Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Amy Edmondson (organizational behavioral scientist)

Episode Date: September 7, 2023

Amy Edmondson (Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well) is a professor and author. Amy joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why she was drawn to studying organizational learning, what psychological safety is, and how systems exist to make societies better. Amy and Dax talk about why working groups can have different interpersonal climates, the definition of learning behaviors, and what the three types of failure are. Amy explains that vulnerability can actually be a desirable trait, how to take smart risks, and why apologies exist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm the Duchess of Duluth, and I'm joined by Mr. Milford. Hello. Hello. Today we have Amy Edmondson on, and she is a professor at Harvard Business School known for her research on psychological safety. Yes. She has a very cool book out right now called Right Kind of Wrong,

The Science of Failing Well. Yeah, this was really interesting. And to be clear, psych a lot, which we get into, but it's probably good to note now. Psychological safety is not— Safe spaces. Yes. Right, from colleges that we've heard about. Yeah, it's more like feeling free to speak.

Make errors, actually. It's almost antithetical to the could be, but not. But yes, but it is and it's not. Please enjoy Amy Edmondson. 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

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Welcome, welcome. We're both wearing jumpsuits. Oh my God, again. We didn't even plan it. And today I look like a little child. You sure do. Little boy. You're almost in a onesie.

Almost, it's true. Yeah. It's true. I mean, I'm monochromatic. Yeah. So that's the theme. We're all monochromatic. That's right.

You know what I underestimated? I'm recovering from poison ivy. Oh. And it's visible on my legs, and I didn't think of that when I wore my tiny little short. It's clearly on the way out. Yes, but it was gruesome. Well, there's that, but on my legs. And I didn't think of that when I wore my tiny little short. It's clearly on the way out. Yes, but it was gruesome. There's that, but on my thigh. It was much worse.

It was so gnarly looking that a friend was over and she was looking at my leg. And she said, what is that? And I said, if I told you I had flesh-eating bacteria, would you believe me? And she said, a thousand percent. I think I'd believe you if you said you had Ebola. I mean, it was just- It looked bad. Yeah, it was bad.

Where'd you get it? Great question. Two theories. Either Martha's Vineyard or Wellesley, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, Massachusetts. Yep. Went for a little walk with people's dogs and my kids got out in the brush and then I went out and got them. Could be either one.

You live in Cambridge. I live in Cambridge. Are you familiar with Wellesley them. Could be either one. You live in Cambridge. I live in Cambridge. Are you familiar with Wellesley? I've never been there. What an adorable place. It is adorable, isn't it? And I don't know if you saw the campus at all at Wellesley College, but it's beautiful. I didn't.

It's very idyllic. Historically, was that a women's? It's still. It's not only historically. It's one of the very few that is still a women's college. Oh, wonderful. That and Smith, I think. I mean, they're the holdouts.

And where are you from originally? Manhattan. Okay. I always feel a little sheepish about that. Really? Yeah, it just sounds so snazzy. Well, it sounds elite. And it's not.

You have a double whammy. Because I have many friends that went to Harvard, and they generally will just say, I went to school in Boston. Yeah, yeah, which is a big mistake, because then you get the follow-on questions, and then it sounds like you think there's school in Boston. Yeah, yeah. Which is a big mistake because then you get the follow on questions and then it sounds like you think there's something special there. Yeah.

You can't win. You can't win. You have to just say. Just say it. I'm at fucking Harvard. I went to Harvard, right? I mean, there was one thing I was good at when I was young. It was like grades.

Grades. You excelled. So I had to do the thing, the one thing. What were your parents doing in Manhattan though? My dad worked at Time Inc. He was a manager. He wasn't a writer or anything. Ultimately, his little area of expertise, I think, became managing technology.

It was like the laser scanners that made photos better and took away the need for all of the reproductions and all those layers of colors that they used to have to do to make a magazine. During the printing process. In the printing process. So he managed the company for time called Printing Developments Incorporated that made those technologies. Well, then in some ways you have carried on. It's not that far off. No.

And my mom was a teacher. What type of teacher? First grade, middle school, later. When we were little, she was part-time and only did admissions work. It was a managerial family. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Because she did become the head of the middle school.

The kids that nobody else really wanted to deal with. Right. No, that's a rough patch. I was hardest on my teachers. Yes, I was physically assaulted by one in seventh grade. Probably deserved it. Yeah, it's a wild time for teachers. Yeah.

Do you know Ben and Matt? Well, of course not because she's from Manhattan. But Cambridge. Wait a minute. You know Ben and Matt. Oh, yeah, sure, sure. The Mascots. No, I don't know them directly. Oh, okay. You never know. Big fan. You never know, it's true. Yeah, I have to ask. One day someone will say yes. Every now and

then someone will say, you're from New York, do you know? You're like, what planet are you from? City of 12 million people or whatever it is. But sometimes you do. Do you miss it greatly? Yes, and I love Boston. I'm very happy where I am, but boy, New York, there's something just deeply home about it.

Well, I just imagine the level of nostalgia I have for Michigan, where I'm from, and it's not New York. But it's home. But New York is, you know, it's a world city. It's spectacular. It's the best city in the country. So you then compound that with your nostalgia. I feel like you must go there and go, why aren't I living here?

I like visiting. I love sort of, oh, like I'm home. My feet another way around. I don't have to think. But I also feel like I've got this whole other life. Okay. Wait, New York, I had one other thought about. Amy just hung out with Adam Grant.

Are you friendly with him? I am, I am. I always forget how young he is. I told Monica, I heard the podcast with him. It's like, wait, he was after Tal? Although I guess Tal and I overlapped a little in the PhD program. I was sort of an old PhD student. But then Adam, I think of him as not that far behind,

but of course he's... Well, he's a wunderkind, right? He went straight to graduate school. He didn't work in a company. Well, when I was researching you and I see organizational behaviorists and I'm thinking, well, that's very similar to Adam. Yeah, but not. Okay, great. So I want you to delineate. But then I just naturally thought, are they friends or are they foes? Because you meet two people in the same profession who both write popular things. We're definitely friends. Adam has been very generous, consistent with his giver idea. He will often talk about my work.

He's done research on it. He's a human bibliograph. Like he can cite. That's the intimidating bit. Okay, great. I'm glad you feel that way too. Because when we interview him, which is pretty often, I think, how are you citing these papers? We were on a panel together the other day in this conference and someone would mention something and be like, oh yeah, that's like the such and such study.

Pretty obscure stuff. In Switzerland in 82. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, so how would you delineate the difference between? He's an organizational exactly. Yeah. Okay, so how would you delineate the difference between—he's an organizational psychologist. Yes, and I think the main thing is he came to the field with this interest in individuals and what makes them tick and what motivates them.

And I came to it because my undergraduate degree was not psychology, it was engineering. Much more about how do we make things work as they should. Okay, like systems. Yeah, systems and organizations. And in part, because most people spend most of their waking hours at work, it ought to be not just engaging, but ennobling and functional. All of that time ought to be sort of meaningful to them. Yeah, you don't want it to be like sacrificial.

So I wanted to make work work as it should because of people, but also more because of society. Society is broken in ways that ultimately trace their roots back to organizational behavior. Not individuals per se, or at least that wasn't my lens. My lens was decision-making processes are broken. Incentives are often broken. You did a lot of work on, you didn't invent this concept, I think it's from the 50s, but psychological safety. And I guess a trigger knee jerk, that might sound a little similar to safe classrooms. So I'd like to immediately distinguish that we're not talking about a place free of critical. In fact, we're talking about the opposite. I often step back and think, why did I call it that?

I created this mess. I first used the term well before this modern safe space, safe classroom. I'm not anti-safe space. Let's have them now and then. In a place of learning or a place of decision-making or a place of innovation or growth and development, you name it, we need differences. We need criticism. We need tough conversations. Yeah.

So how do we have high-quality conversations based on evidence, you know, with an earnest attempt to learn and get to a better place as a result, which is at odds with, don't say anything that's going to upset me. Right. The thing I read when reading about psychological safety I liked was an atmosphere where one can take chances without fear and with sufficient protection. Thus, a climate is built which encourages provisional tries and which tolerates failure without retaliation, renunciation, or guilt. The point that I like is, no, it is a place to take some big swings, but it's a place that when you err, you're not going to be guilted and excommunicated over it. Exactly, because I think we're very afraid of being kicked out of the tribe.

We don't want to be rejected. And so if I'm always, there's some little calculus in my head going on at all times that if I say that, I might, you know, fill in the blank. You're just going to always err on the side of caution. You're always going to err on the side of holding back. This is the endless drum I beat, which is as an anthro major, for me, knowing we're social primates, knowing that status is at the very forefront of our brain at all times, whether we know it or not. The excommunication piece is a strong one, but even if you don't have fear of actual rejection from the tribe and not being able to have food or water or shelter, the intragroup's status is also going to determine everything we get. We're afraid to mess up because we also think we might slide down one notch,

I'd imagine. That's right. And that's a loss. And we're far more afraid of a loss than of missing out on a potential gain. Maybe what I had to say was going to help the team and maybe there'd be gratitude as a result, but maybe not. And so there's this calculus. I mean, if you think about it, if I have something I want to say, but it might offend you and it might lead you to just beat up on me because you didn't like it, then what's my calculus? It's, well, if I say it, I may benefit the team. And when will that benefit happen? Well, sometime later. Will I even be credited?

So uncertain. Whereas if I stay silent, who gains? I do. When? Now. It almost becomes crazy that people are willing to take interpersonal risks at all. And I think we only do it when we care enough about each other or about the purpose or about the customer or the patient. Then we override that calculus and say, I'm just going to do it anyway.

Psychological safety describes environments where it just feels more palatable. Right. Easier to do. But now, okay, not to get into the individual, but of course they're working in concert. So one thing I might think is people have a predisposition. So I'll say for me personally, my dad was just as alpha as it got. He fought everyone at every gas station and grocery store. Like he just was clearly hardwired. That's what his role would have been as a monkey, right?

He would have challenged the other alpha. Maybe died in pursuit of it, but would have challenged. Or maybe ran the whole tribe. Who knows? But had it in him clearly, genetically, I unfortunately inherited that. I hope I'm a 2.0 version of that, but I think I have a genetic advantage over many people who I feel like it's just in my genes to strive for that, to be confrontational, to perhaps be provocative and push an agenda. There must be some individual variations of just aptitude for it. There are, for sure. And what the data I've seen and the data

I've collected suggest is that there are differences between individuals and there are differences between companies, but the biggest source of difference is between groups. So it turns out to be an emergent property of a group. If we've been working together for a certain period of time, we develop certain norms about, yeah, it's good to confront. It's great to speak up. It's totally fine to ask for help if you're in over your head. All of those differences exist, but the one that usually dominates is between groups. And in a way that one I'm most interested in is at the group level because that's where so much of the action is. That's where work gets done. That's where a podcast gets created.

