Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Adam Grant Returns Again

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Adam Grant (Hidden Potential) is an organizational psychologist, professor, and author. Adam joins the Armchair Expert again to discuss how much he misses his family when on a book tour, how most people achieve their goals by being motivated, and the most effective way to teach someone a new language. Adam and Dax talk about how being a perfectionist can stifle someone’s learning, how to overcome the fear of public speaking, and what the difference is between receiving advice and feedback. Adam explains the importance of having imperfections in the world, what the concept of scaffolding is for improving skills, and how people gain social status in different environments.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Mrs. Mouse. Hi. You really need a tweet, tweet sound. Like, you need to have a... You want me to have a mouse sound? Yeah, like a squeak, squeak. You know, when you hear your name. It just reminds me of, like, singing or something. And characters. Yeah, and characters, and I don't like that. My lip is, like, falling off.

Why? I don't know. I just, like... Like, what do you mean? It's, like, shedding. As we sit here't know. I just like, it's like shedding. As we sit here. Yeah. Was it doing it earlier today? Yeah. Okay. So it's not a result of talking to me on the microphone. No. Okay. So I'm completely clean on this. I have nothing to feel bad about. No, I just, it's weird. I can only go into comforting mode once I know I'm not to blame. Yes. Cause I would have to mount a defense if I was to blame, But now that I'm not to blame, I can comfort.

I'm so sorry your lip's falling off. Thank you. Yeah. It doesn't hurt. Did you have it on something hot last night? Nope. Okay. Today's guest returning for the third or fourth time.

Third time. Third time. Third time. Third time is the charm. A friend. A very good time. Third time. Third time. Third time is the charm. A friend, a very good friend, Adam Grant. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, a professor at Wharton, and a bestselling author. His books include Think Again, Originals, Give and Take, Option B. He has the wonderful podcast I've been a guest on, Rethinking Work Life. And now,

most importantly, buckle up for this, a new book out right now called Hidden Potential, The Science of Achieving Greater Things. You know, I was thinking when I was editing this, I was imagining being in his class. Oh, uh-huh. And I would have wanted his approval so bad. It must be, he's so energetic.

It must be the best. Well, he gets voted best teacher all the time there. Yeah, yeah. so energetic. It must be the best. Well, he gets voted best teacher all the time there. Yeah, yeah. And I would want to be his best student. Right.

I don't have that urge interestingly. Yeah, because you have the opposite because you don't like authority but I do. You love it. Well,

I just want their admiration. Yeah, you're horny for authority. That's what we know pretty well about you. Please enjoy our good friend Adam Grant.

Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand. We were made to help you and your friends find a place on a beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia. Made to travel. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, sorry. Good, how are you? Did Kristen give this to you? Or do you want to give it to me? Good question, mate. What's that? I don't know what you're talking about.

Best shirt ever made. For the listener, Adam is wearing a Dax Shepard shirt. Did Kristen just give that to you? No. Or did you come? You have it. I got it months ago. Are you kidding?

Oh, my God. That's a second. Let me see what we've got here. Have you seen this one? That one's chips. I think that's Crosby. I think that's from Parenthood. Oh, my God.

This one's much better. It is better. This is the backup. This is probably my low point of my body journey that they decided to pay. This is God body. Yes, it was. When I saw this post of Kristen's, I texted her saying I need one and she sent two. I think this might have been like four months ago though.

So it did come from. Have you been wearing it around town? No, I didn't want to damage it. You should have. I had to protect. Aren't you just coming from Huberman? That would have been great if you were wearing that on Huberman just to fuck with him a little bit. That would have been hilarious.

I didn't even think of it. And then you could put on a Rogan shirt when you come in here. You could just to fuck with him a little bit. That would have been hilarious. I didn't even think of it. And then you could put on a Rogan shirt when you come in here. You could just really fuck with everyone. Everyone's egos. Oh, we got three shirts. No, it's only two. Oh, okay. Well, now all in, you had three.

That's true. What a physique, though. Can we just celebrate Adam's physique for a second? First of all, the vascularity is gorgeous. And I just saw arrows. Do you see the arrows peek out? I do. You were being respectful.

I was. I'm free to just totally whatever Do you see the arrows peek out? I did. You were being respectful. I was. I'm free to just totally whatever we call that. Just trying to make me uncomfortable. No, no, no. Objectified. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. But I think dude on dude objectification is fine, right? Is that okay?

Do you consent to being objectified by Dax? I guess that's a better question. Oh, okay. Well, I take it all back. How's your day going? So far, so good. I'm excited to hang out with you guys. This is number two of the day or worse?

No, only two. When you record your own podcast, do you do more than one ever in a sitting? Yeah, but mine are much shorter than yours. I know, as I've been a guest and I was like, why are you wrapping this up so quick? I took it as kind of like a, this must not be going well.

He's like really landing the plane like a half hour in. How long are they? Usually half an hour. In that timeframe for you, that feels right? Or do you not feel like, oh shit, we're just getting into the meat of it? I think that if it goes longer, my audience will be bored. Interesting. Have you ever experimented?

That's just a hunch you have. We've tested it. I think whenever I go more than 30 to 40, we start to see drop off. I think a lot of people listen on their commute for me, whereas you're their friends. Well, hold on a second. They listen on their commute. Often they get half the episode on the way there to work. And then when they get in their car, then they're excited to hear the conclusion. Added excited, but I have heard that they break it up. And then on their workout and then when they do dishes and then, cause it's like a three hour endeavor. It'll take you through most of your day and now five times a week. So when you do do back to backs,

do you feel any decline or are you energized by it? Maybe both. Okay. Yeah. The decline is energizing. The decline is energizing. I was so much better two hours ago. No, I feel like round two is always the best. Oh, it is. Yeah. I learned this in teaching. Intensive teaching is three different sections and section two always gets the best of me. The first one's the warmup. And then the third one, it's already been done twice. It's getting a little old. This is virtually the same arc for me acting. So you only do two takes. Here's what happens. The first one, I'm like, Ooh, I got to fix X, Y, and Z. Right. I always make a bunch of mistakes. First take. Second take's probably the best. And then it's like, oh, we got it.

Now let's have fun on the third. But if I had to start repeating what we had fun on, I start losing confidence in it, like you're saying. Like novelty's so powerful, right? Yeah, it doesn't feel fresh anymore. How long of a tour are you on for this book? Is this one of many stops? We're on the early end.

I don't know. I haven't looked at the schedule for the next month. But I have to imagine this is a real departure from your normal schedule when you go out and promote stuff on the road. Yes. I generally don't leave my house. Right.

This is a change. And do you like it? Like, oh, I get to go out and explore the world and sit down with other people? I think I like it. There's a part of me, wait, I wrote the book. Just read the book. I don't need to talk about the thing that I wrote. There's a part of me that loves the ideas

and can't wait to share them. And especially find out what do people disagree with and what did I leave unanswered? And very often that leads to the next book. So it's incredibly fun. I have to get over the, but I figured out how I wanted to say it already and it's there.

I might mess it up, but I don't think you can mess it up. How about just being on the road with no family members? Kind of nice. No, sad. Immediately. The whole time? You don't get two days.

No, I miss them. Oh, that's nice. Immediately. Right away. Do you have any vices? I have many vices. Let's get into some vices. No, now I'm mad.

Oh, you made Jack sad. Yeah, this is just now taking a turn. Oh, okay. Okay. Let me just, as an example. You know, I showed up here thinking, how do I piss off Dad? Well, you've done it. You've done it. I, okay. Okay. Let me just, as an example. You know, I showed up here thinking, how do I piss off Dak? Well, you've done it. I'll wear his shirt and then I'll say I love my kids. Listen, when I leave town for, let's say it's a week, first three days, I'm like, oh, right. Hey,

Dak Shepard's here. Nice to meet you. I'm reminded of what I get to do when I just follow whatever urge I have. Go eat over here. I don't have to ask anyone. That's really fun for me for three days. And then I start missing them. And I go, oh, nothing really is fun without them. Kristen goes, and she's missing them, missing them. And then she gets a wall, and she's like, oh, I'm good.

I'm free. Forever. Like she could then leave her life. She has said on certain movies, she's like, yeah, I just could stay there forever. And you're claiming to have neither of those windows? I don't feel either of those things. I think there's a fun age factor here. My idea of peak fun is I'm an eight or nine year old.

Okay. So I'm playing video games, I'm playing sports, playing board games, and our kids do all that. There's not a thing where, oh, I get to go somewhere and do the thing that I can't do at home. I see.

You get into a hotel room and it's time to jerk off in a way that you just don't get to do at home. Like, you get to eventize it. Every once in a while, I'm listening to Armchair and I'm like, they left that in? That. Oh, really? That's a compliment. And you're horrified? No.

This is in your episodes or in— No, just in general. There are moments when I'm picturing Monica cringing. Of me. Maybe you. Not the guest, right? It's usually you. Yeah.

Have you ever heard a guest have a cringey moment? Not that I can think of, no. Right. And so she's very kind to the guest. I'm very kind to you and me too. You are kind and respectful because I stand by the thing that probably you would want cut out. Exactly. Yeah, I stand by it.

Yes, I know part of the dynamic is also the authenticity of him and I have to remain. The arc for me is usually, one, I can't believe you had that thought, Dax. And two, you said it out loud. And three, it's in the episode. And then delayed reaction is,

and this is part of how he normalizes vulnerability. Yeah, I like that. So can you think of a specific example where you're like, geez, Louise. Like if I tell a shitty my pants story, that kind of thing? That's in the ballpark. Okay. Oh, yeah. That's pretty embarrassing.

Yeah. Gross. Or I had a mix up in an orgy once. Yeah, I didn't hear that one. That probably shocked you. Yeah. And I brought it up randomly. And this was funny because he's talked about it many times.

And then I said it once on a fact check. Well, like, yeah, like when you pooped in the bed, and he got so upset and like embarrassed and defensive. And I was like, you talk about this all the time. But when I said it, it was not okay. You have to control your authenticity. Well, I would argue it's, this is pretty common. I think we interview people who've written a book

and the book is incredibly vulnerable, but it's a this is pretty common, I think. We interview people who've written a book and the book is incredibly vulnerable, but it's a little different talking about it out loud. And then I'm steering this conversation through their trauma. That's different. And so, yeah, like if I have perfect control of the music of the delivery, maybe, I think without the music of that, maybe,

it sounds horrific. It's like what you're saying about your book. You already figured out how to lay it out. So then to talk about it again, it's like, just look at the other thing. You already figured out how to lay it out. So then to talk about it again is like, just look at the other thing. I already figured that out. That's a good question. Do you have with your book what directors have with a movie, which is they've edited the movie like for four months and seen a thousand,

and they just don't want to ever see it again. Do you get that way with a book or no? A little bit. I definitely get tired of editing it at some point because the creative juices are no longer flowing. I get to a point where, okay, there are little things I might improve, and I don't know that the average reader is going to care. Should I just move on, or should I keep tinkering?

And I think the bar for that has gone up over time, which is a constant battle between perfectionism and prioritization. Well, right, because don't you think the trap is, at some point you have to go, it's not going to appeal to everyone. It's going to appeal to this band of people, and it's already there at that point. It's hard to know, right? It's like you keep trying to make it better for other people, but then maybe you lose other people en route to that.

I might, and there's a part of me that's still grappling with the idea that it's possible or hoping that it's possible to create something that is for everyone. That doesn't exist. That's the people-pleasery, don't you think? Yeah create something that is for everyone. That doesn't exist. That's the people pleasery, don't you think? Yeah, that is. It is. That does not exist. No.

How much of these books do you think you're writing to yourself? 33%. Just 33%? I don't know, I made up a number. Partially. There's always at least a chapter where I'm writing the message that I need to hear.

Right. And if I explain this thoroughly enough and I think about it hard enough and I have to talk about it over and over again, then maybe I'll internalize it. Do you think you also could write in an attempt to bolster or an already existing argument

and really not teach yourself something? I guess it could go either way. Yeah, I think that would be kind of a waste of time though. That's an article, it's not a book. Well, what's really fun about your book is it's virtually the opposite of the book I just contacted you about to tell you I was very nervous to have a guest on because the guest

is so much smarter than I am. And I disagree with that guest. So that's Robert Sapolsky. That'll probably have come out. And his is about determinism and the lack of self-will. And I would argue in many ways, Hidden Potential is the absolute opposite of that. I like that argument. Tell me more. Well, what's funny is now to me, this is on another end of the spectrum. You're debunking a lot of myths in this. One would be innate talent, right? This notion that people are born gifted athletes or gifted mathematicians or whatever.

And you fundamentally disagree with that. Do you disagree with it or do you just have examples of exceptions to it? I think I disagree with it. Nobody's born to be Mozart. Even Mozart wasn't born Mozart. And probably a better example would be Bach. But you see this across domains. So the classic Benjamin Bloom study is looking at elite musicians, mathematicians, tennis

players and swimmers, sculptors. And even though they're world-class in their field, rarely were they the most talented as kids. They often didn't stand out in their own local community, in their own school. And when they did stand out in the research, it wasn't because they were extraordinarily gifted. It was because they were highly motivated.

Right. And that feels like something we have control over motivation. But then, of course, the Sapolsky argument would be like, no, you pretty much, you have a base. Yeah, you have like a baseline of motivation or maybe some spectrum of motivation. But doesn't that sound disheartening? Yeah, it also just sounds wrong.

It doesn't track with my understanding as an organizational psychologist of how motivation works. He's certainly older than I am, but I've been studying motivation for a quarter century now, and I don't think that motivation is fixed. Maybe the biological reserves are hard to control, but the psychological energy of what am I excited about? What do I want to spend my time on?

What do I want to focus my attention on? We make those choices every moment of every day, don't we? I mean, I think I do, but how would I know, I guess? Well, he might say that those choices technically exist, but it depends on the environment you're in. Like if you have parents or something who can't give you the time or energy, then maybe you have less choice because you have to do X, Y, and Z instead of putting your effort into playing the piano or whatever. Your context, how you were nurtured, your biology, all these things add up.

I can concede to all that. But I feel like it gives you a range. That's exactly how I think about it. And that's why we can't have motivation alone in a vacuum. We also need opportunity. That's why we need coaches and mentors and teachers who give us the scaffolding to climb to heights we can't reach on our own. But it's not like we need them to give us ongoing support for 19 years before we can finally learn. Yeah. Well, right out of the gates in the book, I'm like nodding along. Everything's going

good. I love how you write. I love your point of view. You're so well-resourced. You're going to give me the study every time you say something. I appreciate all that. But then we get to polygoths, which I didn't even know that term. Do you know what polygoths mean? People who speak multiple languages. Not just speak. A polyglot can think in multiple languages, too. What? I said polygoth. Glot. Glot. Thanks for correcting me.

No worries. I wrote down that wrong in my notes. I've written goths. I guess it should be someone who's multiple gothic. Poor black coats. Yeah, they know Satanism, they know Wic who has multiple gothic disciplines. Poor black coats. Yeah, they know Satanism, they know Wicca, they got it all. So a true polyglot not only speaks multiple languages fluently, but actually thinks in multiple languages.

So they've internalized it that much. Oh, jealous. And so the examples you give in the book are people who actually were not good at it to begin with. And here's where I got very upset because I'm like, no, Adam, I can't fucking learn it. Whether it's the dyslexia or who knows what else is going on. But for me to take Spanish for three years to get just competent enough to get into UCLA

and have to drop out of a class three times, I'm like, that's not how other things have come to me. I agree with Dax on this. I could never be that. That's not how other things have come to me. I agree with Dax on this. Prove us wrong, Adam. I could never be that. There's part of my brain that's deficient in that way. First of all, I don't think that everyone has the skill or the motivation to become a polyglot. So let's be clear.

Okay. I agree with the range theory. Just like anybody who says talent doesn't matter, if you push that to its extreme, if Tom Brady doesn't have arms, he can't be a great quarterback according to the current NFL rules. So there does need to be a baseline aptitude. But given that you can think and speak very fluidly in English, I think the evidence is strong

that what we used to think was a critical period for learning a language that was set by your biology is much more malleable than we thought. And that in particular, the reason that so many people struggle with learning foreign languages is they learn them the wrong way. Which is what?

Which is they learn by reading and by listening. Empirically, you learn it much faster if you use it. And very few classes force you to do what kids do when they're learning a new language, which is just start babbling. Yeah. And start using it until it becomes second nature. And a lot of us don't do this

because we're afraid of sounding stupid. You don't want to say the wrong thing and embarrass yourself. You don't want to offend somebody else. And so you want to wait until you've mastered the language to speak it. And that means the moment you decided, both of you, I think, decided that you weren't good at languages was the moment that you stopped raising your hand in class and you stopped speaking the basics of the language

and then you're never going to pick it up. And it's for a grade. Inherently, that's sort of an issue, right, where I'm just trying to figure out how to say the sentence in order to get the A. I'm not really trying to learn it. Yeah, you don't have, like, big fantasies of living in Spain. Yeah.

