Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Adam Grant #4 (on the secrets of strong connections)

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Adam Grant (Vibe, Hidden Potential, and Think Again) is an organizational psychologist, Wharton professor, and author. Adam joins Armchair Expert to discuss being pushed out of his childhood friend group, feeling like an impostor at Harvard, and finding his footing on the diving team. Adam and Dax talk about memorizing students’ backgrounds, NASA sending incompatible astronauts into the wilderness, and the party that produced 78 marriages. Adam explains why proximity can beat dating algorithms, what separates pals from companions, and what an AI friend can’t give back.Start your 2 month free trial today: https://youtube.com/premium . Terms Apply. Cancel Anytime.Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. Experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hello. Our guest today is here for the fourth time. Foo, he's almost in that five timers. Can we have our own five timers?

You know S&L has that. Yeah. He's biting on the heels of... Let's do six-timers. Do we have any six-timers? Is Cedaris? Kristen has to be a six-timer. Has to be.

Yeah, yeah, there's no way. Okay, she's the only one. Yeah, that's cool. You guys have something to look, look. Cedaris has done six. Six for Cedaris. Six for Cedareis. We are so lucky.

I can you imagine. To get to talk to Sarah six times, to get to talk to Adam Grant four times. Anyways, we're so lucky. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and a best-selling author. His books are hidden potential. Think again. Originals.

And his new book out on October 13th, vibe, the secrets of strong connections in a lonely world. This was so fun. you guys, we got to dance, dance, dance with Adam Grant. Though we waltzed all night. Oh, we did, we did. We enjoy him so much. Please enjoy Adam Grant.

We are supported by Airbnb. Before the holiday sneak up on us and the calendar gets completely out of control. I've been trying to squeeze in one more trip, something that actually feels like an adventure. And that's how I ended up looking at homes on Airbnb in Banff, Alberta. Weekly, you just went there last year, huh? Yeah, we're going back. talk about it nonstop. It was that beautiful. And you went skiing. We skied. I have skied enough that I can say that was definitely my favorite place. Yeah. Well, that's the thing about booking a home

on Airbnb. In a place like that, you're surrounded by mountains and wide open nature all day, and then you come back to a home in a neighborhood that actually feels like you belong there. The host knows the area better than any travel blog ever could. They'll tell you where the best stargazing spots are or point you to a trail the tourists haven't found yet. You end up with these moments that feel like yours, not something off a checklist. And everyone on the trip gets their own space to decompress. But then you come together in the kitchen, break down the day's adventures, cook something local, and just be together. That's why I love booking trips with Airbnb.

What do you think of this weather, Adam Grant? I don't know what country I just surrounded. Yeah, I feel like... It's horrible. The only time I've ever experienced heat like this was I was on a cruise with my family and, I don't know, 98. And we got off the cruise ship onto a tender to go to Bali. And when we got on that, but I was like, oh, no. I don't think my body can handle this level of heat and humidity all at once.

So painful. It feels like our oldest was born in North Carolina in June. And they let us out of the hospital at midnight. It was 100 degrees. Yeah. And you couldn't even breathe. Where in North Carolina? In Chapel Hill.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the complaints about Pennsylvania? You don't have fires. Some tornadoes occasionally know? Rare. Not like we had in Michigan. The kids don't even know where to hide in a bathroom. Okay.

Do you remember those drills with your head down? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But how is Pennsylvania? When you imagine retiring, if you even imagine that, do you stay? I will definitely never retire. You'll never retire. No, don't even try it. Funny enough, just before you arrived, we had Gerr Diamond on,

who set the record at UCLA, I just found out. He taught there for 56 years. Wow. Isn't that crazy? That's a lot of teaching. Yeah. How long have you been teaching at Morton? We're coming up, I think this is 18 years, maybe.

Okay. And how long do you think you could do? I hope to always do it. You hope to die at the pulpit there in a classroom. That would be traumatic for all involved. Okay, do I have the number right? Are you now on seven years consecutive of getting top-reaching? professor at the school?

No. No. Because after the seventh year, they retired the award. Okay. Tell me more about that. They were probably sick at giving it to you. They're like, we can't keep giving it to him, but it's not ethical to not give it to him if he earned it.

I hope if they bring it back, they call it the Adam Grant top-rated professor award goes to. No, no. No, never said anything to you about why they were canceling that? No, but this is not fair for two reasons. Number one, I don't teach accounting, right? It's so much easier to teach leadership and teamwork and psychology. Yeah. And number two, they based it on teaching ratings.

And so the award goes to the professors who are the most liked, which is not always the best teacher. Yeah. Yeah, if you give me an A, you're going up really high right away. And if your class is fun, which, as you said, yours leans more fun than like a tax class. It's not fair. So I think it's good that they got rid of it. Was there any fallout? Did you feel any resentment from other professors?

It was like, oh, God, he goes, well, Mr. Like, were you feeling any of that? I don't know. I never encountered it directly. You might have been oblivious to it if it did occur. Probably. Okay. And so it's student-generated data, right? They hand out a thing at the end of the year.

Yeah, of course, evaluation. And did they give a second place? No. But when they abandon it, now there's an excellence in teaching award that just goes to, I don't know, 20 or 30 faculty a year. Have you gotten one of those? I have not failed to get it. Okay. Okay, great.

I hate this line of questioning. Tell me why. Forcing me to admit to things that I would normally not... But they're true. They're factual. Yeah, they're true. I can't weasel my way out of them. And I have an even worse question that'll make your skin crawl.

So you've hit two of them. One is you're teaching a pretty fun curriculum. And then what do you think goes into it? How do you explain it? I mean, yeah, I'm the worst person to ask that question. You should talk to the students. That's Sophia. Okay.

I guess we could do that. We don't, yeah. I think the Sophia of it all is part of one of my guesses, which is like I received a long email from you saying I have this incredible graduate student. She made this really heartfelt thing. I think it would be worth five minutes of your time to meet her. I don't imagine that's something every professor is doing, like taking time to connect a student with a potential job. That's got to be one of the criteria. I don't think it hurts.

I think that good teachers can. about their subjects and great teachers care about their students. Oh. That matters. Okay. There are little things that probably go a long way. When I teach the MBA students, it's the first class they take at Wharton. And I memorize a couple of details about each of their backgrounds coming in.

And so Monica, you raise your hand and I say, like, okay, Monica, tell me about your observations of effective leadership during your time as a nanny for Dax and Kristen. Or in Duluth, Georgia. Sure. We could go to Georgia if you want. Yeah. If you want, we can. At first, they think that I've just called out the one background I happen to know, but then I go through the whole classroom of 70 or 80 students.

There's a little, I guess, a performance art to it. They feel seen. Well, I guess that would be another way for me to ask the question, which is, if you were asked by the university to teach incoming professors, you'd be forced to outline some bullet point of things. that you think are relevant. I would. So what are a couple that you would?

I think getting to know students personally is a huge factor. Yes. That would be number one. Is that challenging? I mean, you have a lot of students. You have a finite amount of time. Yeah.

Part of the reason that I started doing this memorizing thing is I was teaching three sections of, I don't know, 75 students each for only a week. And I felt like there was no way to build a connection with the students. And I had to do something to both show that I cared about getting to know them and also draw out their experiences, which would have been much easier in a semester. And I thought, okay, if I come in knowing a little bit about their background,

when I teach culture, I can call in the military person. And when we start to talk about effective teamwork, I'm going to bring in the person who was a professional athlete. That actually allowed for some choreography that was really great. Are you looking on, like, Instagram or Facebook? How are you hiring a think tank? If I were stalking them, it would be LinkedIn. What's that comedian's father's name,

whose father's really rich private investigator? Nick Kroll? Yeah, through Kroll and stuff. to do background check on everyone? Not creepy at all. Okay, so those would be some of the criteria. Now, you start the book vibe with a pretty candid, detailed journey of your life from grade school to college in pursuit of making friends. A, is that hard for you to write?

And then B, please tell us about that journey. I mean, it would be ironic to come into this studio and not embrace vulnerability, wouldn't it? Okay. Well, you did it supremely in your book. Thank you. So, yeah, what was your experience trying to meet people and befriend people? I don't know that I noticed

how hard it was at the time. I went through elementary school with a friend group. We traded baseball cards and collected comic books and played sports. And as far as I knew, everything was fine. And then in middle school, I started to notice that I was sometimes not invited to group get-togethers.

And one day, my basketball disappeared. This one really broke my heart. Yeah, this is sad already. And it would be hard for me to write. Even though you're a victim, you feel shame sometimes in these situations. It was amazing to me looking back, how vivid that memory was of going to play basketball with the group of my closest friends. Brand new basketball. Yeah, I'd save babysitting money to buy the NBA basketball.

And the game is over. I'm getting ready to leave. And my ball is gone. Somebody must have been shooting it. It bounced into the stands or out the door. I couldn't find it. Eventually, everyone just left. And then the person I knew least in the whole group, it was a friend of a friend, said, oh, yeah, one of your friends stole your basketball and was bragging about it and thinks it's hilarious.

One of your friends. Yeah. That's really hurtful. The friend I'd introduced to the rest of the group, my oldest friend. And, yeah, I found myself, like, I couldn't resist writing a little footnote in the book. I still want my ball back. That's hard. That's painful.

Okay, so that's junior high. When do you start getting conscious of the fact? like, I'm having a hard time. I'm looking around. This seems to be going easier for other people. I don't remember thinking a lot about it because I had two close friends then who were not part of that group.

And I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, one of the major things that brought us together was we didn't really have other friends. Sure, sure. It was kind of we gravitated toward each other. We had a lot of common interests too, but there was real common ground

that nobody had anywhere else to go. And I really didn't realize it until right before I sat down to start writing vibe, I was with my diving coach. And he said, I think diving taught you a lot of social skills because you were standing around 95% of practice just having to talk in line.

And your teammates did not like you freshman year. And by the time you graduated, you were voted team captain, and I watched that transformation. Yeah. And I said, it can't have been that bad. And he said, you had one friend. You arrived in high school with one friend, and you didn't seem bothered by it.

And I said, well, no, I had two. You just didn't know the other one. Sure, sure, sure. But apparently I was just kind of focused on my goals and a little oblivious to it, but it clearly stung. I'm delighted to hear it wasn't driving you crazy. It would break my heart if I thought you were really, like, pining for that. I was, though. You were?

Yes, I was. So because the, I guess, getting dropped by my friend creep was gradual. It was a little bit of a death by a thousand cuts experience where someone's stealing your basketball, it's not a tragedy, right? But it's the most salient thing that kind of said to me, I'm no longer one of them. None of the ones who I thought were my friends even bothered to have my back here. My two friends that I was close with, we were so close that I think that it sort of filled the void. I really wanted to be liked. That was important to me.

But I went from being bullied to just being excluded. And so the fact that I wasn't being bullied anymore made it seem like things were actually fine. I lost a bunch of friends. They obviously weren't good friends anyway. But at least nobody is making my life a living hell. Yes, yes. There was some improvement happened. Yeah.

What were the, if you don't mind, what were the bullying? Like, what were they saying? Were they saying specific things? Most of it was, like, being made fun of for being a nerd. Okay, nerd. Okay, got it. Even my friends called me Mr. Fax. Classic bullying, a nerd.

I mean, that was a thing back then, maybe still. But like a dork or a nerd. What if I was just like throwing off? Yeah, just fire on, Monica. Thank you. I don't know. Let's roll play here. So I'm one of the guys.

Okay. What breadcrumbs do you start accumulating? I know by the time you get to college, some things start clicking. So what things do you pick up along the way? The first thing I learned was people wanted to be around me if I was good at something that helped the team. This was really easy.

Springboard diving. Getting good at time. Junior Olympics. All of a sudden, the swimmers didn't hate every diver because I was scoring points for the team. Yes. That gave me a simple way to be valued. And then I think when I got to college,

You haven't met Brian Little yet, have you? No. I hope not. I'm so bad with you. You haven't. You haven't. You would remember him if you met him. He's just a dazzlingly, brilliant and funny personality psychologist who I had the pleasure of meeting halfway through college.

And I noticed that suddenly the people that I wasn't clicking with, when I interacted with him in Brian's class, suddenly we had a vibe. And I didn't know why. And I thought it was just the magic of Brian. But over time, I saw that Brian was doing things that actually were facilitating. He was helping us connect. And he would drop these little nuggets that then just stimulated conversation that was missing in a class. And so he would say things like, hey, did you know if you're an introvert? If we sprinkle lemon juice on your tongue in the morning, you will salivate more than extroverts do.

What? Could that possibly be true? There's evidence for it. And I had the same reaction. And I immediately came home and told my roommates who tuned me out every time I talked about psychology. All right. Until then. Yeah.

Well, and something you do. It was kind of a water cooler moment. But he was also teaching me to Alyssa curiosity and to start conversations in ways that I just thought everything I was learning was interesting. You started discerning what might be appealing to a mass audience than just. Yeah, I mean, this is the problem with every academic, right? One of the ways you succeed as a social scientist is being fascinated by things other people think are boring. Yes, yes. It's a good news.

Would I be right to guess that if I were you and I was back in West Bloomfield and I'd gotten into Harvard, my fantasy would be like, yeah, this didn't work for me. But boy, I'm about to be with everyone that's just like me and it's going to be hunky-dory. Did you have expectations that you were going to just land figuring it out? I thought that nerds might be cool at Harvard. What I didn't anticipate was the imposter syndrome part of that. Everyone arriving and either thinking they were sort of God's gift to humanity or feeling like I'm the mistake.

I did not belong here. Sure. I wonder what percentage that is. I wonder if there's been any mega polling to find out what percentage of the kids feel like it was a mistake they got in. But it's high. I would imagine it's really high. Even Bill Gates, you know, he was the number one in math in Washington by like this.

insane deviation, right? And then he got to Harvard. And all of a sudden he's like, oh shit, I'm like the third best at math in here. Like, I didn't think this was failure to drop out. I got to make it. I got to pivot. Yeah. You have to go start Microsoft because you couldn't.

Yeah. But just even if Bill Gates gets somewhere, it's like, fuck, I'm not really as smart as he's, that's crazy. Sometimes I think that about people who went to Harvard. I'm like, you went there? Okay, in the other direction. So, yeah. So, yeah. Confirming.

There is some reason to have some imposter syndrome there because you do. Everyone has this idea of it. And then now as an adult when I meet people from there, I'm sometimes like, okay. Underwhelmed. It wasn't this thing I put at like this unreachable, untouchable. They're not all will hunting. They're almost never maddening. Yeah.

Which I know it's a great disappointment. Yeah. Once in a generation genius. But Monica, I can't tell you how glad I am. I'm not in my 20s anymore because at that point. in my life, I was defined by being a Harvard student and a Harvard graduate. Literally every dumb thing I did, good one, Harvard. You went to Harvard and it's just never ending.

Yes, that's hard. Yeah, people are very, very envious. People went to Harvard. That's what I'm saying. It's envious, but I think there's also, there is this mystique. Yeah, I guess mystique around it that if you didn't go, you're like, oh, yeah, those are geniuses. Yeah, and they're really just people. I know I've already told you this story on one of the 80 times we've interviewed you,

but a good friend of mine, Christine, went to Harvard Law. Opposite of you, she went U of M than Harvard Law. I've been with her so many times when people would be like, where did you go to law school? And she says, Harvard, and the lashing she has to endear. The H-Bomb. I'm like, fuck this, dude. I mean, you just learned not to drop the H-Bomb.

Yeah, and then you're going to school in Boston. And that's somewhere in Boston. That's more antagonistic in some weird way. How do you define vibe? Let's get a definition out of you for vibe. All right, I think about a vibe as the quality of connection between two people. Okay, great. Which is different, I think, from the way that a lot of people talk about it, which is,

I hear all the time, this place has a vibe or I love her vibe. And I have come to believe from the science that a vibe is less something you give off and more something that you create in your interactions with other people. Right. I think a popular opinion would be that a vibe is intrinsic, like the space intrinsically has a vibe or this person has a vibe. What happens psychologically and even physiologically when people are in a vibe? It's immeasurable.

The neuroscience on this is amazing. So if you take a moment when you feel like, wow, I was really vibing with that person, whether it's a first date or a great brainstorming meeting, you can see a couple things happen. One is that your brainwaves synchronize. The two people interacting or the group, for that matter. Not your own. Exactly. And then also your heartbeats will start to share a rhythm together.

That's so right. That's crazy. And I just love the idea that this is not just something that we feel or imagine in our minds. but you can actually trace it in your brain and in your heart. Wow, chemistry. I mean, literally chemistry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but you must also reject that.