And if the group can't function well together, then good things don't happen. I mean, it's interesting, though, because you say, like, aptitude for it. But I almost think it's, like, appetite for it. Yeah. It's not just being good or bad at it. It's am I interested in I interested in having a dance? Well, I mean aptitude in the sense that if you were taking biometric measurements of my cortisol levels as I approach confrontation, I bet mine would be a lot more manageable than other people's. I think they would have a spike

of adrenaline and cortisol biologically that would prevent them from being as ambitious as I am, I think. I mean, I think people have different base levels of those things. Absolutely. I mean, they have differences in aggressiveness. They have differences in outgoingness. I bring it back to this great doc you must watch called Chimp Empire if you've not watched it already. You're inside two different chimpanzee troops. And you're kind of watching this jockeying for Alpha.

There's a couple of the chimps that are destined to try and then there's many others that aren't but there are several that they're just relentlessly pacing the alpha waiting to attack it's just in them there was no collaboration or talk about it it's like clearly that's the path this one's on that's kind of what i mean monica like some of the chimps born are going to be the ones that's the path this one's on. That's kind of what I mean, Monica. Like some of the chimps born are gonna be the ones that challenge the alpha and others aren't going to challenge them. Yeah.

We're way off course. What I wanna say about your interest in the group level, I am a believer in the notion that we are better on a group level than we are individually, that we can do things societally that we won't do individually. We can somehow give 40% of our income to this entity, the government, who will then also pave the roads.

Our systems can be better than our own natural instincts. So I believe in systems. I think they're maybe the greatest achievement of us as a species. So I am fascinated by systems and groups and how they function best. So am I. So I am fascinated by systems and groups and how they function best. So am I. And, you know, in so many ways, our current lives depend on the functioning of our current systems. And our future absolutely depends on our ability to create better systems.

Because when people are just individuals striving for their own needs to be met, it gets pretty ugly pretty quickly. Everything's here, and it doesn't work. Food doesn't work that way. Education doesn't work that way. I mean, all the things that we need and depend on are collaborative activities and or things that no individual either could do or would do on their own. So therefore, we need the systems, the organizations, the institutions to help us create them. Now, which one do you think is harder to change? I think we all acknowledge humans are nearly incapable of change, right?

So are systems and groups easier to change or harder? Probably equally hard. And it's not either or. Groups are made up of individuals. And as hard as it is to change individuals, you think, well, wait a minute, a group has got to be exponentially harder because it's got more individuals. But it's also once you change a couple of them, the others are going to follow suit. The right few. Right, the right few. Yeah. In the right direction. So, right. So, then we get back into the social primate thing, which is weirdly an individual will change

immediately to match their group. There's a couple of major shifts we need to help people make all the time, right? It's really swimming upstream because you're right. Individuals left to their own devices are not going to do all the right things that society needs. Can't stop eating, drinking, doing all the things we don't want to do. Yeah, and that's just the little stuff in a way, right? But how do we combat climate change, right? How do we create a free and fair society that gives everyone an equal chance to thrive? Making even a dent in that requires us to swim upstream against human nature. I mean, human nature is, I want my needs met. I'm fearful. I'm selfish. But once you glimpse a different way of being, so first and most

important shift is from me to we. Once you have a good experience of being part of a great team, me to we. Once you have a good experience of being part of a great team, or for many, a great family, there's a sense that that is part of your identity. It's not me. You know, me becomes smaller and we becomes more important to us. And you want to be a part of a good we. And if that could be a whole institution, that's even better. And I think the saddest part of that is it's not always a lack of selflessness. It's actually a fear that they're not part of the we. It's not that they wouldn't be willing to. It's that they don't feel it in their heart that anyone wants them a part of the we. That brings us to belonging.

That deep need for belonging is so great. You know, the flip side is fear. I'm not going to belong, which is a kind of death. As we talk about fear and the topic of your book, let's start with how you get from psychological safety to focusing specifically on failure. Ian Wright kind of wronged the science of failing well. It's funny because I stumbled into psychological safety by studying errors in hospitals. I didn't set out to study psychological safety. I wouldn't have even known that was a thing to study. Yeah.

It's not terribly sexy either. No. It's so unsexy. In fact, when I was a junior faculty member, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, I had more than one senior colleague sort of take me aside and said, we think you've done very good research or we wouldn't have hired you,

but you really got to drop this psychological safety thing because it's not a big idea. And I said, yeah, no, I think you're right, but I can't get all of that. Yeah. I mean, they got these studies going. I figured if they don't promote me, someone else will hire me. It's not the end of the world. So I set out to study learning organizations. How do we get organizations that work in a world that keeps changing? If they get stuck. In the mid-80s, I was doing consulting at General Motors. I just got shot by a bolt of lightning. Right when you started saying that, I worked for General Motors for 14 years. And I was about to say, whoa, did I watch a culture that had been stuck in another time period?

Couldn't learn. They had been Silicon Valley, but they weren't anymore. They still thought Detroit dictated how the rest of the country, and it was really wild to witness up close. Really wild, and of course, it's not their fault. It's the combination of human cognition, group dynamics, and organizational structures and systems.

I think if we fast forward, I don't know how far, but time moves faster now, we'll say the same thing about Google, right? Yeah, they'll somehow- They'll somehow find themselves with general motor syndrome. Yes, that's crazy you just said that. Or big three syndrome. It's sort of the writing on the wall.

So I was there in the mid 80s and we were trying to sort of change their culture. And I thought naively, because everywhere I looked in the rest of the world, California, East Coast, everybody's driving Hondas and Toyotas. Of course, you get to Detroit and everybody's driving American. Nowhere in a bubble. No joke. I just had Terry Crews on here who was from Flint and they were firebombing cars all the time at the plant.

Right. Which is a great way to keep yourself from learning, right? Yeah. Just erase anything. Attack the better product. Don't look at it. Yeah. Don't study it.

Actually, years later, I was at General Motors and they had this whole lab where they took apart every competitor's car to just kind of look what's working. And I thought it was the coolest thing. My naive hypothesis going in was, these people must not be very bright. Sure. Because they're making these dumb cars when everybody knows the world wants these other cars. As you know, that's not the case at all. They're very bright. The smartest engineers in the world are there.

More often than not, they were stymied. They said, how do I get my organization to change? And they had no answer for that question. You know, middle managers at whatever levels, they knew what they should be doing, but there was no easy way to turn the ship. Can I tell you the thing I observed as a young person working there? And we were a vendor. So I would be at the dinner table and it was at that time GM was very, very structured and you had eighth levels at the top, separate elevators.

Anytime everyone was together, promise you it went just like this. The eighth level person at the table talked until they were exhausted. And then everyone kind of looked around and now the seventh level person, mind you, another dude, would talk till they were exhausted. The dinner was always over before someone from third, fourth. And you thought, well, here's all the youngest people who just got out of college who have the most ambition, the best ideas, or maybe not the best ideas. The latest technology. Yes. And they'll never be heard.

They won't be heard until they've climbed that ladder and their ideas are no longer new or original. It's both a true statement and just a metaphor for all the rest of it. Yeah. You know, for how organizations close themselves off to signals that they may be doing something wrong, just like people do. So I was interested in that. So a brand new PhD student, 10 years out of college, I had no idea how research was produced. I just thought, really interested in this problem. I had no psychology background, no business background. I thought, kind of a fraud. I better go to school to get a little smarter. And back of my mind, I had some idea that I'd go to school, I'd get smarter, and then I'd leave and I'd be more effective. Didn't know I'd never leave. It's a gilded cage, right? It's gorgeous on that campus.

Well, yeah, it's gorgeous on that campus. And, you know, I get to go in and out of companies all the time. So I get the best of both worlds in a way. But I quickly realized that there was no obvious scholarly way to study the learning organization and why they don't learn and how to help them learn. I didn't even know where to begin. So I'm sitting there stymied. And my advisor, Richard Hackman at Harvard, he had done work on cockpit crews and errors and all that stuff. The stuff we may have read in the Malcolm Gladwell book about the Korean Air chapters.

It's such a good chapter. It's my favorite chapter. Me too. It's so encouraging, right? Yeah. We maybe do have the ability to correct. But wasn't it interesting they had to speak English? Yes.

Because their own language had so much, you know, what the French called tutoyer, where you cannot see each other as peers. No. Because of the language, it just embeds reinforcing the— Hierarchy. The problem every single minute of every single day. Richard Hackman was approached by some doctors, some researchers at Harvard Medical School who wanted to study medication errors. And they thought that Richard might be able to help them show whether there was a relationship between teamwork and medication errors. And Richard essentially said, well, I'm a little busy, but here's this PhD student. Maybe

she'll help. And I thought, errors, learning. Ah, yes. I didn't know what I was going to do. So someone says, here's a ready-made study, and all you have to do is survey the hospital teams to get measures of their teamwork properties, and we'll do the rest. We will send trained medical investigators around every other day to collect error rates. We'll do that for six months. You'll do your little thing in month one. At the end of six months, they'd give me the error data, and I'd run the correlation. And I'd have a paper, and I'd run the correlation, right? And I'd have a paper and I'd maybe someday graduate from graduate school. And so fast forward six months, I finally get the error data. I put it

in my model. I've got my team data. Lo and behold, I have a significant correlation. It's obvious right away. It's statistically significant. It jumps off the screen. Oh, how excited are you at the moment? But no, no, no. Because then I squint and I look and I realize it's in the wrong direction. Oh. In other words, I was not only wrong, I was 180 degrees wrong. Like what the data said was that the better teams, better teamwork, better team leaders,

higher quality relationships had not fewer errors, but more errors. What? Like what? I know, Monica. Counter intuitive. That's what I said. First. What? Like, what? I know, Monica. I don't get it. That's what I said. First of all, I said, what? And then it was again, the awfulizing, okay, I'm going to have to drop out of graduate

school. But stay tuned because it ultimately isn't as counterintuitive as it sounds. If we could have any confidence that those were in fact accurate error rates, then it would be wildly counterintuitive. I was pretty scared. Like I've just failed again. Oh my God. I'm jumping to a thought. Yeah. Jump. The good teams were more honest about reporting their errors. You got it. Yep. They felt safer to admit they failed. Right. Because they had established a climate where people trusted each other and they also

were aware and they talked about the fact that things will go wrong. The only question is, do we catch it and correct it quick enough to not hurt anybody? Oh, wow. And so they had, I think in a way they had more wisdom, but they had more awareness of the high stakes that they were playing with, like aviation. Well, what I would argue too is that they all felt valued enough that had they erred, they would not be rejected. Yeah. I mean, they didn't think, okay, if you made a mistake, it means you're like a lousy nurse. It was like, I made a mistake. People do. Days are long. The work is hard and complicated. That became my sudden insight like yours. I thought, well, maybe they don't make more mistakes. Maybe they're more able and willing to talk about them.

Having that insight was a far cry from proving it. Yes. And ultimately in that study, I wasn't able to prove it. I had a hunch. What I was saying was the error rate measure was flawed. Some flawed systematically. That the good teams would have more accurate measures and bad teams would have more inaccurate measures.