No. I mean, I do now, but I didn't then. You were probably graded mostly on your written work, too. Oh, for sure, because I could control it. Yes. Yeah. I'm so amazed that learning styles are still a thing in schools. Our kids were told some kids are verbal learners and others are visual learners and others

are kinesthetic learners. And you got to figure out, are you the person who learns best by listening, by reading, by seeing, or by doing? Decades of evidence. There is no evidence whatsoever that your learning style matters for your learning. You may have a way that you like to learn, but that doesn't predict how well you learn in that domain. Well, but then what are we saying? Certainly everyone doesn't learn the same. No, but when it comes to the medium, a lot of people listen to podcasts. I

hear this frequently. You must hear this all the time. I don't like reading. I listen. Well, that was going to be one of my complaints about your book. I'm sitting there fucking listening to your book. And then you come on and say that you learn far less and retain less if you listen to the book. You're shaming anyone that's currently listening. Oh no. And everyone listening to this. I'm not shaming you, Dax. I'm just giving you a hard time. No, I mean, I think there are reasons to listen. It might be more entertaining. It might be easier to process. And certainly if you're dyslexic or if you have any kind of learning difference

or processing challenge, then I wouldn't say you should read the physical book with your eyes. But the research is pretty consistent suggesting that we're better critical thinkers and we absorb more when we read than when we listen. My point there is not to say that nobody should ever listen to an audio book or podcast.

I love the audio medium. And ideally buy it in hard copy, then also get it on tape. That is what publishers recommend. And I'll leave it to you. That's just the recommendation. But I think the message is to say, you have to be willing to embrace the discomfort of stepping out of your preferred learning style. Because sometimes the mode that's hardest for you

is the one where you actually process the most deeply. Can you give a hard example of that? Contrast it to two. So like, I think of myself as an auditory learner, right? And I think I have a really high retention for what I hear. I can think of probably a thousand Howard Stern interviews where it's like, I know almost the whole interview, which is wild.

But what would be happening in my brain where shifting into this thing that's uncomfortable would yield some positive result? So I think the risk of just listening is that it's too easy to nod and agree with the person who's talking because you can be seduced by the charisma of their voice. You can get into the flow

or the rhythm of the argument they're making. When you're reading, you're much more likely to think things through with your own voice. So you may pause and say, wait a minute, what do you mean? And then you go back and reread the sentence, which almost never happens when you're listening. We don't rewind that much. We don't highlight, we don't stop and cross things out. And so you're much more in control of the experience when you're reading with your eyes. But that's a great point because I guess, yes, I'm liable to hear you say something, but if I make it come out of my own voice, I might go like, actually, that doesn't sound

right to me if I were saying that. I don't believe that. Right. Also, you're in it in a different way when you're reading it as opposed to just passively hearing it. You're in the story when you're reading. Yes. Sometimes audio is like you're watching a movie. When you're reading, it's more like you're directing the movie. Right. So what are teachers to do? I mean, it feels like it was, well, you're one and voted best teacher at Wharton seven times in a row. I would think you would know.

What are they to do with that? Like now they don't even have these three buckets to hopefully funnel the kids in. I think the goal is to try to tailor the learning method to the topic and say, if I'm trying to create engagement, let's go audio. And then when I want critical thinking, let's bring in a visual component or a verbal component. And so I think we should still be mixing the different learning modalities, but we shouldn't be limiting kids to the thing they're already comfortable with and feel like they're good at. Right. Well, you write a bunch in the book about perfectionism, and I think a lot of people will relate to it. Would you call yourself a perfectionist? Maybe when you're younger more?

I am in certain regards, but not across the board. Like in cheerleading for sure. Here, I think editing and stuff, hyper detailed, but not on things I don't care about. This I imagine is a bit of a chapter to yourself. This would be one of them? Yeah, this was the one that I need to reread over and over again. So thank you for making me talk about it. Yeah, good. At what age did you start seeing this as a pathology? Because perfectionism takes you quite far for a while, right?

It really works, like all drugs. They work for a long time, then they stop working. When did it occur to you like, oh, this is kind of untenable and not enjoyable? 14, 15, when I started getting serious about diving. I thought it was an asset. I started diving too late. I was a teenager, and a lot of my competitors were five when I started getting serious about diving, I thought it was an asset. I started diving too late. I was a teenager,

and a lot of my competitors were five when they started. My nickname was Frankenstein. I walked so stiffly. I didn't bend my knees. Couldn't touch my toes without bending my knees. I did not have the flexibility. Missing a lot of talent. Couldn't jump high.

Didn't have any rhythm. I don't know why I was diving. Yeah, come to think of it. But I loved the sport, and I showed up and thought, okay, this is something I can work at to. Come to think of it, but I loved the sport and I showed up and thought, okay, this is something

I can work at to get closer to perfect every day. And for a while, that seemed to serve me well. So one thing I felt like I could control was the rip entry

where you go in the water without a splash. When you watch the Olympics, you hear that sound and then the person just disappears. Yeah. It's so satisfying to watch.

It is. It's even more satisfying to do because you actually hear the rip sound underwater. Oh, wow. And it sounds even cooler. I don't know. It is. It's even more satisfying to do because you actually hear the rip sound underwater. Oh, wow. And it sounds even cooler. I don't know what rip is. The rip entry, it's when you hit the water and it sounds like there's a tearing noise.

Oh. And then you can hear it. You've never noticed, Olympic? Yeah, you know it. I mean, there's just the tiniest splash. Well, I know about a tiny splash, but that's a visual thing. We're talking about an auditory. Right.

So you're saying there's an accompanying sound. So you have your flat palm on the water. you hit the water, you hear the sound, and then the water just gets sucked down and the person disappears. Oh, I love it. I thought that looked like a magic trick, the way that divers would disappear. And also, it's the most important determinant of your score. And so I thought, I can't jump high, I don't spin fast, I'm not that flexible. The one thing I can do is ace the entry. So I spent my whole freshman year of high school practicing what we call lineups,

where you just do a dive and try to get your entry perfect. And I remember being at a meet and a judge said to my coach, well, all you can do is rip. And Eric said so, because that is the thing that ultimately determines the quality of the dive is how you go in the water. So I thought this was going great for me. Yeah. But it wasn't because perfectionism was stopping me from learning new dives and raising my degree of difficulty and becoming more competitive.

And challenging yourself. Yeah. Because I was just trying to master the easiest dives. And then I would walk down the diving board and if my takeoff wasn't perfect, I would stop, balk, fall in and start over. And I wasted on average, probably half of a typical practice, just not being satisfied with my balance right on the end of the board and then just not going. Yeah. I was going to say you were bailing out of most of the dives you were attending, right? Exactly. Which really stifled my learning. Because you didn't want to look bad at it. Yeah. And I felt like if it's not going to be the perfect takeoff, why go? It's already a waste. True. I can relate to that. But the examples you give of people who didn't show incredible

aptitude as kids, do you think the mechanism for that is when they're great early, they get tons of praise and now that's what they're actually chasing as opposed to originally chasing the skill? Fascinating. So you think that if they excel too early, they start to get obsessed with approval instead of progress? Potentially. Let's just turn it on the reverse. Why wouldn't someone who is great at something right out of the gates not then also make the same incremental leaps forward

and then just become indomitable? What happens? And I wonder if it's just they're known for being good at it and that ends up being handcuffs. I think that's part of what happens. There are a lot of child prodigies who don't become adult geniuses in their craft. Some of that is probably driven by staying in their comfort zone, which gets narrower and narrower. And so they don't take on new challenges. They hear play to your strengths, and they think that

means don't ever do anything you're bad at. Don't ever fail. That means don't take any risks. Don't experiment. And I think, yeah, it's possible that some of them are just seeking the outcome and they lose the absorption in the process. What's the price you've paid for perfectionism? What is the toll it takes on you if you think of it as like an addiction or any other kind of pathology? Burnout, misery, depression, despair, rumination in small doses. I changed it enough fast that it didn't take a lasting toll. But I remember going to diving practice and Eric had to kick me out of the pool every day at the end of practice because I would always say one more. And I thought that was me showing grit and being motivated.

But it was also me not being satisfied that I'd been good enough. And so then when practice was over, I'd spend most of the evening analyzing videos and sort of poking holes in the things that went well and feeling like my diving was terrible. That was really unpleasant. And it took a sport that I was passionate about and it made it sort of self-loathing. But then what broke through? What made you change?

So Eric Best, my coach, said one day, listen, there's no such thing as a perfect 10. I'm sure you've heard Olympic announcers say, perfect 10s, it's a misnomer. In the rule book, a 10 is for excellence, not for perfection. There is no such thing as a perfect dive. Oh, interesting. Which I didn't know either. So even a dive that gets straight 10s,

you can find a whole bunch of things wrong with it. It's just excellent. How come more people aren't achieving it then? It's hard. It feels like it's even more complicated than that, that it's actually just relative to everyone else that's diving. I think that's true. I didn't watch diving as religiously as I watched snowboarding, but it was almost like if Sean White was going seventh, they couldn't give anyone above a nine something because they knew Sean was going to be better. They had to leave some gap so that

he could go above that. I think that's in their minds, isn't it, as judges? That happens a lot. Actually, I think there's evidence on figure skating that it's bad to go first because the judges are too critical at first. The bar is impossibly high. And then you see even the best in the world make mistakes and be imperfect. And you realize, oh, I can be a little bit more generous with my scores. Yeah. I bet it's like they set that first score. And then if everyone is now below them, then they're trying to go like, well, I guess eight, two is now a 10. We got to work backwards from that. Yeah, it's really tricky as a competitor

because you feel like you should be scored objectively, but the standard is changing. I think the aha for me in that moment was to say, okay, if excellence is the goal, then I can't compare my dive to a standard of perfection. All I can do is ask, am I better today than I was yesterday? And that made a huge difference. And then I didn't compare my dive to a standard of perfection. All I can do is ask, am I better today than I was yesterday? And that made a huge difference.

And then I didn't write about this, but there was a really pivotal moment where I was afraid to try a new dive. So one of the harder dives I had to do was I had to learn a full twisting two and a half. So I'm on a three meter springboard. I'm going to jump up, do two somersaults, a full twist, and then dive in.

And part of it is I'm afraid I'm going to smack and hit the water at 20 or 30 miles an hour and it hurts like hell. Part of it is I don't want to get lost in midair. It's extremely unsettling. So what do I do? I stand there. I'm just frozen on the end of the board and I'm shaking. I take a step. I stop. I'm shaking. I take two steps. I stop. I finally start my approach. It's not right. I fall in the water and the whole thing repeats. And it's been 45 minutes.

And finally, Eric looks at me and says, Adam, are you going to do this dive? And I'm like, ever? Yes, one day I will do this dive, of course. And he said, great. What are you waiting for? And that was such a transformational experience because the mistake I made was

I was waiting until I had the confidence to take the leap. Right, but the thing itself gives you the confidence. Exactly. The order wrong. Yeah, you have to take the leap in order to earn the confidence. Yeah. I think that was a life-changing reflection from him

because I've heard this in everything I was afraid to do in my head. I remember hesitating to get on the TED stage for the first time and hearing Eric's voice. Are you going to give a TED talk one day? I would love to. Great. What are you waiting for?

Writing my first book. What if nobody reads it? What if nobody likes it? Are you going to write a book one day? Yes. Then what are you waiting for? I like that. People that are perfectionists, I bet they tell themselves a story, which is to achieve

this is worth it. No pain, no gain. But there is data that would suggest that they're not better. If they're doing a multiple choice, great. But if they get out in the real world, they're not better at solving new tasks. It's a great synthesis of the data. Perfectionists do better in school because school is predictable. You know what you have to master. You can work toward that. Then in life, all of a sudden, you don't know exactly what you're being graded on. And so perfectionists often, they Then in life, all of a sudden, you don't know exactly what you're being graded on.

And so perfectionists often, they're trying to get all the details right, but they're missing the forest and the trees. Yeah. One of my best friends is an insane perfectionist. And I feel like the perfectionism eclipses intuition often or real life skill because we're cooking together. And this was in high school, perfect student.

And we were going through the recipe. We were frying something and it said two inches of oil. And she was like, two inches of oil. So is that two inches, like a two inch circle? And I was like, yeah, diameter. And I was like, no, it's two inches deep. And she could not believe me and had to ask someone else. She was like, but it says two inches. She could not. So literal. So literal because it had to be absolutely perfect. Needed to get it right.

Had she ever poured oil onto a surface, it never stops expanding. It just disappears at some point. You won't even know what you were measuring. It just made me laugh so hard because this person I know to be brilliant, and she is, this so obviously was wrong and she couldn't see it. I have been, I think, liberated by this. And I do know how in practice, yeah, I'm game to try shit because my assumptions are never going to be, you know, it's not really my defining characteristic.

I'm like leaning way more on that dude will try anything. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks. So when Maddie shared a surf trip on Expedia Trip Planner, he hesitated. Then he added a hotel with a cliffside pool to the plan and they both spent the week in the water you were made to follow your whims we were made to help find a place on the beach with a pool and a waterfall and a soaking tub and of course a great shower Expedia made to travel I'm curious to hear your reaction to this, but I was thinking about the character skills in the book

on my way over here, and I was thinking, this podcast embodies all of them. The two of you are constantly seeking out discomfort. Well, that's true. Sometimes even imposing it. You're making people comfortable with all kinds of imperfections and mistakes. I think that a big part of what this show is about is being a human sponge, constantly soaking up new information.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. What's the difference between flooding and submersion therapy? I had not heard flooding until I was reading your book. I don't know. What's submersion therapy? Well, and this could be the ninth thing I've written down because I'm hearing you say it and then I'm typing on an airplane.

But submersion therapy isn't like you're afraid of germs, so they put you in a- Immersion. Oh, thank you. I feel much better now. I've never heard of that before. Similar sound. It could also be called submerging. Yeah, sure.

Or it's going to submerge you in this thing you're afraid of. Yeah. Okay, so as I understand it, the broader category is normally called exposure therapy. Exposure therapy. And the idea is to get you familiar with the thing you're afraid of or uncomfortable with. And so there are two extremes of how that can be done. One is flooding or immersion. And then the other is systematic desensitization.

Do you have any fears left? Tons. Oh, my God. What are you afraid of? Being embarrassed. Yeah, being embarrassed. By what, though Tons. Oh, my God. What are you afraid of? Being embarrassed. Yeah, being embarrassed. By what, though? Physical wonder.

Anything, really. If she walks into, like, a glass window, which she's done before. Yeah, I did it once. Once. That can't have been the only time, right? I've done it a handful of times in my days. Yeah, I was so embarrassed. I wonder if I'd still—part of it was the circumstance, like the people around and I wanted to seem... Athletic?

Yeah, agile. A seen person. That's a bad example because you can't then go and practice your walking near glass walls. Exactly. Swimming. I'm afraid of it because I don't think I can do it anymore. Okay. The flooding or immersion version would be we just throw you in the deep end.

Yeah, I'm not doing that. Systematic desensitization would be we're going to have you kind of dip your toe in the shallow end, and then you're going to maybe lay down in a foot of water, but you know you can float and it's not too deep. And then over time, you build your comfort. Okay, I like that better. There are big individual differences based on personality and based on how extreme your fear is, on which is better. So yeah, one's not definitively better than the other. It's just what suits you. Yes.

If I had to guess, I think that when it comes to stretching ourselves out of our comfort zones, many of us default to systematic desensitization when we could benefit more from flooding. Right. I'll give you a great example. We're into cold plunging and you won't systematically get in. You're not going to dip your foot and then next week your ankle and then your leg. You got to commit. Yes.

And I think this applies far beyond these kinds of physical challenges. When I think about hidden potential, I think about people not realizing they can improve at improving. And one of the best ways to do that is to take the leap as we were talking about. So I'm thinking about when I was afraid of public speaking. I remember in college, I would physically shake thinking about raising my hand. Oh, just sitting in class. Sitting in class as a student.

The idea of participating. You're such a wonderful contradiction because you have such a performer in you and yet you also had this hefty sense of fear surrounding it. Apparently. Well, audience participation is awful. I hate it too.

Well, that's different. You don't like when they force you to do something. But when you're in class and you're like, no, hold on that. You don't have any problem. No? Not something. But when you're in class and you're like, no, hold on, you don't have any problem. No? Not when I was in school, no. Oh. Now, I have more.

You guys are big classmates. We both sit there saying nothing. Yeah, but thinking so many things. Yes, taking lots of notes. Boy, we are on opposite ends of that spectrum, the three of us. I know just enough to have an opinion about this. I haven't seen the movie, but I saw the trailer.

I'll tell you why it's wrong. I haven't seen the movie, but I saw the trailer. I'll tell you why it's wrong. You remind me, Dax, of a student I had years ago whose classmates wrote that he physically lacked the ability to raise his arm, but that did not affect his capacity to speak. Anyway, if just making one comment in class was scary, the idea of standing in front of a whole classroom was terrifying. And I didn't think I was going to get over that by making one comment here

or giving a little mini two-minute presentation there. I felt like I had to go into the deep end. So I just started volunteering to give guest lectures in front of huge crowds of strangers for my friends' classes. And that was extremely frightening, but I realized at some point, your body can't produce anxiety. Indefinitely. Yeah, exactly.

It will shut off at some point. And so then the next step from there was I got invited to teach a class for Air Force colonels and generals. And I thought, this is the challenge. I'm in my mid-20s, fresh out of a PhD program. These guys, their nicknames are Striker and Sandoon. They've got thousands of flying hours. They're managing multi-billion dollar budgets.

I need to put myself in front of that room and see if I can handle it. It was brutal. I remember reading the audience feedback afterward. One of the generals wrote, there was more knowledge in the audience than on the podium. Oh, okay. But technically he was right.