Even the way you just phrase that is like, it's not just something you feel. It's measurable here. I think that distinction's outdated and ridiculous, right? There's no division between that. Yeah, that's probably overly Cartesian. Yeah, right? Exactly.

Yeah, like this fake separation. Mind-body dualism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there are things. that we imagine that are really hard to pick up a physiological trace of. I like the fact that the signature of a vibe is so clear that you can detect it. The thrust of this book is you don't have or not have the capacity to vibe with people. You're not intrinsically incapable of it or capable of it.

That in fact, it very much is something that is manufactured and created between two people and that there are many different situations that are going to up the chances of that happening. And then we can game this. That's a great summary of the premise. Okay. I don't like the gaming part. Oh, tell me why. Well, I think it makes it sound like a trick.

And I think it's a skill. You think it sounds manipulative. Yeah. Gaming sounds like a pejorative. I don't want to use other people. Yeah, a little bit. Okay. I start to think also about, I don't think there are shortcuts.

I don't think that a vibe is something you hack. I think that it's a skill you build to get better at connecting with more of the people more of the time. I am still dumbfounded by the fact that, that I can meet a complete stranger and instantly with no effort. We have just hit it off. Yes. And I can sometimes interact with somebody that I know really well and like and respect, and we just are like oil and water.

Those are heartbreaking, aren't they? Devastating. Yeah, name you're number one. I got my number one. Oh, God. Who are you, like, most excited to meet that you admired and then you met, and you're like, hmm, that was a big miss. Okay, so this is easier to answer if the person's not alive, right?

Right. I don't think this is mean to the other person. This is like, oh, for whatever reason, you two don't have that. Mine was James Hatfield. Like, I fucking love Metallica. This is a recovering addict. He's super masculine. He likes hot rods.

But he now talks about feelings. Yeah, he does now. He's in Chapter 6. Oh, I know. So it didn't happen with him? No, I'm hanging with Lars. So then I get to meet him instead of dinner. I'm so excited.

I've been waiting since I was 11 to do this. And then, yeah, there was just like zero sparks, right? If he were a girl, I'd be like, okay, we're definitely on to the next. Wow. Yeah. And I was like, oh, bummer. I really thought we would vibe out. Did you tell him?

No. I mean, all we had is that exchange, and then I left, and then that's been my experience with him. It's not like I know him now, and we can reminisce on the time we didn't click. Okay, so if you were to rewind knowing what you know now, what do you think went wrong in the interaction, and how would you approach it differently? I wouldn't. I don't think anything went wrong. I was my genuine self, and I think he was his genuine self. and I think that didn't click.

And I'm not going to click with everybody. Yeah, do you think everyone's supposed to vibe with everyone? No. Yeah, it's okay. But I think there are conditions we can create that increase the probability. And, you know, I start to think about, if we take James as an example, I think, okay, there are multiple wavelengths you could interact with him on. So, yeah, you showed up, you felt like you were authentic, but which version of Dax showed up?

Is there another one that would have elicited a different version of him? There's no question that I could have. many different outcomes with many different approaches. Yeah. Also, it's totally fine if he's like an introvert and he's not in the business of wanting to make a new pal while he's eating dinner. I accept all that. That's fine.

I think that's fair. And actually, this is something that I think we all need to get better at is we walk away from those situations often either thinking there's something wrong with them and they're not who I thought they were or there's something wrong with me and I screwed this up. That's where the shame comes in. And I think just accepting, hey, like for whatever reason in that moment, it didn't match. I have no judgment of James Hatfield. I don't think he did one thing wrong.

I think just if we were a boy and a girl, we wouldn't have gone dancing that night. I don't know if I trust someone who gets perfectly along with everyone. Oh, you think they're fake? Yeah, or they're a chameleon. Or they're very surface or something. I'm like, who are you for real? If you get along with absolutely everyone,

are you being honest or truthful about your opinions or yourself? That's so interesting. I think it's really relevant where we all come from, though. You're an academic. We just heard your history. You are with other students who really prioritize studying and overachieving and performing. And this is really, really essential information for them. And the star of the cheerleading team, she has a different version.

And I get to have a different version. You know, it's not to say it applies that. For a long time. I had a, I need to get along with everyone. I need everyone to like me so I don't get thrown out of the group. But now I don't feel that. Now I'm like skeptical of like little me who was like doing what she needed to do. But now I'm like, yeah, that person wasn't always being honest or truthful.

Okay. So if somebody vibes with too many people, you think that's a clue that they might be. It's a little bit of a red flag. A red flag of what though, of people pleasing? Yeah. Approval seeking. Yes. I think the insecurity it can trigger in people if they observe that as like, oh,

then that interaction with me wasn't sincere. What's the ideal? How many people should someone provide with that you greenlight them? You know, I don't think we can say across the board whether it should be this number. I think some people would crave more connections and more vibes, and some people probably have enough. Okay, so I think that's right. So it's interesting, though, I don't disagree that you have a skill when it comes to just connecting with people. I don't know if Monica, if you would agree with that, too, the Dax does.

Dext does, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of why this podcast has been such a hit. I think it's part of why you have made it to where you are. Yeah. But I think that it's really easy to look at that and say, eh, that's just intrinsic to you, as opposed to there are deliberate things you do that elicit that. Yes, yes. I'm curious to hear what they are because I think you, no, I just, I mean, because I think you connect with people, definitely.

I think I connect well with people. I think we do it in much different ways. So I'm curious what the list. Let's compare and then I'll tell you who is better. I love the fact that I can look at both of you now. First time in the new studio. This is amazing. Oh, yeah, it's your first time on video.

Yeah, I love it. Not in that often. I want to first lay out the architecture of it and we'll go through it kind of systematically. But basically the book is organized into three challenges, right? So there's sparking connection. That's one thing with a lot of tips. Then there's sustaining connection. And then there's scaling connection.

So we shall start, though, with first, let's go through the four types of relationships you lay out in the book. We'll try not to debate those too much, the archetypes so we can get through the book. I mean, I came in expecting a little bit of a fight on that. That's why we like having you. But I'm ready.

I've got some ammo. You ate your Wheaties today? I definitely came prepared with extra data. One of the things that's bothered me for a long time is friend is a meaningless term. We have all kinds of people that we call friends and that call us friends. And it doesn't really give me any useful information

about how important is this relationship to us and are we investing in it in the same way. And it doesn't tell us what ultimately is the goal of the connection. And that bothers me because I know we all have colleagues, some of them become friends and others don't. We have some people who are friends that feel like family. And everybody has at least one family member that they would prefer not to be related to.

And so this idea of sorting people, into categories in terms of just what part of our life they fit into. Are they work? Are they home? Are they, you know, a friend in between? I've just found that increasingly unhelpful. What I've wanted to do is find a better way to talk about the different ways that people vibe. And after analyzing data from lots and lots of studies around the world, I found that there are four types of connections that exist pretty much everywhere. So I've come to call them associates, allies, pals, and companions. So associates are basically people, who have compatible needs with yours. It could be, you know, a neighbor who does a carpool with your

kids that you help each other out that way. It could be your painter at your house. They have a service to offer. You pay for it. These people are usually reliable and trustworthy, but you don't have usually a strong sense of meaningful connection with them. I think meaningful connections are usually allies, pals are companions. So allies are people who share your goals. Pals are people who share your interests and hobbies. And companions are people who share your values. And there can be some crossover within those, I assume. I think life would be a lot similar if everybody fell into only one category. Well, and I think a lot of the tension in relationships is that someone wants, I think,

someone to be all four and maybe observes that there's another person in that friend's life that seems to occupy all four. Why don't I? But the pal, I think, is the easiest one to explain to point out, like a pal, by your definition, is someone you're specifically looking to have fun with. Yeah. You don't need them to be deep. You don't need them to be reliable.

You don't need them to help you achieve anything. You don't need the values. It's like, who do I want to go off and have a fucking riot with? And I'm probably not going to trust them to take my kids to the doctor if I'm not around. Exactly. But there are certainly pals in your life that are like, why aren't I? Why don't you call me when you have some big emotional thing going on? I do think there becomes jealousy among these categories that people are.

observe if they've not articulated a name for it, but they know them. Yeah, this is like the Esther Perel. Like, you can't fill all the boxes. As a partner, yeah, yeah. It is, in general, people have closer relationships when they do cover all the different wavelengths, but it also can create a lot of complications. It's really simple to have somebody who's just a pal in your life. Yeah.

And you say, okay, we're going to go to a concert together. We're going to catch a movie. We might go on vacation. But that gets really problematic. if you thought that person was a close enough pal that you also wanted some companionship from them and they weren't there for you when you needed them. Or you made the mistake of thinking,

you know what, I really like this person, let's start a company together and you discover you do not like working with them and they're a bad ally for you. You know, it's interesting, you kind of have given language to something that I had to figure out in my 20s, which was there was a particular friend that I loved.

I was regularly disappointed with their dependability or them showing up for me in a way that I hoped. And although I didn't go like, okay, right, they're just a pal. But I went, oh, yeah, I have to have different expectations for different people in my life. And if I hold everyone to some standard that I have, I'm going to be miserable. Like, I have to take people for as they are. And interestingly, I guess now reading this architecture, it's like, yeah, I basically just slid them into pal category without knowing that's what I did.

Yeah, that's exactly how I found it useful. Everybody has been let down by a pal at some point. And you either try to then change the relationship and say, here's the allyship I expect of you, or here's the companionship I demand of you. I want a level of intimacy with you that you're incapable of. Yeah. I have a lot of those, right? Where it's like, we're friendly.

I see you all the time. And I'm like, why aren't we intimate? That drives me nuts sometimes. It's super frustrating. And so rather than sort of fight that uphill battle, you decide. You know what? We are going to be pals, and I'm okay with that. Yeah, it's very helpful. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking if your alarm is actually set before you go to bed, you could have sworn you set it. Even remember looking at your phone. But apparently looking at it and pressing the button are two different things because now you're waking up to sunlight and panic. Yeah, checking first always makes sense.

So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Company and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. Okay, so let's talk about sparking connection and let's talk about, I guess the framing of this would be how much proximity matters in friendships, right? And there's some pretty great data about this. I think it would shock people.

But generally, how do people become friends? I thought it was similarity. I thought we click with people who have the same personalities as us. Yeah, or love the same bands or whatever. I mean, that can be true, right? Similar interests can you bring you together? That's an easy way to find a pal. But what's so funny is, whether you look at kids in elementary school

or police officers going through a police academy, they generally become close friends with the people who have the same letter, last name that they do. What? Because they're seated next to each other in roll call. Oh, my God. That's crazy. Whoever happened to be near you. What?

Think about Aaron Weekly, my lifelong soulmate. Love him by life. Best friend Aaron Weekly. Is that next to you? Well, I had a best friend at my previous junior high, Kevin Gwynn, and he goes, hey, when you get to Muir Junior High, say hi to Aaron Weekly. He was my best friend in elementary. Can't wait.

I love Kevin. I've got an endorsement. I finally find Aaron. You know this story, Monica. I find him in the bathroom in the sixth grade hallway. I'm like, are you Aaron Weekly? And he's like, he thinks I'm there to kick his ass. And he's like, yeah, and he's terrified.

And I'm like, this is Kevin's best friend. This guy's like so nervous. And where's his personality, whatever? So that was that. I like tried. He wouldn't even really talk back to me. And then start of seventh grade, we're seated next to each other, Mr. Nelson's class. We start drawing pictures of Ballsat Cowboys.

And that's literally just because we got seated next to each other. That's crazy. It's hilarious. It kind of points out one of the problems inherent in the internet, which is you are connecting on similarities solely. There's no real proximity. It's counterintuitive. We would think that's what makes a good friendship, but no.

I looked at this research and said, wait, so the two friends that I brought into high school with me, Khan and Jeremy, we were in the same middle school program. It was an experimental program, and there were 30 kids in a class, and one of them lived a bike ride away. There you go, yeah. And we just spent enough time together that we develop compatible interests. Yeah.

It's almost dangerous to pursue it the other way. It is like, you know, this is kind of like how it's supposed to be. We can't talk about this without talking about dating. because the data on matchmaking algorithms, we could put an entire industry out of business immediately. And Monica, this may be more relevant to you than to Dax. I love these studies that Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel and their colleagues have done, where they have you go in before, the best ones are before a speed dating event.

And you fill out a questionnaire with everything you could think of about you, everything you could think of that you're looking for in another person. And then they have a bunch of machine learning algorithms that use AI to try to figure out who's going to match. And there is zero predictive utility from anything that you say about yourself, either being similar to or complimentary to anybody else you've met. And also, what you claim you want in other people

has no bearing on whether you click with them. Oh, yeah. It's all bullshit. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is this big industry saying, okay, we are going to find you your soulmate. No. We should be getting people to spend a little bit of time together and seeing if they can develop some compatibility

rather than trying to match compatibility. Yes, and if you have this device where you can just swipe through and select the people that you've decided your good matches with, when we already know you are not good at picking who you're a good match with, now we've empowered you to only be with people

that you're certain you'd be good with. Recipe for disaster. Problematic. Well, I think a great example to talk about this proximity is to talk about Katie Coleman and Paulo Nespoli. Oh, Katie Coleman and Paulo Nespoly. Okay, tell me about these two. my favorite astronauts.

They are supposed to go to fly an international space station mission together. And they are incompatible. Are they from the same country? Let's start there. No, I mean, Katie's an American PhD chemist. Paulo is an Italian parachute jumper engineer. And she's very deliberate and patient and thorough and perfectionistic. And Paulo is kind of...

Fly by the seat of your panes. Very much ready... Ready fire, oh yeah, aim. Ready fire, aim. That's great. Oh, yeah, I should properly have aimed. They're supposed to operate a robotic arm of the space station together. And in training, they are so incompatible that the NASA team says, this is not going to work.

We cannot send these two into space together. And they're ready to re-engineer the mission. And by the end of their time in space together, Katie calls Paulo her space brother. and says, first they became really great allies, and they're willing to put each other's lives in their hands. Then they become pals discovering a shared love of music and ultimately companions. Katie kind of being a shoulder for Paulo to cry on

when his mother passes away while he's in space and helping to plan a flyover Italy moment where they can look at the boot during the memorial. You could have done all of the analysis on paper and said, it's just not worth the risk. and you would have lost, I think, one of the greatest relationships either of them has had in their life.

There's so many examples like this. And we think about our own lives and how many people are you close to now that you met and said, nope, not for me. Well, and also these two perform this impossible task, Monica, which is they have this arm

and then there is this module that has been deployed, right? And you're orbiting the planet at 17,500 miles an hour and they've got to catch this device hurtling through space with the arm. They get into the exercise and it's already not going as it has gone so many times in the simulation, which they've done together. And it's because they've never had earth in the background as this very distractive force and a prospective fucking force. And what ends up happening

is they get into this dicey situation where they're kind of off script and they both make maneuvers that complement each other without even communicating. Not only did they get along, but they became synchronistic. Yeah. And at the end of this six months together, she said, I would love to do another six months in space, which is crazy. Yeah, that's so cool.

It's amazing. So there were mechanisms at play that got these two to have a vibe. Well, one of the things that I think is brilliant at NASA is they used to put people through training and essentially be like, okay, you meet a new colleague, you go to lunch together, then you see them again in a few weeks or a few months, And the problem with that is you can stay at the surface when you have those sporadic interactions. NASA figured out you've got to do a deep dive really fast.

And so what they do is they take astronauts and cosmonauts and they get them lost in the wilderness, usually in Utah with an outdoor leadership guide. And they have to fend for themselves. You cannot put on a mask for 11 days when you're lost in the wilderness. The real you is going to come out. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that happened on their crew

that really helped them bond was this incredible trainer, John Canningator, who sat them down and said, tell me your origin story. And they all told the story of the moment as children that they first knew they wanted to go to space. And I think what that does for them is it creates a sense of what psychologists call optimal distinctiveness, which is the feeling of fitting in and standing out at the same time.

Not all similarities actually connect to people once you develop or discover them. It's only similarities that are rare that have that power. I remember first time I went to Europe. I met somebody from Michigan. Instant best friend. I cannot believe I ran into somebody who can do this and point to the hometown. If I met that person in Michigan, meaningless.