Yeah. But can we real quick define good team versus bad team? So good teams were ones, the survey. Listen to Taylor Swift. Yeah, yeah. That's a good team. No, they were, you know, this is all survey items. And the survey items would be things like,

in this team we respect and work well with each other. Or, you know, the team leader gives us helpful feedback on how to get better. I really look forward to coming to work with these people in the morning. A bunch of different items that come together to be about maybe 12 different measures ranging from the quality of team leadership to the quality of interpersonal relationships to their own views of how good their performance is and those measures tend to be pretty highly correlated with each other. I mean our our teams go, yeah, we have a great leader, but boy, our performance is lousy. The self-report, right? So that has its own limitations. But from

the perspective of the larger study, the clinicians, the physicians who were leading it really thought that they were getting the honest truth. And that's where they were wrong, but they didn't know that going in. But what was fascinating was the potential. Again, I couldn't prove it in that study, but the potential that different working groups in the same organizational structures could have very different interpersonal climate. And that's what I called it at the time. I thought of one as a learning climate and one as a non-learning climate, but I was well aware that that study was not definitive, but I thought of one as a learning climate and one as a non-learning climate, but I was well aware that that study was not definitive, but I thought it had legs. I thought this idea that teams

develop a different sort of learning environment more or less on their own emergently was interesting. Self-organizing. Yeah. We just had an expert on self-organizing complex systems. Who'd you have? Neil Thies. He's a liver pathologist at NYU. No, at Harvard. Might be a colleague. What is it? Grossman School of Medicine. Oh, that's NYU.

Oh, at NYU. You're right. I'm wrong. I can admit I'm wrong. It's impossible. You're fired. You're fired. You embarrassed me.

See how easy that was? Yeah. We've had a lot of practice. We've had some ups and downs with that. Well, we've done 700 episodes, and we've both been wrong multiple times per episode, so the math is staggering. But anyways, his hobby is self-organizing complex systems, and we were so delighted and fascinated with the scaling symmetry across the universe of this. It was mind-blowing and elegant. Well, you know, that was the doorway I walked through to get to the room I'm in now. Really? Because when I was an undergraduate, I took a course

just almost by accident called Synergetics, the Structure of Ordered Space with this wonderful crystallographer named Arthur Loeb. And it was all about how nature has her own organizing principles, which explain why, you know, a virus can look like a geodesic dome, because nature will arrange herself in the least energy way. And so you see all these similarities. And without a grand designer. Without a grand designer. In fact, the grand designer would just get in and muck it up. Complex adaptive systems, they're self-organizing.

I love that stuff. You know, if only we had a way of being a little bit more humble and letting nature do her job and sort of suggesting the right way to come together as groups, as organizations. Yeah, minimally we can see when we're out of pattern with the rest of the self-organizing or the systems that collapse that we're mirroring. We would go, oh, well, okay, that has too many divergent properties. This has not enough. Right. So then that was a paper. The second year project, it was called Learning from Mistakes is Easier Said Than Done, which is true. And then I thought, well, if this interpersonal climate thing is real, I have to set out to study it on purpose the next time.

So I ended up getting a nice Michigan company, Herman Miller, to let me in in Grand Rapids. Okay. Herman Miller lets me in to study 53 teams in management, sales, product development, and factory production. And my central question was, do they differ in interpersonal climate? And if so, does that help us explain differences in learning behaviors and ultimately in performance? Could you maybe, because that feels a little ambiguous to me, what learning behaviors? It's a great question because it is. It's abstract. So, concretely, that means everything

from asking for help when I don't know what to do, to offering an idea to my teammates that might work, to admitting a mistake, pushing the project forward. I'm willing to do the things that help us learn. And oftentimes that requires me to learn. Say I have an idea and I say it, but you have a pushback for why that's not a very good idea. I have to be willing to go, oh, yeah, you're right. Or that's interesting. So together and separately, we're learning at the same time.

But that's not the norm as we've just were describing before. In fact, before I went to graduate school, one of the reasons I went was I read a book called Vital Lies, Simple Truths by Dan Goldman before he was famous. He's famous for emotional intelligence. And, you know, many of his books have really taken off. That, I think, was his first book for non-academics. He didn't do the original research on emotional intelligence, but he popularized it and wrote beautifully about it. And he was a science writer for the New York Times. Doesn't he have like some sort of quiz you can take on it?

But the book was essentially about how we cognitively, interpersonally, and organizationally close ourselves off from unwelcome truths. I thought, God, that's so cool. And I get the graduate school realize that's not how people write at all. They write these impenetrable papers that nobody can read. But I digress. So I'm trying to show that if you have these beliefs that making a mistake around here won't be held against you, you'll be more willing to speak up openly, to offer ideas, to ask for help. And if you do all those things, your team will perform better. And that's essentially what my dissertation was able to show. will perform better. And that's essentially what my dissertation was able to show. And then I was fortunately able to publish a paper from that study in essentially the top journal in the field

of organizational behavior. So then that allowed me to get and keep a job, which was good. Yeah. Okay. Because right out of the gates, I have assumptions. Knowing that you were studying a sales team, a management team, a production team. 10 of each. Yeah. So right out of the gates, my hunch is the sales team probably operated. In each category of team type, they had variants. Okay, right. So some sales teams were great.

You know, some, oh, how do we get more performance? We're just going to yell at them and they'll do better. The reason I would suggest that is you find out so immediately in sales. It has the most immediate feedback. In sales, you either make the sale or you don't make the sale. It's quick. Whereas a new product development might be five years before you know whether your team did a good job.

But there's still people evaluating your team who can sort of say, yeah, they did a good job. My ratings of performance relied on independent measures from the people who evaluated the team's work. So if you were a management team, there was a senior person who was able to tell me whether they were a good team or not. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks.

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Order up for Damien. Hey, how did your doctor's appointment go, by the way? Did you ask about Rebelsis? Actually, I'm seeing my doctor later today. Did you say Rebelsis? My dad's been talking about Rebelsis. Rebelsis? Really? Yeah, he says it's a pill that... Well, I'll definitely be asking my doctor if Rebelsis is right for me.

Rebelsis. Ask your doctor or visit Rebelsis.ca. Order up for Rebelsis. This is a little off topic, but you are an expert on this. Who's monitoring HR? That's always been a curiosity to me because HR is kind of like they're supposed to be managing all the different departments and handling all these issues. Who's got their eye on HR? From the perspective of HR, they would say everybody. They would say we have no status. We have no power.

Many, many do. I think in well-run organizations, it's really a team. If you are an engineer and you have an issue at work, you're going to call HR. But when you're in HR, they have the exact same problems that every other organization is going to have. You mean like behavioral problems? Sure, and just organizational issues. Gosh, I don't know. It's like who's monitoring the internal affairs division of a police department? I don't know. They're monitoring the police department. We don't need to get bogged down in that, but that is a curiosity. So anyway, to write this paper that got accepted in this good journal, one of the reviewers, you don't know who they are, right? But there are these sort of

people who tell you everything's terrible and they're not going to publish it. One of them said, I think what you're talking about is psychological safety, when I was sort of describing it as interpersonal climate. You know, it was a term that was in the literature, but it wasn't very well used. And so when a reviewer tells you, I think you're saying X, suddenly you're saying X, because they're the gatekeepers. So I said, I'm talking about team psychological safety. And I could show empirically that it really was different, statistically significantly different across groups. If we were a team, the three of us, our ratings of how easy it is to speak up in this team

would be more similar to each other than different and more different from another team. I was arguing it was a team-level phenomenon. Yes. And it shaped the team's performance in important ways. So fast forward, nobody's paying any attention. Scholars, people like Adam Grant, nobody's paying any attention. Scholars, people like Adam Grant, they pick up on it. They use my measure. At the current moment,

there's more than a thousand peer-reviewed articles with this measure. Like it's a very good measure for predicting things we care about, innovation, quality improvement. But none of this would lead me to this moment were it not for Google in about 2014 decided to study its teams to see why do we have persistent performance differences across teams? What's the secret sauce? How do we find out what's working and then replicate it? 180 teams, studying them over a couple of years, measuring everything, something like 200 different variables. And lo and behold, the one that pops up as the most predictive of team performance is psychological safety. So then another wonderful journalist named Charles Duhigg writes about this in the New York Times magazine. And then suddenly, and that was like 2017, no, it was 2016, everybody in corporate America is talking about psychological safety.

And for a while, they were saying, you know, Google's idea of psychological safety. You know, hold on, hold on. I think you better write a book about this now, like my turn. But the funny thing about it, at least to me, is that my original paper was published in 1999. This is 17 years later, right, which is a very long gestation rate. Especially relative to Google's time on Earth. It predates Google. That's right.

Just about. It's essentially simultaneous with the founding of Google. My husband is a physician scientist, and he, in his PhD, discovered a certain molecule caused chronic myeloid leukemia. And exactly 10 years later, someone had developed a drug to cure chronic myeloid leukemia, Gleevec, at Novartis. So I'm thinking, I'm like slower than medicine, you know, bench to bedside in a decade. And I'm sitting here 17 years before the world decides this matters. So you asked how does psychological safety bring me to study

failure? Well, I was studying failure from day one. It's part of the human experience. We make mistakes. We encounter failures. How do we learn from them? How do we thrive anyway? Well, and we're at an interesting time for you to write this book because it is very ubiquitous, this notion of failure. I think obviously the tech revolution in Silicon Valley, they've made popular this one option, which is like fail fast in, I forget the second half. Fail often. Fail, yeah, break stuff. That's one kind of thought pattern.

Fail up. That's show business. That's our proprietary fail up. And then there's failure's not an option. Two ethos, and they're both wrong, or they're both partly right. As is everything. Of course.

Both of them are sort of not realizing that context matters. If you fail early, fail often, take that to the factory. It wouldn't last one day on the job if you were trying to fail often on the assembly line. Take it to Boeing.

Or take it to the cardiac surgery operating room. Yeah. Bad idea. Versus you are not going to be anybody if you aren't willing to fail. Like scientific laboratories. Writing. Oh my god. I mean, more words ended up in the

trash bin on the computer than on the final page. But if you think about aviation, when those flights are airborne, we do not want them to fail at all. Correct. But people have to learn from mistakes to learn to fail well. So where do we do not want them to fail at all. But people have to learn from mistakes to learn to fail well. So where do we do that? Well, in the simulator. Also, I'll add aircraft as opposed to your car. Almost everything is designed with second and third redundancy systems. So they

already know there is some likelihood that this thing will fail, but we always have a backup and then we have a backup and then we have a backup for the backup. It's an admission that failure is inevitable. And now we have to have the solution real time for the inevitable failure. Exactly. Being high performing in spite of fallibility is the goal, not wishing it away. So even the thing that doesn't permit failure really just has the illusion of no failure, but there's already in the system built in an expectation of failure. The oft-quoted line, failure is not an option, attributed to Gene Kranz at NASA during the Apollo 13 failure crisis.

People use that line to suggest, oh, yeah, failure is not an option, like you can't have failure. What he was saying was, we can do this. We've just lost a primary oxygen tank, but I look around this room and I see people with amazing engineering skills, incredible creativity, fantastic teamwork, and I am confident that we can find a solution. Right. Because failure is not an option. We want to bring those astronauts home. It's an aspirational statement. It's not a statement of, look, you better be perfect or else you're fired, right? It's a statement of confidence and aspiration, but confidence in their skills, confidence in their diligence. But there's many popular ones.

There's also like burn the boats, right? This is a very popular approach that leaders want to suggest. I don't know about that. I've never heard that. popular approach that leaders want to suggest. I don't know about that. I've never heard that. When you get to the invasion of the land you're invading, if they burn the boats that they arrived on, the soldiers know they have no choice but to win.

