that's not a hang up for him He's like, yeah, they think I'm a dumbass.

[1098] But then I don't have to do the things I don't want to do.

[1099] We have had a separate conversation, me and you and some other friends, like our friend, Laura, about needing people to think we're smart.

[1100] Yes.

[1101] It started from that reality show on Netflix, too hot for...

[1102] Oh, too hot to handle.

[1103] And that one girl was broadcasting how dumb she was all the time.

[1104] And we're like, can you imagine that your romantic partner would think you were dumb and that wouldn't drive you crazy?

[1105] I couldn't be with someone who thought it was dumb.

[1106] I know.

[1107] But it's so interesting because Laura felt the same way strongly.

[1108] And I just didn't.

[1109] Just didn't.

[1110] And I don't.

[1111] I mean, it's weird because I couldn't have him think I'm dumb.

[1112] Right.

[1113] But I don't know that I need him to think I'm smart.

[1114] Okay.

[1115] And I think it's, I mean.

[1116] Because you know you're smart.

[1117] I do.

[1118] Right, right, right, right.

[1119] And like, growing up.

[1120] Growing up being smart definitely was important to my parents, but not in a way that's like, yay, you're getting good grades.

[1121] It was just like.

[1122] It was assumed.

[1123] The expectation was there.

[1124] And when it was met, it was not a surprise.

[1125] It was commonplace.

[1126] Yeah, yeah.

[1127] Hussim was just talking about that on an episode of Patriot Act.

[1128] Oh, really?

[1129] Yeah, I watched two yesterday while I was working out.

[1130] And he was showing clips of like white parents celebrating something.

[1131] And he said, do you see that Asian parents?

[1132] That's called celebrating.

[1133] an accomplishment or something like that it was calling out that uh that's funny yeah that asian parents just do not give the compliments or parade in the streets when you guys do something i know but you should have seen my dad at the state championship oh my god embarrassing the hell out of you it was so embarrassing oh my god it was so embarrassing he was like jumping up and down and he had all like this gear on like spirit wear oh god oh my god i think i've told you that it would be it would be Sophie's choice for me if I were in that audience who I was going to look at.

[1134] You are your father.

[1135] Because man, would it be fun to watch him celebrate with a bunch of gear on women's cheerleading gear?

[1136] Was it women?

[1137] Is he wearing like a do you have pom -poms and stuff?

[1138] No, he was wearing like a shirt and a weird hat.

[1139] I don't know.

[1140] I don't want to think about it.

[1141] It was really sweet though, obviously.

[1142] But I think because he's not, he's like, what is this world?

[1143] And then we had just accomplished this thing.

[1144] He had no connection to.

[1145] I think it felt like, whoa, she's unlike the academics.

[1146] He was not expecting you to be an athlete of state, state champion level.

[1147] Not at all.

[1148] Guaranteed.

[1149] Well, I had that yesterday.

[1150] I've yet to have the experience with Lincoln or Delta, and this is egotomaniacal, but I'm being honest.

[1151] Yeah.

[1152] They haven't exhibited a skill that I can't trace to either Kristen or I. Oh, they will.

[1153] But Lincoln did two paintings.

[1154] Oh, I know.

[1155] They're amazing.

[1156] And I was literally like, oh, you have a talent neither of us have.

[1157] No, Kristen's really good at art. She's good, but she's not that good.

[1158] You couldn't have done that at seven?

[1159] I don't know.

[1160] She is really good at drawing and art and stuff.

[1161] And I think Lori Kristen's mom is also really good at that stuff.

[1162] So I do think that is where that comes from perhaps.

[1163] But it was pretty astounding.

[1164] And it was on the, and that's why Eric and I were talking about it, actually.

[1165] because all the kids' paintings were lined up on the grass.

[1166] And it was pretty staggering the difference between Lincolns and everyone else's.

[1167] It looked like almost like not abstract.

[1168] Impressionist.

[1169] Like not clear lines, but very intentional.

[1170] And very beautiful.

[1171] It was beautiful.

[1172] Yeah.

[1173] I was very impressed as well.

[1174] Well, I looked at it.

[1175] I was like, couldn't do it.

[1176] Yeah.

[1177] Couldn't make that painting.

[1178] And I'm 45.

[1179] But you're good at drawing, too.

[1180] I'm okay in a weird way.

[1181] I'm just creative.

[1182] I'm not good at it.