Right. Yeah. They're also the beneficiaries of this observation, which is emotional intensity, accelerates connections. So shared arousal, excitement, fear, physical exertion, vulnerability. This, like, speeds up bonding, which is why, like, summer camp is what it does. film sets, military service, college dorms. Yes. Now, talking about accelerated connections,

do you tell us about Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis? It feels like it made it up. It's too convenient. Mind-boggling story, but carefully reported in research. So Anne Atwater and C.P. Ellis, they tried to kill each other in the late 60s, early 70s in Durham, North Carolina. C.P. Ellis was the local leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He had a crazy title.

Do you remember it? Was he an exalted cyclops? Yeah, cyclops. I'm trying to remember. Yeah. You're like, what is it? Dungeons and Dragons are a hate group. They all have those crazy names.

They're all like fantasy nerds, sorry. Crazy. Exalted Cyclops. What a title. Grand Dragon. Yeah. He's a white supremacist, and Anne is a local civil rights leader. She's black.

She is tough. She's not afraid of a fight. She's an imposing figure, and they've been at odds a few times coming into this strange situation in Durham where there's federally enforced desegregation in schools finally. And there's essentially a town hall where a conflict mediator, social worker is brought in, and Ann and CP starts swearing at each other during it. And this mediator, Bill Redick, has this wild idea. And he says, what if I make them work together? What if I get them appointed the coach chairs? The committee to desegregate Durham's schools.

It does not go well at first. CP refuses to talk to her. He brings a gun to a meeting and shows it to her, and then she brings out her Bible. Oh, wow. It's intense. She's already lunged at him with a knife going into this. He's already had a plan to try to shoot her or somebody from one of her rallies.

I mean, just the whole thing is a mess. And I think if we looked at them today, if we paused right there, we would write them off. But over the course of this intense experience, they suddenly discover that they actually have some shared goals. They both come from poverty. Both of their kids are really suffering. And they're just kind of exhausted working morning to night.

They break down into tears. And as they described it later, they start to melt. And you can see, follow the arc of their story. You can see how being sort of put in this position of having to do an intense task in a bubble where you're not interacting with other people. You're just kind of all in on this. So Anne is away from the civil rights activists

who say, you may not ever talk to a white supremacist, which is an understandable position. CP is away from his crowd that will say... There's no way they were supportive of him talking to a black female. Not a chance. And in that bubble that they're in, the intense emotions of the experience,

they bring out vulnerability in them. They start to become associates and uneasy allies. And then, you know, there's some music built in. They have these kind of nice pal interactions. And ultimately, they break down into tears and become companions. and they become so close as friends that Hens' granddaughter grows up calling him Uncle C.P. Oh, my God.

He quits obviously. He was the KKK. Yeah. He had to say goodbye to that fun title, Cyclops. Well, maybe they still call them that for him. I hope not. Reform Cyclops. Or Uncle Cyclops.

Maybe she's called him Uncle Cyclops or Grandpa Cyclops or whatever. I look at that and I think, okay, this is not something you could engineer. In most situations where there's a lot. that level of hatred. But there are principles we can take away from it. One of which is, Dax, as you were saying earlier, emotional intensity does accelerate connection. I love the haunted house data on this.

So if you go with a friend to a haunted house, you will end up becoming closer afterward. Your bond accelerates. Good first date then, haunted house? Potentially. Seems like it. That's really fast. Fast man.

You're moving too fast. Maybe it's like third or fourth date. Depends how easily you're scared. Because you have to physically grab each other. Yeah. What if Brad Pitt asks you to go to a haunted house this Halloween? But it only works if you have a little debrief about it afterward. Oh.

So that there's some shared experience of processing it, not just the jump scare during it. Oh, interesting. Which I thought was kind of cool. And so you can say, okay, that's a version of we need our hearts racing, but we need our hearts racing together. It's not just you go into a haunted house, I go into a haunted house. We come out, now we're best friends. It's this has to be something that only we understood. Yeah.

And we had a unique conversation about. But Bill Riddick did Marionette a little bit of it, right? What were some of the tasks he gave to help facilitate? With NNCP? Yeah. One of the things that he did that I thought was ingenious was, as co-chairs of this committee, he had them write a report on how to make sure that desegregating the schools was not a disaster. And C.P. said, well, I got to protect the white kids from these black kids who are coming in.

And Anne said, I need to protect the vulnerable black kids. from the white kids who were coming in. Yeah, yeah. And so all of a sudden they realized... We're both scared on behalf of our folks. And we need to write a peace plan, essentially, together, to protect our own children. Yeah, yeah.

And it's a common goal, but it also sort of created a common enemy, which is either side-wanting violence is now a threat to their interests. Yeah, we agree on what would be bad. Yeah. You confront a fallacy, and this is great, because I think a lot of people operate under this belief that first impressions tell us who people really are. And of course, you have the incredible example of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien,

which I didn't know this story, which is pretty fascinating. But first of all, why is that wrong? I'm guilty of this. I'm like, I'm right. Yeah, I'm just, I think I'm really great at assessing someone prima facie. And my story is given my background, right? So I have this whole story that I'm pretty good at sniffy now. This goes kind of against Malcolm, this is like thin slicing a little bit.

Oh, okay. Does it? I mean, a little, right? Yeah, all the science on intuition. But anyways, tell us... No, I think what's actually interesting if you were to juxtapose this against Blink, I think what Blink told us is

you can infer particular things about people from thin slices. The classic Nolini on Body Study was you look at a 30-second video of a professor giving their first lecture, silent, and then you can predict their teaching ratings at the end of the semester. You have these non-verbal cues

that signal enthusiasm and excitement and passion and care, some of the things we were talking about earlier. How much do you really know the person and what they're going to be like to interact with outside of that setting, not a lot? You have gotten a snapshot of a professor, not of a human.

Yeah. Yeah, I think the huge error we make constantly is we assume people are consistent in different contexts. Yes. This was a great point that Orna made. Do you know Orna the psychologist? I've heard you guys talk about her. She's the love therapist, right?

Couple therapists. Yeah. What I admire about her is that every time the show starts, you meet these five couples. I'm always like, fuck this. They all need to run away from each other, right? They're completely triggering each other. Like, this is a bad match. And particularly I asked her, like, you know the criteria for narcissism. I'm watching and I know this guy's a narcissist. How are you staying optimistic about this? And she said, well, what's really interesting is that people are narcissists, it's still contextually dependent. They can show great narcissism in some areas and then not in others. And she's like, I personally don't subscribe to the all-day, all-in personality type. No one should.

That's very powerful and very challenging to most of us because it's inconvenient. It is inconvenient. It's a lot easier if people were consistent. I mean, if we could just put people in boxes, astrology, but it would be legitimate. Sorry, Monica. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. We'll put a pin in that.

Yeah, put a pin on. Your call, whether you want to go there or not. But I think that a lot of people hear a description of a personality, and they think that means you're like that all the time. No, personality is not your destiny, it's your tendency. And your personality traits really just describe what your default instincts are. And so if I were to say, let's take an example, let's do agreeableness. Monica, I think you're a little more agreeable than Dax, on average.

Thank you. Oh, wow. I don't know if you're right about that. I agree with you. I agree with you. I mean, guilty is charged right here. He can't even make it. I know. Without fighting on it.

But I think that all that says is if we followed you for your whole life, you will end up on the agreeable side of the spectrum a little more often than Dax. And maybe you'll go further to the kind of cooperative extreme than he does. But you fluctuate all the time. And there are situations where you will be really antagonistic. Definitely. And there are situations, Dax, where you're going to be really probably even accommodating of other people.

If you had video of me at night in my household with my children and my wife versus video of, which we do have, with Monica and I in here, is completely different people. Yeah. And I think what we overlook is, this has completely changed the way I think about personality. We all have what psychologists call if-then signatures, which are like, our thens are, okay,

there's an agreeable side of you, there's a disagreeable side of you, there's an extroverted side of you, there's an introverted side of you. The ifs are, what are the triggers that bring out each version of you? And I think the problem with Snap judgments is we are seeing a then and we're missing the if.

That makes sense. Mm-hmm. I mean, we even talked about this yesterday on a fact check. Dax was telling a story about his kids and family getting in and out of the car. They're supposed to leave at a certain time and they weren't. He's telling this story. And he's just like not saying anything. And I was like, look, I normally disagree with you on most things.

But you're right in this case to be mad. And like, I would be very disagreeable in that situation. I'd be like, everyone needs to get in the car right now. We're not negotiating when the plane leaves. It's set time. Exactly. But you were agreeable. there because you didn't want to cause a fight.

It's not worth it, yeah. Yeah, but I would not be able to be agreeable in that situation. That's a great example of the better you get to know someone, the more you see them in 3D. And you realize if you pay close attention, I can understand how to elicit different versions of them, which, you know, I think goes right back to our Metallica buddy James. Okay, so you saw a particular then in a certain if. I can't help but wonder in those situations. What if you met in a different context?

would a different version of him have shown up? This never occurred to me, but as you're now saying this, this just crossed my mind, which I think is probably true, which is I have been a fan of James Hatfield since I was 11. I have expectations that we will get along great. He, like me, has incredible spidey senses when someone approaches with really big expectations. I know what that feels like you can sense it.

So let's just start there. Probably, he's like, oh, fuck. You know, this is a task now. I've got like, here's a fanboy. He has expectations. And I'd rather just not meet them. I can't deliver, dude. I'm going to do a show in an hour.

It's not the time for me to expend energy making your dream come true. It's all legitimate. But if you came up after the show. Everybody's on vacation and we're at the same hotel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You never know. You're right.

I should hold out. Maybe we'll still go boar hunting in Russia together, even though I don't want to hunt. I mean, if you're that much of a fan. But I do like the idea of saying, okay, we see this all the time. I was floored by watching Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova

become close because they had such a heated rivalry as players. Okay, this is the person who's standing in the way of you achieving your life goal. Of course you're not going to immediately hit it off, but all of a sudden you're not rivals on the tennis court anymore and you're able to

develop a lot of reasons to have a close connection. It's the only other person on the planet that knows what she's been through. Yeah, the only And I just wonder how many of those connections we miss because we write the person off after the first interaction didn't go well. Right, so I didn't know this, but C.S. Lewis and Tolkien both were professors at the same time. In the 30s at Cambridge? They were at Oxford.

They started in the late 20s, and they had a terrible first interaction. They fucking hated each other. Really? They hated different authors. They were both literature professors. They hated different ones. One was a Christian. One was an atheist.

They couldn't stand each other. and then C.S. Lewis sees that Tolkien is going to host this reading of Norse mythology as just a extracurricular fun thing to do. And he decides to attend. Neither of them yet feel liberated to be indulging writing fantasy. Oh, wow. They hadn't yet, right? No, I mean, at that point, they're just riffing about Thor. But they discover, oh, on this topic, I like that version of the other person. And now maybe there's something here. And that becomes the gateway to, had they not been willing to just let go of their first impressions of each other, we might have no Narnia and no Lord of the Rings.

That's crazy. Isn't it wild? And also probably them substantiating each other's dreams in some weird way? It seems like it was obviously never met them, but it seems like it was validating. Yeah. To have another kind of wonky academic who actually wanted to tell great fantasy stories. Yeah. Huh.

What do you mean by people are shapeshifters? I think about shape-fifting as the process of kind of fluctuating on your then when you have a different if. So asking me if my son is courageous or timid, and I'll say it depends on whether you see him on the ski slopes with his friends or the amusement park with his sisters. The latter, he'll be a little bit more cautious because he knows that they're older and they're willing to try rides that are scary and that was a little hard for him. On the ski slopes, he will be the first one flying down the mountain, wanting to egg on. on his peers a little bit. Yeah. And so who is he?

Is he brave? Is he cautious? Yes. Right, right. Yeah. I want to hear, Dax, you said you said you recognize things you do to bond with people. Mm-hmm. I want to hear this thing that comes so easily to you.

How do you do it? I have one observation, which is the first time we met. I guess it was up here. Monica, I don't know if you remember this. I don't know if you were in the room yet. Maybe it was before I walked in. I think it was before you came in. I remember Dax, I guess we can check the audio, right?

I remember maybe it wasn't even recorded. You said, I want to bond with you. It's the first thing you said to me. Oh, wow. No memory of that, but... You don't remember it at all? It doesn't sound unlike me. I just remember being really surprised by it.

I was coming to spar about ideas and share data and learn. I'm like, why does Dax want to bond with me? What is that about? It's weird. Did I want to bond with you about... I can guess which things, the village... Yep.

Restaurant. Village place. Yeah. Village palace now. The potential of getting... your ass kicked at the 7-Eleven next door to the village. He's like, who else am I going to run into in this job where it's like, we know the highs and lows are both going into the village and then trying to go into that 7-Eleven.

The Kiga Harbor Jerry Queen? Yes, yes, yes. But now looking back at that interaction through the lens of the different wavelengths, I thought, okay, this is a really interesting way. We do this in romantic relationships all the time, right? The DTR, define the relationship. Oh, I don't know that term. Or woo-woo, what's up with us?

My students told me about that one. Oh, that must be new. I don't know that. That's a coldestack of a question, I got to say. That's not a good question. I would not recommend anyone ask that ever. But there's something useful about it, right? At some point, declare, yes, this is a relationship, or yes, this is an exclusive relationship.

At some point, you do have to do that, unless it's obvious. You don't say, what's the deal with this? You be vulnerable and you go, I would love to be able to call you my girlfriend. How do you feel about that? Let's just go right there. You say this is how I'm feeling. The fucking dance, the wording is like, oh, shit, is he breaking up with me? Is he wanted to marry?

Well, now you just have to say woo-woo, I guess. It's kind of cool. Cute. Cutsie-o-o-o-o-sie. Oh, but yes, I'm aware of a few things, which is like, I am not uncomfortable at all with vulnerable stuff. Nope. I'm not uncomfortable with trauma. I'm not uncomfortable with addiction.

This is like I'm not very flappable. And in fact, I most enjoy knowing those things about people because I think I much better, understand who they are. I think I have my own not great origin of the motivation, which is like, I'm very in a hurry to find out are you friend or foe. And if you're a foe, I need to have my guard up. So I think I developed really quick ways like, hey, can we be intimate and cool or do we need to fight? One of those things has to happen because I'll be so uncomfortable waiting to find out which one it is. So I think that's maybe how it started. But I think that's one of the things. I mean, I told this on the other podcast that hasn't aired yet. But I will say I've come to

find out there's also a responsibility behind that that I did not acknowledge. I didn't have the awareness that that was a unique quality of mine. And I definitely think there were many girls I had very casual relationships with that for them, I came with a level of intimacy that was very misleading. And I didn't know that. I thought because I was quite honest about my intentions or where I thought things were going. I never told someone I loved them that I didn't. You know, I thought my side of the street was clean. But now that I'm older and I look back, I do realize that level of intimacy was probably pretty unique for a lot of people and it was probably a bit misleading and I feel quite bad about it. I think that makes sense. I also think this is where people often confuse the rituals with the type

of relationship you have. I would say what you were doing in those conversations is you're doing a companion ritual, right, which is you're expressing a level of emotional intimacy that you only would do to somebody normally that you have very strong feelings about. That most people would normally only That would be the expectation. But I'm quite comfortable with. Right. And they don't know that. Yeah.

How could they? And so they think that means this is a really serious companion. Yeah. Look, one of the most heartbreaking experiences I had, and it wasn't too long ago, I made an amends to an ex-girlfriend. And what I had come to make an amends for, she was like, oh, yeah, whatever. And then she said something that broke my heart, which was like, yeah, you know, it never really got better.

Wow. And I was not prepared for that. And that I felt really terrible about it. Got better for her? Yeah, like she never did connect with someone so deeply again. And I... That's horrible. Are they married?

That breaks my heart. They're not married. And look, we had... She is one of my more serious girlfriends. But at the same time, that's when it kind of clicked like, oh, yeah, I guess a lot of the boys in my town weren't offering that level of like, yeah, let's get into your emotions and mine. Yeah. And so that was kind of my white ball moment of like, oh, I wish I had bad. better awareness.

But if she was a serious girlfriend, you then were in a relationship. You gave your all in a relationship. You can't, like, regret that. I don't regret just being me, but I feel sorrow that, like... I mean, it's sad, of course. I assumed walking away, oh, she'll have that with everyone she dates for X amount of time. You did not know you would be the one who got away. And I don't even know that she feels like I'm the one that got away, but just like

whatever weird level of intimacy we had, that was easy for me to have. and was unique to her. And that feels very unfair to have introduced that to somebody and then just gone on with your life. Well, she got to have it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice. Thank you. I felt really, it really, you know, caused me to go through the whole book again

and go like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's Miss Lee. Doesn't really matter what you tell people. It doesn't matter if I go like, hey, man, I got a girlfriend. We're an open relationship.