The worst one was, I think this was a colonel, because some of them signed their names, said, and I quote, I gained nothing from this session, but I trust the instructor gained useful insight. Oh, God. Yikes. Now, I would be guessing, but was the result of which, yeah, that went terribly. I just lived out my worst fear and I'm still alive. And three days later, I can weather that. Is that what happens? Half. So it could have been worse. This is not the end of the world. Happened. But then, uh-oh, I have to give another one of these, and I have no idea how I'm going to do it. And I don't

want to let them down. And these people are supposed to protect national security. They're serving the country. They're going to give four hours of their time to me. I've got to do something worthwhile for them. And I think I had made a major mistake in thinking, all right, these people don't respect me. So I've got to convince them that I'm credible. So I had opened by talking about my credentials and tried to convince them that I had relevant expertise. Wrong move. Well, your fear was I don't belong here doing this. So I have to prove myself. Yes. And then you expose yourself. What I should have done is shown them that I was willing to prove myself. Yes. And then you expose yourself. Yes, exactly. What I should have done is shown them that I was willing to improve myself.

And so in round two, I only had about a week between sessions. I couldn't reimagine all the content. All I could do was change the way that I connected with them. So I walked in, I looked around the room, and I said, I know what you're all thinking right now. What could I possibly learn from a professor who's 12 years old? Nice, nice.

They did not react that way. Ice cold stare. No giggle. Nobody moved. Nobody made a sound. It felt like an eternity. And then one of the colonels

finally jumped in and said, ah, that's ridiculous. Come on, you got to be at least 13. Okay. And then they all laughed. Thank God for that guy.

You just picked the wrong age. It was like Seinfeld tell you, these little words, they make a huge difference. 13, hysterical, 12, what? I don't get it. I needed those notes a while ago, but it really changed our relationship.

And I think what it did was I called out the elephant in the room and I let them know that, look, I'm aware you all have a lot more experience than I do. Hopefully we can create a good learning experience together. And the feedback was much better after that.

And it was a great reminder that consistently my biggest moments of learning have happened when I put myself in extremely uncomfortable situations. How did you prepare for your first TED Talk? Did you do it in front of your wife and kids or anything? I did it in front of a lot of audiences. You did? Yes. Like you were a stand-up?

Yeah. I gathered a group of friends and colleagues and former students who told me I needed to throw the whole thing out and start over from scratch. Oh, wow. That was fun. At one point, Joanna, our oldest, actually was doing impressions of me giving a TED Talk and making fun of all my goofy mannerisms, which was hilarious and also really helpful. All the nervous tics. Yes. Everything. And I actually went back and watched it while I was writing the discomfort-seeking chapter. And it's excruciating.

But I can see all these mistakes I made. They don't bother me as much as they used to because I look at them now and say, that was the best I could have done at that time. And that was the path that led me to a place I'm pretty happy with. Exactly. I needed to take that leap.

You have this bizarre capacity, almost maybe masochism, where you claim at least to love feedback. Maybe you've written a book about it. I do love feedback. Youthful feedback. Yes, but I will say you distinguish exactly what you're looking for in this book,

which I appreciate it, which is if you ask for feedback, you're liable not to get anything quite useful. But if you ask for feedback, you're liable not to get anything quite useful. But if you ask for advice, I thought this was a neat, distinguishing aspect of the request. One of my favorite findings. Yeah, so how did you discover that? Practically, I started giving a lot of talks.

And afterward, I would ask, how did that go? And nobody said anything helpful back. Oh, it was great. Oh, I enjoyed it. What do I do with that? And I noticed that whenever I asked for feedback, I'd basically get two groups of people. There were cheerleaders and critics. And the cheerleaders were applauding my best self. The critics were attacking my worst self. What I wanted was coaches. I wanted people who could help me become a better version of myself. Somebody who saw my potential, but also realized that I hadn't reached it yet and wanted

to close the gap with me. I was reading the research at the time, and it said, when you ask for feedback, people basically evaluate you. And they tell you either what they liked or what they didn't like. But then you're stuck trying to figure out, can I translate that into what to change tomorrow? And if there's not consensus either, you're like, I don't want to throw this out. I got three opposite viewpoints. What do I choose from? Somebody says it was great.

Another person said it didn't resonate. Is one person the right audience and the other was the wrong audience? Is one person more honest? And the other is just trying to kiss my ass? I don't know. So what the research showed is that when you ask for advice, it focuses people on what you could do better next time

instead of what you did right or wrong last time. So they give you very focused suggestions. And then you can see if multiple people have similar suggestions, that's not taste. That's actually a quality. Well, you point out what I love is that novices seek encouragement and ignore criticism. Experts search for criticism, information versus validation.

And I certainly have had this experience a million times where someone wants me to read their script. And I just generally ask them, do you want me to pat you on the back after it? Cause you've accomplished it. Or do you want to know how to make it better? I'll do either, but you need to tell me upfront. Cause I don't want to accidentally do the wrong thing, which is a weird hack. No one can admit that they just want to pat on the back. Everyone pretty much would go like, no, I want notes. I made this mistake for so many years. I would have students come by office hours and ask for career advice.

I'd hear them describe their plan, and I thought my job was to help them see their blind spots and maybe course correct if they were missing something. And then they would get really upset. Ten years in, it finally hit me. Oh, some of these people are just looking for approval. So I started doing exactly what you have done for a long time, which is saying right when they walk in, why are you here? Do you want me to pressure test your reasoning?

Do you want me to broaden your options? Or are you just looking for my stamp of approval? Well, guess what? You already have it. It's not up to me to know what's best for you. I want you to choose whatever career you think is going to help you achieve happiness for my stamp of approval. Well, guess what? You already have it. It's not up to me to know what's best for you. I want you to choose whatever career you think is going to help you achieve happiness and whatever your goals are.

And a lot of them would just leave after that. Okay, I don't need your advice. Yeah. It's almost impossible for someone to admit they are looking for approval. I don't think it's as hard as you think. I think it depends on how you frame it. So are you worried that people are going to judge you

for this decision? I can say yes to that. I mean, in a lot of cases, it's like, well, you know, I think the high status move would be to go to this job, but I actually want to do this other thing that's much more meaningful to me. Okay, I approve. Right. Do you have a hard time admitting that you want someone's approval? I don't, but I do think in general, it's hard. It seems really indulgent. I think people have a hard time admitting that they're being indulgent. This just happened. It happened with Kimmel, which was like, I had interviewed Letterman. I wanted to contact him and I wanted to tell him about the thing. And I wanted ultimately his approval, like a father say,

good job. And then I resisted that urge because I was like this is very self-indulgent you have to decide whether you think you did a good job or not but then I got an unsolicited email from him and it made me cry so I definitely wanted it but I didn't succumb to the desire to go search for it do we think there's a difference between approval and validation or are they the same it's a good question what do you think for me that's more a validation that what you're doing is good. Yeah. And worthy. And approval feels more like, you're great.

Yeah, but full honesty, I didn't want him to say, you weren't ready to interview him or you should know. If he had been super critical, I probably would have. Because again, I was going to him like he was a father, per se. He's also your benchmark, though, is your role model. Yes. So actually sociologists would say your reference group is him. You've done something that I think is really important and rare,

which is you don't care about pleasing everybody, but you have a few people in mind whose standards and tastes you really admire. Their thumbs up means a lot to you. Yeah, they're like signposts, right? They're at where I would like to be and I feel like they'd have a good sense of if I was on the right path. You think that's a good thing to do? I think that's a healthy thing. I don't think all social comparison is bad. I think comparing yourself to people you admire as opposed to people you envy is a great way to raise the bar. And

sometimes only those people have the judgment that you're looking for to tell you whether you are on that path or not. Yeah, well, this is what I've admitted this before and it shames me that this only those people have the judgment that you're looking for to tell you whether you are on that path or not. Yeah. Well, this is what I've admitted this before. And it shames me that this is how it was, but it was like to say that I didn't get my dad's approval. That's not the truth. He gave me his approval and this is the shameful thing is, but I wanted the approval from someone I admired selfishly. I don't think that's selfish. Well, it's very cruel. Look, I guess if he were around every day, maybe I would have admired him more, but I just selfishly. I don't think that's selfish. Well, it's very cruel. Look, I guess if he were around every day, maybe I would have admired him more,

but I just didn't. He had filed bankruptcy three times. I was very judgmental of his things. So for him to say, attaboy, it didn't feel like I had cleared some high bar that he had set. I don't feel that way now. I even hate saying that out loud.

But at the time, it didn't really feel what I would have hoped it would have felt like. I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily because I think part of a bad thing necessarily, because I think part of a parent's job is to hope that their kids will develop values of their own. And if a child develops a set of principles that's different from the ones that they think their parent lived by, then I would think that the parental approval should matter less.

Yeah. I feel guilty about it, though. Don't you think some people would say, and I actually don't think I agree with this, but I can sense somebody would say... You're already debugging the argument. I can picture comments. Is it fair to value someone higher status's opinion over someone lower? Everyone's opinion should be equal.

I think it should be domain specific. I don't value a high status person's opinion across the board. I value their opinion on what they're an expert on or what they excel at. Yeah. Like I don't need Elon Musk to tell me I'm a good husband, but if he tells me I'm a good engineer, it's going to mean a lot more. Yeah. Because he's credible in that domain. You say in here that the masters weren't really perfectionists by and large, that most masters are not. And then there's this kind of pretty common pattern where they actually were poor in school. We always hear this about Einstein, right? He's

like the main example of this, but it's pretty common. It is. Yeah. I mean, empirically, there are things that straight A students get wrong, which bothers them at a basic level. But we talked about some of them around what perfectionists do, focusing narrowly on the things that they can really ace and losing the bigger picture. There's also a tendency to want to regurgitate the way it's always been done and say, okay, well, if I'm an A-plus student, let me go and figure out what the right recipe is as opposed to doing something original. Yeah, well, if you're picking between a couple strategies and one has already proven results, you're obviously going to be inclined to replicate that. Bingo. And then there's no originality. And then you introduced Wabi Sabi. Am I saying that one right? Yes. Which is not to be confused with Wabi Wabi over there.

Wabi Wabi. Yeah, I thought that's what you were going to say. Oh my God, you write about Wabi Wabi in your book? And Wabi Wabi's not very Wabi Sabi, to be honest. If I had to say one person was perfect that I know, he's approaching it. Do you consider yourself a perfectionist, Rob? Yeah, probably. Yeah. He did text me for my tea order before I got here. I didn't even know there was tea. I don't know that we had it. I think he might have went and got it for you. Now I feel bad, but thank you,

Rob. No, no, we had it. How do you explain that? That these masters generally weren't good in school? First of all, the last time I was in this attic, the first time I was on this podcast, we talked about equifinality and the idea that there are multiple paths to the same end. So there are super high achievers in school who go on to great things.

The ones who don't, I think my favorite study on this was the McKinnon study of creative architects, where they tended to get Bs in classes they weren't interested in and As in classes they were. The most creative architects, the Frank Lloyd Wrights of their generation, they had spikier grades than the technically skilled,

but less original architects who kind of aced everything. And I think what they were either predisposed to do or learning to do was to prioritize based on interest and importance. They're like essentialists. Yeah. Just naturally. Or just really bad at motivating themselves. I can't say just naturally because that would go against the premise of the book. You can have natural instincts.

Right, okay. You can also choose to override those instincts. So talk about wabi-sabi, not wabi-wabi. Yeah, so wabi-sabi is a Japanese art. It's the art of honoring the beauty and imperfection, which I thought was a hell of an oxymoron. Like there's no beauty and imperfection, but the more I think about it,

I wrote about Tadao Ando's architecture as a really stellar example of this, where he has these visible defects in his walls. In the masonry, is that what it was? I'm not knowledgeable enough about architecture to even describe it. Okay. But you can see them.

You can look at these walls, which look unfinished, and you can see that his spaces are completely lacking in some basic function. Like, one of his most famous houses didn't have a roof in the center and you'd have to walk through the elements to get from the kitchen to another room. But he was optimizing on a set of features

and compromising on another set of features. That's a life skill. You can't optimize everything. And knowing when to aim for excellence and when to settle for good, I think is one of the most important things we don't teach. Well, because it's so arbitrary, right? By the way, so much of what you're writing about,

I can't help but go back to all of it is really the serenity prayer. Grant me the strength to confront the things I cannot change, or courage to change the things I can, the wisdom to know the difference. So much of life is just that, figuring out which imperfections are acceptable and which aren't.

Yeah, I think that's right. Maybe I would just modify the serenity prayer a little bit and say it's not just about what you can change, it's about what's worth changing. Raw, that's a good point. Yeah, you think that's right. Maybe I would just modify the serenity prayer a little bit and say, it's not just about what you can change. It's about what's worth changing. Raw, that's a good point. Yeah. You could change anything conceivably. Would it be worthwhile or good return on investment? Exactly. So I want to come back to approval for a second, because this is really interesting. So I was thinking about the deja vu of last time I was here. What was it? Fall of 2019? No, you were... Oh, because it was Zoom last time.

Yeah, definitely wanted your approval. Okay, right back at you, cowboy. Even then? Oh, for sure. It was early on for us. I'm surprised.

I mean, you had already exploded. But it wasn't just the success of the podcast is that I had listened and I thought you were doing something really interesting and important

in the way that you both chose your guests and then the kinds of conversations you'd had with them. I listened to people I knew and learned things about them that they'd never shared with me. People I knew well, people I'd known for 20 years.

I thought, this is really powerful. And so that mattered because you had a skill of learning from people and extracting their authenticity and vulnerability that I'd never heard before. So I wanted that. I don't care about your approval anymore. Okay. Or maybe I already have it.

You definitely have it. Maybe I already have it. You definitely have it. Maybe I already feel it. Yeah, yeah. But there is a part of me, if I can be perfectly candid, that wants to know that you thought my book was worth reading or listening to. Of course. I don't worry that you will reject my ability as a thinker communicator, but this book is new.

I poured a lot of energy into it, and I want it to be interesting and useful to other people. And so I still care about that, but it's more specific approval now. Yeah. I think that's very fair. Well, I loved your book. I love all your books. I told you not too long ago that I don't think you're the best psychologist in the world. I hope not. I didn't dislike that. You didn't dislike that. I just said, I think what makes you, you and have the standing you have is that you're much more of a writer. You're a writer first is what I think about you. And a communicator.

Thank you. I'd prefer to be a thinker and a communicator as an extension of that. Well, we were rarely best at the thing we want to be best at, aren't we? It's true. I think that's exactly right. I realized really early on, I'm never going to win a Nobel Prize. But I am good at synthesizing Nobel Prize caliber ideas and sometimes connecting dots in ways that other people don't see. There's also been over time, this preference for specialists over

generalists that somehow it's bad to be a generalist, but like more and more we're seeing these people pop up. Yuval Harari being one of them, Sapolsky being one of them, you being one of them. Like no, generalists are really cool. They can tie in all these other elements and make it one thing that we can understand. They also aren't ignoring the interactivity of all these different things the way specialists might be blind to. So like they have great value, but they don't win Nobel Prizes. Nope. Yeah, just specialists.

The whole economy's fucked up, right? I think if we were economists, we would recognize that the marketplace for all these values that we are chasing, there's like half of the values that are out there. The specialists are rewarded greatly, more than the generalists, it seems. I think that's starting to change, though, in a lot of domains. Actually, there was a great study of CEOs showing that CEOs who are multifunctional generalists, as opposed to just specializing in finance all the way up the hierarchy, actually led more innovative organizations. They had multiple languages they could speak. They had different perspectives they could combine. And I think there's going to be a premium moving forward, especially in an AI-driven world

on being a generalist. It's funny you'd say AI, because I cannot stop talking about AI. It's starting to drive me crazy. I'm sure the listeners over it. But when you were talking about Wabi Sabi, I thought, well, this might be our only defining characteristic as humans once AI does everything. In fact, I can imagine this appreciation for the imperfections is only going to multiply as things are done perfectly. I hope so. I was thinking a lot about AI when writing the book, because in some ways, hidden potential is an attempt to amplify what's uniquely human. And I think we're at an inflection point where we used to talk about how cognitive skills are what elevate us above animals.

And I think character skills are really what elevate us above machines. When I think about character skills, the ability to soak up knowledge and filter it according to a set of values, a computer can't do that. It needs to have a constitution that was written by a human, at least today.

When it comes to seeking out discomfort, AI can't do that. It needs to have a constitution that was written by a human, at least today. You know, when it comes to seeking out discomfort, AI can't feel. It can't stretch its comfort zone. And when it comes to embracing imperfections, I don't know how you train any kind of robot to see beauty in something that's flawed. Yeah, it would have to choose its mistakes. Yes, that would defeat all purpose. It would have its own algorithm. Well, it would see that the humans are loving this flawed art,

and then it would just choose to make flawed art. Chosen mistake is not a mistake. No, by definition, it's an oxymoron. We're going to see. That's the bottom line. It's like everything's so theoretical right now. That's what's so mind-blowing is we'll know. Maybe we'll prefer perfect.

I don't know. I hope not because I would like a role. I think we'd all like a role in this society and economy. I don't think we're going to prefer it. I keep thinking about the Nozick pleasure box, the experience machine, as he called it, the matrix. So Nozick was a philosopher, and more recently there have been experiments on this

where you ask people to imagine they could live in a simulated world where they get infinite pleasure, and it's ever-increasing. And only about half of people have any interest. Really? They didn't talk to enough addicts. Well, clearly not. I don't think that was the majority of the sample. They should have done an AA meeting

and seen what the results were. Well, pleasure is in relation, you have to have displeasure in order to have pleasure. So this gets addressed. They have all these different iterations, one of which is you get ever-increasing pleasure, so you have a comparison standard. And even then, it turns out people value

what they think is real experience. So I would rather have a difficult real life than a simulated easy one. And that makes me think all the more that as AI can sort of reproduce what we think are works of creativity, there's going to be a premium on was this created by a human?