[1183] It's just the things I'm writing in the bubbles are interesting.

[1184] No, the people are good.

[1185] They're good, too.

[1186] Well, you really like when the back fat were showing you.

[1187] They're detailed.

[1188] You can see their back fat.

[1189] But that is interesting.

[1190] It was really exciting.

[1191] It's way more exciting to see your kids do something unexpectedly good.

[1192] Like, I expect our kids to be mildly funny and probably okay at acting.

[1193] Right.

[1194] But this thing, I was like, whoa.

[1195] I know.

[1196] Like Lincoln rides a motorcycle like a boss.

[1197] But I'm like, yeah, of course she does.

[1198] No, you're impressed by that.

[1199] I am.

[1200] Yeah.

[1201] But I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1202] But I'm like, I understand why she's good at it.

[1203] Because I was always good at bicycling and stuff.

[1204] She has a lot of talents.

[1205] Yeah.

[1206] She really does.

[1207] I just she finds the booze and drink.

[1208] Booze and.

[1209] I don't know.

[1210] Hopefully not.

[1211] Hopefully the trauma component will be absent and only the genetic component will be there.

[1212] And only on half.

[1213] That's true.

[1214] Do your parents have any opinion about drinking?

[1215] Like, if they ever monitored your drinking or asked you if you think you drink too much or not enough?

[1216] Yeah, sometimes my mom will.

[1217] She doesn't really drink, right?

[1218] Right.

[1219] Every now and then she'll get like a mixed drink at a restaurant and she'll take like a few sips and then she'll feel drunk and it's.

[1220] But my dad drinks a lot.

[1221] So he never says anything.

[1222] But not a lot.

[1223] a lot the way you do, which is just he drinks often, but he doesn't get hammered.

[1224] That's true.

[1225] I've never seen you hammered to my great disappointment.

[1226] I'd love to see you incoherent and, like, tripping and stuff.

[1227] I'm sure I've tripped a little bit around you.

[1228] I'm sure I've been more drunk than you knew a few times, probably.

[1229] I was drunk last night because I ordered these amazing drinks that Jess's friend, bartender friend is making.

[1230] And you can get them delivered?

[1231] Yeah.

[1232] They're like made.

[1233] Are they chilled?

[1234] Are they in a cooler staying cold?

[1235] They're in like a cool bottle, but it's highly concentrated.

[1236] So you put it with ice and you shake it up.

[1237] And you got a little tipsy by yourself?

[1238] No, I wasn't by myself.

[1239] I was with Laura.

[1240] Do you let her in on it or do you have your guardups around her as well?

[1241] Do you hide how drunk you were around her?

[1242] I didn't even know.

[1243] Oh, snuck up on you.

[1244] It did sneak up.

[1245] I haven't really been drunk in a long time.

[1246] It did sneak up on me. Oh, it did.

[1247] And do you think she observed that you were?

[1248] I wonder.

[1249] But then Matt came over.

[1250] Oh.

[1251] And you all fucked, which is...

[1252] Which I guess I wouldn't normally do if...

[1253] Anyway, but I did think today was like, I wonder if I should ask Laura if I was like talking his head off.

[1254] Sure.

[1255] I bet I was.

[1256] Oh, man. I woke up every...

[1257] morning for a decade.

[1258] Embarrassed.

[1259] Trying to replay every conversation I had.

[1260] Because I, you know me sober.

[1261] Sober I'm too much.

[1262] Like sober one in five nights of conversations, I'm going to have to call someone and apologize.

[1263] And that's sober.

[1264] Yeah, I can't imagine it.

[1265] I really can't imagine.

[1266] Jesus.

[1267] But you had that horror when you wake up and you're like, oh, God.

[1268] Let's see.

[1269] I said, ooh, oh, I remember saying that.

[1270] Oh, it's just frightening.

[1271] When you woke up in the morning after these experiences, did you ever feel like, oh, I said things?

[1272] Were you lying?

[1273] No. I had, I have theories when I'm drunk that I don't have sober.

[1274] I think differently when I'm drunk.

[1275] Really?

[1276] Yeah.

[1277] I don't have that.

[1278] I think I'm just saying what I want to say very openly.

[1279] I think that's common with people with drinking.

[1280] Like one of the appeals is it like, it brings.

[1281] breaks down the social barriers, right, and all these different things and it allows you to be honest.

[1282] But that's, again, like you're not needing to be smart.