If you want to have fun tonight, I'm up for that. If you don't, of course, whatever. And then we have fun for the night. I don't. I don't think I necessarily was accurate about what that experience might have been. Or how misleading or confusing that might have been for people. I think this is one of the fundamental challenges in all kinds of relationships is actually

getting on the same page about what the expectation is. And I found myself thinking, you know what? A lot of the conflict I have with people is we're just on different wavelengths. This person really wants to be a pal. And I'm like, nah, ally. Do we tell each other that? Uh-huh. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's hard. That's here's so impossible. You just hold to say something like, hey, man, I just want to be pals. It sounds like a breakup. If they don't know the vernacular, they're going to be like, we are pals.

Yeah, me too. That's what I'm trying to be. Yay! Yes. But I don't want you in this other role. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. My oldest had a really funny observation. Somebody was texting.

me, like, wanting to get together for lunch. And she said, oh, it's a palvator. This person is an associate. I don't know them well, but they're kind of trying to barge into a certain kind of relationship that you would only have with somebody that you enjoy. And I didn't want that. How do you say that? There's no script.

I think you respond according to how you want to respond, and it's on them to figure out, oh, that's what they're giving. I can't be responsible for your ability. Yeah, you give with boundaries what you hope. they'll read. But if they're giving too much, you have to pull back. I think I think that is the responsibility piece that you're sort of talking about with these relationships. Yeah, if you're giving a ton, they're going to think you're very close. This is a problem. This is a problem. As somebody who likes to help people, I think a lot of people mistake my attempt to be a good ally

for wanting to be a pal or companion. Well, again, because you've got to acknowledge that those people have probably not had a lot of people go out of their way to help them. This is my version of you being seen as a companion. What are we? What are the two of us? Woo-woo. Yeah, I'm just curious. Oh.

I got to look at your list. Okay. Well, there's some level of pal. For sure. Because you guys hang out sometimes and you have similar hobbies which are learning. Learning and thinking. That's debating and thinking. Although that could be seen as also allyship.

Right. We both have goals of learning. But we lift the weights together. in Montana. True. Okay. Anytime Adam's on, he stays in his dinner. I mean, that's a friendship.

I would say your pals. With some, remind me about ally, the depth of allyship? I think the allied thing is implicit, which is we have a shared goal. He wants to best represent his book. I want to best represent his book and make it interesting. And what was the first one again? Associates. I think we've passed associates.

No, that's, you're not associates. I'm not paying you to maintain my sprinkler system. Okay. Yeah. I think it's... So we have an allieship. We have a paleship. And then, by the way, like, we've also had intimate exchanges.

Like, there was a moment where we talked about having your wife on the podcast. And we had to have very vulnerable and revealing conversations that I think is beyond what a lot of pals have. Yeah, but, okay, so this is, again, this is back to... So, like, you need to be careful. Okay. Because I think you've had intimate interactions doesn't mean your companions. that the level of intimacy is always at a 10 or that you're always the one you go to. No, we probably just dipped our toe in companionship.

But no, I'm going to call you if I'm struggling with a relationship issue with Kristen. I'm not going to call you. Yeah, I wouldn't call me for that either. No, you have other relationships. Yeah, yeah, there's a list of dudes I would probably call before. So your pals and allies. Now, we are all the things. You're the center of the Venn diagram.

Okay. And that's why he calls you his soulmate all the time. Yes. But do you think we're pals? Of course. Oh, well, I mean more like, because we don't have many hobbies. The fact check is pure paldom. It's just play.

There's no point to it whatsoever. That's why I sometimes tune out at that part. No, it's the best part. It's the best part. Okay, but I guess when you are going to like race cars or something, I'm not like, oh. Well, your hobbies don't overlap 100%. I wish I could go do that. No, but we love spades.

We love... That's true. I mean, dude, the fact tech is us being pals. You enjoy each other's company too much to not. Yes. I'm genuinely amused by all of your stories that go nowhere. They go, please. Not one of them's relevant of telling yet.

I'm endlessly amused by all of them, so I think that's paleship. I think I used to be a better ally to both of you, because I used to help recruit guests, and that is no longer relevant. You're a great ally. You're a great ally. If you ever think of people for us and you always send that over, Sophia, yeah, you're thinking about us. We're not very good allies to you. What have we done? No, I think I do a really good job of learning his stuff.

Well, you do. I mean, you're, I'm like, you've covered. Have AI assess the other interviews if they knew your book as well as I did? Well, we'll see what the answer is. We'll see what the answer is. We'll see. Put that in the fact check, Monica. But let's talk about sustaining connection because I think there's also some counterintuitive assumptions we all have,

which is like people think frequency is the metric. they should be using, and you've got wonderful cases where that's not true. So much pressure on especially relationships that are supposed to count for something to interact on a regular basis. If we don't have a weekly meal with our former college roommates or some parents to adult children insist on nightly phone calls. And I think they're mistaking the frequency of interaction for the closeness of connection. And those two things are not the same. And I think the evidence is very strong on this, but everyone knows somebody who

they could go a decade without seeing and they would pick up like they didn't miss a beat. It's Aaron and I. We had decades where he was still a raging addict and I wasn't. We did our best to be around each other, but it was quite limited. And then saying it got sober, it's like we were in seventh grade all over again. Nothing changed.

I think we should recognize the virtues of catching up less often. I think we have too many relationships that are treated. They become high maintenance because there's this guild. If you're not always, seeing each other or talking to each other or texting back and forth. And to me, that's actually a sign of a fragile relationship. If the relationship cannot withstand time, it might not be a strong connection to begin with.

Kristen will love that part. Yeah. Yeah. She sure would. No, this does not apply to your spouse. Let's just be clear. No, but how long can you go? Because, yeah, you're right.

Like, if you have, like, people living in other states and stuff, I have that with a bunch of friends from home. Like, yeah, I don't catch up with them as much, I guess, as maybe I should, but I don't feel like the relationship is suffering. But I do feel with my friends here, if I haven't seen them in three weeks or a month or something, I'm like, we got to see each other. We got to connect. I think it changes things. I think that's true, too. So I think sustaining a connection is different from continuing to strengthen one. And spending more time together, obviously, can continue to strengthen it. But if you want to maintain it at its current level and you don't want to lose it, frequency just becomes kind of a background variable. Yeah, that makes sense.

And I think part of that depends on what wavelength you're on. So allies are really easy. Think about all of the people in Hollywood who could go decades without collaborating. And the chemistry is right back when they find a project that's of mutual interest. I think with pals too, as long as you have some hobbies or activities that you both enjoy, you can go water skiing with your high school friends and probably will feel pretty similar to high school. I think with companions, it's much harder because there is an assumption that you, in order to be emotionally connected and supportive of each other, that you really know what's going on in each other's lives. That it requires a lot of maintenance.

Yeah. Or more. And so I think we have fewer companions in general. I think there's more pressure on the companion connection to have those touch points. But I also think all it takes is a little bit of interaction to signal that you care about each other. What do penguins do? So penguins, some penguins, not all penguins.

I love this so much when I read about it. I first came across it when a nurse posted about it on Twitter, X, whatever we call it now, that some penguins have these courting rituals where they will collect and present these smooth, shiny stones to show their suitability as a mate. And it's kind of a gesture saying, I am a good partner for you. So I think the digital equivalent of pebbling is sharing memes, reels, articles.

you come across something on the internet that reminded you of someone and you send a quick text over to them and all of a sudden they say, oh, wow, Monica thought of me. I didn't expect that. This is not spamming people with random junk from the internet. This is not kind of a mass blast.

It's a personal, hey, I read this article, Dax, and it's on the effects of testosterone on male connections. And that reminded me of you. And you're like, wow. I know you remember that. He really hates that I'm on testosterone. Yeah, you would... It doesn't bother me at all.

But, you know, the more specific it is to the person, every pebble you send is a gesture of care. And the research on this shows that if you send little pebbles, it's kind of a memory flex. Because you're signaling to the person, hey, this relationship matters enough to me that I paid attention to what you care about and I noticed something that would resonate with you.

And I think relationships can be kept up over distances and decades through those. little pebbles back and forth. They used to be letters that people wrote to each other. That's true. And now, obviously, it's a lot easier to do. But I think it makes it more important than to choose really thoughtful pebbles. Kristen is a great pebbler.

She sends me the best content. Every time I get a text or DM from her with a link to something, usually on Instagram, like, how do I get your feed? What shows up in your feed is what I want in my feed. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if you could map your algorithm onto other people? Like, give me your algorithm. I want to try that for a week.

That should be a feature. Adam Mosey. Make your algorithm transferable. We're coming for you, Adam. We have an algorithm upgrade. What I never know, we should ask Kristen this. I don't know if she's doing it deliberately because she knows that it's a low effort way to show high care

or whether she's just excited to share something that will land with somebody else. The latter. That's what I assumed. Yeah. I think the latter, but I do think it's her personality. I don't think she's drawn to just like texting and checking. it. Like that's not her nature, right? So this is more her nature. She sees something, she thinks

you, she sends it. Yeah. And so much of that is personality. Because I actually like really don't like sending memes, unless it's perfect. Like I sent Dax one the other day of like someone pooping all over Los Angeles or something like that. Like that that is a perfect pebble. Yeah. On the run. And I think I said the greatest one of all time to you, which was the woman who just pulled her shorts aside and pooped in a grocery store. Yeah. And what was so obvious by the footage was, oh, this is not her first time. It was crazy.

The expert level at which she could just pull her hands aside, do a goose turd, and then keep it moving. I'm like, not this chick's first time. And she knew where to go. She, like, a spot. Yeah, she had a spot. This is peak armchair and not an expert material. You have to find her now.

I interview her about it. I have a hunch that our world's no overlap at all. Yeah. They saw it, that pigly, wiggly. All right, now, messy connections are also worth maintaining it again. I think we live in an era. And just me getting old. But I feel like people are just like, if this person's not perfect, I'm out.

If he's not perfect, get out of there. She's not perfect, dump her. You know, like, I think, man, we are fucking quick to keep it moving. So let's talk about how we do navigate messy connections. Most people assume what you want around you are your friends and you want to avoid your enemies. And psychologists have now shown for the past quarter century that there's actually a type of relationship that is worse than an enemy. It's a frenemy. So they're called ambivalent relationships.

And they're people that you have both positive and negative feelings toward. I see this all the time when people talk to me about their in-laws. I don't know why they're talking to me about their in-laws. It's like, oh, I love the fact that they're great grandparents to my kids. and I hate the way they belittle my partner. That is a textbook ambivalent relationship. I got to hit you with this, Jared Diamond, who is just here. His book is on leadership.

And there's all this incredible statistical info on CEOs who lose a spouse. There's a predictable drop in profits the next year or two. Yep. With a child, obviously, with a sibling and parent, yes. And then if an in-law, a mother-in-law or father-in-law dies, There is not statistically significant, but an increase in problems. Oh, wow. Oh, I do not want to know what boards are going to do with that information.

Exactly. But what's shocking to a lot of people is you can even see physical health effects, that your blood pressure spikes more if you're interacting with a frenemy than an enemy. You are more likely to suffer cardiovascular disease. If you have a lot of ambivalent relationships in your life, you're more vulnerable to heart attacks and to cardiovascular disease. And what happens is,

one thing that's nice about enemies is at least they're consistent and predictable. And so you minimize your contact or you put your guard up and you're done. With ambivalent relationships, you don't know. Are we going in for a hug? Do we need to brace ourselves for a brawl?

Are they going to be nice to your face and then stab you in the back? And we waste tremendous amounts of emotional energy trying to anticipate how it's going to go and then manage it in the moment, and then we ruminate about it afterward, and it takes a toll, and we can't just cut them out

because they do have virtues, but their vices are really bad. And so for me, this race is the question of, what do we do about maintaining those? What do we do? What do we do? Because also, as a Virgo, which I know you respect, I do not.

I feel like I'm aware, and Capricorns are also pretty aware of this, that we all have good things and bad things. So by this definition, every single one of my relationships is ambivalent because I know the good things about them and the bad things. But that doesn't mean, it just means we all have bad things. Yes. Do you think some of the things are hurtful and some are not? Yeah.

Right? Yeah. Like I can recognize someone's bad with money. So I'm not going to start a business with them. But if they are like positive, positive, something really negative and judgmental about you, and you're like, oh. Oh, God, that kind of hurt. You know, I just think whether their bad side impacts you are not is probably relevant. I drew two by two in vibe to try to capture this, where if somebody has virtues that are great

and vices that are totally tolerable, they're immediately going to be a natural ally, pal, or companion. If somebody has horrible vices and kind of virtues that you don't value, then that's an adversary enemy person. The tricky in ambivalent relationships is the virtues are important to you. you value those positives, but the vices are also problematic for you. And so that wouldn't be all of your ties. Right. Because a lot of the ambivalence is just, yeah, I don't like that thing about them,

but I can get over the fact that they leave their fingernail clippings on the sink. I think a really clean example would be like an addict in your life. Yes. You might like totally love the addict, but if you're linked and dependent on them in some capacity, their unpredictability is highly stressful and hard to navigate. It's a really uncontrollable. if then.

Exactly. Because, okay, I've got Dr. Jekyll when they're sober, and when they're not, Mr. Hyde's going to show up. Or most likely not show up is the outcome of Mr. Hyde behind the wheel. You don't want Mr. Hyde to show up. That's hard. So I think the biggest thing I learned while researching the book about how to deal with ambivalent relationships

was really captured by Joe Dumars. I have to have a Detroit sports example. Well, you have Rashid too. Joe and Rashid together. Okay. So, Monica, do you know? No, the Pistons' backstory. No.

88, 89, we won back-to-back championships. He was the good guy on the bad boys. He was my favorite player. Of course. Yeah, yeah. Predictable. Yeah, yeah, I'm predictable. Guilty is charged.

I like Vinny and microwave Johnson because he was smoking three packs of Kula Day and Drain and threes. Microwave was impressive. Spider-Sally was great. Rodman. Bill Lambier with the elbows. Yes. So, Dumars, he finishes his playing career. He takes over the Dubei's.

Detroit Pistons. And he makes a trade that pretty much all of Detroit is furious about. He trades for Rashid Wallace, who is the most volatile player in NBA history. He leads the league in technical fouls by two standard deviations and has for like four years straight. He's been kicked out of more games than any player ever. And he's just a hot head. And he's constantly flying off the handle. Now, he's also a big man who can shoot threes. He's an insanely talented player. Crazy talented, but also unreliable. And so you really want them on your team, except when he screws your team.

You want to put him in a cage when he's not on the court. Yeah. So what most of us would do, we would either end up with rose-colored glasses and think, no, no, no,

we're going to have a different Rashid this time. He'll mature. Or we're just going to say this guy is not going to cut it on our team and we write him off. What Joe Dumars did, having played with Dennis Rodman

and experienced a volatile player before, is he sits down with Rashid, actually says this right at the airport. He says, hey, I understand that you're going to lose your cool. And I understand that you're going to have meltdowns.

We just can't have that happen when the game is on the line. And I cannot have any technical fouls in the fourth quarter. And Rashid says, I got you, Joe. What Joe is basically doing is he is accepting his emotions and he's containing his behavior. And the idea of simultaneously saying, I accept the way you feel, but this is not an okay response to that feeling.

This has changed the way, I think about managing all kinds of ambivalent interactions. I've even done this with, I wrote about this a little bit with Allison. Whose wife? Yes. I think she would say my biggest vice is being late to most things, unless there's a room full of people waiting for me to take the stage. Like that's the only time when I'm definitely not going to be late. And for years, she tried to convince me that it's morally wrong to be late. No, she's like, other people. You're valuing your time more than there. Exactly. No, no. Actually, I'm thrilled with other people

late. I'm lost in my own time is what I am, yeah. I haven't factored anyone else into it. I'm fucking lost over here. Please be late for me. I love it. And finally, one day she just said, I understand that you have a hard time disengaging from a task until it's done.

I get in a flow and I disappear. And I understand that you don't think it's important to be on time. Here are situations where that is not okay. We cannot be late if somebody has made dinner for us and it's going to be getting cold. And I was like, oh, I can show up on time in those situations. Yeah. I've just seen so many relationships fall apart when people are kind of at each other's

throats about, I want you to change who you are. Right. Like, no, no, accept the tendency, contain when it appears. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, scaling connection. Plan serendipity. Tell us about Jeff Zaslo.