There's no other choice. There's no retreat. Oh, wow. So there's a lot of leaders in business that love this burn the boat approach. Which seems a little foolhardy to me. Well, if you read any books about military, let's have a plan B. Retreating is a very important aspect

and logical and smart decision at times. I can understand the sort of the psychological principle of give it everything you have and be smart. You know, the sort of Silicon Valley fail-off and break things culture is great in

innovation contexts, science, invention, art, book writing. That is a place where that makes sense, right? Because that's going to be where great progress comes. And if you're in a very high risk, high stakes setting, military, aviation, nuclear power, surgery, then it's sort of, military, aviation, nuclear power, surgery, then it's sort of how do we make sure that we do the very best possible despite the fallibility of our human selves and our systems. And that's why psychological safety plays a crucial role in both domains because in the high-stakes, high-risk environment,

you need people speaking up quickly about not just a mistake but even a potential, gee, that might not be right moment. Whereas in the creative settings, you need people to be willing to share the wild ideas that are otherwise almost embarrassing. Yes. Let's go over the three types of failures. Right. In fact, that's a very important part of this conversation, right? Because when you're saying fail often, you're not saying have lots of stupid mistakes. I would never be in favor of being reckless. I'm anti-waste. I think you say it most beautifully in the intro of the book where you say,

most of us go out of our way to avoid experiencing failure, robbing ourselves of adventure, accomplishment, and even love. That's when we can't let failure stand in the way or our fear of failure. Right. I loved your episode with Dan Pink. And I love the idea that many regrets people have was that they didn't ask someone out. Boldness regrets where they didn't go for it. How many times in life are two people both kind of thinking, oh, out of my league at the same time about each other? This is what destroys so many marriages because these two unrequited lovers cross into each

other on Facebook 20 years later and they finally get to say, oh, I was in love with you. And they go, what the fuck? I was in love with you. And then everything blows up. Yeah, exactly. That's why I put love in there because sometimes we're just not willing to go for it. We take the safe date, the person who won't reject us down the road versus the one that we really hoped to be with. So let's talk about intelligent failures the first time, because those are the ones where fail fast, fail often makes sense. So intelligent

failures are those that are still undesired, but they're in new territory, meaning you couldn't just Google it to get the answer. There's no recipe. So you're going to have to take a risk to see what happens. So new territory in pursuit of a goal. That could be a life partner or a new scientific discovery or a new vehicle, whatever, with a hypothesis or at least good reason to believe it might work. And then finally, as small as possible. Don't bet your life savings on an uncertain outcome. Just as much as you need to to learn. So that's an intelligent failure.

Intelligent failures are where progress come from. Everything that sort of we take for granted in our world at some point had to endure intelligent failures to get there. Basic failures, on the other hand, are single cause failures driven by human error. Will you give the example of the $800 million? So the $800 million mistake was at Citibank a couple of years ago when some employees failed to check all the right boxes in the electronic transfer and essentially accidentally transferred the principal rather than the interest of a very large loan, having instantly realized their error. It's not a judgment error, it's a slip. By definition, a mistake is something you don't know you're making.

If you're making it on purpose, then it's sabotage. Or a violation. If it's a decision, it's not a mistake. I think those are most of my mistakes. Our decisions? I don't think so. They realize immediately what they've done, and they try to get it back. And the client says no.

So they have to go to court. And the judge, in a kind of odd ruling, maybe he didn't like banks or I don't know. But they didn't allow it to be reversed. Some kind of finders keepers. Oh, boy. Ruling. I want to know who got a free $800 million. It was a company, not an individual.

Okay, well, that's less exciting. I would love a farmer to get accidentally. Yeah, wouldn't that be great? Yeah. So a basic failure is the mistake. It's not a mistake. It's caused by a mistake. Okay.

Because I can make 10 mistakes a day that don't, thankfully, lead to a failure. Cause a failure. Okay, I see. Also, we had somebody on who was talking about in doctor's offices accidentally checking the wrong prescription medication box on the computer. And then that person dies. That's a basic, believe it or not, that's a basic failure. Yeah. It's big, it's tragic, but it's still basic, right?

Because it was that simple, single slip in known territory where there was a right answer, but we can often check the wrong box and nothing bad happened. Right. I would imagine these increase with repetition as well. I remember reading recently that people were driving off the Bay Bridge. This is, I don't know, five years ago, and they were driving off the Bay Bridge asymmetrically in morning commute traffic. off the Bay Bridge asymmetrically in morning commute traffic. And they're talking about how much of your automatic system is driving you to work and how really unpresent people are while it's happening to the degree that they were driving through these.

Something was blocked off. Yes, and the brain's doing this. And I think so many repetitive things get filed into your automatic. So the risk of getting really good at something is that you stop paying attention. Yes. But inattention is very often the cause of a basic failure. And when anyone says, you know, I can do it in my sleep, that's probably a signal that you should nudge them not to. Right, right.

As well as you could. Because in reality, you can't do it in your sleep. Right. And then complex failures, which are multi-causal. They could be caused by several mistakes, but they don't need mistakes. Complex failures are the failures that happen when a handful of factors line up in just the wrong way. Any one of which on their own would not have caused a failure. This is what almost all airplane accidents are.

Absolutely. There's almost no single failure airplane accident. There are. Absolutely. There's almost no single failure airplane accident. There are a few. Air Florida Flight 80 in 1982, which took off from National Airport and crashed into the icy Potomac, killing almost everybody aboard, was a basic failure. They run through the checklist and the captain says, anti-ice. Co-pilot says, off. It's a snowstorm happening out there, right? And they were doing it in their sleep.

It was Air Florida. They don't deal with ice very often, right? So they're taking off from D.C. in January, and it was, in fact, very icy out there. So they made that single failure, left it off, take off, and within a few minutes, they're in the river. The wings are iced. God. For everyone who hates flying, that's the worst story that anyone could possibly have heard. Yeah, I have a graduate student who's doing research on aviation accidents, and he had the unhappy allocation in the conference this week to speak about his research.

The very last session of the conference, which is right before everybody's about to fly home. No. That was me listening to Dr. Death, the podcast, and then getting an operation that next week. No. I said to the nursing staff, I'm like, please speak up if you see something wild going on. I was like, please don't listen to this surgeon.

Intuiting my research, right? Do speak up. In fact, later I looked at teams in the operating room and the difference in willingness to speak up was associated with all sorts of good outcomes, as you can imagine. So the complex failures are on the rise in our very complex, interconnected, interdependent world, which is sort of a depressing statement.

But the good news is the fact that they're multi-causal means they're also multi-opportunity to stop. Sometimes all you have to do is just notice one of the factors and intervene. And we all pretty much have a deep fear of failing for numerous reasons. I was wondering if we could go through some of the reasons that people fear it so much. We've been talking a lot already about that primal fear of loss of status or actual rejection or if people don't think well of me, I'll die. It's this kind of primal fear about the group, about society, about others. Yeah, but it kind of works down from group to group, right?

Because at first you're trying to hide your failure from your peers, but you also then hide it from yourself. If you can't admit it to the group, sometimes maybe you're less likely to admit it to yourself and then explore why it happened. How do we avoid doing it again? There's a real relationship between individual denial and face-saving or impression management in the group.

Because if I don't see it myself, I can't share it. They reinforce each other and lead to this widespread problem that we have culturally with failure. I had to go to AA for 20 years to learn how to admit failure. I think we can do it, obviously, but we're swimming upstream against cognitive, sociological, anthropological forces that have made impression management front and center. We want people to think well of us

and to like us. The crazy thing is that, you know, whom do we like? Well, we like people who are vulnerable and honest, right? And real. We don't like the people who are like, oh, they look perfect and they've never made a mistake in their life. I tell young men all the time, if you're on a date with someone and they tell you about their five breakups and the other person was the problem all five times, get up and walk away. This person has no interest in figuring out what they've ever done wrong. And you'll be the same.

You'll fit right into that pattern. That's right. I mean, if you look back and you can't identify a single regret or a single thing you did to contribute to the impasse. I don't want to be with that person. Nobody does. Yeah, and I don't want to work with someone

who can't admit that they're wrong. No, and that's the tragedy, really, because people are looking for love and connection and they're actually pushing people away because they think they're presenting well i'm a pretty flawless person you should snatch me up and if that has been true since the beginning of the species it is now true in an exacerbated form because of social social media because we're just presenting a culled version of only the best photos and only the highlights. We get deeper fulfillment and joy from genuine connection.

A relationship with someone that is based on the truth rather than on faking it. But we deprive ourselves of that experience as well. Okay, now, so that's aversion. Well, that was actually the fear part. So I say aversion, confusion, and fear. And the fear is sort of the social. Aversion is almost just instinctive, right? That's sort of that. Right. Me jerk. I broke this. I'm going to walk away really quick. I just don't like it, right? I like things that succeed, not fail. You know, I like me when I

succeed, not fail. So that's just almost instinct. Confusion to me is the one that I'm a little less clear on. So confusion is really where we started out. Wait a minute. Someone over here is saying fail fast, fail often. Failure is a big category. And if you don't appreciate the very different phenomena under that big category, no wonder you're going to be anti-failure. Because you're not thinking instinctively about the intelligent failures through which great successes happen. You're thinking of like, oh, I'm going to look like an idiot. Yeah, I'm not going to check a box and I'm

going to give away $800 million. Right, right. And then I'm going to never be employed again. So if we had a sort of clear-eyed appreciation for basic failures, then we could sign up to say, let's prevent them. Complex failures, again, let's prevent them. Let's understand them better. Let's never have the same one happen twice. And then, oh, there's the intelligent ones. Those are discoveries. Let's pursue those. In fact, if you haven't had any of those this week, you should probably sit up and think, what risks should I be taking that I have not been taking? Yes. I love that. Now, in the book, you have an antidote to this. So how does one create a fail well mindset? A fail well mindset, it's both cognitive and emotional and the cognitive being thoughtful about the strategies for both taking smart risks

and also for being careful when the situation calls for being careful. In a way, the most important thing here is just context matters. There's really two dimensions of context you need to think about. How much uncertainty is there? You know, if there's an automotive assembly line, there's like zero uncertainty. We know exactly how the parts should fit together to get that beautiful vehicle at the end. If it's like a new cure for some rare cancer, there's like 99% uncertainty. We almost don't know where to begin. So how much knowledge do we have about how to produce the result we want? And the other dimension is what are the stakes?

Are we in a simulator where we should just push it till it breaks? Or anything that's high stakes and high uncertainty, vigilance is what you need. You know, follow the recipe exactly. Right. There's a few things people should be doing. So they should be persistent, although you differentiate that from stubbornness. Yes. Well, persistent, there's so many words that are like valued, good words. There's another word that kind of means the same thing, but it's like a bad word.

Also, this is just the serenity prayer in AA, which is like, give me the knowledge to know the difference. Yeah. Or the wisdom to know the difference. And I think that's an important distinction between knowledge and wisdom because knowledge implies that there is knowledge. And I think that's an important distinction between knowledge and wisdom because knowledge implies that there is knowledge. And I think wisdom implies that you're going to have to use your own judgment. Yeah. There isn't a right answer here, but it's up to you. So persistence is Sarah Blakely going to like 12 different textile manufacturers saying, please make my Spanx. It wasn't called that yet.