And what kind of AI assistance did you get? Well, how do you feel about this? So our show just started getting converted to Spanish, French, and German, and it's us talking. What do you think about that? So there's a voice synthesizer for both of you that then reads in Spanish? Yes. And any of our guests who sign and say, that's fine, they do. Creo que es excelente. Podemos hablar en espanol si quieres. Oh, he doesn't even need it. Oh my God. Will they convert that to English, do you think?

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. No, they'll convert it to better Spanish. What is the AI doing when we're speaking very broken Spanish? How do they even know? Well, no, I like this because I think if you've signed off on it and you've already performed the original. Yeah, it's still all thoughts. Yes. And even your intonation probably too. I don off on it. Yeah. And you've already performed the original. Yeah, it's still our thoughts.

Yes. And even your intonation probably too. They're trying, yeah. I don't mind it. Yeah. Do you? I don't. I kind of feel like, well, I'm still the originator of the original content, so it doesn't bother me yet.

I mean, it's better than the way we translate books right now. Somebody else is taking my words and it's their interpretation of it. Yeah, because your first book's in like 45 languages now. Are you curious? Don't you want to master a language just so you can see if they got the translation right? I did read one of the Spanish translations originally. And it felt right? Yeah, I mean, I'm not a native speaker, but there was nothing egregious from what I could tell. I actually didn't like the title. I was like, ah, that kind of isn't the point. But that was my only critique. And I realized hopefully publishers know more about marketing a book in a different language than I do. I had this thought about Russian literature. And I realized hopefully publishers know more about marketing a book in a different language than I do. I had this thought about Russian literature.

Like, I love Russian literature. But if we were at a dinner party and I wasn't afraid Russians would be upset that I said this, I would say there is a slight sociopathic nature to it that I actually like. It's really appealing. And then I started wondering, is that the vibe of Tolstoy and of Dostoevsky? Or does something happen in translation that makes it feel that way? It's kind of unknowable to me. Unless you start speaking Russian regularly. Yes, exactly.

But I was curious, like, is anything you convert is going to have that little flare that I see? Well, also the nature of those stories are dark. They are dark. Regardless of the translation. Russia's had some oppressive times as well. What you could do though is you could bring a guest on

who's bilingual, who was raised in the US and Russia and try to get a sense of that. Yeah, how does reading Dostoevsky differ in Russian and English? Is there a difference?

You could probably find an expert on that. That would be a fascinating conversation. Who do we have? We had a Russian? No. The linguist?

No. Valerie? He wrote Lincoln and the Bardo. Oh, George Saunders. Thank you. It was amazing. He teaches Russian literature. He does teach Russian.

I love George Saunders. He was a great guest. He could probably answer this question. Yeah, he could. Okay, I want to talk about some approaches because I think it's one thing to observe. You give great examples, by the way, like the chess club is an incredibly empowering. So there's like a inner city black school that's never played chess and they end up winning the whole kit and caboodle.

How did they do that? By finding this hidden potential. But there's observable techniques we could use to help bring this about. Which ones do you want to talk about? Well, scaffolding, I think, is a big cornerstone of your book. So tell me about Scaffoline. This was a surprising aha moment for me while I was writing.

One of my favorite things about writing is discovering new things as I'm building the ideas. I guess I'd always thought it's such a travesty that there are people who don't get the opportunity to take on big challenges and who don't have anybody in their life who sees their potential. It's bothered me for a long time

that the nuclear family in America basically rolls the dice on whatever two parents you happen to be born to, and it might not even be two. You think about so many Latin American or Asian countries where there's an entire extended family and you're not left to the whims of the one or two. So what I thought kids needed was they needed the ongoing guidance and support of parents and teachers and that perfect mentor who's holding your hand for 11 years. That's not what the research shows. It shows that what we really need is temporary support.

We need the kind of scaffold that you probably have all around the property right now. I can see it from my point of view. You can't see it. There you go. That what you need is a temporary lift so that you can reach a height that you can't scale on your own.

And in learning research, the idea is that a teacher will provide some initial instruction and then deliberately remove the support so you can learn a height that you can't scale on your own. And in learning research, the idea is that a teacher will provide some initial instruction and then deliberately remove the support so you can learn to do it independently. And I think that's what great coaches do. I think we all need people like that in our lives. This is interesting. I guess we could also do a training wheels analogy,

which I was anti-training wheels for whatever reason. We didn't do training wheels. And did it work? It worked, yeah. Delta and Lincoln can ride? Pretty well. Well, Lincoln in particular. There's an innate ability.

I don't know. She seemed to have. First time I let go of the bike, she just rode it. I was like, well, okay, done. That's impressive. This is what I like about the book. There's as much energy and time put into not just your own hidden potential, but in others around you.

And I got to say, this is where I'm a real piece of shit. I'm not really thinking about how other people have unrealized potential around me. Or the net's not very far spread. It's like my kids and then maybe Wabi Wabi Monica I care about and hoping that they reach their potential. But so much of the book is generating how to help other people do that. You paint such a caricature of yourself when you talk to yourself, Dax. It's useful. It is useful in certain ways. It's efficient. How about that? It's efficient. I get it. I don't agree with it, by the way, because every time you talk about armchairs, there's a whole community of listeners that you don't even know.

You've never met them, and you care about their potential. Well, it's because they're better than us. We meet them all the time, and they're much better people. Yeah, they are. Yeah, they do want to help other people reach their potential.

Trust us. I think my greatest moments of meaning and joy have been finding hidden potential in others and helping them realize it. And I think even Dax Shepard has experienced that. Wouldn't you agree, Monica? Yeah, for sure. It's extremely rewarding, but people have different base levels. You also sponsor people and that's all a part of this. Yeah. But my baseline is I'm not worried about refugees. I know it's terrible,

but my wife's super worried about refugees and she's probably not going to take someone through the steps. Like I'm an individual type of person. She doesn't get fatigued by empathy when there's 40 kids in the photo. Well, she does. That's why you had to basically teach her how to not do that.

We have to be honest. Like that did have an impact. It comes with a price. Yeah, yeah. She can get defeated by watching what's on TV. This is a key difference between empathy and compassion. Empathy is feeling other people's pain. Compassion is taking action to try to alleviate their pain.

This is Kahneman. This is Paul Bloom among us. I'm sorry, Paul Bloom. Yes. The latest research on this, I think one of the things I didn't realize is, like in healthcare, there's a ton of dialogue about compassion fatigue.

And the idea is that doing all this helping is exhausting. That's wrong. It's not compassion that exhausts people. It's empathic distress, which is I see people who are hurting and I can't help. And so that's what you'd have to shield Kristen against.

Yeah, yeah. But the actual act of being able to help people, that's energizing, not exhausting. Actually, I heard a story this weekend about Kristen that I didn't know. I'll tell you if it's true or not. Yeah, I heard that she got the paparazzi to stop taking photos of people's kids. Of course, that's what you heard. He was involved.

I wrote an op-ed that got traction that started the whole thing, but yes, she did. The two of them did. It's amazing. I didn't know that. Well, we were very incentivized. They were living in our front yard and we couldn't really leave the house. And I was very protective of the whole thing. We went on talk shows and I debated paparazzi. I'll tell you what is true is I was like, let's go to war. And she was like, let me befriend the picture house people, and let me build a coalition. This is what I heard, that she did the organizing to get people aligned. That's absolutely true, yeah.

And you used your mouth. I started with the pen and then the mouth. You both used your strengths. Yeah. Which I think is appropriate. Do you know this? Maybe you would know from listening to the show occasionally, but my whole thing with Obama that they said if I did something, then he would answer a question from me on Instagram.

Yes. And then he made the comment about how he's a fan of Kristen's. That was the most devastating joke. Before I talk about you, I want to talk about your wife, Michelle. He liked the good place. Loved the good place. He just went on and on and on. And then he didn't answer the question I submitted.

He just answered another one. It was perfect. That's amazing. So providing, I guess, the scaffolding around people, providing support, seeing what little bit of support might go a long way with them, identifying that. Do you think that's something you get better at as you practice it? I hope so. I think one of the best things we can do for other people is actually help them teach what they want to learn.

This is one of my favorite pieces of research that I read about while I was writing on the tutor effect. Tutor, like getting tutored after school, not tutor like the Egyptian. Teaching effect. There's this tiny but reliable trend for firstborns to score slightly higher on IQ tests than younger siblings. And it's really hard to imagine a biological or genetic reason for that. So why would the oldest be slightly smarter on average? And it turns out one of the key mechanisms seems to be that they get to teach their younger siblings. And they get smarter by explaining things to others.

Oh, interesting. Although causality is so tricky. Causality is tricky in general, but here's the thing. There are only three ways for two variables to be associated. One is causality. Two is reverse causality so tricky? Causality is tricky in general, but here's the thing. There are only three ways for two variables to be associated. One is causality. Two is reverse causality. And that's impossible here. Your intelligence cannot cause your birth order.

Right. And then three, there's a spurious relationship. So something else is causing the connection. Well, because I can just immediately remember that when there's one of you, the amount of attention they're getting from mom and dad is enormous. And it's question, answer, question, answer. Like you are blueprinting their brain for question, answer. And what is an IQ test other than a question and answer?

Whereas the second one, it's like now you're dividing your time between the two of them. Also, the other one's more used to your time. So you're dealing with the fallout of that missing time. They're not getting the same amount of attention. They're not. But here's the interesting thing. You can control for that and still see the slight intelligence gap. And then you can also see, actually, you would expect that the more younger siblings there are,

according to that theory, you would think then that the gap would shrink because the firstborn was no longer getting the extra time and it was more divided. But actually, the more younger siblings you have, the more you get a slight intelligence boost because you have more siblings to teach. Does it fall down the order? Is each subsequent kid lower on an IQ test? Or is it just the gap between number one and two? It's harder to study because there aren't as many families with larger numbers of kids. And then you also have to factor in age spacing because if your

sibling is a year younger than you, you're doing less teaching than if they're three years younger than you. And then if they're too far, you might then no longer be teaching. And so it gets messy very quickly. So I know the firstborn compared to I'm not the oldest is probably the most robust comparison I've seen. I told you this because we all know that the best way to learn something is to teach it. And that's part of what this research reminds us of. And I think that so often when we're trying to help other people

unleash their potential, we want to explain things to them. We want to give them the answers. We want to show them the way. What we forget is that we're not building their confidence or their competence by doing that. And so what we should do is we should say, okay, whatever the thing is that they want to get better at, we should let them teach somebody who's behind them. And then they're going to start mastering it and believing in their capability to master it as they're in the teacher role. This is a major hack in AA, which is if you sponsor people, you inevitably have to take them through the steps. And maybe

you haven't gone through the steps in a few years. And all of a sudden you're like, wait, how do I do third again? And you have to brush up on it to pass it on. That's Elliot Aronson, the psychology of self-persuasion. It's one of my favorite effects in psychology, where if you really want to convince someone of something, you should get them to go convince someone else of that something. And then they're being persuaded by somebody they already like and trust. It must be how multi-level marketing works as well. That's exactly the mechanism. It is.

Backing up is counterintuitive. I like counterintuitive stuff. So this is like retreating if you're in a war, no? It could be. That's commonly regarded as a good strategy for survival. In lots of the Revolutionary War, there was much more retreating than there was advancing, and we somehow won. Oh, that's interesting. So I think you're right.

I think retreating is often seen as a survival strategy. What I didn't know until I wrote that chapter was it's also a growth strategy. So backing up can actually help you move forward. For me, this is all about

what happens when you get stuck. So we've all stagnated. We've all hit a plateau and we think, I just can't get any better at the thing I'm doing. And what psychologists find is that when you're in that moment, the last thing you often want to do is retreat because it feels like you're

giving up all the ground you've gained. I don't want to go backward. I don't want to get worse. I'm trying to get better. I was watching the Steph Curry documentary. Did you watch it? I'm not done with it, but it's incredible. Hopefully this isn't a big spoiler. There's a scene partway through where he's in high school and he's short and he shoots from his hip and he keeps getting his shot blocked. His dad, having been an NBA player and knowing something about basketball, says the only way that you're going to be able to get your shot off without being blocked is if you shoot

from higher up. You're too short and so you've got to release high so that they can't easily just put their hand in your face. What that means is Curry's got to re-engineer his shot. He's a good shooter and he's going to have to spend several months being a bad shooter. So he's got to do this huge, huge skill decline in order to improve. And I think this is a great example of what we often see with skill development is

when you hit a point where you can't move forward anymore, it's often because you've stretched the limits of the current method you're using. And so you need to back up and become a beginner again to learn a better method, which may be slower, which may be harder, but ultimately can get you farther. And you use a great story about this baseball player to demonstrate this. R.A. Dickey.

It's an incredible story. The great thing is you can track all his statistics and you can follow his games and it is almost unreal. The short version is a phenom and he becomes a top draft pick as a college player, having been a starting pitcher on an Olympic medal team. And then it turns out he's got, I think it's a ligament. He's got something missing in his arm, and it looks like it's going to cap his speed. He's never going to be able to throw a blazing fastball. And immediately his signing bonus gets slashed. He was, I think,

signed for close to a million dollars. They cut it by 90 or so percent. He's sent down to the bottom of the minor leagues. He's never down to the bottom of the minor leagues. He's never going to make it. And he toils there for years and years and years and years. And he's already passed his prime. I got to add, he was sent down to the minors seven times. Yeah. Can you imagine they send you for the seventh time,

you've still got some fight in you? I mean, he gets called up to the majors, he gets his big break, he gets sent back down. And then he gets another shot and then he's sent down again. And over the course of, I think, 14 years, he moves 30 times. Just ultimate journeyman experience. And a lot of people would give up. There's a pitching coach who notices he throws this weird pitch where he's gripping the ball kind of like a knuckleball. The coach says, why don't you go develop that? Only nobody knows how to throw a knuckleball. There are a few dozen pitchers in the last century who have mastered it.

There's not a playbook. You can't go and get a YouTube tutorial. And so he kind of has to figure it out on his own. And he goes massively backward. He sets multiple records for most home runs given up in an inning. He's a disaster and ultimately becomes one of the best pitchers in baseball for a while using this technique that forced him to get worse before he got better. Yeah, he set a record for the most home runs given up in three innings, which he threw seven of them. And then he has the 10th best record of all time in baseball. Wow.

That's so bonkers. There's some constitution there as well. I didn't actually spend a lot of time on this part of it because I thought he was a great example of building the scaffolding to say, okay, when I don't know exactly where I'm going, I don't need a perfect map. I need a compass that's going to tell exactly where I'm going, I don't need a perfect map, I need a compass that's going to tell me whether I'm moving directionally correct. And then I need a bunch of guides, and I'm going to piece together

the little tips that each of them have, and then maybe I'll figure this out on my own. But he really had honed his character skills, so he was not afraid of discomfort. He was willing to do the backtracking and say, this pitch is not going to work, and I'm going to throw a lot of horrible ones. He was a total sponge. Everyone he met who had thrown a knuckleball, he wanted to soak up everything they knew and then filter out what wasn't going to work for him. And he was a hell

of an imperfectionist. Actually, he did something that I think is applicable probably in any walk of life. He said, I'm not going to expect every knuckled ball to be perfect. What I'm going to do is I'm going to track how many out of 10 are decent, and I'm going to try to improve that number over time. Setting some realistic goals. Realistic goals for improvement and saying, I'm trying to compete against my past self and raise the bar for my future self. It's really hard to set a goal of improvement.

You have this image in your mind of what you want to do. The notion that you should be aiming at the intermediate steps is really hard, I think. That's right. So what do you do about that? I think the best thing you can do is, I don't want to do too many sports examples here, but this is a diving lesson for me. You get a bunch of people to score you zero to 10, and then you track whether you're making progress. Right. Yeah. Incremental. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Okay, you found that lawyers who actually had multiple mentors, they tracked higher in becoming partner. The thrust of that argument was getting multiple perspectives was more useful than having a singular one. But I'm just curious,

is it not possible that just the simple act of availing themselves to the partners and asking advice endeared the young lawyer to them and it had nothing to do with what they might have learned? Because they vote to who there's going to be partner, right? Entirely possible. Yeah, that was the first thing I thought when I read this research is there are two explanations that make sense. One is you learn more and you get better quality advice as you triangulate across multiple perspectives. And the other is you basically incurred favor, you've impressed more people. Or maybe there's a third, which is the better lawyers were more likely to attract multiple mentors in the first place. I think all of the above is potentially true.

I think, though, that the fact that these other mechanisms exist doesn't negate the reality that it's really hard to learn everything you want to know from one person. Chances are, if they're that knowledgeable, they are too busy to give you all the mentoring you want. Also, some of their advice is not going to apply to you because you have different strengths, you're walking on a different path, and so some of their directions are going to actually steer you toward a dead end.

I see this all the time with students, especially undergrads who are getting ready to graduate from college. And they're saying, okay, I want one mentor who's going to guide me. And lo and behold, that mentor says, okay, here's what you need to do to become like me. And they're not like you. I don't want anyone to get pigeonholed like that. I did hear recently a great quote, which was, the person you're best suited to help is the person you used to be. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. It's so rare that you find that person as your mentor. And so given that very few of us have access to a better version of us or a former us, I think the next best thing we can do is to try to cobble together, okay, can I find six or seven people who each know a thing that might be relevant to me? And then maybe I'll be able to build my own map from that.