Let me start here. During my middle school days of losing friends on the basketball court, he moved in diagonal from us across the street. Oh, really? Yes. Ah. And he was the first adult who came over at a neighborhood barbecue when I was shooting baskets on my driveway alone and said, hey, do you want to play horse? How much older was he than you?

He was in his 30s. I was 12. He had young kids. He'd just moved with his wife. He saw a middle schooler shooting hoops. I don't know if he was bored by the barbecue conversation or he was such a giver. He was like, oh, I can help. I'll go play a game with that kid who's alone.

And it turns out he's a journalist. and he took over the Anne Landers advice column. And so he's getting all these reader requests and a lot of them have to do with love. And he decides that he's not contend to just answer their questions. He wants to help them fall in love. So he dreams up a Zaz Bash

where he invites his single readers to show up. They host it in Chicago. People come from multiple states and a bunch of couples fall in love and get married. And it grows and grows. And eventually he tracks it over the question, course of 15 years, 78 marriages. Wow. At Zazbash, organized by a journalist. And so what I envisioned as a kid, hearing him tell these stories, was, okay, he's got a profile on each of the people and he's

trying to find them their match. But no, he anticipated what we were talking about earlier with matchmaking algorithms being bogus. And he said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to choreograph interactions that bring out a better version of each person. And a lot of the interactions were just, he had these great pal rituals. It was the heyday of Seinfeld. And so he had, he had, people show up and do a Kramer dance. Oh, my God. Sounds miserable. I mean, that would not be my cup of tea either.

But a lot of people, to the point about showing a little vulnerability, they were a little bit sillier. They had more fun together. And I think it increased the wheels of connection. And I think that it's something I've really become a passionate believer in that we think that great connections in gatherings are spontaneous. And they are not. They are choreographed in that if you design the right ways for people to connect, they are

more likely to find allies, pals, companions, and hit it off. And we can make a whole list of them. Well, here's some fun ones I wrote down. No phones as a rule. That's good. At a mixer. Don't talk to anyone you know. Oh. This is my favorite. No advising, fixing, or solving. That would be a challenge. It's a hard one for me. You would not be able to go. But I could sign Phil Dan. I'm not going for that. But yeah, you say instead of a hosting something, kind of design something. Yeah. You should should have a vision in mind, whether it's a dinner party or a boring work meeting, ideally you come in with a vision of what kind of bond am I trying to create? If you want people to be allies, have them come in with a problem, have the group try to solve it. I love those exercises. If you

want people to be pals, have them do something silly. I would say, let's play Telestrations. It's my favorite bonding game. And then if you want people to be companions, you skip the small talk and go right to Deep Talk and start a conversation. It could be in pairs. It could be in a small group. about what is your biggest regret. Tell me about your relationship with your mother. Exactly. Not everybody's comfortable to. We've all got a lot to say about our relationships with our mothers, right?

Sure. Okay, I'm saving this chunk of time for this because this is where we could have a fun debate and it'll be two on one. Oh, good. Yeah. I hope I'm the one. It'll be you two against me for sure. Oh, that's going to be too easy. Because I know your position on this.

Okay, so you have a little section on AI in your fear around AI. And if I could summarize, it's if people become. become accustomed to frictionless artificial companions, ordinary humans with all their irritating needs, disagreements, and imperfections will begin to seem intolerable. Great relationships are not effortless. Real relationships contain friction, obligation, uncertainty, rejection, compromise, and mutual need. Go ahead and voice your fears of AI.

That's pretty much it, right? That's spot on how I feel too. The evidence is accumulating. Tell me about the evidence. Maybe I don't know about the evidence. Well, an alarming number of young people say, they have an AI companion. Okay.

And a sizable minority of those would rather interact with their AI companion than an actual person, even a friend. What is sizable minority? Let's put some numbers to this. It might be a third, a quarter to a third of the young people who say they have an AI companion. And what percentage of young people say they have a companion, do you know? Seems to vary by survey, by location.

The numbers are climbing, though, and actually elderly people now increasingly have them. And it turns out empirically that the most lonely, elderly people end up lonelier after interacting with AI companions. Because you cannot have a relationship is a two-way exchange. And you could receive from an AI. It can communicate to you in a way that helps you achieve your goals and kind of seem like an ally. It can simulate companionship by expressing sympathy.

It can certainly, I guess, have a conversation with you about your interests that feels pal-like. You can't give anything back to the AI. The AI does not need your help. It does not need your emotional sense. support. It does not need to have any fun with you. It can't be happy at your accomplishments. No, it can't have any experiences. It can't be disappointed in you and share that when they observe bad behavior. Well, it could. It's not going to feel the disappointment, but it could be

communicated. But I think we overlooked the fact that our most meaningful relationships live in the contributions we make, not just the support we receive. And a relationship in which you have nothing to offer to an AI is not a relationship at all. At first, I would say yes. I think it is yet another tool, another technology, that is driving us away from being a social primate into a solitary tiger. I think it's one more thing.

Bingo. And I'm very vocal about the many things that facilitate that. I rest my case, Your Honor. Monica, do you have anything to add? We're done here. I mean, yeah, you're very nervous about isolation. and the lack of like relationships and things like that. I am.

So I want to concede that. I'm trying to make a steel man argument for both of you, right? I like it. Additionally, another very loud voice in my head is screaming, this is yet another moral panic. And I definitely think it's another moral panic. I'd like to see the data. I think people are still friends.

I have kids. I'm watching other kids. I think everyone's completely freaked out that we have a generation of kids sitting in their rooms talking. to their computer. I personally don't see it, just A. And B, I definitely think it fails to acknowledge that, yes, it is not as good as a real relationship. And it can't give you many of the things we'd want someone to get out of a real relationship. Also, there is a sizable chunk of this country of ours that aren't going to have any companionship whatsoever for all these other instruments that

already exists. They can be self-sufficient, have a job that's online, and they don't need any companionship to shoulder the rent. They don't need to go to the restaurant to eat the food. It gets delivered. They don't need to go to the movie. There's a lot of technologies driving people in this direction. And I think you have to acknowledge that although it is a shitty relationship, for a certain segment of our population, it'll be that or nothing. And I definitely think you need to evaluate whether it's additive to someone who's completely alone. And I think we have such a specific way of evaluating it. And even the way we would design a social experiment around it,

is no one's going to set out to prove the theory. It actually, for some small percentage, it is better than having no connection whatsoever. Oh, there are lots of researchers trying to test that. And that's, I think, why the data on it exacerbating loneliness for elderly, lonely people are so important, right? Because that's the group that would be the right test of, your hypothesis. I think you and I have different levels of confidence in social science experiments,

too. I certainly think that's true, and I think the more knowledgeable person has the right level of confidence. Okay, great. You really believe in these social experiments, and I think a lot of them are completely subjective and so easily manipulated and so subjective that I don't think we're getting concrete answers the way you think we are. I think you vastly underestimate the rigor and complexity of designing a study that. makes it through peer-reviewed at journal, especially now with our standards of transparency and replication. I can point out like 80 of them right away that we believed as law that now have unraveled. The jello experiment. The marshmallow experiment is completely unraveled. No, it hasn't. Yes, it has. That is a

misunderstanding of it is. Tell me what your understanding of it is. You've had Keith Payne on the show, right? I think Keith did the best kind of synthesis of what we know, which is, it is true that the longer kids wait for a second marshmallow rather than eating the first one in front of them. The better grades they get, the better SAT scores they get a dozen years later. What is also true is that ability to delay gratification is built over time by being able to trust that you're going to get the reward that was promised later. And kids who are poor don't get that. But what's interesting is the original data that made headlines to challenge the marshmallow

data were basically saying if you control for somebody's socioeconomic status, the effect goes away. You are actually taking the effect out by controlling for it because you're controlling for something that actually correlates with the variability that you're studying. And so it doesn't negate the marshmallow effect. Well, the causality was wrong. Not necessarily. Yes, the conclusion for 45 years was, oh, these people who have this predisposition for frontal lobe control and delayed gratification will achieve more in life. I think that's a caricature of the research, because even in the original marshmallow studies that Walter Michelle led, socioeconomic status was controlled for as a variable.

And it reduced the effect. It doesn't always eliminate the effect. Now, we do it with larger samples and better statistics, and I think we can debate about where to draw that line. But what we would say is I don't think it's an innate difference between people that drives the whole effect, right? What we learn from that is, oh, one of the ways that we can help elevate kids out of poverty

is giving them an opportunity and a relationship in which they learn to trust that if they wait for the second marshmallow, it will come, and they will build the skills then that will help them power through studying for the SAT. And that actually is a skill that is built when you are not in poverty. Mm-hmm. So not bunk. Just complicated. I still know.

All you've actually demonstrated is that kids from high socioeconomic backgrounds will have great achievement. No, but this is one of the reasons why is because they are able to forego the short-term reward for the long-term benefit. That's one of the outcomes of it, but you're claiming you're measuring one thing, but you're not. You're measuring another thing. All you're measuring is socioeconomic advantage. No, because you can show the contribution of all the different mechanisms. And so you can compare what is the relative benefit of the delayed gratification skill against the what is the relative benefit of the network they had access to, the doors that were open for them. Well, no, just a house where you have a high socioeconomic base have parents that already,

are atypical in their delayed gratification. On average, but you can control for that too and see if you get the effect. This is where we disagree, that you are able to control over and over again when you keep finding out, no, that's not actually what it revealed. Well, no, I make this tweak. Suffice to say, you put a little more confidence in them than I do.

I think they're fun and interesting, and they're often correct, and they're often wrong. Well, it's hard to have any of these debates if we're going to take away all the research because, like, we just had Angela Duckworthon, and she just said the same stuff about loneliness. Remember? She said across the board, all age groups, people are lonelier.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I don't dispute that at all. But how you conduct your experiment with the old person who's all by themselves to use the chat, GPT, and we're measuring their loneliness before and after, I have a hunch. I would be skeptical of several of the metrics you're using. But you're just saying, but I'm sorry, going back,

you said that you don't see it. You're like, I don't see it. My kids have friends, people I see have friends. And the studies say everyone, not every single person, but all age groups are lonelier and more isolated. Yeah, all of America is. Yeah. Yes, yes, I don't dispute that. So this is not helping.

AI companions isn't helping that trend. It's making it worse. That's an interesting point, my opinion. I like it. Yes, I agree that it is one of the variables in it. And I think we have much bigger ones that have led us to hear for us to spend the attention. tension and time and panic about the AI. I think there's much bigger forces at play that have resulted in the loneliness because we saw

it way before AI. I agree with that. And I also think that Jonathan Haidt is completely moral panicked about social media. I think there's a ton of conflicting data. I also think he likes to ignore that they drink less. They work out more and they're better with money. So it's like, yeah, the suicide rate went up by 25%. But yet we have these other things.

We're just going to ignore all those things. So it's all very convenient. What exact metric we want to look at. So John and I have had a lot of debates about this, and I think I'm probably somewhere between his view and yours, but it is hard to ignore the both randomized controlled and natural experiments done where you take phones out of schools and you see what happens.

Boys get bullied less. Girls get better grades and have better mental health. And so I think there are actually a lot of contributing factors causewise. But in terms of how do we begin to solve the problem, we can make a dent. It's not going to hurt. Yeah, I don't think it's, um, a waste of time, but I do think it is comparable to blaming SUV for the carbon issue when we know cement and steel production are 35x that.

Like, I just think it's not where the attention is most helpful. It may be one of the most controllable influences, though, right? If you look at the Australia. Yeah, you can take it away or not. We don't need kids under 16 on social media. No. It's just not necessary, right? So if we can run that experiment and it helps, I'd say by all means to it.

Which is, I think, one of the things that is important about the way that John brought the data together is to say, look, whether you think he's over-claiming or a little bit one-sided or not, I think the reforms that he recommended are all net positives for society. And I think the evidence is clear on that. But let's go to the AI one. I actually think this is an easy argument for Team Monica to win. Because I think that the question is not, is AI potentially going to help some populations more than it hurts? The question is, what is the value of AI compared to the alternative activities we could recommend? So in England, there's social prescribing. where physicians will actually write you a prescription.

Yeah, to go to the gym. You could go to the gym. You could join a group or a club. You could sit on a friendship bench, right? There's a whole series of recommendations there. I don't know that's the right intervention for a lot of people. I would say, let's go to one of our previous moral panics, video games. Social gaming is one of the best interventions we have.

For AI use? No, for reducing loneliness, for helping people make friends. Oh, oh, oh. And we also know that playing video games has all sorts of cognitive benefits for kids. and adults. And so I would say, look, if you're worried about a group of people who's lonely, and I think disproportionately that is young people and it's old people, I would so much rather have those people playing social video games than talking to an AI companion. In an order of descending preferences, yes, I would agree with that.

And so we already have those tools, right? Let's not let AI become a crutch. I'm not in a panic about that. What I'm saying is we have better options already available that will both help with your cognitive functioning and help you build real connections with human beings. Let's focus on that instead of this tool that might interfere. I also disagree with you, or maybe we have a disagreement on the percentage of people who would never be able to have a friend.

Yes. I agree with you on that. So tiny. What if little Adam got his basketball stolen and then he just made a friend, he would be like, oh my God, just made a friend with an AI, and then he never joins the dive.

It can really change the trajectory. I mean, I can think of that scenario. That's plausible. I just don't know that it's reached the epidemic level that society is response. I agree with that. I think there's a big moral. I agree with that, but I think we underreacted to social media. It's probably not a bad thing to exercise an abundance of caution with the most powerful technology in human history.

Okay, here was another one. Here was one that I read. I'm like, where did Adam get this fucking statistic? So in the wake of those two people that got caught cheating and the, players box or whatever at the football game. The Coldplay one? The Cold Play, that's what it was. I don't even have the right venue.

Yeah, at the Cold Play concert, you immediately have this post that people that cheat are less trustworthy at work. Tell me the exact things. I don't want to misrepresent. The econometrics on this are really strong. Okay. People much smarter than us have, I think, have demonstrated this about as convincingly as you could. So basically what they do is the researchers capitalize on the Ashley Madison leak.

so you can see in a number of professions who is using an adult affair website. They did this with CEOs, with financial advisors, with police officers. You look at their rates of misconduct in their job. And if you look at the Ashley Madison sample compared to match pairs of otherwise similar CEOs, financial advisors, and police officers,

the people who cheated on their spouses were two to three times more likely to be guilty of misconduct in their jobs. Okay, so there's so much flawed with this. Let me just hit you with immediately. Try. What a terrible sample set. Of the mass amount of affairs that happened, the estimates are in the 40 to 50 percent range that people have affairs.

So of that group of, we'll call it 100 million Americans, the amount of people that used Ashley Madison are such a very specific sect of this group. And they're like most balzy. already trusted, we're so risk embracing that they entered a public website that could be leaked and was leaked versus two people on the space station who fall in love who are both married. These aren't even comparable groups. So the fact that we're going to graph on to anyone's ethics what cheating means because the people in that video were not on Ashley Madison. No.

So you're, you're, I wasn't attempting to equate them at all. It was right in the wake of it. So there was no way someone couldn't. connect those two things. Fair. Okay. So I agree with actually everything you just said. Okay. So here's where I come down based on the evidence. There was a lot of debate in the wake of the KISS cam, which of course, as almost always happens, ended up much more hurting the woman than the man. Yeah. Yeah. I felt like it was like Monica Lewinsky all over again. The narrative that came out was very different, right? I think they were both separated. And it was maybe their first date. All of the

vilification of them. Yeah, they got mobbed. They got mob mentality. And it's happening. There's like people, there's some park bench situation happening. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I didn't want to pass judgment on them or their situation at all. But if you release this statistic that says that people that cheat are three times as likely to cheat at work, what are you doing?

Okay, so what I was doing was responding. I'll tell you what I was doing. I think it might have been four days later. Okay. Okay. But what I was responding to was a bunch of people saying it is irrelevant how you behave in your personal life to whether we can trust you. on your job. And I said, not so fast. Because in the extreme case of the worst cheaters, which is the Ashley Madison case. Yeah, it's a very convenient piece of data. It's not

representative at all of cheaters. No, no, of course not. But this is how social science gets cherry-picked shamelessly and misleadingly. And when I read your thing, I was like, okay, great, Adam, let's get rid of Martin Luther King. Let's get rid of John F. Kennedy. Let's get rid of literally everyone that probably you would point to as having made the country better, we got to throw them out of there because they cheated? No. Because Ashley Madison is not, it's something so much more than cheating. No, on the rung of addiction. You're in the I go to bathhouse or you're a sociopaths edition. There are a number of possible explanations for it. Yeah. The point I wanted to make is there is such a thing as character, right? As much shifting as people do, as many if then, signatures as

we have, the person who would never cheat on their spouse is less likely to cheat on their job and vice versa. Yeah, because they're probably the least... They're the most risk adverse. Yeah, exactly. They're the most risk averse. That doesn't mean they're good employees either. Except if you care about their honesty, that may matter to you. It matters to me. It matters to me. But, but Adam, I don't think it's a fair statement to say someone who would never. I think there's a circumstance... Maybe you don't know if... There's no way to know that anyone would never. I think there are a lot of people you think, oh, they would never do something like that.