I have this product. I know everyone's going to like it. And they're looking at her. Little girl, you don't know what you're talking about. Go away. Girdles were in the 20s. Right, right, right. We don't called that yet. I have this product. I know everyone's going to like it. And they're looking at her. Little girl, you don't know what you're talking about. Go away. Yeah, girdles were in the 20s. Right, right, right. We don't do that anymore.

So you could say, okay, she was stubborn or crazy to just keep trying. But she had a valid reason to think that it was worth trying. The ones she had mocked up for her friends and family members, they loved them. You see that kind of passion for the product, you know, all I have to do is get someone to make the thing for me. It's a hurdle that's worth pursuing. Whereas if you have a research idea, no one will publish it or no one thinks it's any good or you can't get the experiments to work, at a certain point, you're barking up the wrong tree. Now, if you can't figure it out, ask for help. Be a little open-minded about that. So, I mean, to fail well,

we need to be persistent, but of course, we also need to use judgment and be thoughtful. And it's not that you give up, it's that you pivot, and maybe in a very big way. Acceptance. Accept reality at some point. Yeah, like listen to the data, right? Listen to the data of your own experience, rather than just what you wanted to have be true. And then calling it pivot, that's a part of reframing. And this came from a wonderful guy named Jake Breeden who was working in the pharmaceutical sector. And he'd read all the stuff out there written by people like me and others, a lot of Silicon Valley stuff too, saying, let's have failure parties. And he just couldn't sell it, right?

Like people just really didn't want to have a failure party. And he said, I got it. Failure is an ending and it's a bad ending. And he said, but when I shifted to, let's have a pivot celebration, people liked that. Like a pivot is a new beginning. And he said, that's essentially what happens. You know, when your experiments or your trials fail,

that just means you get to try something else now. Monica and I's main hobby is a game called Spades. And you play with a partner. Love it. And half the game is trying to figure out when you're both going to pivot. Yep. As partners without saying pivot. And go in another direction.

Do a new strategy. Yes, mid-game. Yeah, because it's all just information. As opposed to failure, you can think of it as like, okay, I just gained a lot of information to now do something different. Right, that's why I love the quote attributed to Thomas Edison, which is, I haven't failed.

I just found 10,000 ways that didn't work. It's exactly the right attitude. And in a sense, he appreciated that he was on the very leading edge of the domain he was trying to invent in, whether it's a battery storage or a light bulb. And there's nobody else out there on the planet who can tell me how to make it work. But I'll keep pivoting and I'll get there. And I treasure the 10,000 ways that don't work, their knowledge. Right. And dating, that is the same thing.

Same thing. It's you go on a date and it's bad, but then you leave with more information of what you want or don't want or what you will do again or won't do again. It's just a good way of framing it as opposed to, oh, that was so bad. It's the old, I can't fail. I can only learn and grow. Right. And then of course, people have to reflect. Now I'm super into Formula One. And at the end of every race, the entire team does a debrief, right? They get on their headsets. Everyone's got a computer in front of them. And they go through that whole weekend, all the different things. And they just take an accounting of what they did and what the results

were. And I love that because they're deep in the details, right? They're looking at the actual data frame by frame. That's not fun, right? It's just not fun to go look back at all the stuff we screwed up. Especially if you just got out of a car that you finished last in. It's just not fun to go look back at all the stuff we screwed up. Especially if you just got out of a car that you finished last in. It's like, can't we just go forward? No. It's like examining how you tripped. Right.

Okay, I tripped. I won't do it again, right? No, no, no, no. We want you to look at it. But I can't help thinking that by making it a team sport, it becomes more palatable, right? Because if you had to do that all by yourself, I think it would just be, oh, this is just painful. I don't like it. But when you're doing it as a team, I bet nine times out of 10, you end up laughing at something because it's sort of like we're in it together. There's always a little bit of humor in our human error. It's bonding.

Yes. And I think our fallibility is such a potential source of bonding that we often don't take advantage of. Oh, it is. Some of my very favorite and funniest moments were like getting off stage. Holy shit. There wasn't one laugh. Oh my God, they hated that.

But the explanation is to feel embarrassed. Even if it's in a group, I'm the one that ruined it or whatever. There's like a fear of that. But the fear of it is usually worse than the actual reality of it. Because what happens instead is you did something just absolutely embarrassing.

What happens is your friends, your team members are so full of empathy. Well, our mirror neurons are firing. We know how we would feel. And we are just intrinsically compassionate. And we want to make it better. In a funny way, we now like you even more. Yes.

Because you had that moment. And it's really hard to convince yourself. This happens all the time. This whole thing's about, yeah, I do apologize. But when people come in that have relapsed, almost unanimously, the person comes, they're ashamed. They're embarrassed. They're thinking everyone's going to say- They don't even want to tell the truth. Yep. And then they are assuming everyone there is going to go through what they did wrong, what they should have been doing differently. And there are some of those, sure. But generally, it's always met with true gratitude. Thank you for reminding us what's on the other side. Thank you for reminding us how easy that is. You've just done all of us who didn't relapse an enormous service. It's like a booster shot. Yes, and it's hard for that person to imagine that that's true. I've been in that situation, but I know it's true when I'm on the other end of it.

And I'm like, oh my God, I'd hate to say thank you for doing this, but thank you for reminding me. And certainly thank you for telling us. Yes. I mean, that to me is sort of one of the great lines in the organizational world is when you can say thank you for letting us know.

It's genuinely true that you can appreciate the clear line of sight. That's right. Yeah. It's such a service people do. One thing that I think helps, and again, I study the things I struggle with, right? So I'm a scaredy cat, so I study psychological safety. But most people, when you talk about accountability in an organizational setting, that means punishment. But the word is really account, right? It's a story. So if you think about it as can you piece together the story, in that fuller story, you can see clearly the parts that you contributed to. Take account of your contribution to the failure. If you think of it as accounting.

Accounting, yeah, exactly. Like doing inventory of your stock and then going, oh, of course we didn't make the omelets because no one got cheese. That's potentially empowering that I can see it and own it. And I would just argue that it's almost all anyone's looking for. Like you're living in such fear that you've made a mistake or you've erred and you're going to be rejected. And everyone has an expectation that everyone's going to fail because they are failing all the time. The only thing they're looking for is like,

I just would feel safest if I knew you knew when you messed up. We can fix that. Right, and then I feel a little more confident it won't happen again, at least not the same way. I feel safer. But if you're in denial that you played any role in this, it's just going to repeat itself over and over again. It just makes you very pessimistic about the relationship.

Absolutely, for good reason, because it probably will repeat. So you think you're preventing someone from not being attracted to you, but in fact, you're ensuring they won't be attracted to you because you're dangerous. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't.

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Okay, now sincere apologies. I know a thing or two about apologies. Tell me sincere apologies. I know a thing or two about apologies. Tell me about apologies. Well, apologies exist to repair the relationship harm that happens when you do something wrong. There's a range, of course, from things you do wrong that you did absolutely by mistake, human error. Those still need to be apologized for all the way over to malicious harm. They only work if they're done well. need to be apologized for all the way over to- You were malicious. Malicious harm, right? They only work if they're done well. And done well means taking accountability, acknowledging your role in it, acknowledging

the harm that was done, and promising to make amends or offering to make amends. That can mean so many different things. Yeah, you could pay someone back. Right. And I think you have to fight strongly the urge to explain to people why you did it. Because that sounds like you're justified in what you did. Yeah, and it's a fine thing because an explanation can be okay, but an excuse is poison. It basically negates the apology.

Yeah, if you're saying I had no other option but to do that, that's not actually an apology. No, but if you say I failed to show up for our meeting, I got a phone call from my mother and she just tripped and fell. And I am so sorry. I forgot to call you to say I had to take her to the hospital, right? I mean, it's probably helpful for you to know there really was this legitimate challenge in my life. You didn't hit a happy hour. Right. But I think it's rare that the explanation helps much.

What we want to know is that you're conscious of our feelings and you're operating in this relationship with some level of concern about me. That's right. In fact, that's the key element right there is about you. It's not about me. So if I want to make a good apology to you, I've got to do my very best to not make it about me. And I understand how it impacted you. Regardless of my intention or my motive. Yeah, a lot of people will say, I got tired of people judging me by my actions

and not my intentions. Sorry, you're gonna be judged by your actions. That's right. All of us as fallible human beings need to make sure we appreciate that the impact another has on us does not accurately mirror their intentions. I think in ordinary social relationships,

the impact that we have that's harmful, or I think you insulted me in some way, is not driven by bad intentions. Thoughtlessness, maybe carelessness, but not bad intentions. Yeah, not straight up nefarious. Okay, you mentioned social media. We kind of talked about it a little bit, but maybe just the last thing I would like to talk about is parenting as someone who has a couple children. And I want to bring into that perfectionism. Yeah, there's so many messages in our culture and then often in our families that reinforce this need to be perfect. And we even have systems in place to demonstrate perfection.

So an A is perfect. And you want an A. And if you get an A minus, God forbid, or B plus, you might as well give it up these days with grade inflation. Join the army immediately. Right. So as parents, it's so important to help your kids not fall prey to perfectionism. You know, it sort of seems almost tempting, like, well, if they're perfectionists, that's going to be good because they'll work really hard and do really well. But what ends up happening is they'll take the easy test, right? They'll take the easy class because it becomes so painful psychologically to be shown to be imperfect, that there's all sorts of coping

strategies that actually, instead of playing to win, going for it, seeking accomplishment, seeking joy, seeking friendship, there's playing not to lose. Well, yeah. And then you're also reinforcing or formatting their brain to be results-driven, period. Yes. And they never enjoy process, which your life is fucking processed. And that's the beautiful work by Carol Dweck on growth mindset versus fixed mindset. She describes the fixed mindset is what most of us have most of the time, which is that belief that our intelligence is fixed. You know, if I do well on something, it shows I'm smart.

If I don't do well, it shows I'm not. So I'm going to go out of my way, largely unconsciously, to not show to myself or the world that I'm not smart, right? So I'm going to not take the risks, not stretch. Whereas the subset of kids naturally, and then you can train all of us to do this better, have the growth mindset where they just think of the brain as like a muscle. If I take the harder course, it'll stretch more.

I'll get smarter, right? They just believe that their ability to grow and learn and stretch is what they have and what they should be pursuing. Carol Dweck says, as a parent, one of the ways to encourage the growth mindset is to focus on process rather than outcome. So instead of, oh, what a beautiful painting you just made,

you say things like, I love how you're working with color. Oh, and why did you choose to put the bird over there? So you're interested, you express interest and appreciation for the processes and the decisions. Well, you're incentivizing it. That's where the attention's going to come from. That's right. That's where the attention's coming versus just results. And I think so many of us grew up where the attention was 100% on the results.

Well, also it's just easier as a parent of two, eight and 10-year-olds who show me stuff all day long. It's just easiest to go like, oh my God, that's incredible. Because you just want to move on from that. But then you're reinforcing this. Okay, that was incredible. What if the next one's not incredible? Like what if the next one's just okay, right? It's a drug.