[1283] I've never needed provocation to be.

[1284] Oh, yeah.

[1285] It's just, I always say what I want to say.

[1286] So, like, it doesn't encourage me to say more of that.

[1287] I just will get on vents that in the morning, I'm like, it's just like I can compare to this.

[1288] You know, I regularly wake up in the middle of the night and I'm obsessing about some problem and the problem is so huge in my mind in the middle of the night and I believe it and then I wake up in the morning I'm like that's not even a big problem like I got to do x y and z and it's over in that way I think when I'm drunk I could make a mountain out of nothing you know brie and I who never fought sober would have these fucking fights that were just so stupid and pointless yeah if you're reading a transcript you'd be like I don't know what either of you was saying yeah but she was drunk too yeah yeah it helped that everyone I was with also probably was going through what they said.

[1289] Yeah.

[1290] But the best is when I'd go home to see her family over the holidays because it's like you have that, well, now there's some place the alcohol would probably bolster my confidence.

[1291] But you have this, you have a presenting self.

[1292] You're presenting to parents of a girlfriend.

[1293] Yeah.

[1294] And once I got shit face, I think it was like, hey, you're going to see who my buddies see.

[1295] Wow.

[1296] And then I'd wake up in the morning maybe a little.

[1297] I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

[1298] Oh, it's so humiliating.

[1299] Funny.

[1300] Oh, boy.

[1301] Okay, Vivek.

[1302] There's not very many facts, obviously, since he knows all this facts.

[1303] He knows every fact.

[1304] And he knows a lot of emotional facts.

[1305] He's very in touch with that.

[1306] It was a really good episode.

[1307] Yeah.

[1308] And the way he would talk to his boy.

[1309] He has sensitive boy.

[1310] I was saying, though, it's great that he has.

[1311] Was he the one that wanted to hook you up with an Indian dude?

[1312] Yeah.

[1313] Yeah, we haven't, it hasn't happened.

[1314] Oh.

[1315] Oh, yeah, we should allow with that because I bet people are.

[1316] That's true.

[1317] Yeah, yeah, I would be.

[1318] TBD.

[1319] TBD.

[1320] Oh, really quick.

[1321] I'm sorry.

[1322] Sorry, Vivek.

[1323] But you know Jess talks regularly about this huge hurdle he had to overcome.

[1324] Even after he was out of the closet, the notion of being in public and holding hands and kissing was a whole other hurdle.

[1325] Yeah.

[1326] And I think the, the notion of.

[1327] of you and an Indian gentleman holding hands and kissing in public, I think could be this very bizarre breakthrough for you.

[1328] Yeah.

[1329] I agree.

[1330] I mean, look, it's coming at a good time because I'm doing a lot of soul searching about my...

[1331] Identity.

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] How I built my identity.

[1334] And, yeah, at one point, I would never have said yes to that.

[1335] Or I would have said yes and then been like...

[1336] Unreachable.

[1337] Definitely not doing that.

[1338] Yeah.

[1339] And I don't, I don't feel that.

[1340] That's good.

[1341] Yeah, I think it's good.

[1342] But his boy is, his little boy who he was saying is sensitive.

[1343] I just, I think it's so good that he has Vivek as his model because it worked out.

[1344] Like his sensitivity worked out, you know, in such a beautiful way and a successful way.

[1345] You know, like more modeling of that type of personality is maybe how well it's just it is interesting still even in with tons of progress when I hear men acknowledge their boys are sensitive it always is in this very kind of specific way yeah which is almost like you can tell they'd probably like to keep that hidden but they're not going to like it's a choice it's not just like oh my daughter's this yeah it's a vulnerable thing.

[1346] to admit it is that's true and i think i think all boys are sensitive i do too yeah i think it just beat out of us poor boys okay so there was a little bit of a conversation about liberty and food and and like should we be federally putting a tax on oh i'm saying this but like a sugar tax or something I think Bill Maher brought that up the other day.

[1347] And I was like, thinking about it after I watched it, like, we just can't do that in this country because there's so much emphasis on this idea of liberty.

[1348] We could do it effortlessly if we weren't straddling all these different ideals.

[1349] So it'd be very easy to not have a sugar tax and not care about it if we didn't all absorb the cost.

[1350] of someone else's medical decision.

[1351] Right.

[1352] That's where it starts getting tricky.