And there's a circumstance in which they would. You don't think you know anyone who would never do it under any circumstances? I think I do. I really don't. Wow. My grandpa probably didn't cheat. My grandpa went to Wonderbread Bakery, 12 hours a day and worked with other men. We can't say because he died and having not cheated and my dad died cheating that those are comparable situations. It doesn't say anything about humanity. It says a lot about context. We also know someone who we know had an affair, and they're a good person. So there's this other, like, you know, there's a real condemning, and it's like, well,

I disagree. This person's like, by all accounts, a dependable, wonderful, beautiful person who was in a very unique situation and then did something very regrettable. I see that point of view. I also think I know people who would never. Nobody really knows, right? I think the point here, though, is that somebody who repeatedly cheats, right, is making a statement. about their lack of integrity? No, I think they're making a statement about their

appetite for risk. Or lack of will. Or lack of concern with not crushing the person they claim they were going to spend their life with. There's definitely a lack of conscientiousness. There's a lack of... You could say respect. Depends, depends on, I think, the situation.

But I just think to say they're all bad... No, I wouldn't say that. Or that they're all dishonest at work is a little tricky. They don't have character or integrity. They're very sweeping. I don't think I disagree with any of the points. I just think the nuance in the statement I was making is getting lost. Okay.

Which is we see this in organizational psychology. There's a whole literature on integrity testing that goes back half a century. And we can predict your likelihood of lying, cheating, and stealing in a whole range of jobs and tasks from looking at some very well-designed tests where you don't realize that what you're revealing by, in a lot of the questions, you're asked to predict what other people would do. And if you think other people are cheaters,

you're more likely to be a cheater yourself. You assess other people on a level that you assess yourself. There's a projection bias thing. And so my point is just that the person who assumes everybody else is dishonest, is a dishonest person. And if they reveal a pattern of that dishonesty consistently, repeatedly over time,

across situations at home, we should not immediately give them a pass at work and assume there's just a compartmentalized self. Oh, I disagree. Martin Luther King. How are you going to account for Martin Luther King? He had orgies. His role in his job had nothing to do with his having orgies.

He couldn't have been more effective in the civil rights movement. I'm just speaking probabilistically. Yeah, but you really got to ignore most of the people that you and I admire. I sure hope not. I could go through a list and I know you would admire these people. You admire Martin Luther King, don't you? Yeah, but I also... Do you admire John F. Kennedy?

Less than MLK. Well, of course. But do you admire JFK? Yeah, look, I think it's possible for people to have such... This goes back to the ambivalent relationships discussion. Yeah. It's possible for someone to have such extraordinary virtues that you're less concerned about their vices

or that you're willing to tolerate their vices because of the impact they could have on the world. Yeah, yeah. I'm only pointing out that you're saying, there is no compartmentalizing and that if you are this way in your private life, you're this way in your public or your work life. And I'm giving you examples of people that that's not true at all. Yeah, of course. It also depends on the job, maybe. Yeah, I mean, I don't have any evidence on did MLK ever commit tax fraud, right? So if you actually line up the type of integrity, maybe there's,

actually, he was guilty of plagiarism on his job. Okay. He had a bunch of refrains that he did not source properly. I actually think his dissertation was partially plagiarized if I remember what I read correctly. Oh, okay. And so now, I'm like, okay, there is a pattern of cheating professionally and personally. Now, does that mean I don't want him as civil rights leader? No. He was an extraordinary

civil rights leader, and he was extraordinarily selfless. But being selfless and being honest are two different virtues. Yeah. Sure. That's true. So interesting. But yeah, I'm just saying, look, if somebody is a serial philanderer and you're a board of directors choosing a CEO, you might want to take that into account. Yeah.

If they're on Ashley Madison, probably not a great idea. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they're caught up in an addiction if they're on Ashley Madison. Yeah. I definitely think we need to draw distinctions between someone who drinks on the weekends and an alcoholic or someone who had an affair in a space station and someone who's on a website fucking five days a week. Fully agree. And what I probably am guilty of here is putting the nuance in the caption of the post.

Yeah, right? when I described the study, but pushing back against the oversimplified argument on the other side, which is the doesn't matter at all. It's irrelevant how people act in their personal life. No, you don't check your values at the office store. I don't care at all when I'm working with somebody, whether or not they're in an open relationship or a close relationship. Yeah, but that's consensual, right? That's a little different.

Yeah. Or if they've had affairs or not had affairs. That doesn't, to me, have anything to do with me. I think that has to do with their partner. maybe on the job. Some jobs don't require honesty. Wow. That's a scary thought. I think that's true. It might be more important in some jobs than others. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think, like, yeah, if you're a lawyer, that's probably a problem if you're dishonest, you know. Or an asset. Actually, they all are lying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're great at creating a version of the truth.

I mean, yes, there are things. But dishonesty is always a trust problem at the end of the day, right? And if you have a job where you're collaborating with other people, okay, you could say an actor is a consensual liar professionally. Yeah, yeah. But you certainly don't want to hire the actor who's going to renege on your contract the moment they get something better. Well, of course.

This is kind of my issue, is that you want it to bleed over into a lot of things that I don't think it does. So my doctor, I don't know if my doctor's cheating on his wife. I don't care. Oh. My doctor's not incentivized to lie to me. Could your doctor be incentivized to give you

bunch of unnecessary tests and profit from them? That is possible. Yeah, but you're just not that worried about that. Yeah, I'm not worried about that. I don't care if my doctor's cheating on his wife. I don't care if my lawyer's cheating on her husband. I'd have to force that into my relationship with them. Because I'm not the spouse.

I'm not going to interview them on it, but I would prefer not to let somebody who is violating integrity knowingly into my life if I can avoid it. Yeah, you have a really moralistic bar. You and Gladwell often argue about this. And I agree. I think you have a very, I don't know, to me it feels a tiny bit unrealistic. I think really what you're evaluating your business relationship with is, is it reciprocal and beneficial to me? That's what you're really doing.

You can say integrity is a prerequisite, but I don't think I believe that's how we assess our incentives. I think is it mutually beneficial or not? By the way, I mostly agree with that. I've tried to get more disciplined about assessing integrity. before I collaborate with someone. Have you been burned a lot? I've had a few collaborations where I've walked away saying, if I knew then what I know now,

I never would have done anything with that person. And so that forces more caution. And I don't think I know with high confidence, but I think I can make better probabilistic judgments now than I could have 15 years ago. Do you think colleagues at Wharton should be fired if they have an affair? Oh, really good question.

No, because you should be fired for either underperforming in your job or violating the values of your institution, and that is not one of our... It's not one of the tenants. Right. It's not in your job description. It's not in the values. But should you be fired for sexual harassment? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a clear. Trying to date students. Yeah, we got to get out of it. Absolutely unacceptable. Get out of that. This reminds me of something that we have to talk about. Oh, great. Which is another fight we haven't had yet.

Oh, okay. Great. Monica, I don't know if you are. aware of this. So you read Allison's book, Dax, and very kindly recommended it. It's really, really great. Thank you. I love her new one even more. Oh, she's already written another. It's like out now.

Oh, wow. What's the name of it? It's called lump. Lump. A memoir and in inelquent reflections. Oh, great. And it's poetry and prose about her experience with breast cancer. Uh-huh. Okay. Blu me away as did the first one. And Dax, I remember you being surprised that I could judge

that Allison was a beautiful writer. And you thought that I would be biased and couldn't accurately assess her work because I love her. I don't remember this, but I'll go along with it. And I wanted to fight with you about that. Oh, that doesn't sound like something I believe. Oh, interesting. I think when your partner writes something or does anything that will be public facing, you have a very quick and natural, oh boy, this reflects on both of us. You, the general you. Yes. Not you. Yeah. So you think your guard goes up because you're trying to protect.

Well, I think you acknowledge there is a certain level of shared embarrassment that's a potential. And so I think it's natural to read or consume the thing with a tingle of fear. I think that's kind of natural. Like, oh, is this going to be embarrassing for her and I? The stakes are different because you're a known intellectual that's on TV. and you have a wife, and now she's going to put something out into the public-facing thing. And I think it would be very natural for it to cross your mind that this will be a reflection on us as a unit. You don't have a distance from it.

It's not like when a student turns into paper, you go, oh, no, this will reflect on me as a professor. You have a very healthy distance. So I do think it's murky when you're in a relationship that's public-facing. I'm aware of it. Some of my decisions are I don't want to embarrass her. There's things I'd say on here that wouldn't embarrass me. But I won't do because I don't want to embarrass her. So I think there is different criteria and different pressures

when a loved one is putting out a work of art in your unknown entity. Well, luckily, Kristen is relatively insensitive to embarrassment because you have a pretty long leash, I think. I have a long leash, but mine would be even longer, as you might guess. I could see that. So we agree on this, but for different reasons. Tell me. I thought where you were was you're just too biased

and you're going to see the good in the person no matter what, which is not where you came down. I think you can see the people you love most accurately for a different reason. I think yours is right in some cases. But I think the other thing is when you really care about someone, you want what's best for them. Of course, yes. And so the last thing you want to do, whether it reflects it on you or not, is let them embarrass themselves. And you want to help them put something out there that's great.

It's like, this is what every good mentor does. They protect you from the worst version of yourself. And that's what a good partner should do too. Yeah. But again, another added layer that's in the mix is if you, Your wife writes something about her personal story. I have no option other than to take that at face value. I'm going to assume that that's what it was.

Now, you know her extremely well, and you now are evaluating whether she got her real voice out or not. I don't know what her real voice is. So, again, I have so much distance that none of that's going to get complicated for me. That tracks. Maybe then you were surprised about something else, which is that I would have married someone who could write. I was like, what did you say?

I'm confused of what he said. I think it was on the podcast because I remember hearing it and being surprised. Oh. You said something like, I didn't expect this to be good. Oh. Well. Well, maybe it's just surprising that two people who are connected are both really good at the same thing. That's abnormal and low percentage.

Also, when a friend reaches out and says, read my significant other thing. Yeah. You're preparing for the worst. It's 50. Because it didn't come to me through the other channels, which is like, oh, this book's getting a lot of attention. You should check it out. This is in essence of a favor. It's a favor.

It's a favor. So when you're doing a favor, your expectations are low. You're like, this is a favor. I'm going to probably get through this book. Right. And then lo and behold, I loved the book. Yeah. So I just think that's very honest.

Like generally when a friend asks you to read their thing or their loved ones thing or their child's thing, I think you have a realistic expectation. This might not be at the level it should be. Okay, that resonates completely with one small exception. Okay. Which is from an integrity standpoint, I would never ask you to read something as a favor. And for you to question my judgment and taste,

to think I might have given you something that wasn't good or worth your time, I was like, oh, all right, we're going to have to duke that one out. That's the blinder, the love blinders. Potentially. Of course you could, of course you would send him something, And your wife wrote that you might think is beautiful

because it came from your wife. Buddy, this is where our priorities are so different. I would like it about you if your wife wrote a piece of shit and you knew it was a big, a big, steed pile of shit. He said, fuck it, I'm still going to try to help them. I would hate that. I would admire that about it.

I would hate it. I would know how hard it would be to send that email. Exactly. And I go, this person would do something that was very uncomfortable for them. It's like he loves it so much. And I would look at that person and think, oh, where is your taste and judgment? You can be a better partner. Yes.

But I would really, the shittier the book, probably the more I would respect you. Wow. Okay, well, I really missed the boat on that one. All right, two other things we have to talk about. Okay. One is embarrassment just came up. Oh, okay. I can't remember where this was.

On one of your episodes, Monica, you kind of pointed out the Dax likes being embarrassed. Oh, he loves it. And he admitted it. Yeah. I want to know why. As a psychologist, this is endlessly interesting to me. Because normally embarrassment is something people are supposed to avoid. It's one of the self-conscious emotions that's supposed to protect us from repeating whatever mistake we made socially.

And for you to seek that out is the opposite of what should be your primate reaction. Above all things, I'm a novelty junkie. And so it is such a unique feeling to be embarrassed. I mean, it is like your whole body starts vibrating. There's a physiological component that is like unmissable. You know, Monica starts crying immediately. She walks into walls and stuff. It's like, it's so.

Okay. Roos, I walk to walk, then I cry. But you could have easily walked into a second wall right after because you were disoriented from the embarrassment. Oh, my God, so embarrassing. And so I immediately go to two things. One is it's so novel. And I just love novelty. It's why I was a drug addict.

It's like, how else can we feel? I'll do anything to feel. So this is thrill-seeking for you in a way. Yeah, it's just like, it's novelty. It's like, oh my God, this is crazy. And I feel like the world's staring at me and all of it. It's just like I can't help but notice how bizarre the feeling is, and I kind of like it. And then secondly is anytime I'm embarrassed, I immediately know, oh, I've got a story.

And my trade in life is stories. That's what I pedaling. So it's like, this is like a stand-up looking for materials. Yes, it's happening and I can already hear myself telling the chain of events that led to me on my back in the movie. theater with the popcorn in the air. Okay, I had that one. It's good material. I did not have the just the sensation, the thrill of the. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other two that I was thinking about, one is, I think there's a gendered component of this. Sure. Which is women being embarrassed is much more difficult than men. That is against the common saying, which I agree with, as a woman's

greatest fear, she'll be murdered by a man, and a man's greatest fear is that he'll be embarrassed in public. And I think that's true. I think men because of the way evolutionarily our status was dependent on this. This is precarious manhood. Yeah. So I actually disagree. I think being embarrassed for men is like dangerous. That's why men have this crazy.

Have you ever witnessed it? It's like a guy he's taking you for a ride in his new car and he fucking loses control or whatever. There's numerous ways men can fuck up in front of you. And men all immediately instinctually act like it did not happen. It wasn't embarrassing. They get angry. If it's a threat. If they get really embarrassed and they get angry, now we're all in danger.

Yeah, exactly. So we know instinctually to like pretend that when it makes a mistake it didn't happen. And I don't think women have that with each other or we have it with women. If the threat is to your competence or your strength. And it makes you look weak or incapable. Now you've got to display immediately to regain your status. But not if you seem insensitive, which is something that the woman would get punished for more. The reason I was thinking about this.

is gendered is because most embarrassment happens because you violate a social norm, I think. And women get penalized much more for doing that than men do because they're expected to be socially and emotionally skilled. Yeah. And so I was wondering if that was part of it, that you just don't experience the cost of certain kinds of embarrassment because you can get away with it. And your strength is demonstrated. It's built in.

I have so many privileges. Like, I'm a fucking 6-2 white dude. And I weirdly have taken it to a place where it's actually a display of great bravery and confidence. Yes. Right? If I can marinate in my humility, boom. I think other men are like, fuck, that's gangster.

I actually think it's like a counterintuitive reaction. Okay, this goes to my favorite hunch, which is, I think it's a way of getting attention without being a narcissist. I disagree with that because that would imply that I initiated it. Fair? I can promise if I initiated it, it's not embarrassment. Because that's me doing Frito in idiocracy. I'm doing lots of embarrassing things, but I've chosen to do it. You're in control.

Right. Yeah. So I'm not experiencing. any of the fun stuff. When I watch it, I get very embarrassed, but not while I was doing it. But if something happens that embarrasses you, right? A narcissist would want positive attention. You then being able to tell the story or have everyone laugh at you.

It keeps people's eyes on you, which is part of the joy of being an extrovert and being in the spotlight. But not in a way that's elevating you above other people. And that feels okay. Right. Like if I bench pressed a bunch in front of other people versus I fell down and laughed at myself. Yes.

It's humble attention. For sure. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Good. Okay. We are on to something here.

This is so fascinating. I actually want to get a group of doctoral students to study this. Embarrassment? Yeah. And the pleasure you get out of it. Yeah. I wonder how unique or not unique it is. But what was so fun is, so my 13-year-old, she thinks the most embarrassing thing someone

can do is run with a backpack on. I don't know why that is, but for her, that's really huge. Such a funny image. And she found herself at a situation where it's like, The crosswalk was, she thought she could make it. A lot of kids were there watching. She ran with her backpack on. Then I think she tripped with her backpack on.