You get addicted to the attaboys or the incredibles. But they'll stack four rocks and be like, look at this. Yeah. I know. Yeah, right. There's really nothing to say. It's like, yes, you did. It's hard to know what to say.

They, like, climb a little bit. It's like, hey. Get curious. Like, you know, instead of thinking, okay, what am I supposed to say? You think, oh, I wonder. Why did you think this was going to be impressive? This is for water.

Why did you call me over here? Look, I wonder more. Yes, you've been going underwater for like eight years now. But here's another one. So one is trying to encourage the growth mindset through talking about process and interest and curiosity

about the decisions and the activities. You know, and rewarding when they try something really hard that doesn't work out the first time. I mean, no kid would ever learn to ride a bike if you didn't do at least some of that. That first go-round is not pretty. Yeah. I do a good job sometimes and bad times another. I try and tell them, like, there's scores. We all do that.

That one's perfect. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. Exactly. I'm like, that's your receipt right there. You got a receipt for riding motorcycles. That scar on your knee, that's your receipt. That's right.

Get a bunch of those. It's very tempting as a parent to want to remove the experience of failure from your kid's life. The snowplow metaphor. Helicopter parent. Just kind of reduce the barriers to your happiness and achievement in ways that you don't even know I'm doing. But in fact, kids need failure experiences to build those failure muscles. They'll feel even better and more fulfilled by the successes they have

when they're hard fought and when they've done it themselves. Well, this gets back to my judgmentalness about accountability. I think if you really get honest with yourself as a parent, you're uncomfortable watching them suffer. I am heartbroken when I see my daughter fail socially or these other things. It is excruciating for me. And so if I'm a thousand percent honest, if I'm trying to intervene, I'm actually trying to reduce my own suffering. Yes. And sometimes you have to be tough. You want them to be resilient,

but also we're signaling a little lack of your own resilience. So there's a little introspection that needs to be done. That's a good point. And maybe one more, which is it's not just your own suffering. It's also, they're sort of a reflection of you. They're an extension of your own identity. Right, it's ego. You know, if my kid doesn't do well in school, I'm not a good parent. They got my genes after all. Your

own PTSD from being picked last on the fucking kickball team is now being reactivated. We're seeing this a lot with parents of children who are getting into the dating phase and watching some of these parents try to mitigate heartbreak. It's just like, they're reaching out to other parents, telling the other parents how their kid has to be. And I's just like, they're reaching out to other parents, telling the other parents how their kid has to be. And I'm just like, oh my goodness, are you going to college with them as well? Certainly if I look back and I think about the various heartbreaks, they were all absolutely essential in making me who I am, clarifying what I really care about. Yes. Well, listen, this book, Right Kind of Wrong, The Science of Failing Well,

is tremendous. And I think it really helps people know exactly what they're up against and what they're actually afraid of and how to label, which is so important, and then how to think about it. And then what solution is appropriate for this? Because now I know what one I'm dealing with. So I think it's very, very helpful. And I'm delighted you wrote it. And I really hope you'll write more books and come back because this has been very fun. Well, this has been so much fun that time has flown by. And I wrote it because it's so hard for all of us individually and collectively to answer the question of how do we thrive as a fallible human being? We are fallible, each and every one of us.

as a fallible human being. We are fallible, each and every one of us. And that does not have to be a source of pain, but actually can be a source of connection. It's almost the only thing we'll do perfectly on planet Earth. Is be fallible. Yes. We'll be perfectly fallible.

Yeah, we will. Absolutely. Some more than others. Anyone who you think isn't failing, they're better at keeping secrets. Exactly. We're all stepping in at all the time. Yeah, and any boss who says thou shalt not fail is basically setting himself up to not

hear about the failures that do occur. Right. Yeah. That's super helpful for anyone who's in charge of other people, I think, to know. You've got to make sure that they understand your ears are wide open. Well, it happens in parenting, too. Oh, it's the same thing. If you want your kid to tell you when they're pregnant,

there's a lot of steps that come before that. If you want them to make that phone call when they're at a party and there's been drinking and they want to ride home, you want them to pick up the phone, no hesitation. That's right. Psychological safety is important in families, in companies, everywhere.

Amy, this has been so much fun. Everyone get Right Kind of Wrong, The Science of Failing Well out September 12th. Come back or when we eventually take our guest lecture series at Harvard, we'll have lunch with you. Ooh, I can't wait. All right, take care.

Next up is the fact check. I don't even care about facts. I just want to get into your pants. What's up, guys? Hi, Monty. Hi, cutie. Hi. Are you guys having fun? Oh, the most.

Yeah, fun's coming to an end in about two hours. Yeah, gotta fly home. But let's talk about how early it is for you, Monty. This is about one of the earlier fact checks ever, yeah? Yeah, it's fly home. But let's talk about how early it is for you, Monty. This is one of the earlier fact checks ever, yeah? Yeah, it's 9.30. When did you wake up? I woke up at 8.35. Wonderful. How was your Labor Day weekend?

It was good. You know, we recorded Sync yesterday at 9. We recorded. We started at 9. Why? Because Rob had a tattoo appointment. Wobby Wob was getting more ink? Yes.

He has the most ink. He does. He has a lot. And what about your Labor Day weekend in general? Labor Day was nice. It was pretty relaxed. Supposed to make a lasagna. I didn't make it. You seem to be at my house? I was at your house for recording and then I went to Cara

for computer work and then I dropped off a burrata for Anna. Which if you haven't seen the video on my Instagram it's quite funny. Well that's what I was basing it on. It looked like you guys were having a pool day. Explain the burrata sitch. How do you spell burrata again?

It's actually spelled B-U-R-R-A-T-A. Oh, my gosh. I wouldn't have guessed that. Yeah. And they have a very good burrata and prosciutto at Cara. It's really delicious. Anyway, Anna loves it. World class. And so she asked if I could pick her up one while I was there.

So I did. Then I dropped it off. And then later, I got that stupid text. And I was like, what is this? And then later I saw that video. So I got to see it before and after. And did you do any swimming or hot tubbing? No, I left pretty quickly

You were in and out? Mm-hmm Did you do anything eventful on the three-day weekend? Oh, yeah, I did Here we go I knew there was a Seinfeld story somewhere Yeah, this is a bad story I went to Houston's last night because it's the last day they're ever serving baked potatoes.

What? I know. It's really bad. It's really, really, really bad. Like, I don't know if I can go anymore. really bad. Like, I don't I don't know if I can go anymore. Is it because the potato farmers are

finally trying to make some money and charging more for potatoes? That would be a great reason. And I'd pay $40. You would pay $40 for a baked potato. Because Aaron and I have often marveled over the years

that you can get a 10-pound bag of russet potatoes for 99 cents. And you wonder how with the delivery of that heavy of a package. It's true. I never thought about that. Is there still a margin on it? And you have to dig up the potatoes out of the ground. It's just we can't even imagine how much money they're losing doing all that work. Yeah, and when you see a semi driving down the road

loaded to the gills with potatoes, if you do the math, you divide that by 10, there's probably $1,000 worth of potatoes there. It's probably 10,000 pounds of potatoes. And somehow the whole truckload across from Idaho to Michigan at $1,000. We don't know how it works. Obviously, it must be subsidized.

Yeah. Wow. I've never, ever, ever thought about this. It's been boggling us since we were children. Yeah, we've been on this tip for 29 years now since we first started road tripping. And we'd see these potato semis. Well, that's my privilege because I'm not a farmer. And so I don't even think about what it's like to be a farmer. Everyone loves a baked potato. Everyone loves it. I have told a bunch of

people about this and everyone is so upset. Nobody's like, oh, I guess that makes sense. I bet they do feel that way as I do, but I bet also if they were honest and took an inventory of how many baked potatoes they've eaten at a restaurant in the last decade, I bet it's four or five. But do you know why? Because most places don't have it. That's why. It's very hard to come by. And now Houston's doesn't have it. So now I have to go to Morton's, I guess. I've never been there. Oh, it's beautiful.

But back to how frequently are you getting a baked potato? Be honest. If I'm at Houston's past five o'clock, I'm getting it. So every time you get your chicken sandwich, you get a side baked potato. Well, normally I go before five o'clock. That's just my schedule. But if I'm there for dinner, I always get a baked potato and then I get the chicken sandwich. And then normally I just eat the baked potato and I eat one bite of chicken sandwich and I take the rest of the chicken sandwich home. That's my routine.

And you finish the potato? Yeah. Yeah. So this is really potato? Yeah. Yeah. So this is really messing with your entire system. So you virtually have nothing to eat the second day now that they're getting rid of the baked potato. Yeah. I can see why the stakes are high. You guys had a good reaction at first. It was, you were really upset and that was accurate. And now you're talking yourself out of it a little bit, but I know that that first reaction is the one that I'm going to get.

If they have a good baked potato, that's not being microwaved for 10 minutes and served to you, then they should keep it. Yeah. Then he's sad. Yeah. Then you're sad. I love a baked potato too,

but I guess I only really get one if I'm out and I get a steak. Then I have to have a baked potato. Yeah, but they have a great steak there. A lot of people get it. I got it last night for the first time. It got crazy. The pineapple ribeye? Mm-hmm.

Yeah. We have a lot to report on the eating front since we're on that topic. Yes, I want to hear about your time. Okay, so I've been here for four nights, and three of the four nights, Aaron and I went to Dairy Queen. So 75% of the time. Aaron's face. Did you force him to do that? Who's he?

Dax, did you force Aaron to do that? No, quite, no. On the contraire, mon frere. Contraire, mon frere. Yeah. Wade works at Dairy Queen, first of all. What? I have been on the Dairy Queen train like way harder than anyone should be because it's offered to it's way free it's free for me someone paid

for it um but wade likes to um to shoot a text and say what's your order what or what do you want like for me to pick him up from work usually includes him with 16 things he's bringing back. Yeah, it'd be impossible not to be stuck in the Dairy Queen trap. What do you get, Aaron? What's your go-to? I'm all over the place. Last night, Dax had been getting, I never got a hot fudge sundae there. It was fucking the best thing I ever had at Dairy Queen all of a sudden.

I'm like, what? And in Michigan, we're almost done. Labor Day is like the end of Dairy Queen's going to be boarding up the windows soon for the season. And I'm like, well, I got to get as many sundaes as I can in now. And the fact that I even stumbled upon the sundae is a bit of an accident in that I used to, as you know, Monica, get the banana split blizzard and then a peanut buster parfait. Well, I can't have peanuts anymore. So then I contemplated getting the peanut buster parfait, hold the peanuts. That sounded crazy.

And then I thought, isn't that just a hot fudge sundae, not as tall? So I ordered that on night one as just a side item. And it turned out to be so delicious that then that became a part of my order the rest of the time. But I can only blame the Wade situation for two of the three visits. The third was when we were in Traverse City and at 10 PM, I was perusing DoorDash and ended up ordering a bunch to our hotel for Ruthie, Aaron, and I. That sounds nice. I tried two flavors I had never tried. And guess what?