Well, listen, that's hidden potential and it's fantastic. The science of achieving greater things. I have now non-related to that book, a few just curiosities of mine. In a way, I think your life parallels an actress a little bit, the highs and lows of it. And I think like your first book sold millions of copies. Your New York Times op-ed about languishing. Huge. Started a movement. It was the most read article in 2021. Yeah, everyone was talking about it. Which I will never achieve again, by the way.

Well, this is exactly what I want to talk to you about. It's kind of like the Tarantino thing. It's like, God, after you direct Pulp Fiction, where do we go from here? And I think for him, there was even a confusion and a misstep and then refinding where we're going from here. But how do you personally take the highs and lows? Like some of the TED Talks are huge. Some of them are just whatever.

What do we do with that? That's actually the goal, to take enough shots that some of them go in. So this is similar to any kind of creative portfolio career, which is you want to have a portfolio of projects so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket. If the only thing I was doing was a TED Talk, it would be devastating if it wasn't a successful one. But if I'm writing an article and doing a talk and working on a book and teaching a class and mentoring some students, I'm not over-identified with any of those individual projects. But how do you fight the urge of going like,

okay, whatever came after languishing, I don't know what was your next New York Times op-ed. But when that one comes out and it doesn't hit the way the first one. It didn't. Collective effervescence. Oh, okay. Do you know that term? Nope.

Collective effervescence. No, but I feel like I've experienced it. Is this like community enjoying? The eras tour. Yeah, there you go. That's peak collective effervescence. Originally, it was Durkheim's term to describe the sense of energy and purpose you get when you're part of a group.

This is one of my big concerns is like, as we become less religious, as I'm in favor of, where do people get community? If you're not an addict and you don't go to meetings, where the fuck do you get it? What are the options today that are secular and fun and appealing? It's a huge problem, but nobody was excited about that the way they were languishing. Right. When it doesn't take off or it doesn't hit the bar that you've now set for yourself, do you accept that or do you go, what magic did I not capture from the previous one? Both simultaneously. The first thing is, I think that if I'm trying to measure articles

by how many readers they get, that's the wrong metric. It's kind of like counting likes on social media. It's a very poor proxy for impact. I can ask my publisher how many books I've sold, but what I really want to know is how many lives did I affect? And I'd much rather have 10 people

who said this moved me or this helped me than have a thousand people say, I bought that book and I don't remember a word of it. And that's how I feel about the articles. So I'm not worried about what was the reach of this? Did this go viral or not? Because actually, one of the ways to go viral is to write something very controversial that a lot of people disagree with. And sometimes I do that not for the sake of being controversial, but because there's strong evidence for something that I think a lot of being controversial, but because there's strong evidence for something that I think a lot of people are getting wrong,

and I'm willing to stick my hand in that fan. But that article is often going to be more popular than something that resonated, unless it really hit the moment. And so what I'm trying to do in the first place is define whose approval I'm seeking. My test, first and foremost, is if this is the only thing I've written that somebody ever reads by me, am I proud of it? And if the answer is yes, I'm not too worried about the reach that it gets. But I think if I

ignore that altogether, I'm failing to learn from my own successes and shortcomings. So when the next article hit, what I said was, okay, let me take a look at the differences between those two and see, is it the topic choice? Is it the writing style? Is it some of the content? And then I'm not trying to shame my past self, I not trying to shame my past self. I'm trying to educate my future self. So did I learn something from this? Yes, good. Now maybe the next article will do better,

but maybe this one didn't do worse. It just reached fewer people. Well, you're human. And to my knowledge, we've hung out a bunch and you seem very human when we're together. You know, one's enormous hit, there's inevitable elation that kind of accompanies that. And you're a famous academic.

You're on the same ride that like actors would be on. Yeah, but I think it's much less of a drug in the idea world. Because for me, the biggest rush comes from developing the idea. Do you have fear of irrelevance though? Do you ever sit around and think like, God, what if what I have to say is no longer going to be that captivating? I wouldn't describe it as irrelevance. If I was afraid of something, it would be failing to make a contribution. It's less about, am I relevant? And it's more about, am I using my knowledge, skills, and time to be helpful and useful to other people? That's much more about impact than likes.

That's hard to control. And so look, even on social media, there are days when I don't know whether it's the algorithm or the content I created or some combination of the two. I'm like, I thought that was an interesting point and nobody cared. And myself, a scene drops that day. Yeah, that's what I want to know about. I don't think you can enter into the fray. And not care at all.

No. No, of course not. It's impossible. But this happened a couple times, right? So I posted something on Instagram and I thought it was going to strike a chord and it just kind of dropped like a rock. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of was bummed out that day.

And I'm like, why do I care whether today's post got a lot of likes? Don't I need to zoom out? Isn't the real question, this year have I generated some content that people found valuable? And I think that's the skill. You don't erase the rollercoaster ride.

What you do is you don't take as many dips. If you're stuck in the moment, you're always going to be at the mercy of other people's approval or not. But do you get jealous of other people? Like when you're seeing someone have a moment, like a peer or a colleague or someone else in your space? I think it depends on how much I respect their work.

If there's somebody whose work I really love that's exploded or had a real impact, if I admire the person, it's inspiration for me. And also, it's good for the field. If a psychologist or a behavioral scientist is getting ideas out there, I feel this way so strongly about authors. Seeing a book succeed is the best thing that can happen, because that means more people are reading.

And I'm not excited about that, because that means more people read my books. I'm excited about that, because I think a world of readers is a world of learners. But if it's somebody who I don't respect, who I think does work that's not rigorous or not interesting, then I wouldn't say I'm envious so much as annoyed. Why don't people have better taste? Why are people paying attention to that snake oil? Maybe this is how I aspire to be rather than how I am every day. But the way I experience it most of the time is, oh, my standards are being violated here. It feels like an injustice.

Yeah, it's a violation of justice. As opposed to feeling like I was wronged. It's just, this is wrong. The world shouldn't work this way. Right, that person shouldn't be rewarded. No, and I have four other people who deserve that attention if you take me out of the equation. And so what I want to do then is say, all right, let me elevate these other people who do work in this area that are credible.

No, I get that. Like I have no angst towards someone who wins a lottery. So that's somebody who got a bunch of things they didn't quote deserve or work for, right? They bought a lottery ticket. Yet if I see someone get a lot of stuff and it's built on a lie, I find it very annoying. If they didn't deserve it. Yes. Which is weird because it's not about deservings. I don't mind if the lottery ticket winner gets it. You want it to be fair. It's the justice point. Yes, the justice one. Yes. Okay. So how do you feel about smartless? Oh, that's a great question. I want to know what Monica's thinking. That was a really strong expression. Well, I was going to say that when- We've talked about it. I don't think I've been like crazy secretive.

It's easy to have ideas about fairness and stuff, but when you're in it, it's a different thing. It's hard with podcasts because, and we say this about TV shows too, like what we think is funny, what we elevate as like high comedy versus- Veep is better than whatever. Yeah, if we say Veep is better than Big Bang Theory, that's our opinion. But a lot of the country disagrees. They love Big Bang Theory. And we aren't better. Like, we can't say. We're not more right.

It's just our taste. Exactly. And same with podcasting. I can't say ours is better than or this is better than because it's just what people are resonating with. So, for me, it's easy. By and large, we don't do what they do. So, it's easy. By and large, we don't do what they do. So it's not really relevant. It's like I'm a speed skater and they're sprinters. Where the jealousy will creep

in is if they have access to guests that we would like, the shittier side of me will be like, well, of course, because they have three famous people with connections that can reach out to people. And then I'll feel like it's not a fair fight for the guests because I'm overpowered in their cumulative connection base. So interesting. But I don't think they're trying to make the show we're trying to make. We're not trying to make the show. They're and they're friends.

So I'm excited for them that they are doing well. It doesn't bother me because we're still succeeding. It's not zero sum. It's not zero sum. If it was. If when they arrive, we went away. Yes. Then of course we might feel like this is unjust,

but that's not the case. So it's like, great. But it is tricky. It's really hard not to succumb to like a scarcity mentality or that it's limited. Particularly for you, given your upbringing. Yes. And just like older brother.

I realized so much of my triggers still, like people coming into my room or people using my stuff. My kids using my nail clippers and not returning them. And it's like, it's so heavy. It was the 18 years of someone having access to everything that was mine. Wow. Nail clippers. I buy them by the dozens. I've put four pair in each kid's drawer. How long are their fingernails? No, where the fuck are the nail clippers is the question. Where are they all? I imagine one day I'll pull a drawer open and it's just going to have hundreds kids how long are their fingernails no where the fuck are the nail clippers is the question where are they all i imagine one day i'll pull a drawer open and it's just gonna have hundreds of nail clippers i got a safe i bought a safe for nail clippers for my nail clippers i wanted my nail

clippers tweezers they take and i had a hairbrush because those three things are gone if they're not bolted down does this not happen in your house? Are your kids not pillaging your shit? No, I'm just thinking it would be a great future episode of a punked reboot to steal Dexter's nail clippers out of his safe. Oh my God. It's not worth it. What was great is the end of the safe was, I know where the

keys were. Certain other people also knew where the keys were. All of a sudden, the keys were gone. Now my shit's in the safe. I got no keys. So then I had to go to Home Depot and buy like a $200 grinder so I could break into the safe

to get my $6 nail clippers. And Kristen was like filming the whole thing thinking this was hilarious. That's amazing. I think the next iteration is just have to steal one or two nail clippers at a time. I think they've already been doing this punked on me now for 10 and a half years. I love this.

Your kids don't steal any of your shit. East Coast kids are different than West Coast kids? No. One of our daughters steals my t-shirts. Okay. That's nice. That's helpful. But then I find out because she's wearing them.

And you probably feel flattered. Do I? Yeah. I would. Yeah, you feel cool. If your kids want to wear your clothes, that's like, you must have cool style. I think they're just big. Like oversized, like pajama shirt.

Okay. And she's only in it for the size. Yeah. She doesn't wear it out of the house? No, it's only in the house. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's no pride there. Okay.

It's just theft. What are you going to tackle next? I don't know. What should I tackle next? I've been wrestling with this this year. That's why I asked you about the relevance thing. I was having this out of nowhere, unfounded fear of relevance. I had an unfounded and not based on reality fear of financial insecurity.

I have all these fears. There's nothing real happening, but I have them. Another one is like stagnation or is it time for me to change it up somehow? Just some fear of doing something repetitively and that's somehow going to be bad and I need to shake it up. So I'm just curious if you go through those cycles. I think everyone does. And I think if you don't, you're probably limiting your own growth. I don't know. I live with someone that hasn't yet thought of our finances in 16 years and she seems to be doing just fine and still generates plenty of money. So I don't know if it's necessary. I tell myself that. I don't mean necessary from a success standpoint. I mean in terms of continuing to challenge yourself.

I mean, I guess you could think about this in terms of micro-experiments and macro-experiments. The podcast was a macro-experiment. You'd never done an audio platform before. A micro-experiment would be saying, I'm going to bring in pairs of guests who don't know each other and try to facilitate an interesting conversation.

I imagine there are all kinds of interesting things you could do in terms of format that you've never done, which would be lower risk, but still interesting. I had a really interesting discussion with Allison about this, my wife. She has extremely high standards when it comes to everything. But we were talking about it in the context of writing and speaking. And I think I was getting ready for a third TED Talk, and she said, it's the same thing you always do. It's like a story and a study and a cartoon. Don't you want to mix it up? She was encouraging you to

break the mold. As I often do to pressure test the argument, I pushed back and I said, when I think about, I get such a kick out of Jim Gaffigan's comedy. I don't want him to change his format. I just want new jokes. I love his format and that's why I keep going to his show. I'm very happy with that. And I said, I think the audience feels the same way. If it's

new ideas, they don't mind the package. The delivering device is the same. Yes. And Allison agreed with that. But then I thought about it more and she convinced me that particularly with book writing, I could do more experimentation. And so I started breaking the fourth wall a little bit and adding these italicized comments to the reader, which I had a ton of fun with. And a bunch of people have said, that was surprisingly funny. I didn't know you could make a joke. Yes, yes, yes. Half of Sapolsky's new book is footnotes. Wow. Every page half is that, and it's just him letting loose about whatever he wrote.

It is super fun because again, both of you are hyper-intelligent. So to see the human nonstop in the footnotes, or in your case, the italicized, it's fun. I had fun doing it. And so the hope is that the audience feels it. But I think there was a really good point there to say, let's not just explore a new thing. Let's also try to change the mold that it gets packaged in.

So you're afraid of getting boring and being stagnant as well? I'm afraid of getting bored, for sure. Personally? Yeah, and then not evolving. Because what if there's something better I could do? What if there's a way of communicating the things that I love

that would resonate with more people? Actually, I'll give you a concrete example on this. So Joanna, our oldest, tells me constantly that my Instagram is boring. It's just words. Uh-huh. Yes, that's what people want to hear from me. They want to hear ideas.

And she's been nudging me to start doing more reels and I'm allergic to the idea because I feel like my worst way of communicating is me talking to a camera well look I'm an actor and it's fucking awkward Monica's in the same you guys are very similar by the way there's so much to this conversation

tell me more yeah I hate social media I mean I hate the video packaging and putting in all this effort for this 20 second yes it could take me half a day to film a minute. Yes. And I know it's supposed to not take that amount of work. But if you saw how goofy I looked in the first 19 takes.

But Monica has a friend, Liz. Well, you know, Liz. Liz is playing. Yes. And she's drug Monica in. And I've enjoyed watching it. Like, I know it's not for Monica, but it's really fun. And she is great.

All these videos they do are very entertaining and it's so outside of your comfort zone. It is outside of my comfort zone. And so that's part of it. But also part of it is I'm like, I don't have energy for that. Yeah. I have energy for this over here, which is the show we're doing, but this piece feels extra. And I feel like I don't have time or space for extra. That's exactly how I feel. And if I enjoyed it and I felt like I was good at it, I would make time for it.

Right. But then there's this question of, okay, I feel incredibly fortunate to have a big audience of people who are interested in my ideas and my content goes to those people. But because of the algorithm, I'm in the wrong format to reach more new people.

Is it worth my time to do? No, so far I've concluded I don't like it. I don't think I'm good at it. I'm not in this field to try to build an audience. I'm trying to share meaningful content. But maybe the challenge for both of us is to find a format still within the algorithm that we're energized by. I'm with you on, and I think this is one way Liz and I are very different.

I am very content with the people who like us and who listen. I am not, I need everyone in the country to listen. We need 40 million. I don't care. I want the people who like us to like what we're doing. And then the other people, I'm kind of like, well, listen, we're not for them. And I'm not trying to get them. I feel that way for this show, too.

Such a healthy attitude. Do you ever worry, though? I wonder about this. If I package something a little differently, people who would be interested in this would discover it. Right. Exactly. That's why we're letting AI convert our voice. There's billions of people who don't speak English.

And I would ideally like as many people to hear our take on being human as possible. So if an AI could do the thing for you guys that needs doing on Instagram, you would just do it. It's all about effort, ultimately. It's like, where am I putting it? I don't really want to put it in maybe getting a couple extra people who might or might not like us. I don't know. I have to do it because I'm doing this with Liz and she loves doing it.

Also, there's so many things that I think we as humans, we get like halfway there and we're not acknowledging like to be one step into it's the same as being 100 steps. I know there's some alarm bell in your head that like, oh, this is really self-indulgent or this is really egomaniacal to make a video like this. But it's like, you're already on Instagram sharing shit to get attention.

You got to acknowledge. No, it's not to get attention. You got to acknowledge what you're doing. No, it's not to get attention. It's to create something of value. That requires attention. Well, everything requires attention. Yeah, you can't create value unless people are seeing it. Of course.

If you're in your backyard pontificating, it's useless. But a narcissist does it to get attention. Hopefully the rest of us recognize that attention is the means of impact. I think that's too lofty. Do you? I absolutely do. I think you're denying that we're a social primate, that status is super fucking important for your survival, and a measure of status is the amount of attention you're receiving in our culture. Okay, that's a very good point. So I don't want

to deny any of those things. I think that's exactly right. I want to make a distinction between promoting yourself and promoting your ideas. So what is the difference? There's a huge difference. No. There's a huge difference. Okay, tell me. Finally, we're dancing. Yes. Took a while, but here we go. Wait, were you waiting for this moment? Of course. We got to dance every time you're here. It's true. I just thought you'd gotten... Soft on you? You'd given up on fighting. No, no, no. It's lawyer time. Let's all put on our lawyer hats. Prosecutor to prosecutor. Here we go. Monica, are you ready to referee the logic bullying? Yes, I'll try. Okay. So I think you're right, Dex, but I think that self-promotion is look at me, look how great I am. Idea promotion is here's the insight I want to share and I hope

it's useful to you. No, it's look how great my idea is. So all you've done is separate me from idea, but me generated the idea. So some person wants to get attention for looking gorgeous and you're probably judgmental of that. And you want to get attention for what's in your head. Both people want attention. Like I think you're euphemizing one of them. And this also feeds into a little bit of this meritocracy bullshit, right? And the shit you were born with versus what someone else was born with. Like we would say objectively, it's better to get attention for being smart than attractive. Why?