She goes, oh my God, Dad, it was so embarrassing. I could just tell by her delivery. It seemed like maybe she enjoyed it. And I go, did you like it at all? And she goes, yeah, I love it. It feels so weird. Wow. Yeah, that's my thing too.

It just feels so weird. It can be funny in retrospect. In the moment, it's embarrassing. but later when you visualize the backpack and the tripping, it's funny. So maybe with some time, you're like, that's hilarious. This is the comedy equals tragedy plus time. Right. Exactly.

I just think there's a lot of things that boys don't know that are very counterintuitive that are actually huge displays of strength. Saying to another boy, I'm scared. I don't want to do that is immediately admirable and as red as bravery. If you do it with confidence. Yeah. Yeah. You have to show a degree of security when you do that, right?

And I think most boys, if they're scared, what comes across is, like, I am timid and I am weak. And you do it in a way that says, yeah, I don't care what you think of me. Yeah. Or even with daughter, you know, another one, little one, someone said something shitty at school. And I said, you wouldn't believe this, but the fucking most gangster thing you could say is like, oh, wow, that hurt my feelings. Because every other little girl is going to be like, well, that's what I want to say. but I don't have the courage to say that. It would shock you.

And then that other person, there's no wiggle room. No. There's no way to play that off. Like, you just hurt my feelings. You deal with that now. It's not a retort. It's not a burn back. It's just like, let me tell you what just happened.

That hurt my feelings. That's such a victory and counterintuitive. But I think there's a lot of little things, tropes of masculinity that actually the opposite is the thing that everyone will think you're so brave for. If you know how to balance on the tight run. Telling your partner, your female partner, the things you're insecure about.

We think, oh God, she'll won't be attracted to me now. She'll go, fuck, I've been with a million men. They were all too cowardly to tell me this. This dude's a fucking stud. That's the hack. It is. It's so counterintuitive. I am all in for that.

Yeah. Adam, I love you. It's always so fun. I like you. Yeah. I'm not at love yet. We're not companions. Yeah, but you're pals.

What I really just want is for you to love the book. I don't care if you love me. That's a terrible. fuck Adam that just opened up another hour debate no no you should want me to love you for you because you're intrinsically lovable regardless of your accomplishments or your output no no no i think i take for granted that we have a level of i think from the day we met we respected each other yeah absolutely and have built a bond around that as you professed you wanted to do and so if i have uncertainty or insecurity it's okay now i'm putting something out in the world that i spent a couple years on yeah and i'm at the

beginning of sharing it, and here's somebody who has engaged with it really thoroughly. Yes. I want to make sure that he thinks it was a worthwhile project. Yes, I loved it. And I love everything you write. You're a very, very good writer. You're very entertaining writer. You're not pedantic.

It's not a slog to get educated by you. It's a pleasure. Well, most fun class, seven years. Yeah, seven years running. And now, you know, among those 30, they get these participation awards over at at Wharton. But the book is called Vibe, The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World. Adam, such a delight.

I can't wait for you to come back. Thanks. Always so fun to be here. I learned a lot. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let them have the facts. How did it go?

Good. It took a little while. Did you do other things? I peep. I just pee. Are you sure? Yes. You didn't touch up your.

A little. Okay. You're talking about gasoline. You're on high alert for gaslighting and you just look directly at me and said all you did was pee. Stop. Stop it. I forgot about that part. Okay.

It wasn't on purpose that I left that out. Okay. I just, I forgot that I did go upstairs and reapply my lipstick. Yeah, sure. A little powder? No. No powder. Foundation.

There we go. Just a little extra. Sure. Because my period's coming and my face looks bad. If it doesn't come now, we are in trouble. Do you like having your feet on the edge there? Do you want them fully on top? I like it on the edge.

I live on the edge. Sure. What everyone says about you, Monica loves living on the edge. Hey. You're safety-minded and you know that. I am, but I've also done a lot of things that some would constitute living on the edge. I found out today ran from the cops in Cam. Exactly.

Check out that armchair anonymous. Study abroad if you want to hear about that. You know, this looks disgusting. I'm taking that off. Don't look at it. I saw it. Was that from the fluid inside or did your lips that dirty? Who's to say?

Who's to say? Who's to say? Who could know? Hopefully the liquid inside. What were you telling me earlier and I told you to shut up, save it for the fact. You asked why I was going in the wrong direction yesterday. Yeah, we got very confused because we, we really. finished recording yesterday.

Yep. You told me you were going to Cara. We had a long talk about the mosquitoes. Yep. And if you were to go to Carr, you would have headed down Western. Yes. You would have gone south. Yes.

And then independently of that, I came inside. Probably also. Probably on foot. Yeah. I come inside. I pitched to the Lincoln and KB. Hey, does anyone want to go get some all time? Yeah.

They're up for it. So we hop in the car pretty quickly after we finish recording. And we're driving now there, which would be east. Yep. And we see in traffic next to us, directly next to us, you sitting in your car. You're already coming. Somehow you've already gone east. Now you're returning west.

Right. And it's very confusing for us. And we're honking. And you are, God knows where you were at mentally. Lincoln's screaming your name. What? Yes. Oh, my God.

And then we were off. Where was it? Like, was it like? Just before Vermin. I had just turned right then. I just turned right. To redirect. So, okay, this is what happened. So I went, it's a sad story, actually. Okay. I have tissue, so don't worry. I can handle it. I was going to go to Kara as I planned. But then I thought, no, I was just there yesterday. I already got mosquito bitten. I already saw Leslie Bibb. Yeah. I want to mix it up today. Yeah. See who else you can see. And I was.

starving, you know when you're starving, like, what do I, what do I put in my body? What do I want? What do I need? I need food fast. Okay, really quick, that's already interested in different about us. When I'm starving, I know exactly what I want. It's when I'm not very starvy that I'm like, well, it would be good. But when I'm starving, like, I know what I want. Oh. And it was all time as it turned out. I, okay. Well, so I decided I'm not going to go to Kara. I'm going to go somewhere else. But I didn't know And so I just got in my car and I started driving. Amelessly and hungry, low blood sugar, not thinking. Yeah, not all that clear.

What? Not doing your best thinking. Oh, yeah. I thought you said something about stinky. No. I'm sure that's post meal. So then, yeah. So then I go up north and then east, okay?

And I think maybe I'll go to all time. I didn't know that was your plan. So I'm really glad I didn't go. That'd be so embarrassing. You have to sit with us and have lunch. No, I'd be like at my table by myself and then you guys over there and I'll just be like, hey. That's not what have happened. Hey guys.

Buddha said, Monty's here. Sit down. It's nice to see you again. Ten minutes later. So yeah, anyway, I start driving to all time, but then I realize, you know what? No, I want in and out. That's what I want. And I want it now.

And I want to go to sunset tower after. and that's where I want to work. This is my plan, okay? Unfortunately, I'm heading in the wrong direction for that plan. That's right. Additionally, and this is the sad part. Oh. There was a big car accident, and it was a, why?

Are you laughing? I'm not. This is the sad part of the story. No. I'm already sad. It was a three-car. Pile-up? Okay.

What's the difference between a pile-up and a- A pile-up is a- when one car has stopped and then another one collides into it and then a third car collides into that. I know, but it's hard for me to know what happened. It's just three cars were involved. I didn't see the collision, but I want to call it a pile of. Was it in the middle of an intersection? No, but it was, it was where one of the tributary roads let, like someone was clearly pulling out and then a whole mess happened. And it looked bad.

Okay. So I felt sad. But I'll and I and you know it's one of those things where I was like what why is there so much traffic? You know, it's getting mad. Sure. Well, you were you're in low blood sugar. I was really hungry. Yeah.

And I was going the wrong way and I'm in traffic. I was like, this is horrible. I'm just sitting here. But then I saw that and I was just like, what am I? Yeah. I was like, what an idiot. You know, it does immediately make me think, I don't know how it was for you growing up. But when where I lived in Michigan, when we would drive to say where I worked in.

Troy, Michigan. It was like a 30-minute drive down the highway. And my mom, when she'd come on from work, I swear once a week, she'd be like, oh, I saw, you know, they were putting someone in a body bag or the jaws of life were out. Like, you saw people are going through windshields. Like, people used to get so mangled in car accidents. The safety of cars has improved so dramatically that it is very rare you're seeing someone super injured. We have airbags. Seatbelts are mandatory. There's analog breaks. There's anti, you know, there's traction control. There's stability track. Like, things have changed. Like that little thing you saw in 86 in my town and Milford probably someone's through a windshield or something else. Well, I don't know what happened. Okay. Okay. My hunch is they were all outside shooting

the show. No, they weren't. They weren't. I saw one guy and he was on his phone. That's good. Anyway, so I'm trying. So then I'm like, oh, I'm, that's so like, who am I? I'm like, I need to get to in and now. And these people are having the worst day ever. So then I finally am able to turn right. I was like, it was the closest turn right was Vermont. So I did that. And then I turned right. Yeah. Turn right again. And I guess you saw me. Yeah. I guess you saw me and I didn't see you or hear you or anything. You were out to see. This is, no, this is part of the problem, okay, with honkers. Because you know, I hate honkers. But this is partly what. I love walkers. Okay.

You were going to put it on a silver platter and I'm not going to take a bite. What are you talking about? Okay. Be more careful with your language. Okay. So I hate people who honk. There we go. And part of it is this because now you just hear people honking all the time.

You file it as white noise. It is white noise. And then that's annoying because I could have then noticed my friends. That's finally a negative. You know what you were talking? about we use black, you know, black's always generally associated with negative stuff. That's a good, that's a white one. That's bad.

No, white noise is not always bad. White noise is an asset. I guess now people falling asleep. Yeah. Okay, whatever. Moving on. It's both. Anyway, so that is what happened.

Did you make it in and out? I guess that's all. And it's a fun time to go to in and out because you would have been getting there around 2.30 or 3 and all the high schoolers are in there. Were there a ton of? I don't go inside. Okay. You go through the drive-through?

And I was able to turn left in. You eat in and out in that nice car, clearly. Yes. Dex. I know. It's fine. I'm allowed. It's your car.

Yeah. You can set it on fire and tonk in there. I do. Since you've gotten in it, you eat a bunch of hamburgers and shit in it. So, you know. Dex. It's not your car. I would never do that in your car.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that. But, well, I actually, I can't say never if there's, if I, if I, I have to Tonka. Then Tonka, you will. Yeah. Yeah. But I wouldn't eat in your cart because I'd be scared.

You'd be so mad. Well, it just smells so much. It's very pungent. It is. Burgers and fries. It's like you might as well throw broccoli under the seed. Especially because in and out, like I get the grilled, chopped onions. Animal style.

And I get animal style. Yes. And it's so stinky. But it is so good. And you have a nice buttery leather. interior that's just like absorbing that smell holding in I'm not putting the burger on the tape I bet you got some sauce I didn't it's in a little box okay um I did the other day though leave your burger in there overnight kind of yeah not a burger but I got some groceries

uh-huh oh yeah oh you're kidding you hate your car no listen it wasn't raw fish two things I got some groceries and I ate half a tuna sandwich and then the other. Fuck, dude. Leaving a tuna sandwich in a hot car. Oh, dude. I want to smell your car. I bet it your fucking car smells like the trash can behind a grocery store. It smells great.

Just a bunch of rotten food. I did panic when I realized I left that tuna sandwich. Do you compost in the back seat? Yeah. I think it smells fine, but there really is no way for me to know. That's right. I recognize that. What if you went on a date and you picked the guy up and he was like, you work at In-N-Out or something?

Oh, I'd be like, I wish. Free burgers. Sweet and terrible story about the man I hired to relocate the skunks in my yard, remember? No. And it was at the old house. He basically rang, I'm at the gate, so I go outside to open the gate. But before I open the gate, I can smell skunk from his car. Because he puts skunks in there?

Yes, he relocates them into the Angelus Forest, but he just puts them in his trunk. Oh, my God. And I was like, this, does this man have a second car for dates, I hope? Because I could smell skunk on the other side of the gate, like 300 feet away. So unfair. I know, and he was a very nice boy. He was young. He was seemingly in his 20s.

I mean, I was two. I was probably 30. I was in my 20s too. I was 30. Okay. I'm asking because of would he be dating? Yes, for sure. He was, I mean, again, immediately he stepped out of the car and I was just like, fuck, this guy's big time P you.

Skunk. I mean, the worst of the worst. It smells like burning rubber. Yeah, see, so I could have a skunk in my car. You should go on a date with that guy and be like, whose car should we take? Does it? It doesn't matter. It's going to fucking.

stink no matter what? Listen. What if you got, what if you drove your car to in and out? And then you got out and walked up to the counter and they go back again so soon because you reached like in and out. Just from being in that hot box of yours, you're already coming from there.

I smell good. Do you smell me now? I don't smell you now, no. And I haven't washed my hair. So the in and out didn't get, like I'm saying hair. Am I? No, you would smell it. I didn't bury my nose in your long locks and your mermaid locks to find out.

Hair collects smell a lot. Yeah, kind of like that nice leather. If my hair doesn't smell like it, then my car definitely doesn't smell like it. Okay. That's bulletproof logic. The tuna sandwich was tough, even for me. And then, but it actually, but surprisingly, the next, like, a while. Not a while, but like, like 24 hours.

And it's hot now. Like, people don't know what's happening here. Um, but they were, mid-90s all week. I know. And then there were raspberries in there, too in my, in the grocery. That's okay. I mean, they probably got wilted, but. Well, I threw them away, of course.

Yeah, but it probably didn't smell, like, if your car smells like raspberries, congratulations. But I got nervous about flies because of the razz, like fruit flies or something. You have like a, don't worry. They didn't go. You've got like a green. You've turned your car into a green house. I'm doing, I'm doing good. I'm doing the good.

for the world. Listen, I'm sorry. This is how I... You don't need to be sorry. You don't need to be sorry. It is hysterical, but you don't need to be sorry. I'm not saying I'm actually, I'm not apologizing. Yeah, good. And if you got in it and drove it directly off a cliff, that's your right. Yeah. Let's hope I'm not in it. Well, you would jump and roll out. Oh, okay. Right before the cliff. By the way, are your underwear still on backwards throughout all of this? You think I haven't changed my underwear since yesterday? That was the same day. That was yesterday.

Oh, I thought you meant, is my underwear on that? No, on the whole trip. Yeah. It was all on backwards and then sunset tower. Yep. Turns out. Wow. Doesn't matter.

It does. Those, that pair, it doesn't matter. Okay. I told you, it was not a G-string. Same div. I wasn't flossinging my vagina. Okay. Okay.

Although. What? Maybe it's good hygiene to floss. No, no. I would highly not recommend that. Plus. Please don't do that. That's flossing.

Please don't do that. That might be a winning product. Feminine hygiene floss? Think about it. You're not even thinking about it. I am. You're disgusted. I am definitely thinking about it.

Okay. All that's going to do is irritate the whole system. What if there was like a gentle spring water on it and some other organic items? Why would you need to be doing this? This is a freshen up. No, you can just spray water, but it needs to be regular water. Okay. So maybe the floss just has a high quality water.

Flossing is going to irritate. Okay, God. Moving on. Part of why I was all kerfuffled, I was hungry, but also something else bad was happening. What? I got a text yesterday, and I'm going to... Read it out loud. Put her on blast slash shout her out.

I got a text from Allison Roman. Uh-huh. Chef Extraordinary. Exactly. Who I love deeply. If you miss that episode, check. it out it's in the archives. We're keeping it in the archives.

She said, she texted me. And she said, and I am embarrassed, but sadly I do enjoy money. And I was like, oh, is she responding to something I said on the fact check or something? Like maybe I said something. I don't know. Or is it part two of a bigger text that's sent to someone else and now she's sending you the back half to the wrong person? So I said, what?

Question mark. Then I said again. I said, ha ha, ha, ha. And why are you saying ha, ha, ha, ha. Do you think that's funny? I did think it was funny if it was, if she was like, I like money. I don't know. Like Frito says.

Well, now, see, now I'm going to look really bad because I said, ha, ha, ha, ha. Where did this come from? And also, duh, same. Uh-huh. And then she responded again, and I am embarrassed, but sadly I do enjoy money. So then I'm like, oh my God, yes. Someone's getting half. Yes.