[1353] Is like, you know, should someone have the right, which would be their liberty, to smoke cigarettes and give themselves an illness that is going to cost $500 ,000 when it's all said and done, is that's when your liberty is infringing on someone else's liberty if we have a system where we're going to take care of each other, which we are.

[1354] So it is, it's only complex because we're doing both things at once.

[1355] we want liberty and we want equality and all these things.

[1356] Yeah.

[1357] It's kind of like the stock market.

[1358] It's like if we really had liberty and not a socialist -leaning government, then, yeah, we would have let all those financial institutions absolutely collapse in 2008 because they were all in route to collapsing.

[1359] Yeah.

[1360] They all would have.

[1361] Yeah.

[1362] And it would have decimated the whole economy.

[1363] Yeah.

[1364] interesting because investors and people in finance they want laissez -faire stay the fuck out of it let the market regulate itself but we also admit we can't let the market regulate itself or the decisions by a handful people would completely fuck over the entire country so yeah they're just endless and and people have to have patience for them and people cannot subscribe to a binary thing because we're we're not pursuing a binary path so do you think you'd be for a sugar tax?

[1365] Fuck, because you know I kind of am all about liberty in some debates.

[1366] Yeah, but you also know sugar's horrible for you.

[1367] Yeah, I personally think it's poison.

[1368] Yeah.

[1369] No, I think people have got to be allowed to eat sugar.

[1370] Yeah, I agree.

[1371] Yeah.

[1372] We just have to attack it another way.

[1373] I don't believe in legislating that kind of stuff, but I do believe in investing heavily in an education approach to try to get, you know.

[1374] Yeah, that's true.

[1375] And what he was saying was people make better choices if better options are there.

[1376] It's like when they go to the grocery store, if there is like a bunch of organic produce that's accessible and cheap, they'll pick that.

[1377] Right.

[1378] They just pick the other thing because it's cheaper and easier and convenient.

[1379] Yeah.

[1380] So if we can raise some of those other standards, then maybe, yeah, I don't know.

[1381] Yeah, I think we've got to like aim towards liberty with the acknowledgement that we have to still try to brainwash people into doing the right thing.

[1382] We've got to put a lot of muscle behind that.

[1383] The 9 -11 boat rescue he told us about that was such an interesting story.

[1384] I never heard that.

[1385] I almost didn't believe it when he was saying it.

[1386] I know.

[1387] And it is.

[1388] It's the largest maritime rescue in history.

[1389] That's crazy.

[1390] I know.

[1391] Those stories give me hope.

[1392] Yeah.

[1393] And I like that.

[1394] Me too.

[1395] Also his, mainly this fact of.

[1396] is just recalling good parts.

[1397] Yeah, great points he made.

[1398] Yeah.

[1399] His story about the guy who won the lottery and then was super miserable and had all these health issues.

[1400] And was isolated.

[1401] It's funny.

[1402] Like, when I challenge that fairy tale on here, I feel like someone could interpret that as me threatening the very existence of America.

[1403] Mm. Like by saying money isn't the thing you thought it would be.

[1404] which is so triggering in so many ways, like, oh, sure, dude, we'll trust you.

[1405] You're allowed to go get it all and say it doesn't.

[1406] Right.

[1407] Easy for you to say.

[1408] Easy for me to say, oh, then just give it all up.

[1409] But also the fantasy that I had as someone broke, it just wasn't that.

[1410] And I feel like I want everyone to know that.

[1411] Yeah.

[1412] Because I don't think it's worth killing yourself for.

[1413] And yet I recognize that it threatens the whole thing.

[1414] The whole capitalism, individual.

[1415] rights, liberty, all these things are to protect the one person that really could elevate from the lowest strata to the highest strata.

[1416] Because that happens one in a thousand times, we protect it at the cost of another system that you can't get as big of a reward, but way more people are included.

[1417] Yeah, but there are all those studies of, it does increase your happiness up to a level.

[1418] Yeah, it's a no number.

[1419] It's like $126 ,000 a year or something, or $175.

[1420] I know, I think it keeps changing.

[1421] It's somewhere between $100 ,000 and $200 ,000.

[1422] Yes.

[1423] So no one's saying, yeah, just sit around and don't earn any money.

[1424] Like, it does make your life much easier up to a point then you get into this lottery story.

[1425] Yeah.

[1426] And in fact, if I believe the Gladwell book, it like plateaus for quite a while, actually.