That's not true. You were born with intelligence. This person was born with good looks. And so they should not get attention while you get the attention for your thing you were born with. No, just one is healthier when it comes to your happiness and your growth. And it's also more sustainable

because it's really hard to stay attractive the way it is to your happiness and your growth. And it's also more sustainable because it's really hard to stay attractive the way it is to stay smart. I agree it's harder to stay hot than it is smart. I'm with you. Check. Wait, I just won. It's over. No.

Dax agreed. But I've met a lot of academics and professors and I'll say I've met a lot of models and I'm not seeing this enormous lopsided enjoyment of this trip on planet Earth. I don't think you can say that either. I think a lot of people are delighted to be pageant winners and models and supermodels and be known for that.

And that's fine with them. I don't know if there's a meta-analysis I cited in Hidden Potential of over 100 studies worldwide showing that if you base your self-esteem on intrinsic rather than extrinsic goals, you end up happier. I believe that. But to claim you're an intrinsic goal seeker is a fucking farce. That's not true. You got to own it. No, I don't think they're mutually

exclusive. You can want both. You get TED Talks, you write for the New York Times, you're on Instagram posting stuff. It's okay. I disagree. Okay, tell me. So I think of status as a byproduct of those activities, not the goal. I guess for me, there's a big difference between a guru and a scholar. And I'm not talking about the Eastern conception of a guru. I'm talking about the Western. Our modern gurus. Yes, the armchair experts. There was a great series. I don't know if you listened to it. It was a BBC series. It's called Modern Gurus. And they go through like the money gurus, the time management gurus, Russell Brand's in there a bunch. They profile him a bit. There's many ways to be a guru. It's the snake oil, quick fix, shortcut, hack crowd. I think the big difference there is they're basically only selling their own

ideas. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to be a good ambassador for my field. And that means citing a lot of other people's work, trying to amplify them and their platforms. And I don't think if my goal was status, I would be doing a lot of that. I think there'd be much more efficient ways for me to get the attention on me. And so maybe it's just a figure ground thing that for me, the highest mark of using my time well is saying I contributed something of value. And the emphasis is on the contribution, not the I. Yeah, but also your culture that you've submersed yourself in is at Wharton. The currency is exactly what you're doing. Is it? Published, respected, revered, consulted, asked to be a pundit. Yes, of course. If you were fucking on

the line at GM, you'd probably have a great drag car on the weekends. Like, you know, we do whatever the culture you choose to join. You're trying to get status in whatever culture you're in. The way you're in happens to value that stuff. I don't think I disagree with that. I think we're all status seeking creatures. Because I think you're positioning it maybe that there's like a moral dilemma that it would be unethical to be seeking extrinsic validation. No, I don't think so. I think we're all human. I agree with your social primate thesis. I think there's deep-seated evolutionary pressure to be valued by your group. And the alternative is potentially exclusion.

In death. Yeah, which is bad. And we don't know that we know that, but we know that. No, this is like the ultimate proximate distinction. Yeah, when you say, is it more important than food, water, and shelter? It's the thing that gets you food, water, and shelter. So it's actually above that. In some ways. And I also think there's a lot of shaming of people.

And I just kind of think like, yeah, that's their lane, man. We're all trying to pop in whatever thing we're searching. Yeah. I like the idea of legitimating status seeking. Status feels icky. It does. But really another way of framing it is to say you're seeking respect and admiration. Safety, ultimately.

Ultimately. Completely reasonable and entirely human. Yes. I think the way that you seek it matters though. And I think that you can seek it in a way that centers you or you can seek it in a way that centers other people. And I think that distinction really matters. And I think it matters, yes, I guess in a moral way.

I think it matters also in an emotional way. If you're seeking attention on yourself, then you're in a bottomless pit because you can never get enough of the validation we were talking about earlier to satisfy your craving. Believe me. It definitely doesn't work as well as it does.

It's temporary. It works, but it's temporary. Yes, it's an addiction. Yeah, yeah, it's a dopamine hit. And you're going through withdrawal every time you don't get the hit. Yes, yes. Which is what you were asking about in a way.

Yes, exactly. What happens when your dopamine depletion cycle begins? I think a resolution to that puzzle is you learn not to be as dependent on the dopamine hit to begin with. Yeah, not letting yourself get to a 10 so that you don't have to experience the two. Yeah, exactly. And I think what that means is a lot of the time, don't check how many likes a post got. Read a few of the comments and learn from them, but don't try to figure out, did people like this or not? Or read the comments. My version of this is to say, I'm taking the comments as a signal of, are people interested in this topic? And do I have a novel perspective on it?

Not, did they like it or dislike it? And that changes the equation because I'm not trying to be beloved. I'm not trying to be beloved. I'm not trying to maximize my following. I'm trying to learn where I have a contribution to make. And that emphasis matters, doesn't it? Can you tell us who won? Well, I don't think, well. Did you say tell us who won? I'm really just looking for Monica's validation. Yes, of course. You're not going to like it. And I never do this. You're siding with Dax? I do agree with Dax on this. Rob, Monica. I want you to do something, Rob.

You don't get to just go to Rob. Look something up, Rob. No, I just want you to mark the moment when we learn that Monica has gone native. I know, I know. No, only because I do think in some ways we're saying intelligence is the premium. And not everyone has that. And not everyone deals in intelligence. They deal in looks or humor or whatever.

I think everyone's finding exactly what their strength is and then optimizing it to get attention. We can't say one's better than the other because we don't have all equally. I think we're actually mostly in agreement on this. I think what I object to is the to get attention as opposed to I need to get attention in order to create something valuable.

I think about this all the time. We'll get to the point where my kids are in junior high and they're in high school. So I'm constantly drafting these positions I'm going to be taking. And what I feel like is a lie is to say, you shouldn't try to seek status or you shouldn't try to be the most likable. I think the real art of life is you're going to seek status. Agreed. Or you shouldn't try to be the most likable. I think the real art of life is you're going to want that. Some strategies are better than others. What is the strategy that attracts the most people to you? There's good and bad strategies.

And then beyond that, you'll attract like-minded people. So if you want to hang the metal ball sack off the back of your pickup truck most people aren't gonna like it but the other people that are gonna like it are other dudes who probably want that same ball sack that have probably been victims of fucking trauma as kids you know these are just all realities the notion of like you shouldn't want status or you shouldn't want to be popular i just think that's foundationally a lie it's unrealistic but i also think you can tell them you can want those things but you should know that if and when you get them, being popular doesn't feel good. It feels good to have a group of people who you really connect with. And maybe that's three people. It might not be your most popular kid in school. And so it's good to also impress upon that. It's not how many

followers you need, your group. What helps me have compassion with people I see out on the streets that are driving me nuts, I have to remind myself this person wants the same thing as you. He wants everyone he meets to love him. And he just has a bad strategy. I'm inclined to do attribution error and say, like, I know what his motives are, and they're not as clean as mine. No, his just strategy is not as good. I think we're aligned here, actually.

So psychologists talk about one of the paths to gaining status being prototypicality, meaning you figure out what are the ideals of the group, and then you exemplify them. Actually, there's a great Paul Graham essay where he talked about how different cities have different currencies of status. So Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's all about how smart you are.

New York, it's about how rich you are. In LA, it's about how hot or famous you are. You go to Silicon Valley, and it's about how creative you are, potentially. You could sort of think about how do you gain status in different places according to what's valued there. And I think a huge part of success in life is being able to read what's the valued currency in a group and then gain it. So I don't object to any of that.

I just think that because we're social primates and because attention is now our scarcest resource, I see attention as the means and I bristle at thinking about it as the end. Yeah. I get that. Yeah, I just, I happen to like your approach. Like I can love you the same amount

thinking you're just like me and you want status like all of us want. I don't even want you to like me anymore. I like the version of how you're getting the status. It appeals to me. Well, I appreciate that. And I don't think that bothers me, actually. Why do I care about this distinction?

I care about this distinction because I think that if status becomes the target, it's too easy for the motives to become corrupted. And you start to focus on the outcome and the result as opposed to the process or the reason. Well, you're saying you're incentivized to cheat your way into more status, maybe. Not cheat.

There's so many different directions to go with this. Can I add one part? Yeah, please. One thing that came up while we were talking about this. What's really interesting is testosterone, right? So testosterone is a very interesting chemical in us and associated with aggression and all these other things. But in Molecule Amore and Dopamine Nation and a few different books I've read,

no, testosterone is the fuel by which a man will try to achieve status. So if you change what gives status in the group, if it's not defending the tribe or it's not aggression or manhandling other members of the tribe, that won't be pursued. Testosterone is just the catalyst to make you pursue status. And then your culture determines how it's going to display. Yeah, you know more about testosterone than I do. Because I'm blasting it? Maybe. That would be one reason.

You said it, not me. All right, here's what I think. One of the things I've learned about status from psychologists and sociologists who study it is it's a currency that lives in other people's heads. So my status is entirely determined by what other people think of me. I can't control it directly. And if I start to focus too much on that status, I shift my attention away from doing things that have intrinsic value, which may or may not gain status. In other words, I don't think the best route to status is actually pursuing status.

I think it's to try to do things that I think are valuable and then hope that other people find them valuable too. I agree. Does that make sense? Yes, because you make yourself happy. It's not a target you can hit directly. Right, because if you just search for status and you do it by acting inauthentic and you miss, now you're left with, you don't have your own approval,

nor do you have anyone else's approval. But if you start minimally with trying to get your own approval and then you get this great benefit that other people are attracted to it, then it's a win-win. Exactly. This is why I don't like the idea of saying you're doing something to get status. I think status should be in the rear view mirror, not in the dashboard. My frustration is it doesn't cost us anything to admit

that that's what we're trying to transcend. We can't even begin to have tools to monitor our status seeking until we first admit, like, no, this is the main driving force. Okay, so there's a really interesting debate in psychology about this. The steering question is, why do we have self-esteem in the first place? Why do you have an opinion of yourself? There's one camp of psychologists who have argued for a long time that it helps people manage existential anxiety. Believing I'm a person of worth makes mortality less terrifying. There's another camp. It's called the sociometer theory. The idea of sociometer is that self-esteem

evolved to monitor your standing in a group and help you make sure that you were not going to be booted out and die. And I think you find that to be an appealing explanation. Absolutely. Because again, it's life or death. If you're not good at evaluating your real standing, that means you're going to walk and try to grab some of the food before the alpha did, and you're going to die. But self-esteem is intrinsic. That wouldn't be about the rest of the group. I think your self-esteem is totally informed by everything around you.

That's how this camp of researchers would look at it, is to say you're taking inputs from other people that could build or deflate your self-esteem. I totally disagree with that. You're living in the basement. You're 42. You're in your parents' basement right now, and you lay in bed 12 hours a day. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that or shitty.

There's no reason you should hate yourself. But because you know other people don't live in their parents' basement at 45, because you know that most people are up 16 hours a day. No, that's because you have no purpose. You're not doing anything. It's not about other people. You could walk for two hours and probably feel better.

It's just like in the program, like doing things for other people gives you self-esteem. It's not because everyone else now thinks you did something for other people. It's an intrinsic feeling of positivity. Well, I agree with you that doing esteemable acts for other people gives you self-esteem. But for me, I also then just trace that down to, well, because the story I'm telling about myself is someone of value would be someone who would give their time. Like, it all feeds into, and then I look at other people who I don't like as much and I realize, oh, they're selfish.

I don't like that in them, so why would I like it in me? It's still, let's put it this way. The baboons that Sapolsky was studying, they only have to forge for three hours a day. They have nine hours a day to do nothing. There isn't anything wrong with doing nothing. It's only wrong to do nothing because everyone around us is doing so much. We're not actually supposed to be productive. I don't think productivity gives you self-esteem necessarily. Well, you said you were doing nothing and I agree. Someone's sitting in a basement. In your scenario, when you painted where someone's just like laying in bed and never getting up.

Yeah. There's also biological things that would make you depressed in that scenario, but I'm not going to get on board with self-esteem is about other people. Okay. I accept that. Monica, I'm going to side with Dax here. Oh, come on! Yeah, this is like one of those... You're just mad at me now. What was the game? It's your own medicine.

No, yeah, I do think it's really hard to separate your self-esteem from other people's opinions, either of you or what other people think is worthwhile and important. Now, solitary animals, they don't need that.

And if we were solitary creatures, we'd be like, you know, this is how I do it. I don't give a fuck how anyone else does it because there's no penalty to pay if other people don't agree. Yeah, there's such strong internalized standards of what's important, what's respectable, what's worthy. I don't think you can ever detach yourself from those entirely. I mean, I think both are ways to inflate your ego. I think self-esteem can inflate your ego and other people can inflate your ego, but I don't think those are the same thing.

I agree with that. I think the big overall statement is you're going to pursue these things. They're not going to result in the thing you think you need because we don't live in an era where my status determines whether I'm going to eat or not or sleep inside. Just like I recognize that my instinctual pull to eat everything at 7-Eleven on the candy bar rack is not going to result in how I want to feel. I think it's just owning it and then trying to fight it and transcend it. Or channel it in a useful way.

I think that's what you're saying. Find a meaningful route to status. Yeah. Yeah, I don't have any issue with that. This is why though, I think we need to redefine the way that people think about success. I see so many people say success is achieving my goals. And I don't think that's enough because sometimes you hit targets that don't bring you the meaning

or joy that you were seeking. I think we should think about success as living our values. And I guess that's what I'm driving at. That if you were to sit down and think about, Dax, you just did this. You said, I don't like when other people are selfish. You are concluding that even though you don't think you're always a generous person, you aspire to generosity. That's something you prize. It's a principle of yours. But here's where you and I will differ. I will go one step further and say, because I'm selfish, I want people to love me. I'm going, I don't like it in other people. Other people clearly wouldn't like it in me. And I want a lot of people to like and love me. I don't object to that. If you need a selfish reason to care about others, you can have it.

And you and Kristen, as we've talked about, have pulled each other toward a healthy equilibrium on that spectrum. So once you identify that as a principle, you have to start measuring your success by am I living up to the standards of generosity that I believe in? Not by when I helped somebody,

did they like me more? And did I earn status from them? That's where I think you get yourself into deep trouble and a vicious cycle. I do too. Yes. And I think it's an addiction. Wow, it happened.

Consensus. Here we go. Adam, I love you. I have to give you bad news. I still dislike you. You were on the leaderboard. You were here often. And now this is three.

But Sedaris has been here like four. Four. Yeah, I think he's, no, four. Four times. So you're going to have to come back really soon just if you want to stay on top of this. Well, you know, I'm not interested in winning the most frequent guest competition. Yes, you are. Because I keep getting notes from people saying, I heard Monica and Dax talk about you on Armchair.

That's true. You appear a lot. Yeah. That's true. You appear a lot. Yeah. That's true. So I feel like I'm in the conversation even when I'm not here. You are. You very much are.

But then I'm like, oh no, I don't want it to be about me. I hope that there's an idea that was interesting in a conversation or I opened the door to a guest that you didn't know existed

but then loved. That's common. And that distinction matters, doesn't it? Yes. If I were your therapist, I would say, Adam,

people would still love you if you wanted to be a part of... But I'm not trying to get them to love me. That's the thing. I would rather that they think about what I say and have no opinion of me than they love me and blindly accept my ideas. Sure, because you don't want to be surrounded by lemmings, though. That's just selfish, too.

You don't want a bunch of bozos around you like, what do you say next? Oh, my God. A lot of people do want that. Yeah. So I agree that this is probably the better approach. I want to publicly thank you because you are one of the few people I am able to ask advice from. Like the fact that I would just share the Sapolsky thing with you last week. I don't really do that. You don't do that often actually. I don't do that at all. You are terrible at anything that's not in the self-reliance bucket. Yeah. Horrible at asking for help. Horrible at accepting help. Yeah, it's painful. This has to be our 2024 DACS growth goal. Less self-reliance. Yeah, or being willing to rely on others. Well, actually,

the smart list example was a good one. I think there are guests that they get that you don't because you don't realize you know someone who would happily open that door. Well, actually, the smart list example was a good one. I think there are guests that you don't because you don't realize you know someone who would happily open that door. Well, no, he won't ask. Okay, so he realizes it, but he's, yeah, that's what I just said. I mean, that's a little bit of an infuriating part of that conversation because, yeah, I'm not famous, but I'll ask. Yeah, you're great at asking.

I have to ask. That's part of the job. And so they're using their assets to do that, and you're not. So if you're great at asking. I have to ask. That's part of the job. And so they're using their assets to do that. And you're not. So if you're upset. Monica just said you're not doing your job. No, I know. It's no secret I'm not doing my job.

No, you're not doing that. You're not doing what they're doing. And so now I feel bad because it's like, oh, I can't get those people. But okay, I'm going to defend myself a tiny bit. So yeah, I didn't ask Downey for five years. And he's a good friend of mine. That's someone I should have asked. Yes, why didn't you?

Standing where we're at now, whatever happened was perfect for me. He showed up when he wanted to be here. And we had a fucking blast. And it wasn't a minute too soon. And I'm delighted that that's how it happened. But then you can't be jealous of them. Well, I can. It's just, is it logical?

Well, you can't do both. It's annoying if you do both. And I'm going to pile on and join Team Monica here because you don't have the counterfactual decks. You don't know how great it could have been three years ago. And then this could have been the next iteration. By the way, I loved that conversation between the two of you until you started talking about cars.

And I was completely lost. Sure, a lot of people felt that way. The rapport between the two of you and the banter, it cracked me up. But I want to know, why are you uncomfortable asking somebody that you know well, or a stranger for that matter? You have a huge platform. People gain status by coming on Armchair Expert. I have even heard people in Hollywood, who you think would be famous enough that they

can get anything they want, aspire to be on Armchair. Send us their emails. Definitely will. Offline. Send me, sincechair. Send us their email. Definitely will. Offline. Send me, since I'm the one reaching out. Yeah, Dax will not be doing any work here. This is so easy to answer. I don't even have to dig very deep.