All the flavors are good, as it turns out. I'm so religious about the banana split flavor, but spoiler, they're all delicious. Agreed. I change everything. Heath, Reese's, Snickers. spoiler they're all delicious agreed i change everything heath reese's snickers i'm all over the board wow well you have the luxury because you can get it at any time so there was the obvious derivation from my normal diet by the three trips to dairy queen i don't know i don't think i've eaten bread in, it's got to be 10, 11 months since I've cheated on bread. And we went to our favorite restaurant in Highland, Michigan,

where we're from, well, Milford Highland. And we went there and they have now a side item you get with the breadsticks that is a very spreadable, light garlicky cream cheese that you can put on the- Is this the Greek restaurant? It's, yeah. Greek salad. Yes, you've been there with us, right? Yeah, I think so. Incredible breadsticks.

But now this crazy smear that they have, a spread, that adds now cream cheese and garlic to already garlicky and buttery breadsticks. And we each had 12. Oh, my God. We think it equaled a loaf each. A loaf of bread. I think we sat down and ate a for real loaf. We were like, well, if you put two slices, it takes two slices of normal sliced bread

to equal one of these breadsticks. And there's got to be 20 slices of bread. And we haven't researched any of this, but this is what we're ballparking. So we think we each sat down and had a loaf of bread covered in many cups of spreadable cream cheese. It was euphoric. Why aren't you saying, are you not saying the restaurant on purpose? I can tell you are, but why?

Highland House. Didn't we say that? No, you said Highland. No. Oh, yeah. Highland House. That's our old haunch. Oh, that's not what I was thinking.

I thought you were talking about that Greek restaurant you took me to. Olga's. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't been into Olga's because I need to be able to tell myself a little lie to get in the situation. So when we went to Highland House, I'm like, I'm going to go and not eat the breadsticks. That's going to be almost impossible. But I'll just fill up on Greek salad and some barbecue chicken and ribs. And that hot basket of fucking sticks got dropped on the table. And then this new side item of spread,

schmear. It was like a bowl full of the spread too. It was a bowl. Yeah, it's not like when you get a little side of butter. This was a full ramekin overflowing with what had to be a cup. Wow, like spinach artichoke dip size. Exactly, exactly. And then unlimited refills. That sounds delicious. It was really great. And we were up in Traverse City in northern Michigan.

We're like a four-hour drive from here. That was the first full day here. We drove up there, and we went to Hop hops fields, which we had never been to and filmed at some hops fields and went into the processing plant and saw the huge swimming pools full of hops and it smelled so yummy. Yeah. And then we attempted to go tubing on our ride home. Oh, yeah. God, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No. I forgot.

We attempted to go tubing where we had been tubing before. I don't know how many years ago was the last time. 20, let's say. Yeah. So Dax is driving through the town and seems to maybe remember where we're going. And anyway, then we have to look it remember where we're going. And anyway, then we have to look it up and we're going back and forth and we find a place. And it turns out it was, well, I think it was, what did Ruthie say? White powered rafting or?

It was a militia camp. This is like, we follow the directions to the kayak and the tube rental. We get to this weird address, and then covering the tube rental sign is a don't tread on me sign. Get on the Trump train. Big First Amendment rights with guns. And we're like, what happened to tubing? The smallest part of that sign was kayak and tube rental. You can barely see it. I think they're like, we need to pivot as a business, and now we need to be a militia.

It was so confusing. And we went to three different places and struck out, and it was all over the town. We wasted so much time. The only highlight is we ate at a Bob Evans. When's the last time you've been to Robert Evans, Monica? I don't know what that is. What? Bob Evans, a breakfast sausage.

What's the saying? Isn't he? Bob Evans, down on the farm. Yeah. Does that ring a bell? Down on the farm. Okay. They make a lot of great sausage.

Pork products. It's hog heaven. Yes. There's hog waste out back and hog products galore. Oh, God. Is it a restaurant? It's a breakfast restaurant that specializes in sausage. I mean, I always do that. Cracker Barrel?

Yes, Cracker Barrel. Very adjacent. Yeah, it's a— The original Cracker Barrel, I'd say. Yeah, it's very Southern. Is it in the South? It's only in the North, but it's Southern. I don't think it is because I've never heard of it.

Ruthie felt right at home. Oh, well, then yeah. A lot of gravy in that fucking building. Yeah. But what was really fun, and you just don't get this in L.A., is that the place was at 95% occupancy. It was like after church on a Sunday. Okay.

But 90 plus percent occupancy, 100% of the customers, 85 and older. Okay. We were the youngest people in there by a good 40 years. And it made for so much fun people watching. There was a birthday. A guy got up and read scripture before they started. Yeah. Oh, what a trip.

Yeah. It was exciting. I found out some stuff. Okay. Oh, okay. Bob Evans is based in Ohio. Perfect. Okay. Exactly. It was based in Ohio. Perfect. Okay.

Exactly. A lot of good hog. It was founded in 1948. Pre-Cracker Barrel. Well, yeah. I'm guessing. Cracker Barrel was founded in 1969, much later. 21 years after Bob.

Can you imagine? But guess what? Cracker Barrel was founded by Dan Evans. Shut the fuck up. No. No. Dan Evans. Daniel Evans, Robert's brother.

Dan Evans, but Evans is spelled E-V-I-N-S. Oh, he's trying to differentiate himself and act like he wasn't biting off of his brother Bob's restaurant chain. Yeah. What if he spelled Cracker Barrel? In fact, it's shocking it's not spelled K-R-A-C-K-E-R. Sure. It's very shocking.

It definitely has that vibe. Sorry, Cracker Barrel. I had the worst meal of my entire life at Cracker Barrel. Am I getting it? No, that's my opinion. I had the worst meal in my opinion of my entire life at Cracker Barrel when I was like seven. What? Seven?

You remember the meal? What did you order? The catfish? I'll never forget it. It was so horrific. It was dumplings, like southern dumplings. And it was so like. Salty?

No, like. Not enough gravy? Thick, like doughy. Oh, not cooked. It was, I had nightmares about it after. Oh my gosh. You need to go back. Never.

And work through this trauma. Order the dumplings and process the trauma. No, thank you. No, thank you. Okay, what else about the trip? Also, Dax, you should, at this point, know you haven't learned the lesson that the tubing you did a long time ago is never going to be the same. This is now the second time your tubing has changed dramatically. But Monica, I disagree.

Despite the death-defying trauma you experienced going over the water spill, that tubing in San Marcos River was so much fun. I give that a 10 until you're... Yeah, no, but you thought it was going to be the same route, and then it was a much different route. If we would have hit the water, I think we would have, well, can you imagine, first of all,

we felt, I was scared to pull up and look at this sign being a white man. I can't even fucking imagine what someone else would think. I know. I was like, well, this is the most uninviting sign, and you feel like you have to defend yourself just to drive up the driveway. Oh, you know, just being a Democrat would have been a reason to beat the fuck out of us

and shoot at us. Yeah. Oh, us. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, it was wild. But with the exception of that little oopsie daisies, the time we all went tubing, tremendous fun up until that point. Wouldn't you agree? Jumping off the bridges and clinging together.

There was all the cute boys floating. Yeah, that was fun. I liked that part. Yep. So was all the cute boys floating. Yeah, that was fun. I liked that part. Yep. So I'm going to keep swinging. I'm going to keep trying to tube until I'm... In fact, a dream day when I'm 90 would be to start the day at Bob Evans,

get a big belly full of hog products, and then float on the... Relax. Just relax the rest of the day on the tubes. And then how was all the video... How was it working together as actors for the first time? I'll let Aaron answer. Oh, yeah. I've been telling Dex that I wish I would have broke into the business with him earlier.

But I've had so much fun. This is all I want to do. This is all we want to do when we're younger. He just connected the dots that us horsing around in junior high is the entertainment industry. Like, we go shoot this dumb thing on his motorcycle. We look so stupid. We're riding two up, drinking

Ted Seegers, and then we're watching the video, and we're laughing and having so much fun with how it turned out. And then I'm like, Aaron, this is the whole thing. This is you go make these stupid things with your friends, and then you giggle like crazy. It's just junior high officially.

It was fun. It was so ridiculous and so much fun. Yesterday we wanted to film a little thing with all three of us on one jet ski. Oh my gosh. Yes, on a very, very busy Labor Day

lake. But Ruthie was there for all of this, right? Yes. Oh, thank God. Okay. Well, she was the camera operator. She's now can put that on her resume. She did a phenomenal job.

She's great at social. Very competent person, period. Yeah, agreed. I mean, you have a visual of what Aaron and Aaron and I would look like sharing two feet of seat on something that tips over in a very choppy water with boats flying in every direction and four cops pulling everyone over on jet skis uh we fell over for no reason just out of nowhere and And luckily, Ruthie was- Did she get it?

Did she get that? Okay, good. That's gold. Do you want me to text it to you right now? Yeah. All right, let's see. Here it is. Nothing's going on.

Well, I think it's because the second Aaron was like not even on it. So he had to fall off because he's like barely on. Yeah, he fell off and then I was hugging onto the deck so hard. You jerked me off. You did pull him straight off. I told him to begin with though. I go, if I'm going off, you're coming with me. I'm going alone.

It was the scariest thing I've ever ridden because aaron's holding on tight behind me at 230 and then tyrell's on him so all in is like 470 pounds pulling on me i'm holding the handlebars it's so unstable and way too fast oh my god well look the weather looks beautiful. My God. Oh, it was a dream day. It was like 88, and we were on the water. It was so fun. Hey, I'm really glad you guys wore life vests. Well, not by choice. It was the law on the lake.

Well, I'm glad. And as you can see, probably a good idea given how stable we were. We tried to go fast. Well, we did go fast a couple times but when we first started going fast it started bouncing really bad and we it was like a concertina effect where tyrell was slamming hard into aaron who's slamming into me and it put the whole thing pushed me forward and i landed testicles penis and mon's pubis on the plastic as hard as I've been hit in the groin that I can remember where I thought there's probably some blood in my bathing suit from my perineum I thought maybe was ruptured and then

had to continue getting on the gas so we could plane off it was uh harrowing yeah I took Ruthie and Adelaide for a ride after we docked for a while and were on the sandbar and Dax was like, do you think it's gonna be different? And I said, well, of course it's gonna be different because it's two small girls and not three men.

And I got fucking cranking with those two and I started smacking my balls and I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah. It was a choppy rough out there. Oh man. It was for experienced jet skiers only, which we are not.

Sure. Oh, and you'd like, you'd be proud of us. Two guys in a pontoon boat got angry at us and they were screaming at us and flipping us off and calling us names and we let it go that's good yeah felt like oh i know we're supposed to we gotta follow them back to their dock and then we're gonna try to dock this dumb thing and get off have a swimsuit fight three on two then awkwardly get back on our jet ski and probably crash as we pull away. Oh, God. We overlooked the whole thing.

They're just jealous because you guys were having so much fun. Because we were being so sexy. I think they felt left out. Yeah, it was that. All right. Well, I have a few facts. I don't have that many. Okay.

facts. I don't have that many. Okay. We talked for a second about women's colleges, and she said she thought the only two that were still operating were Wellesley and Smith, maybe she said. But there's still 26 active women's colleges. Okay. But there was 281 in the 60s, so it has dropped significantly. Oh, my God. I can't believe I waited this long to ask you. And I'm sure you're not doing it because of the school, but have you started the sorority documentary on Max? It's about Bama.