[1427] Yeah.

[1428] So like from whatever the numbers, let's say 176.

[1429] It then plateaus to like three million a year or something.

[1430] Oh, interesting.

[1431] And then it starts going down.

[1432] Your life actually is measurably worse.

[1433] Yeah.

[1434] You can't get anyone to believe that.

[1435] I mean, I believe it, but I can see how it's a hard thing.

[1436] Oh, yeah, give me the $8 million a year.

[1437] I'll tell you.

[1438] I'll be the exception to that rule.

[1439] But even you, you're experiencing it in front of all of our eyes, which is fascinating, which is like when we met.

[1440] what you made versus what you make now, you had to have had a fantasy of what it would feel like.

[1441] And I can't imagine it's fulfilling that fantasy.

[1442] No. It's like made some stuff easier.

[1443] And the story you're telling of your life feels better because you've accomplished something.

[1444] But that hour to hour, minute to minute, joy, it hasn't really changed it.

[1445] The only thing it does for me is bring safety.

[1446] And that feels good.

[1447] Safety feels good to me, knowing I have that money in case something happens or if my parents need something, you know, I don't know.

[1448] Like, for whatever reason, I just like knowing that that exists.

[1449] The reason I know it's safety is because I bought a house and so a lot of that money is gone so that I don't feel that I have that safety anymore.

[1450] I like knowing that there's money in the bank.

[1451] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1452] sitting.

[1453] And so the house has put that safety in flux a little bit, and I don't like it.

[1454] I don't like that feeling.

[1455] I've had a lot of moments of this was a mistake.

[1456] Uh -huh.

[1457] I should have just been able to keep money in the bank and, you know, pay for my apartment every month, and that is fine.

[1458] That would have been fine.

[1459] Also, I know it's like it's a good investment, put money into a home, all that's true so I can rationalize it out.

[1460] But I have had a lot of moments since buying it.

[1461] of fear and regret.

[1462] Mm -hmm.

[1463] Okay, so he says science says we can't multitask.

[1464] So then I did watch this lecture on it.

[1465] And, yeah, so our short -term working memory has very small capacity.

[1466] It can only hold between two and four pieces of working info.

[1467] So then you start suffering cognitive overload and things that come in, force other things to leave.

[1468] So, yeah, so you really can't really multitask and that you're giving everything you're all.

[1469] There used to be this kind of colloquial knowledge that women could multitask better than men.

[1470] Have you ever heard this?

[1471] And Kristen used to tell me this all the time.

[1472] And in my mind, I was like, no, I'm watching you.

[1473] You're just doing three jobs poorly at the same time instead of one good, then one good than one good.

[1474] And I was always kind of critical of it.

[1475] And now it's really been debunked, which I...

[1476] It has been debunked.

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] But some people are clearly better at it than others.

[1479] I'm a terrible multitasker.

[1480] I can see why evolution.

[1481] But evolutionarily, though, you would think women would be better.

[1482] Yeah, because they're nursing a kid and picking the vegetables.

[1483] Yeah.

[1484] Like for survival, they kind of have to be a little bit better at it.

[1485] Yeah.

[1486] And a hunter needs like tunnel vision.

[1487] Yeah.

[1488] Singular focus.

[1489] But it doesn't really seem like that holds water.

[1490] No. One of the definitions of intelligence I heard in college, which I really liked, was that, like, if you were to measure the IQ of some of the great scientists, there might be differences.

[1491] but that the real hallmark of super intelligence like Isaac Newton was that he could block out the whole world and focus kind of indefinitely on some single problem.

[1492] Yeah.

[1493] And there's all these, maybe they're apocryphal, but there's all these stories of him being asked a question, like he had a pupil ask him a question.

[1494] And then he gave the answer and the pupil wasn't there.

[1495] And it was like a day and a half later.

[1496] Oh, my God.

[1497] And there's these stories of Benjamin Franklin when writing the Declaration Independence and he forgot to eat.

[1498] There's all these, like Einstein would forget to eat.

[1499] All these people would forget to eat and stuff.

[1500] Seems a little OCD.

[1501] Uh -huh.

[1502] Like maybe they all had a little version of that.

[1503] Yeah.

[1504] There's no way you can just be world -class historically brilliant and not pay some price.

[1505] No, no, for sure, for sure.

[1506] Yeah.