I am not worthy of your love if I am a drain on you. I need to add value to your life at all times in order for you to love me. Why don't you realize that this is a gift to your guest as opposed to a drain? I could find my way there through that logic. You could. I feel like in your head, this is a fledgling podcast. You have 32 listeners. It's about to go away.

I don't want to impose on my friend to do this big favor for me as opposed to let me share my platform with somebody. Okay, I'm going to add one little wrinkle though, which is when I know the people, they are right to have some concern that they know what goes down in here. We're going to get honest in here. That's not everyone's cup of tea. And especially if I know them and they know I'm doing it. It's like friends of mine that I know are sober and famous. Are they going to come in here and act like they're not sober? Maybe they've never said they were sober.

I don't want to put them in the position where they feel like, why aren't they saying it? But you're making the decision for them as opposed to letting them be responsible adults to choose for themselves. I mean, that's happened a lot on the show where we ask people and they say no. And in my opinion, I feel like depending on the person, but I have one particular in my mind where I'm like, oh, they probably don't want to come on a show like ours. And that's not upsetting. That actually is understandable. And they probably shouldn't if they're't want to come on a show like ours. And that's not upsetting. That actually is understandable. And they probably shouldn't if they're not going to come do what we do here. And then if they go on SmartList, I don't feel like, oh, but they went on SmartList. I feel like, yeah, because they're asking their guests to do a different thing than we are.

So it doesn't hurt. Yeah. I don't think they've asked any of their guests if they've been molested very often. Well, we haven't asked. We haven't asked that either, to be fair. People have told us. But you've created the opening. I'm not going to name any names.

I can think of multiple people in your life who, I don't know if they would say it this way, but my read is they're hurt that they haven't been asked. And you think you're imposing on them when they would love to be asked. And the last thing they want to do is invite themselves onto your podcast. Oh my God. Because that feels like-

Well, if I know you. An ego trip. Please invite yourself onto the show. It's a strike. We need help. Look, it's ridiculous. My wife will ask anybody for anything and I watch the whole interaction.

They're delighted. They get esteem out of doing it. She answers every request. I thought I was worth reaching out to. It feels great, right? And you realize people will feel that way when you ask them too. I don't feel that way, but I aspire. We'll put that on the 2024 list. Yeah, I think that's fair. I feel like you could get there though. Okay, great. Adam, I adore you. I really appreciate having you at my disposal to ask questions and guidance and advice. And I really,

really appreciate it. You don't ask enough. Okay. I'll hit you more. I ask you too much. I disagree. I email you a lot. You email much less often than many people in my life. Okay. And they're always really easy requests. Like, do you know this person?

It's very nice. You answer so fast. It's so nice. It's unsettling, actually. You're so busy. I'm still just trying to one-up Dax and be more responsive and better at getting guests for your show than he is.

You're doing a great job. Well, you've proven that to be the case. You've had Malcolm now multiple times because we've had a lot of guests that were solely because of you. Well, Adam, I love you.

You're staying. We're having supper and I look forward to that and maybe we'll dance even more at supper. Oh, I can't wait. All right. I love you.

Thank you for having me. Next up is the fact check. I don't even care about facts. I just want to get into your pants. Do you have a cold? No, I just swallowed some meat, but I'm just like, I think it went up my nose. A lot of people have colds. Do they?

Yeah. In Atlanta, people have colds there. Do your parents have a cold? My mom had a cold. Did you have a cold? No, I didn't. But I was getting paranoid about her cold.

Let's talk about it on here. I don't know. I feel bad. I feel bad. You do? Yeah, I do. I do. Why? It's okay if mom gets a cold. No, exactly.

My mom had a cold while I was home, and it was sad. I don't want her to have a cold. And now you have a cold. No, I don't. I'm having some, I don't even know what it is. I guess it's taco meat. A goulash. It's a goulash. It's a goulash.

Taco meat covered in some good culture cottage cheese. And I just think some of the burger got in the wrong pipe. It might be in my lungs now. Beefy burger. I have beefy burger in my lungs now. Yeah, my mom had a cold and it was sad. No one wants your mom to have a cold, right? But did it eat away at her ability to serve

you? She was going to not make dinner the last night, but then she did end up making it. She did. Okay. She rallied. Yeah, she did. But, you know, she'll say like, I really hope you don't get it. But then she's just like coughing a ton. Sure. Well, just like coughing a ton. Sure, well. Were you starting to look at her like she had Ebola? No, it was one of those like once. You started getting annoyed.

I was getting annoyed. Sure, because she's a parent. Yeah, and she can't help it. She's just coughing. Right. So then I feel bad. But also she shouldn't say, I hope you don't get it, and then cough all over the place. Because then you don't really care if I get it, right?

Well, no, no. I definitely think you can care and not want you to get it. Yeah. And then also you have a cough and then also be maybe lazy about how well you're covering it up. Right, right. But I think she was sincere in her desire for you not to get a cold. I don't think she wanted me to get it. She just wasn't doing a ton to prevent you from getting it.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Look, I didn't get it. Right. And you think by now you would know. Yeah, I think so. Because this was how long ago?

I mean, she had it pretty much a day after I got there. Okay, so you definitely would have, yeah. Yeah. Well, you and I, it sounds like we both dodged bullets. Oh, tell me about yours. Delta had strap. Oh, no. And I think the other two felt yucky, but they didn't get tested when they went to the doctor for some reason, I think.

But presumably they all had it. Wow. I don't know. But the point is that strep was in the house. Oh, man. And I didn't get that. I was out of town for that, which I was grateful for. Yeah, that's a not fun one.

No, because it kills when you swallow, right? Yeah. I guess we're heading into cold season, aren't we? This is kind of timely. Tis the season. Yeah. Tis the damn season. That's a Taylor Swift song.

Oh, it is. She had a damn to it? Yeah. Okay. Tis the damn season. Yeah. She's feeling naughtier, you know. She's swearing a lot in her songs

She swears a lot Lavender Haze is definitely an adult song Yeah, you love that one Well, I think it's definitely for adult activities It's not like I'm on the bleachers over here It's like, no, I'm in this bed over here Yeah, it's a bedroom song It is

Oh, God If I could rank the sexiest Taylor Swift songs. Yeah. Look, okay. Here we go. Let's start from scratch. Let's start over. Let's start all over. Welcome home. Thank you. There is a article, by now everyone's read it and I posted it, but there's an article from the New York Times from Taffy. I forget her last name.

We'll call her Taffy. Okay. That's an incredible first name for a New York Times journalist. I know. And she wrote an article after she went to the concert about Taylor. And it's so good. It's so spot on. She nails it.

You like it much better than my debrief of Eris. Your debrief was great. The op-ed I was fancying that I could write is the one better than my debrief of Eris. Your debrief was great. The op-ed I was fancying that I could write is the one she actually wrote. Kind of. Yeah, but you didn't have dissimilar thoughts. Oh, great. You had similar thoughts. She just really did a great, great job.

So I recommend reading that. Okay, I'll read that. Taffy, Brodesser, and Ackner. Wozers. Yeah. We'll stick with Taffy. Anydesser, and Ackner. Wozers. Yeah. We'll stick with Taffy. Anywho, so— Are you going to read it out loud?

Oh, my God. Should I? Well, it would be in keeping with— Oh, my God. It's a ding, ding, ding. Let's see how far I get without you telling me to stop. Oh, okay. I mean, so she's known for doing celebrity profiles,

and this article is about basically why Taylor doesn't need one. Oh, okay. Great. Oh, I'm going to like this. Okay, I'll start reading. Okay, great. Should I really? It's really long.

No, it's not going to work. But read me the first seven sentences. Let's see if I get. Yeah, I mean, I cried. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Wow. Oh, my God. It always acts like I don't have New York Times, and I do. I mean, I cried. Oh, my goodness. Okay. Wow. Oh, my God.

It always acts like I don't have New York Times, and I do. I know. And you got to sign in. It's so annoying. Let me try to find it again on my phone. Thank God we have all these devices. While you look for that, can I now answer your question about my sweater? Is it new?

Yeah. It's not new. Okay. But what is new is I watched the Beckham documentary. Fuck. Good. We need to talk about that. I can't wait to talk about it.

Okay. So clearly I'm only going to wear wool sweaters now and denim. Yeah. Because he looks so gorgeous. But you're not wearing denim and this is a gray outfit. Well, these are jeans. Oh, you count that as jeans. What are you counting it as? Like a slack. Well, these are jeans. Oh, you count that as jeans. What are you counting it as?

Like a slack. Well, okay. It's good. I like it. I don't know where he's getting these jeans. Do you know? No, but Victoria Beckham is a huge fashion designer. He's probably wearing like Armani or something.

Well, what are they? That's what I need to know because they look like just cool Levi's. They don't look They could be cool Levi's. hoity-toity. I have it in my mind I'm going to find. Isn't there places

that sell used Levi's? Yeah, yeah. Do you know about it? Where is it? There's a place that Chris and I were just supposed to go to. Taffy's Melrose?

Chris and I were just supposed to go and I couldn't go but she went and they have and I don't know if they do men's, but I'll ask. Okay. But they have all of these old vintage Levi's, and then they custom fit them to you. Oh, fuck.

Okay, I'm going. I'm going to go. Yeah. Because I have to look as close to Beckham as I can. I know. He looks great. How pleasing is he to look at? I know.

His face. Charlie and I could not. We were like just losing our minds about what he is as a person. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can't get into this. Okay.

So it's a great article. And I'm going to actually read it. Really read it. I want to hear. It's so good. I'm still going to try actually while we talk about Beckham. But because now I feel. Are you going to be able to do both?

I'm a little worried about you doing both. We'll see. Okay. Were you so horny for him? I mean, I do think he's so hot. Yeah.

So, yes, but, he keeps saying, I never wanted to leave. Like, a hundred times he says that.

Are you finished? Yeah, yeah. Okay. To leave Manchester, wherever he was at. Manchester, wherever he was at. Yes, wherever he was at. No, I loved it there. But then he leaves and he acts like he's always the victim in that circumstance.

But you know what I mean? It's like, it's very subtle. But he really was forced out of Manchester United. He was, but like, what else? I don't know. I have some suspicions about. That he's got a spin, a little bit of spin on some of these stories? Yes, that he, like most people, want to rise up.

Yeah, yeah. And I think it would have been okay if he had just said, yeah, it felt like maybe it was time for me to move on. Here's where I'll defend him a bit, and this is what makes me a Becky. If there's Swifties, I'm going to be a Becky, which is a David Beckham fan. Great. Just invented it. Trademark. Taffy, put it in an article so that it's in the vernacular.

She should write it. She'd be so good at synthesizing whatever you're about to say. Yes, and I regret that you have to hear it from me and not Taffy. No, I'm being serious. But the amount of abuse he received from all of England, from his totally understandable and not even

relevant retaliation from getting his, tackled and then his face pushed into the ground. I know. I think having gone through that experience where he was like the golden boy and then enemy number one of an entire country. I was telling Jethro this morning, we've not had that. No.

We don't have that. Exactly. Maybe the one thing we're nicer than, than England. Like somehow we would, we just wouldn't do that. So having had that experience, I'm sure if he did want to leave Manchester United, he's like, they're going to kill me. Like, they're going to kill. It's so dangerous to piss these people off. Yeah.

That I can see where maybe if even if it was a little bit, you know. I just feel like now it's a retrospect. They're older and they're looking back on it with some, hopefully some clarity. Yeah. But it's got to be a deep wound. Exactly. A full year of people screaming at you every time you left your house. Oh, no, that's impossible.

It was like dangerous. When he was showing up at soccer games and there's like 10,000 people surrounding the bus banging on it, I'd be like, oh my God, guys, we're about to get murdered. Yeah. They're a different level over there of celebrity obsession. That's the most obvious example. You keep hearing that the English have tall poppy syndrome more than us,

but I'm like, we have it here too. Everywhere has it. Anyone that's too big for their britches, they get blasted. That's the time I was like, no, they have it really bad. Because all the coaches were so mad that he had a girlfriend that was famous.

He was playing perfectly, yet they were all mad at him him felt like they had to sit on him because he was famous i don't know well i think what they didn't want to draw so much attention to that because but because why i think because everyone's so crazy there that and the tabloids are so, so intense that then they would just never get a reprieve, which did sort of end up happening. What a great doc. I didn't know that level of crazy that they had gone through together. I also didn't even know how good of a player he was. I didn't know if he was just like insanely famous because he's so gorgeous and had cool tattoos and also was a good player i didn't realize he was like a spectacular phenom was so great yeah it is one of it was so interesting seeing their marriage i have a lot of respect for her sort of having just a very full understanding that this is kind of what he's meant to do on this earth is play soccer or football.

I hated in the dog when he went to America and then he said soccer. Oh, he code switched. You hated it he said soccer oh he code switched you hated it you felt like he had betrayed his culture okay i turned into one of those english people sure betrayed sold out his countrymen turncoat a benedict arnold yeah she recognized that obviously and even though it bothered her of course. She let soccer sort of rule their life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, she's a huge institution on her own and didn't really let that get in.

It was just very interesting. She's very strong. She's incredibly strong. That's obvious. It made me want to have another go with her after watching the doc. Did you feel that way at all? I did, but I also understood our interview with her more.

Same. Yeah. Anywho, well, I'm glad you watched that. What if we had a new policy? We only interviewed people who had four-part documentaries. That way we really felt like we knew who they were and we could really tee up the purpose. I know. It's going to be a—

That's limiting. We're going to go from 200 episodes a year down to probably 13. Also, it feels a little like a cheat because we're learning everything. Just be repeating what this great doc made, which is what we're doing right now too. I'm so glad you watched the whole thing.

It's so good. It's really good. It's very, very good. And then I started the messy doc. Oh, how's that? I've only seen really good. It's very, very good. And then I started the messy doc. Oh, how's that? I've only seen one episode and it's great. But what's a huge bonus I wasn't expecting, because now I'm like, well, I guess now I like soccer docs. Sure. Right?

I don't watch, I don't know about soccer. Yeah. Clearly. And then I watched this messy one. Yeah. I can't even say his name right. Is it messy or messy? I think messy.

Messy. Messy? Messy. Not messy. No. Messy. Right. Yeah. Messy. Not messy. No, messy. It sounds so derogatory. Messy. Like he's just messy.

Yeah. No, he is. He's messy on the court. Yeah. It's not called a court, the pit. It's called a field,

but they call it a pit in England. That was Kim. Or pitch. Okay. Get into the messy doc. Yep. And David's a huge part of it. Because David's the one who brought him to America.

To his team. I know. And now I want one of those jerseys. They're pink with black writing. They're so stylish. Oh, God. I also want the couch he sits on the whole interview. I'm like, I have to get this couch.

Oh, my God. I want everything in his kitchen. Do you see how much he cleans? Yeah, that part was disturbing. I know, he's so OCD. couch. Oh my God. I want everything in his kitchen. Do you see how much he cleans? Yeah, that part was disturbing. I know, he's so OCD. He's so OCD. I love it. His closet was perfect with the tees

where you could see what tea was under. I want to do that. I was watching him clean. For anyone who's not watched, he cleans everything. And he has this outdoor kitchen he cooks like one mushroom on. And the amount of meticulous preparation to prepare this one mushroom is mind-boggling. And then he cleaned everything for about what seemed, it was edited, but three, four hours of scrubbing and polishing metal. And what I thought, the lie I tell myself is I can't be that way because I don't have time.

But this guy, he's got a busy schedule too. And apparently there's time to clean your shit as well as he does and still be what he is. That is just a derivative of his personality. At the end of the doc, they do say sports. Well, soccer, but sports probably. They're addicts. And they're chasing a highs. And then once they're not doing that anymore, they have to- Get out the Brillo pads.

Exactly. They have to shift their addiction. And his addiction is now making one mushroom at a time. And then cleaning for hours. I could not wrap my head around why he was making one mushroom at a time. I bet it was so delicious. But why can't he make like 40? Too much cleanup.

It would have been three days of cleanup. The stove he's cooking on looks considerably better when he's done than it did when it started, and it looked brand new. I know. Yeah. I want him to make me some mushrooms. Some mushroom? And mussels. And so one mushroom.

I want him to make me some mushroom. Yeah. Oh, I could mess with you right now so bad Whoa No, you're gonna give me a seizure Oh, sorry, sorry My watch is in the hot spot of the sun It is It's a magnifying glass

Is that your same watch? Oh, yeah Okay And Beckham, they said he's become a figure of worship. Maybe when he was playing in Spain for Real Madrid. Yeah. They were calling him a figure of worship. I was like, oh, wow.

He got to deity status really quick. Well, he was. I worship him now. Anyway, don't do that. Can I just do your teeth? Oh, my God. Rob, can you see that? What do they look like?

Very bright. That's impossible. Okay, what else? Oh, I have something I want to talk about. Oh, great. We have so many open ends. Sorry, listeners. I want to talk about. Oh, great. We have so many open ends. Sorry, listeners. I want to talk about this. Why, when you go out of town, when you come back, or actually,

I don't know if you'll experience this, because I think it's only if you're living by yourself. Okay. Really quick. What day did you get back? Yesterday? Yesterday. Okay. Why does the house smell funny? Do you know what I'm talking about? There's a very specific smell. Almost dusty? Yesterday. Okay. Why does the house smell funny? Do you know what I'm talking about? There's a very specific smell. Almost dusty? Yes. It's like musty and dusty. Because I don't, musty and dusty.