Wait, this is so... Julia was just telling me about this. Is it new? Because she acted like it was, oh, it's new. I just discovered. It says 2023. I don't know if it's been months or not, but it's all about. Bama Rush.

Yes, Bama Rush, which I knew nothing about and you must know a lot about. Yeah, I don't know if I'm allowed to watch it. It's like the strike. Like, I don't know what I'm allowed to do and not. With Bama, Roll Tide. Yeah, don't know if I'm allowed to watch it. It's like the strike. Like, I don't know what I'm allowed to do and not. With Bama, Roll Tide? Yeah, don't say that. They do say Roll Tide a lot, which I thought, oh, I bet every time, Monica. But then part of it is like you would have to watch it.

But I will say in it, they give a kind of history of sororities, which were much different originally. They're kind of history of sororities, which were much different originally. They're kind of feminist organizations. Yes, because they were joining colleges for the first time and there was such rampant misogyny. They show these articles that the professors were writing about women and how pointless it was for them to matriculate and how they were incompetent. So the original pulling together was for kind of safety. They were so outnumbered and it was not a warm welcome that they originally started as kind of a feminist thing. But then they evolve into this very strange thing, which obviously the documentary exposes. Yeah. Oh, I guess I might.

There's just too many things out there that are my enemies. It's like the Florida doc. Now the Bama doc. It's like, ugh. who they want to invite to their parties. And they are young men who are only evaluating the sorority on how hot the members are because that's who they're going to invite to their party. So ultimately the entire structure of the sorority ranking system is how hot the people are. I know, it's awful.

Which doesn't feel like that could be a thing in 2023. I know. And they all have the Greek initials or whatever, but then they're given like a nickname based on those initials. And some of them are really bad. Naughty? No, like ugly people and stuff. Oh. It's bad.

Were you tempted to join us? I was about to say, it probably is, if I'm being honest with myself, a small amount of why I did not rush. I mean, I didn't, none of my friends did, and we all went to college together. So we were just like, we're not doing that. That feels like the main reason, but I think I would have been very anxious about getting in one that was not cool. And then I would hate myself. I know, because they all like, it's just a big cattle call, and then they say what their pick is,

but then the sororities themselves single out who they want. It's like getting picked for kickball, but you know it's about your looks. It's really brutal. It is brutal, and yeah, and I definitely – there's an aesthetic. It's very specific. Oh, it's definitely, you know, there's an aesthetic. It's very. Oh, it's white blonde. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not that even if I try, I'm not that. So I bet it would not have gone well. I mean, the two time state champ would have helped. Well, that's what led with that. There is some overlap with the competitive nature. You plan performances.

For someone, I think, like you, who is an overachiever, and here's the list of things I got, I definitely could have seen you doing it. Yeah. If I had gone to a school, like another Southern school, without my friends, I probably would have. Yeah. Well, it does seem at least the way

the doc's painting Bama is you kind of have to at Alabama. Like everyone's in one. Well, that's how Georgia was. To tell Ruthie this is out. She was in one at Auburn. And they hated Bama.

I don't know. Yeah, they're also enemies. There's so many enemies. More enemies than friends in this college sports biz. There's no friends. You're not friends with anyone. And then even within, in Rolling Tide, you're in a strata of sorority. Wait, wait, Ruthie was in one

at Auburn. Yeah. Oh, wow. Is she around? We should ask her to speak on that. Is she a high rank or a middle rank? Don't know the details. Now we need to know. Okay, Ruthie. About her rank. Could you come tell

us about what sorority you were in and where it was ranked? Because I'm just learning of this from the Bama documentary. I was in Tri-Delta. Okay. Delta, Delta, Delta. Oh, good. Delta, Delta. How can I help you?

Help me, help me. At Bama, they're awesome. I would say they're like top third in Auburn. Okay. Back in the day. But you know, I went to college in 2000. So this is like 24 years ago. It's too long ago for to be relevant, but we're still going to count it as very expert insight. Okay. I like that it was in the top three or top third. Top third. We'll say top three. We'll just make that top three. We'll say

top three. But I want to know, I just learned in this doc that the rankings of the sororities at the school are based on how hot they are. Was that the case at Auburn? Well, it's all a popularity contest. Yeah. 100% across the board. I mean, they say that it's their philanthropy and their grades and what they're involved in and yada, yada, yada. And don't get me wrong. I loved my sorority.

I still talk to my sorority sisters, like had the best time. Came from Birmingham, Alabama to Auburn and made a lot of friends that weren't from Alabama. Like they all came from Texas and Georgia and all different places, but it's 100% popularity. And I don't wanna, you don't have to answer this,

but I was heartbroken that all these gals rush and then they get assigned to, in some of the sororities, they know like that's the low end one. So where were you in the tiers? Top tier. My sorority or where was I when I went through rush? Delta, Delta, Delta at Auburn. Was it a top tier or middle tier? I would say middle tier. Top to upper.

Across the national board, Tridel is known everywhere. Like if you, that's a very popular. Yeah, we had one. Yeah, very well-known sorority. We partnered with St. Jude's for children's cancer research. That's what our philanthropy is. Right. And the hotness, would you say the hotness was pretty epic?

Oh, the most epic. We are the hottest people on campus beyond. I mean, there's nobody better. All blonde hair, blue eyes, southern bells. That's exactly what it is. None of us drank. We were very perfect. Spray, spray, spray.

Very perfect. The most perfect. Well, thank you so much for that. We didn't anticipate having an expert here in the house. All right. Well, that was our on-the-ground reporter, Ruthie. But now I really want to remember what our best ones were. Right.

You might have to call Callie. That's what I was thinking. Yeah. Get her. She'll know. Should I was thinking. Yeah. Get her. She'll know. Should I call her? Yeah, call her. She's got another expert.

This whole fact check is about sororities. I mean, it's a fascinating world. I know people love them, but I was super happy with my decision. This is what happens. Hi. You're on air. Okay. Can you guys hear her? We can hear her perfectly. She won't be able to hear happens. Hi. You're on air. Okay. Can you guys hear her?

We can hear her perfectly. She won't be able to hear us. Okay. You won't be able to hear Dax and Erin. They're on Zoom. But we got in a conversation about sororities. Okay. And I couldn't remember.

What were the, like, best ones at Georgia? And also, was Tri Delta a good one at Georgia? Yeah. Okay, great. Good job, Ruthie. Yeah. That was scary. Okay, what were our, like, well, we're talking about how horrible it is because really it's just how hot they are.

And it's the fraternities are sort of dictating that. So we hate it. But what were the best ones? I guess it depends, yeah what what you consider best but the like you know the coveted ones kd kd yeah kd was i think like the best one remember our one of our roommates ish not really yeah we had a friend, not friend. She lived on our hall named Katie, and she was in KD, and she was hot. Oh, per- Shewin. What is Shewin?

Yeah, they were all very, very hot. And Zeta. Oh, yep. Yep, yep, yep. Zeta. And then there was one, like, was it Akio? That was, like, cool. Yeah, that sounds familiar. Or, like, was it A.K.O.? That was, like, cool.

Or, like, good. But more normal. Like, I feel like that would have been where we were if we had done that. There's different sororities. There's, like, the Jewish sorority. There was the. Yeah. I feel like more of, like, the, like, out-of-state sorority.

I don't really remember. Foreigners. Oh, God. Oh, my God. They probably would have tried to get me to go into that in the foreign one. I want to ask one question. It wasn't foreign. It was just like.

No, it was foreign. I want to ask Callie one question. Okay. Dax has a question. How do. Okay. I'll relay it. Does she think she paid a price in attracting young male suitors by not being in a sorority?

Okay, Dax wants to know, do you think you paid a price in attracting young male suitors by not joining a sorority? I don't know. No, Callie had a lot of boys, so no. Next question. I'm going to say no. I think it was always, there were so many organized events. You know, there was like socials and. Yeah, but they were all, yeah.

Forced socialization, which I guess inevitably makes you more social. I think we also went to a school where we didn't need it. You know, everyone's at bars all the time. So you're already just meeting a ton of strangers. Booty bouncing and booty pumping. All right, Cal, I'll let you go. But thanks for the intel. You're welcome.

Okay, bye. Bye. Wow. We're using all of our sources to get to the bottom of this today. Oh, my God. That was fun, I just realized, because that's both of our best friends were on this fact check. Oh, my God. This is the best friends edition of fact check.

Exactly. Oh, so do you remember, this is recent that I wanted to watch Revenge of the Nerds and then was told how inappropriate that is anymore because of a lot of things, I guess. But the Omega Moose, you said there was a lot of bad words for ones. That was one. Yes. There was the Omega Moose. Because they were cows.

Yeah. Back when you would call people cows was fine to do. Yeah. I mean, we had those. Like, was it that blunt? It's so funny how that movie 180'd, which is, for many years, it was an inspirational film about the nerds getting power over the jocks, which seemed great.

But it was at the expense of filming girls without their knowledge of them being naked. There was this moo thing. So it kind of then 180'd yet again. And then nerds ended up running the whole world from Silicon Valley. So then now the nerds are the jocks and the jocks. Now there's going to be a Revenge of the Jocks. Oh, my God.

Yeah, starring Aaron and I. Okay, that was a good. Starring Aaron and I. Okay. That was a good detour. Let's see. Oh, one thing I just wanted to highlight. Ben and Matt. Did you see Ben and Matt paid for Kimmel's staff for two weeks during the strike? I saw your post celebrating them.

Yes. That's how I learned of it. Yeah, you loved that, didn't you? Yeah, that's so nice. It is. It is. I wrote that down. Okay, well, there's an emotional intelligence quiz.

I think it's going to be too hard via Zoom. So we'll put a pin in that um for another time yeah maybe not on best friend day yeah different day yeah yeah and then the company that city bank lost the 800 million dollars to based on the basic failure was revlon really? There was a computer error made by a human that resulted in Revlon getting $800 million from Citibank. And then it went to court and they got to keep it. What? Yes. Don't you want them to make that mistake? Wow. What if you woke up and you looked at your glance at your things, you were going to buy a season pass for skiing. Yeah. And then you saw that you had $800 million and $1,100.

I would. And 11, yeah. That'd be accurate. Yeah. I would. It's for a high tail. I'd be like, later. Yeah.

That's very fun. Ruthie, did you put 800 million into the account? It says we have 800 million and 1,100. Oh, boy. Well, that's pretty much it for my facts. Okay, well, listen, as much fun as I've had here, which was a ton, very excited to get back to our studio to do this in person. Yeah. In person's fun.

But, Aaron, you got to come visit. I was just telling him that I haven't seen you in a really long time. Yep. I've been saying the same thing. So, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. See you next week. We're doing it.

Well, now that summer's over, you know, he had a lot of child response. Three children out for summer, yeah. School's back in. I'll be back out to West. Maybe you could bring some Dairy Queen with you. Maybe it still works. If you go to Dairy Queen here,

you can say, my son works at the Dairy Queen in Michigan. Discount C. Yeah. Discount Wade. Yeah, code Wade. Dairyqueen.com slash Wade for arm cherry 10% discount. Well, Monica, we love you.

Love you guys. Have a good last couple hours together. And I'll see you tomorrow. See you soon. All right. Love you soon all right love you bye love you