[1507] And if you're a world -class genius and you're a little bummed out that your social skills aren't as good as everyone else's.

[1508] Don't be greedy.

[1509] Well, yeah.

[1510] Okay.

[1511] So I'm back to thinking Dave Chappelle is better than Michael Jordan.

[1512] Okay, because of 8 .46.

[1513] Oh, yeah.

[1514] Well, that's what kind of sparked it.

[1515] But yeah, I thought it was fantastic.

[1516] And I loved that he did it.

[1517] And then they put it out like the next day.

[1518] And he said normally I wouldn't put out something this unpolished.

[1519] But, you know, for anyone who doesn't know how stand up works, they go round and they try different jokes, 80 different ways, and they slowly cobble together a 45 -minute routine or an hour routine.

[1520] And sometimes it's like years of being on the road and testing out material, but we're in COVID, so he hasn't been doing anything.

[1521] And I thought it was fantastic.

[1522] It's not funny at all, which I also very much appreciated.

[1523] He is a genius in that he's so funny, but every one of his specials, which is what I'm getting to, I rewatch so many this weekend.

[1524] They are so poignant.

[1525] I mean, you are always left with a real new thought on...

[1526] A whole new perspective.

[1527] On, like, an injustice.

[1528] Like, he's really speaking to something big.

[1529] Yeah, like that the one thing was built on a lie, like that the woman lied that the boy had looked, right?

[1530] Remember, like, one of his specials is all about the movement that started when they lynched a young black man for hitting on a white woman.

[1531] Yes.

[1532] And then it was discovered that she was lying.

[1533] On her deathbed she said she was lying.

[1534] And then he was saying Trump may be the lie that saves us all.

[1535] Yeah.

[1536] Yeah.

[1537] He brings it all back in such a poignant way.

[1538] But with this one, because it was also short.

[1539] Yeah.

[1540] It's not funny at all.

[1541] He doesn't do that.

[1542] But he just does the poignant thing.

[1543] Uh -huh.

[1544] And he's kind of talking stuff out loud, you know?

[1545] Yeah, you can tell, like, a lot of it's the first time he's saying it.

[1546] Yeah.

[1547] No, I think I, like, did an Instagram thing last week or something saying, like...

[1548] I want his opinion.

[1549] I need his opinion, like, because I know I'm missing something.

[1550] That's such a great feeling.

[1551] I used to kind of have that, not to the degree, but stern.

[1552] And, like, quite often I'd be on the fence about something.

[1553] I'm like, I'm really excited to hear his point of view because it's generally going to be something I didn't think about.

[1554] Right.

[1555] But I thought it was so funny because you did post that.

[1556] And I had also been thinking it.

[1557] And then he basically opens with saying, I don't want to have to be the.

[1558] I don't, but not I don't want to.

[1559] I don't have to.

[1560] You guys are taking the reins.

[1561] I trust you.

[1562] You're doing a great job.

[1563] He said, you guys are great drivers.

[1564] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1565] Yeah.

[1566] Yeah.

[1567] Just such a genius.

[1568] He's a genius.

[1569] And then circling back to what you were saying is genius comes with a little something.

[1570] Uh -huh.

[1571] You know, when he left $50 million deal.

[1572] Maybe we're not entitled to it, but he is so honest and he has such a brilliant point of view.

[1573] I do want an explanation.

[1574] I find myself like, I mean, there's more than just he walked away.

[1575] clearly there was some crisis of conscience, some coming to terms with who he was.

[1576] Like, yeah.

[1577] Because I didn't even think, I guess it was his last special where he talked about, I lost it all.

[1578] And I forget about that period where he had just gone away forever.

[1579] And you didn't know if he was ever going to come back.

[1580] And he kind of was on the outside again looking in.

[1581] And everyone thought he was crazy.

[1582] Yeah.

[1583] And he might have had a mental breakdown that he's not telling us about.

[1584] A lot of people said.

[1585] And I guess that's what I was going to say is maybe the flip side to his genius is, like, maybe paranoia or who knows.

[1586] But he, when he came back, he went on Oprah and was talking about it.

[1587] And he was, like, not really able to say super clearly what happened other than he, like, referenced a few times.

[1588] He went to Africa in that period, right?

[1589] He went to South Africa.

[1590] Yeah.

[1591] Yeah, but he referenced that he was doing a sketch where he was in blackface and he heard a laugh in the crew.

[1592] Like, you know, people are laughing normally.