I was like something horrible is happening. Same exact text as a response. Yes. Yes. So then I screen grab it and I DM her and I say something is. On Instagram. Yeah. And I say something's going on.

Yeah. And then I get a message from her that says in solidarity I have to tell you I'm That seems normal. Yes. Yeah. And then I said, what is happening with our phones? Help me. Because then she responded in the.

in my DMs, a screen grab of her saying that, in solidarity, I have to tell you I'm a in a response for me that said, and I'm embarrassed, but sadly I do enjoy money. So this is horrible, right? I'm so confused. How did? I don't know how, what's happening. I don't know what's happening.

And she, because she said, oh, my God. So clearly some hacking or some scam or scheminess. Yeah. But I'm nervous we both participate. Like, I don't know. Yeah. But what is it going to do? It didn't, like, get my information. I don't know.

I know. That's weird. Yeah. I wouldn't like that. I hate it. And, yeah, so I said, what's happening with our phones? Is it gone? Has it stopped?

She hasn't responded. Why don't you call? Why wouldn't you then? Then I left a voice note. Oh, a voice note. Still not call. I just, no, I don't want to call her. You know, like, phone call.

I don't know. That feels scary. Like, I don't do that. So I left. a voice note. I just learned that's what they're called. And I said, hey, I'm doing it this way. Sorry to leave you. Voice note people. Not everyone likes those, but I just want to make sure. Who doesn't like those? A lot of people. It's very controversial. I love them. I know. I like them too. I would just need to hear someone's explanation of why they wouldn't want to hear someone.

No, people. A lot of people don't. They like, they don't want to take the time to listen. They also feel like, oh, I can't really listen right now. Okay. Rob. I don't love them. Yep. That's no. Most people are like that. You also wear underwear and massage, though.

Sure, sure. Well, the texts are for reading. Okay. Josh Hartnett doesn't like them either. Okay. I mean, I also don't get mad when people send them. I love them. I would way prefer to get one.

Though, I understand if some people are very inefficient about them. So, yes, if you're leaving five-minute ones, that's cumbersome. Well, it depends on the... To me, it depends on who and it depends on the relationship. Like, Sally and I send voice memos. What are they called? Voice notes. Okay.

A lot. And it's fun. It's like we are just kind of catching. We are kind of talking on the phone, but just not talking on the phone. Yeah. What I particularly like, the one that's coming to mind is we had Guillermo del Toro on. So I sent Josh Brolin a voice memo because I know he worked with them. on this movie that was really challenging.

And so I was like, oh, I want to hear his perspective. Yeah. So then he sends me a long one back. But it's so riddled with, he can't remember this actor's name and he can't remember where he was at. And is this the thing? And so I then respond immediately send that above voice memo to your neurologist. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. And then so, and I'm laughing through it. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I'm laughing really hard. send this to your neurologist, then he sends one back laughing. You know, you can have that kind of a exchange where you can hear someone respond.

I just wrote something in defense of voice memo or voice notes. I called them audio text because I think that's technically what they're called. Okay. And then I got made fun of for doing that. But I wrote something about this. And I said, you get true context of...

The spirit. Yes. I was like, you can't misread tone and jokes can be delivered as properly and precisely. Less incriminating in a court transcript too. Like, you imagine some of your texts being read by someone with a very monotone voice, how they would sound. Versus if you hear me saying the offensive thing, I think you would go down a lot smoother. Well, even just saying you need to send this to your neurologist.

Oh, sure. It could be me. That could, like, you could infer that I was serious about that or that I was. I'm really accusing him of, you know, whatever. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Anywho, all to say, should I call her now? Sure. Okay.

Oh, yeah. And she's going to be like, why did you call me? She might be scared to answer. So, like, talking on the phone, but you're willing to do it on the air. L-O-L. L-O-L, you're on air, just FYI. Why? Because.

Also, Monica. doesn't want to talk on the phone, but she's willing to on the air, which is so confusing. Wow. Well, I like to watch. If somebody calls me, I'm like, somebody died or it's like such a novel thing that I always pick up. Okay. Well, I knew this, which is why I don't like to call because I know it just scares everybody. Yeah.

But I did want to, I'm talking about what's going on with our phones. Oh, my God. I do have to unfortunately tell you that it was only you. Oh. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And that, like, I was, I was tech, because I was on the subway when I originally texted you. I was like, okay, well, it's obviously a subway issue.

But then I got out of the subway, and it was still obviously an issue. But other people I had texted at the same, in the same time frame, no issues. But had you ever typed in the thing about I like money, too? Had that been typed by you ever? That was an original text, obviously, specifically for the occasion. I know. It made no sense. Also, that would have, it's giving, like, there's a scam or, like, I've been kidnapped or I would be worried if I were you.

And you weren't kidnapped? Are you currently kidnapped? Oh, my God. Do you want to give us a secret word? Tell us the secret word. Pineapple? I'm, like, trying to, we were at a party once and I ruined a rug. Oh, yeah.

It's you. It's her. She's fine. Okay, okay. Okay. I will have to text you again and we'll figure it up, but I'm glad that you can at least make a phone call to me. Well, thanks for picking up.

I hope our phones aren't like ruined, you know, because mine came, that was a text from you are on its own, like spontaneous. It made no, so I don't. But you saw the context. Like I screenshot it to you. There was a previous text that, like, gave the second text context. Oh, so that's all that happened, Monica.

I like, I like money. I got it, guys. There's no, there's no mystery. The first text didn't go through and the second one did. Yeah. Oh, I thought when I screenshotted that to you, that was established. Oh, my God. Alison, I'm about to start my period.

Yeah, she's falling down, her underwear is on backwards. I'm so sorry. Oh, I thought we were getting hacked. This is so simple. Guys, we regret the phone call. Sorry for taking up your time. No, it's okay. Honestly, case closed.

Wow. This is another job for the girl detective. I'm going to put my monocle back in its case. I love when mysteries are solved. It's skipping murder she wrote. I love it. This is a happy ending. Okay, well, this was great.

Love you. Love you. Bye. Bye. Oh, so she was joking. Yes, the first text makes sense. And then the second one makes a lot of sense. But you got the second one first, which made no sense because there was no context.

And then I thought it was a, this was an. But I thought it came from my phone to her, though. Don't re-confuse yourself. It's like so simple. What happens? I think it's your, your colors are swapped if she's screenshoting her phone. So you thought it was your- Okay, thank you.

That does answer something. That's not, you didn't say that. Well, but you know that on her phone, hers. No. Look, look. They're both on the same side. But one's green. She's blue on her screenshot.

you're blue on yours. It's okay. It's really hard to figure out. And anyone would have made this mistake. Okay. Even the smartest person in the world would have made this mistake. It looks like. And would still be struggling to figure out what happened.

But the problem is both of these were not delivered. Do you see that? I do. Yeah. So then how did one then come through later? It did. You know. I just.

Just an ordering issue. Okay. Well, wow, that was a great. Capers solved. That was great caper solved. Okay. Oki-dokey. Real quick.

Have you heard of the Trader Joe's Halloween bags? No. It's a whole thing, apparently. They have limited-a-dish Halloween bags, and people are freaking out and, like, standing in line, and they're running out. What's in this bag? Candy? No, no. It's just like your tote bag.

Oh, my God. But it's Halloween colors. wasn't that I just was saying people have so much more time than I do. No, I think it's fun. You know, it's like it's something to look forward to. It's event ties. It's like, oh my God, it's the time for the Halloween bags. Ah!

Okay, yeah. Yeah. I mean, if people are that pumped about like pumpkin spice latte and stuff, then I'm not shocked that they need a bag. Yeah. I just can't relate. That's all. I can't.

I cannot imagine someone going, did you hear there's bags? And I go, fucking got to get down there. Like that notion is very foreign to me. I know. I think you're missing out. It's a really fun feeling. You know me. This is an age old tale.

The second I hear everyone has something, that's the last thing I want. I'm like, so I can be like everybody else. I think that's so silly. I'm probably denying myself a lot of fun carrying the bag, winking at everyone. Yeah. Does everyone wave at each other if they have a bag? Probably. I don't know.

I don't have one. Okay. But I love one. I think it's a great product. And I'd love to have Trader Joe's as a sponsor. Me too. Trader Joe. Not Joe's.

Is it Prater Joe's? Joe's. Joe's. Yeah. Trader Joe. Well, fuck. Now I'm like. Is it got an apostrophe and ass?

You say Trader Joe's, but now I'm more. Like you're from Michigan. It's apostrophe, yes. Okay. Oh, phew. Trader Joe. Thought we remind them in Michigan, any. Yeah, me too.

All right. Yeah, let's do some facts. Adam. Okay. So when we started this episode, you brought up how he keeps winning, you know, he kept winning that award of like favorite teacher or whatever. Oh, yeah, until they had to stop doing it because it was so embarrassing. They had to stop and then they made a new thing and he's also winning that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you asked him, why do you think that is? And he said, you'd have to ask my students. So I asked Sophia. Great. Okay. Oh, yeah, why he wins so much was what we're resolving. Exactly.

She said, number one. And she used like bolds and stuff. Wow. She said, number one, demonstrating. Which is the disclaimer. She also works with Adam. Yeah. She's got to disclose her financial interests here.

That's true. Number one. Demonstrating interest in students. He owned up to that. Mm-hmm. She said, colon. What stands out most is how genuinely invested he is in his students. During our two-week MBA simulation, he fully commits, even staying in a hotel to minimize professional and personal distractions.

Do you think he's one at the Bowery? He is my spot? Fuck. And give us the best experience possible. He also memorizes the backgrounds of 75 plus students across three classes and brings their experiences into discussions. Example, John, you spent the past five years leading strategy for your family's consumer goods business in Brazil. So I'm curious to hear your perspective here. Right.

He mentioned that as well, sort of. This is good. I've never had another professor demonstrate so clearly that everyone in the room matters. Wow, that's nice. Very nice. Okay, number two, relatable material. Colon. His organizational behavior material feels essentially relevant because he connects it to real companies, research, and workplace situations many of us have experienced ourselves.

Okay. Okay. Number three, this is the last one. Supporting students through action. Colin! Beyond the classroom, he genuinely wants to help students connect with the right people and achieve their goals. He's incredibly generous with his time and network. I'm Exhibit A.

Yeah. That's true. And then she said, it really comes down to a sincere interest in understanding and supporting a students. Hope this helps. That's incredible. Yeah. I never had that.

I didn't have that experience with any professor. I had ones I loved, but I certainly didn't have that experience. No one ever knew what I was where I was up to. Mind you, it wasn't in a computer age. That's true. But also different kind of classes maybe.

Like all my professors did know in like the theater program. Everyone knew everything about each other. you were from Duluth. Oh, yeah. But they had to ask that. He comes in already knowing all this. Yeah, yeah. Which was not possible in 99.

That's true. Yeah. Okay. All right. Do we know Brian Little, no. I double checked. We have not had him on. So we're not like bad for forgetting.

Okay, great. Okay. Oh, we brought up what we thought, but we wondered what the percentage was of the Harvard student body who has imposter syndrome. Oh, yeah. Okay. Now, obviously, there's no way to know that, but I did my own study. Okay. I asked three Harvard students I know. Okay, this is the data set. Yep. And I just simply asked. Okay, two of these people are married. Okay. So that was one-stop shopping for you. It was easy, yeah. Is it doing a fact check and the question came up, what is a percentage of people at

Harvard who have imposter syndrome? Since there's no answer to this, I'm conducting my own research by asking just the two of you. I ended up asking someone else too. She said, wow, good question. I mean, I think most people have some degree of imposter syndrome, but at Harvard, definitely a lower percentage than the normal population. She said, because it's full of psychopaths. Oh, wow. So even people who went to Harvard hate people who went to Harvard. It's interesting. She said, the thing is, some people don't have it who should have it. And then she said, I want to wait for my husband's answer, though. But she's pointing out something good to consider, which is there are so many objective hurdles, one has to clear to get in there,

that it should trend lower on imposter syndrome. Yeah, but she's saying, like, I'm in there with people that are like, you, why do you think you're so hot shit? You're not. Yeah. And then her husband replied, I really try not to do too much introspection. It's just better that way. Okay.

Very male answer. Yep. So then we had a whole thing about this. but she just wanted to really put a point on the fact that there are psychopaths there. And they asked me to swing. I'll skip this part. She said plenty of people at Harvard think they were born to attend. Okay.

Now. Some were, by the way. Yeah. Then I asked another friend, female friend. She said this is such a wild guess, but I'd have to say definitely over half the class, 50 to 60 percent for sure. But there's another funny dynamic, which that in some ways I think that serves. those people. I'm including myself. I had major imposter syndrome. He said because the other group are people who are very much used to being the smartest person in the room. It's their total

identity and then it's really hard to be in a room full of people just as smart. De-stabilizing, identity crisis-inducing, purpose-shaking. So I do think some people who start with the fear of being less smart than everyone end up having a unique advantage because once they prove to themselves that they can hang, it builds a lot of confidence that can also build real momentum over time. Right. That makes sense. This is a good research. study I do. Really good research. I hope Adam cites it going forward.

So there is this study. 2026, I believe. There was a study by Monica Padman. What was C.P. Ellis's KKK title? C.P. Ellis held the KKK title of Exalted Cyclops. I mean, guys. It just goes to show like how goofy. How ridiculous the whole thing is.

Well, look, I think. I think it attracts losers. Like obvious, exactly. Yeah, I mean, truly, like, people who just, yeah. Yeah, it does. That's the truth. And they need to feel superior to somebody because they're fucking losers. But who wants to be a cyclops?

It's so bizarre. Like, even that is not, they think that's something else. To aspire to. What was it called? Exalted. Exalted Cyclops. Oh, my. There's one, there's one listener in the clan right now.

He's like, you don't understand the cyclops is there. He's like screaming at his radio right now because we don't understand the prestige behind the Cyclops title. I'm going to say, I'm happy to lose him. I don't, I won't. No, I would want more than anything if you're in the clan to be listening to this show because it could be a pathway out. Yeah, but if he's still thinking that after this many episodes. But now when he hears us poking fun at it, maybe he does go, it is kind of weird. That's not really how it works when people are made fun of.

You're right. I got to be friends like she became friends with the Cyclops and earn the trust. Yeah. Well, she didn't want to. Remember that documentary we watched? Yeah, I was thinking about him the whole time. Yeah. I wonder if he was him.

I wonder if that was also C.P. The white guy in the doc? Yeah. Oh. What if his whole thing was he just knew people love converting people out of the clan? And he just kept acting like he was in the clan. Exactly. Okay.

Oh, he said that the first interview we did with him, you said, and he was like, I don't remember if it was before we recorded or what, but that you said. but that you said you wanted to bond with him. So I went back to the first interview. I listened to the very beginning and you say, first you say, welcome Adam Grant to armature expert, which we don't do that anymore, which is, that was interesting. And then you say, first and foremost, let's geek out for one second that we're both from Michigan. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, I looked up Rashid Wallace. There's a great doc on him. Untold did a Rashid Wall's doc. It's really great. He's so fucking cool. He's really, really cool. Well, he is, okay, he is the most volatile player. Strong claim is the most technically volatile player in NBA history.

That's what I was looking at because that's what we were saying. Yeah. Holding the single season record with 41 technical fouls and 21 career ejections. And I got to say, if you watch the doc of those 41, I bet he deserved about 20 of them. Because once he became, people were waiting for it, looking for it. and they found it. Yeah. So he also was treated unfairly.

You said 40 to 50 percent, it's in the 40 to 50 percent range that people have affairs. So, okay. Now, to be very clear, these are reported. Yeah. So that is already, we're only counting so many, okay? Physical infidelity, roughly 20 to 25 percent of marriages experience physical infidelity at some point. Emotional infidelity. When including emotional affairs, the numbers were.

rise to about 45% of men and 35% of women. Dating versus marriage, rates are higher in dating or non-marital relationships with research, with research estimating up to 70% of dating couples experience some form of cheating. So, yeah, it's a lot of people. It's a lot of people. It's half the people. How are you going to say any one thing that's true about half the people? Yeah, it's a lot of people.

Yeah. Um, okay. The cold, call, call play thing, they claimed they were separated. from their spouses or going through separations at the time. Yeah. Um, that's it. Okay. That's great.

That's it for Adam. That was great. Yeah. Oh, I love having Adam on it. It's so fun to debate him. It's fun to dance. Yeah, he's the ultimate dancer. He taught us that phrase and we kept it up.

We love it. I can't wait for him to come back and for us to have another dust up. So much good faith. Love you. Love you.