Yeah. Okay. I think it's because the doors haven't been opened and closed. It just like becomes stagnant air. But. And then that smell of dust starts pervading. Like that fast? I mean. I think so then that smell of dust starts pervading. Like that fast?

I mean. I think so. Well, you were gone for a wee. Ten days. You were gone for ten days. Yeah. Wow, that was quite a trip. I know, what? Okay, is it just, I guess the answer is just that it's musty and dusty.

And it's because there's no coming and going. There's no air circulating. I feel like maybe it's because no one's's breathing in there and getting their breath in there. Human smell? Oh, I don't know. Well, I'm sure that does change things, but I think it's more the doors opening and closing. Okay. I mean, I don't have very good insulation, so I feel like air would come in and out.

It would pass in and out. Yeah. I don't know about that. Okay. All right. Was there any progress made on your house while you were gone? Because that can be fun when you return after 10 days and you see that there's more work has been done.

He gave me some. We got the edges of a gate while I was gone. That's fun. Drywall too. Yeah, drywall in the garage. It looks done. Yeah, it's real well. Wow.

I'm afraid to say that, but it does look like it's eminent. That's very exciting. But you didn't notice anything, no new structures? I haven't been when. Wow. I'm afraid to say that, but those look like it's eminent. That's very exciting. But you didn't notice anything, no new structures? I haven't been there. Okay. Well, that's hard to see if you're not there. Okay. I just want to hear more highlights of-

My trip? New York and Atlanta. Okay. Two of the great cities in America you were in both. Great cities, both great. Well, yeah, actually, because they were both so folly. Being on the East Coast, I've decided it's imperative for my mental health. Okay.

To spend at least a couple days on the East Coast around this time every year. Yeah, that sounds like a good policy. Because the actual leaves are out. Yes. And falling. Full bloom. And blowing. Red and orange. Yes. And falling. Full bloom. And blowing. Red and orange. Yes.

Yes. Very autumnal. Let's see. In New York, lots of shopping. Oh. How do you, did you bring an empty suitcase or did you purchase a new suitcase while you're there? No.

I made a lot of mistakes this time with the suitcase. Okay. I came with it pretty full. Okay. That's a mistake. Tactical error. Yes, it was a tactical error, and I just figured I could make it work, which I did, but I did break a platter. Uh-oh, that you had purchased.

Yeah. Were you really bummed? Yeah. Can you glue it back together? No. No? It's in too many pieces? It's pretty shattered.

When I got to my parents' house, I realized it was shattered. Ceramic or glass? Ceramic. And you couldn't glue it? Too many pieces? Yeah. Yeah. Like shards.

So that was sad, but I did buy a lot of stuff. I bought this sweater. It's great. Thank you. Yeah, beautiful. Very I bought this sweater. It's great. Thank you. Yeah, beautiful. Very Beckham-esque. It is. And I bought a lot.

I did a lot of shopping. Okay, great. I squeezed it all into the suitcase. I sat on the suitcase. Obviously, I broke the platter during that time. Oh, right. Were you bouncing? Yeah, but it was covered in, you know, bubbles.

So I thought that would be fine. Yeah. But no. And then I thought to myself, well, I obviously can't buy anything at home. Right. Because there's zero space. Yeah. But then when the platter broke and I took the platter out, I thought, oh, maybe I can buy one thing.

Okay. So I bought this dress. A very thin item. Oh, perfect. Okay. So I bought this dress. A thin item. A very thin item. Oh, perfect. Okay, so you got that dress in Atlanta. But then I also bought three Halloween gnomes. Oh, you can't do that. And they were thick.

You got to have those shipped. No, I shoved them. How big are they? I shoved them in. I just closed them all in there. Ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag? It was so much stuff. How big were the gnomes?

Hold your hands up. I'll try to describe it to the listener. Sitting? Yeah. Like this. Size of a football. Height of a football. That's exactly a football.

Okay. But when their hat is up, it's this big. Okay. They have hats. Hold on. Keep doing that. It's like the F1 trophy. It is, but I don't know if that's a ubiquitous enough reference.

You're just supposed to have a photo with one, though. I'm going to say that's 14 inches. Okay. So that's 14 inches. That's the tallest one. Then there was a little smaller guy. I don't understand how a thin platter wouldn't fit, but you got three footballs in your bag that were also breakable.

The platter fit. It just broke. It was fragile. The g okay. It was fragile. Oh, okay. The gnomes aren't fragile. They're cloth. Oh, they're cloth. Yeah. I was picturing.

Okay. They're not ceramic. Oh, you thought they were. No, no, no, no, no. They're cloth. They were cloth. Like stuffies? I'll show you a picture.

I'll send one to you right now. Okay. And these are stuffies. Yeah. Okay. Oh, my God. Speaking of stuffies, you know what didn't fit? The one thing that did not fit in my suitcase, I had to get rid of it.

Liberty? Yep, Liberty. No way. Got rid of it? I didn't get rid. It's still in my parents' house. Throw it in the trash. But no, no.

But I tried to stuff him in one of my shoes. I cannot believe of all the things that wouldn't fit. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Look, I'm also really not good at packing. It's not a strong suit of mine. But, Liberti's still in my parents' house.

But wow, is it disgusting. It's even worse in person. Did you smell it? What is it smelling? It doesn't smell bad. It smells, well, it smells a little nasty and dusty. It's covered in shit, but it doesn't smell like that It doesn't smell bad. It smells, well, it smells a little musty and dusty. Because it's covered in shit, but it doesn't smell like that. It's not shit. It's just dirt.

Okay. Well. I don't know if it can really be revived, but I am still planning on. It's still your retirement plan. Exactly. Right. Okay. Just sent you a picture of the gnomes.

Okay. Let me get this out. And these are for Halloween or these are for Christmas? Okay. I have some Christmas gnomes already. Oh, you've already got them set up? Yeah. Oh, how cute.

Oh, my God. Aren't they cute? I don't even know if you know what one of them is. Oh, fuck. Well, they're both, I think. Uh-oh. What? I think they're ZZ Top gnomes.

Wait. Are they wearing sunglasses with the big beards? They're not wearing sunglasses. That's, gnomes have. Have no face? Yeah. Oh, I see now. These are stuffies.

I thought they were like statues. No. Okay. They're just cute little decor. They're very cute. And do you think my, do you think it was right, my sizing? Well, they're seated in the photo which is tricky yeah but yes i think the one with the plaid hat is 14 inches tall and then i think his

sidekick is 10 inches tall and then what about the other one there's a third yes yep it's separate it's not with the other two. No, I moved him to a different location. Did you send me two pictures? Uh-huh. Oh, I just saw the first. Okay. Yeah, these are definitely ZZ Top gnomes. Gnomes don't have big beards.

Yes, they do. Oh, they do? They all have beards. Oh, okay. Well, I guess maybe then ZZ Top is lighting off gnome style. Yeah, the original gnome. Oh, gee. Oh, yeah, Oh, yeah. And it works.

Okay. Now, some facts. Although I do think there's a lot we haven't covered, but that's... Absolutely. I was in Austin for a week. I know.

Let's talk about it. Well, I'll just hit you with the highlights. Exercised every day. Great. Not every day. Missed a day. But at the LA Fitness Gym

every morning, we went to Barton Springs every day. Oh, wow. And it became this great routine. We would go immediately after we got home from the track.

So this is the first trip I went at dark. It's open until 10 o'clock at night, which I didn't even know. I thought it was, I assumed it closed at like four or five.

Yeah. It's open until 10 p.m. And one of the nights we got there, it's dark out and you go for a night swim and the skyline's lit up in a very beautiful,

romantic way. It's very enchanted at night. Ooh it's very enchanted at night yeah it was great so barton springs every day dairy queen every night every night we hit dairy queen we always just made it like with three minutes left we'd be doing something fun we'd be engaged in conversation and we would tell the people we must leave now because we only have five minutes to get to Dairy Queen. This amused so many people we were hanging out with that that was the priority, which it was. And we went and saw live music. The band was incredible talking with fun people. We got to go right now. Sorry, we're out. Got two items each night. It was great. And then we, a new restaurant, tried a new restaurant, Loro, which is incredible on Lamar. Oh.

Fuck, it's Korean Smoke Barbecue House. Oh. It's by the guy who owns the coolest Franklin Barbecue in downtown, which is an institution. Oh, yeah, that's, yep. And the Uchi guy. And the Japanese restaurant on Lamar that's huge. Oh, that we went to? We went to Uchiko, but yeah, same.

So those two bonded, right? Yeah, I've been to Loro. Oh, you have? It's great, isn't it, I've been to Loro. Oh, you have? It's great, isn't it? Yeah, it's really good. What kind of food? I had this crazy burger with caramelized onions and cheddar. This kind of a Thai curry chicken over rice.

Their brisket was insane. Wow, okay, eclectic mix. Because it's Korean and smokehouse. Oh, nice. Aaron Franklin and Tyson Cole. There we go. Oh, nice. Aaron Franklin and Tyson Cole. There we go. Big shout outs to Aaron Franklin

and Tyson Cole. And this beautiful cabbage salad with like a peanut, ginger kind of a dressing. It was outrageously good. And I did drifting with Peter Attia.

I had so much fun with Peter Attia. I went to his house twice. He made dinner, which was incredible. Fun. Super interesting people there because of the people he knows.

It was fascinating. Cool. It was great. By the end, though, flying out yesterday, Southwest, middle seat, sitting next to Charlie. Terrible idea.

Oh, my God. Just couldn't be a worse idea than sitting next to Charlie. Did he fart a lot? No, but he's too wide and I'm too wide. We should never be seated next to each other, especially not on a Southwest flight. Find a Burbank at least? Yes.

That's good. That's what the whole cost-benefit analysis was. Yeah. But we were on the hedonic treadmill for four days straight. Great. Just one fun thing after another, one even sweeter tasting thing after another. And then you reach like a dopamine max and you just have a crash coming.

Oh. You know, if you just indulge yourself. Did you do that? Did you indulge on this trip to a level? In New York, yeah. And when you got back home, did you need to like reset for a day and like lick your wounds?

Yeah, a little, I guess, sure. What were the big indulgences in New York? Shopping, eating. Oh, the headset. Oh, speaking of burgers and salads. You got yourself over to Emily? Got myself over to Emily. It was still so

good. Someone at the restaurant came up and said, we're here because of you guys. That happened to me too when I was there, which makes me so happy. And someone else on the street also was saying they were going there because of listening. And I've never felt better about an endorsement. Yes.

It's so good. It delivers every time. Yeah, that broccoli salad. It's outrageous. I'm going to make that tonight. Kristen made it. It's in the cookbook, I think, so I'm gonna make it. It turned out really good. It tastes nearly as good

as it did at the restaurant. We went to a Thai diner. It's a hot spot. Oh, a CNBC? Yeah. Was it hard or easy to get into? Hard, but it was so good. What part of the city? I thought maybe we... You know, we were kind of always hoping

maybe we'd see Taylor, Molly and I. Yeah, of course, because she's your Matt and Ben now camping. Yeah, exactly. Every morning we'd wake up and there'd be some picture of her out in New York. Oh, I thought she lived in Nashville. She lives in New York? No, I think she has a home there, but I think

she has multiple homes. Anyway. Anywho. Okay, this is for Adam Grant. Oh, Adam Anyway. Okay. This is for Adam Grant. Oh, Adam Grant. Okay, so he talks about the rip entry while diving, the sound.

So I'm going to play it. The lack of sound? No, it's a sound before you, like as you hit the water. Okay. Okay. Last dive of the penultimate round join Hong Chin from China back three and a half somersaults

huge difficulty did you run I mean kind of I couldn't tell what was what without seeing the video. Yeah, did I hear the diving board? No, the whole point is hearing it. You want to hear it again? Yeah, let's do it again. Let's see if I can get it the second time.

The last dive of the penultimate round. Join Hongchen from China back. Three and a half somersaults tucked. Huge difficulty. Back, three and a half somersaults tucked. Huge difficulty. Like, you didn't hear. The noise, it sounds kind of like a diving board noise.

It does. I think that's the noise, though. It is the diving board noise? No, the diving board is not making a noise. There's no diving board. No, but I think when you don't see the video, it sounds like that would be the diving board noise. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no.

But there's no diving sound of entering the water okay now you know now it is now now you kind of i don't know if i could pick that sound out from a group of four other signs okay the theory that good at some parts of school but he was very good at math yeah algebra physics language so okay so he's probably quite good yeah as good as we love those stories we do yeah we want that to be true but it's just not you know I was texting a little bit with Adam recently oh cause he had listened to Sapolsky it was occurring to me in that moment

oh interesting Sapolsky and his book are virtually opposite ends of the spectrum oh for sure yeah it's like almost opposite books coming out at the same time by two people I respect enormously. Which to me, I actually take comfort in.

I think that would be discouraging to some people, but to me it proves this prevailing theory I have, which is like, at best you're 60% right. It's just like, here's two geniuses, I believe in both their arguments, and they're opposite. Yeah. Okay, we talked about Wabi Sabi. A offshoot of Wabi Sabi is this. Is Wabi Halas? Yes. No, is, I don't know how to pronounce it, but I'm going to try.

It's been a while. It's been too long, actually. You've been too long, actually. If I seize tonight, you're going to feel bad. Okay. All right. Kintsugi. K-I-N-T-S-U-G-I.

Is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold. With gold? It's really cool. So do you see? This is what you should have done with your platter. I thought about it. But I don't know how to do Kintsugi. Melt gold. It's a Death Cab for Cutie album too.

Oh, really? Kintsugi, yeah. Oh. It sounds like Death Cab Kintsugi a little bit. Death Cab Kintsugi? That's right. Kintsugi. Death Cab Kintsugi. That's right. Kintsugi. Death Cab Kintsugi.

Yeah, I mean, of course. Right? It sounds like they mispronounced that. That's how they got the name of their van. Anyway, it's gorgeous, and I want some. Okay, great. I got to imagine that they're pricey. Probably.

If it's got a bunch of gold in it as a binding agent. Yeah. Okay, he mentions this essay by Paul Graham that different cities have different currencies of status. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I found that it's called cities and ambition. And it's really a theory that great cities attract ambitious people and then in different ways. I will say it seems like it's just his thoughts. Okay. It just his thoughts. Okay. It's his observation. It's his observation.

I don't think it's, there's no stats. Blind clinical trials. No. But it is interesting. People can look it up if they want. I'm not going to read it. Okay. Could you give an example of a couple cities though?

Yes, I can. I'd love to hear what. Okay. I'll read a little bit. Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message. You could do more.

You should try harder. The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all, you should make more money. There are other messages, too, of course. You could be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer. What I like about Boston, or rather Cambridge, is that the message there is you should be smarter. You really should

get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to. Yeah, these are very anecdotal observations, but I like them. When you ask what messages city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the valley sends is you should be more powerful. That's not quite the same message New York sends. Power matters in New York, too, of course, but New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. That's not impressive. Well, to us.

Yeah, yeah. But I think he's saying if you live there and you're a billionaire, that means a lot. Doesn't really matter how you got it. Berkeley, you should live better. L.A. is fame-based. That feels like a cheap version of it. How about creativity? Right, but I think it's being a little more dramatic and probably more truthful. What's Chicago? More drunk? It doesn't sound... I think it's being a little more dramatic and probably more truthful. Okay.

What's Chicago? More drunk. It doesn't sound... Probably. More drunk. I don't think it includes Chicago as an ambitious city. Sorry, Rob. But I didn't read it all, so I'm not so sure. What would you say it is, Rob?

I mean, you hit it spot on for drunk. No. That would negate his theory because it's about, I don't think being more drunk would make you ambitious. Well, sometimes it takes a lot to stay really hammered for hours on end and keep plotting from bar to bar. Here's what I'll say. I don't suppose that Chicago has a higher or lower rate of whatever. I don't actually have the opinion. But what I will say is for the people that do go out in Chicago, it's worth observing.

If you're on the street around 1 a.m., people are en route to another bar that should definitely be going either home or to a hospital. You see a level of intoxication in chicago at night and you know where the like the 4 a.m bars are yeah yeah people are sloshed yeah which again we get a lot of that in detroit too so i think i can relate but the only other place i've observed this outside of the country is wellington new zealand where again i don't think the overall drinking rate is higher but the people that are out at night are getting plastered. Interesting. People are throwing up all over the sidewalks.

They're still heading to another bar. I saw a guy carrying the whole tray of McDonald's. He got it for inside the restaurant, but didn't take away. Then tripped and fucking puked and was gathering all of the food back up on the floor. I hate this. It was such a yard sale. It feels very college-y. Uh-huh.

Yes. But then it's adults. Yeah. It's college-y, but like small town in a city. Yeah. Small town, big city. Big town, little city. That's it, really.

That was it. For Adam. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad we're back. Me too. So happy to was it. For Adam. Yeah. I'm glad we're back. Me too. So happy to be home. I know.

We normally record via Zoom. While we're on the road. Yeah, and we didn't. So I haven't seen you in a long time. I know. It's been since... We did record once when you were in your hotel. That's right.

In New York. Yeah. And I was... But it's been like eight days. Yeah. That's probably a record. Yeah. I don't like it.

Well, it's delightful to be back in the attic chatting. Agreed. Okay, love you. Love you.