[1593] And he's like he heard a specific laugh where he thought that, uh, oh.

[1594] I'm feeling the wrong side.

[1595] Who know?

[1596] Some people could take this as death.

[1597] Yeah.

[1598] And he felt morally uncomfortable with that.

[1599] This is a problem.

[1600] Like, this is Stern's problem.

[1601] And Baba Booie talks about it way more openly than Stern, but Baba Booie would tell these stories about like going to a gas station and then some dude being like, yeah, Baba Booy!

[1602] And it's like great, great, great.

[1603] And then all of a sudden he's dropping end bombs and he's like pussy and he's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. That you guys got this wrong.

[1604] You're not, you're taking away the wrong part of this.

[1605] Yeah.

[1606] It's a fine line.

[1607] It's a great big ethical question because are you responsible for people?

[1608] people's misinterpretation of your message.

[1609] I mean, I'm inclined to say no, just in general, if I'd say one way or another, but...

[1610] I don't think you're responsible, but if you're the person and you have high moral standards, you're going to feel the responsibility.

[1611] Yeah, if you're putting more weight on one side of the scale, that's actually...

[1612] More people are getting it wrong and finding it to be fuel.

[1613] Yeah.

[1614] There is a responsibility when you're a public person and you're making statements and you know how they could be perceived.

[1615] And it's especially tricking in comedy, obviously, because there's jokes, and people are laughing.

[1616] That's what's yummy and dangerous about it.

[1617] Yeah.

[1618] I think that was part of this.

[1619] He gave a speech at Allen University where his great -grandfather worked, and there's a building named after his great -grandfather.

[1620] And I guess they, like, redid the building.

[1621] And so he gave a speech there for the students, and I watched that.

[1622] And in that speech talks about, I'm not really known for the thing I did.

[1623] I'm mainly known for the thing I didn't do.

[1624] Which is that last season.

[1625] Yeah.

[1626] I walked away from $50 million.

[1627] And he goes into this whole thing about ethics and how right now we're sort of living in a time where we've discarded good and bad and replace it with better and worse.

[1628] And he's like, no, there's good and bad.

[1629] bad.

[1630] Anyway, and then he ends it by saying he walked away from $50 million and then last year he signed a deal for $60 million.

[1631] And so it all like sort of came back around like he did the right thing and it paid off.

[1632] I think in general, if I think I agree with the principle, which is if you're telling the truth, you're clean.

[1633] Like if you tell the truth and people weaponize that or or bastardize it in some way, I don't think you can be held responsible if you're telling the truth.

[1634] I know, but again, it's like, it's not about being responsible.

[1635] It's not like, you know, someone's going to put you up on a, in court.

[1636] It's just how you walk around and in life.

[1637] Like, do you feel good?

[1638] Are you making the world better or worse?

[1639] Exactly.

[1640] I had this in my own short career, which was there's a scene in hit and run where he says, does that have nitrous?

[1641] And I say, no, nitrous is for fags.

[1642] It's got cubic inches.

[1643] But I do that solely to then have the six minute conversation that comes after it where Kristen goes, you can't use that word.

[1644] And I'm like, no, it's just a swear word for blank.

[1645] And she basically educates me in the scene.

[1646] Yeah.

[1647] And like it had a purpose.

[1648] Yeah, yeah.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] But I have had, as you might imagine, people in real life say, Niger's is for fags.

[1651] And I'm like, yeah, they didn't.

[1652] They didn't get it.

[1653] They didn't understand that the whole point of that was the six -minute scene afterwards where I learned that that's not cool.

[1654] Yeah.

[1655] Yeah.

[1656] That's tricky.

[1657] Anyway, he's the greatest.

[1658] Oh, he is.

[1659] But what's funny and maybe he could even miss because he's inside of it is he was destined to do something much more profound than the Chappelle show.

[1660] His art wasn't really delivering what he was capable of.

[1661] Yeah.

[1662] So all those other things aside, it might feel like all those things.

[1663] But I bet the real inferno in him was I have something I could do.

[1664] That's maybe, yeah.

[1665] And it's not this.

[1666] Yeah.

[1667] It worked out for everyone.

[1668] We love him.

[1669] All right, Vivek.

[1670] All right, Vivek.

[1671] We love you.

[1672] We love your son.

[1673] Oh.

[1674] We love the subcontinent.

[1675] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1676] 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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